101–110 of 163 posts
No smartphones for my kids until they reach 18. Human interaction cannot be replaced by a screen and a keyboard.
More than a mental health crisis or go outside more, the biggest harm that social+smartphone has ever done is end of creating things . The new generation is spending huge amount of time in consumption and very little in creation. This is going to be a boon for the producers (book writers, movie makers etc) who will be in short supply for much larger consumption crowd. This will eventually be reflected in massive weal…
My 12 year old is very creative in Kerbal Space Program. And what he's trying to do is hard - things never work first time, and you have to spent a lot of time trying to figure out why. Sure, it's not how I learned, building go-karts and tree houses and simple electrical stuff, but it's still learning how to create and debug. A bigger problem for me is that today's generation have no hope in figuring out how things l…
I'm on the younger end of the HN spectrum, so I grew up playing Minecraft pretty regularly. I remember stumbling into low-level hardware design with a thing in the game called Redstone. You could combine it in numerous ways to make various Boolean logic gates. That progressed into making memory, ALU's, and the like in said game. Fast forward 8 years and I'm a hardware engineer IRL. Once you understand the basic 'building blocks' of how something works you'll develop an interest in the rest of the abstraction generally.
I suppose the best way to see it would be to think of it like a program. You can build a program from bunch of functions, not knowing how those individually "work", and have a finished product at the end. That's still an enjoyable process. You might enjoy it so much that you jump into the library and look at how the functions work. You might go further and look at how the code works at a lower-level language. Then down to machine code. Then at a part level (graphics card, processor, RAM etc). Then a component level. Then at an electro-dynamics level. You can keep going further and further into deeper levels of phsyics.
A kid is still going to have a grand old time plugging in all the parts of their computer and having it turn on, as much as they do building tree-houses and go-karts.
More than a mental health crisis or go outside more, the biggest harm that social+smartphone has ever done is end of creating things . The new generation is spending huge amount of time in consumption and very little in creation. This is going to be a boon for the producers (book writers, movie makers etc) who will be in short supply for much larger consumption crowd. This will eventually be reflected in massive weal…
Kids these days OTOH want to become YouTubers... and they actually CAN and DO with free video editing apps, 4K cameras built into their phones, etc. They're making memes (just look at all the creativity coming out of something as inane as TikTok), and just look at Minecraft.
This article/researcher makes claims that: a) there is a mental health crisis among teenagers which is not parallel to other comparable generations, and b) that crisis is linked to mobile phones. I'm not convinced by either claim. In my experience of working with teenagers over the last couple of decades, there is a general trend that they are now better at communicating their emotional needs and emotional state. If…
Sometimes it blows my mind that even in "educated circles" of the west there's such a blatant lack of perspective on the rest of the world. We still live in a world where 3 million people a year die of diarrhea - and you think economic insecurity is the reason Western kids are depressed?
No, this is not why teenagers are depressed. If that were even remotely true every teenager on Earth not from a G8 or Scandanavian country would be jumping off a ledge by the time they're 14.
This article/researcher makes claims that: a) there is a mental health crisis among teenagers which is not parallel to other comparable generations, and b) that crisis is linked to mobile phones. I'm not convinced by either claim. In my experience of working with teenagers over the last couple of decades, there is a general trend that they are now better at communicating their emotional needs and emotional state. If…
What a great summary. Tho I think the part about issues our society faces is a lot bigger than those few examples. Educated people have more than ever reasons to be depressed now: - pollution - economic stagnation - inflation - antibiotics failing - global warming - debt - automation and artifical intelligence - politics failing to tackle those issues (its a circus in some countries) - issues like Brexit - natural di…
The commentary in this thread just blows my mind. I'm astounded in an era of regular travel just how sheltered people in the West are.
I believe 200 years ago people were asking if books were destroying a generation. My parents generation wondered if video games was destroying mine. Now it's smartphones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a great summary. Tho I think the part about issues our society faces is a lot bigger than those few examples. Educated people have more than ever reasons to be depressed now: - pollution - economic stagnation - inflation - antibiotics failing - global warming - debt - automation and artifical intelligence - politics failing to tackle those issues (its a circus in some countries) - issues like Brexit - natural di…
All of those things were around, and had greater effect in the 70’s and 80’s. Combine with all our jobs going overseas.
And as dollar value influences pretty much whole world, it can be applied the same way in other countries.
Source: http://www.in2013dollars.com/1860-dollars-in-2017?amount=1
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not enough, I am afraid. I think we should think holistically, this means, don't only look at school but also at family, peer relations and society at large. In other words I propose that we should completely forbid functional smart phones for children below 10 years then officially introduce smart phones in school as a part of the school's curriculum. The curriculum also limits usage and relaxes the rules whe…
How on earth could that ever be realistically enforced?
No smartphones for my kids until they reach 18. Human interaction cannot be replaced by a screen and a keyboard.
Human interaction outside of school is coordinated by kids with smartphones, using smartphone apps, to other kids who have smartphones. No joke a child without a smartphone would seem weird to the rest of the group and risk alienation bases solely on the lack of that smartphone.
Social media is like booze - social lubricant when used responsibly, but can cause problems in those with addictive personalities. Teach your children to use it responsibly, instead of forcing them to be teetotalers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People still fear the "robots will take all of our jobs!" dialogue. Many societies still have work as a core component of personal value, so the idea of people having to work less doesn't translate to "Great, I can let these robots do the work and I can enjoy myself" but to "I can't find work and so I'm a worthless disgrace."
I'm sitting in a McDonald's right now in the Netherlands. There are about 30 unfilled orders on the TV and only 1 cashier. How is that possible? The other cashiers were replaced by touchscreen ordering kiosks, which there are 4 of in this restaurant. This has happened in McDonalds worldwide, easily eliminating hundreds or thousands of jobs. It is only a matter of time before these ordering kiosks become commoditized.…