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My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone

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Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone

#151

Post by racl101 »

No offense, but the author / parent sounds pretty passive when it come to parenting. It could've been an iPhone or a Nintendo Switch or whatever or a Macbook. The point being: the parent never enforced the limits nor stood their ground. Of course your kid is gonna plow you over once they know all they need to do is just ask.

You gotta set those limits and stick to what you say. No matter how awkward or unpleasant it may seem. They'll eventually understand, and on some level, respect you more for being a disciplinarian. Sometimes kids act out though they secretly crave rules and boundaries.

Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone

#152

Post by ianseyer »

JoeCianflone wrote: post #109

What a load of shit. I’m sorry I have an 11 year old who has an iPod touch the real problem here is lax parenting. My son cannot use his phone alone in his room alone, he doesn’t have TikTok or any social media apps. He cannot take it to school (not that there’s a school to go to at the moment) or take it out of the house unless he asks first and 95% of the time we don’t let him. Kids test—that’s like an iron law of…

"What a load of shit", "all these problems are your fault."

Really? This comment just seems like ego-driven parental grandstanding rather than an actual attempt to understand how the first generation born into the era of smartphones and all-the-time internet access might have difficulty negotiating a healthy psyche against a multi-billions dollar oligarchy of companies intentionally seeking to monetize their attention.

Congratulations, your son doesn't seem addicted to their ipod. Cool anecdote; here's actual data about wether or not parental control of phone use has much of an affect on phone addiction (it doesn't): https://journals.lww.com/jan/fulltext/2018/04000/does_parent...

Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone

#154

Post by dijksterhuis »

michaelt wrote: post #58
dijksterhuis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a bit like saying addictive drugs themselves aren't a problem. I mean... They're not. They're inanimate f----- objects. They've never maliciously set out to cause someone harm because they're inanimate f----- objects. They don't have an understanding of the concept of morals or ethics because they're inanimate f----- objects. When I ingest them into my body -- that's when all hell breaks loose. They become a…

> They're not. They're inanimate f----- objects. [...] They become a problem for me when I use them. In common usage of the english language, a thing can be a 'problem' without being sentient or unavoidable. A pothole in the highway can be a problem if it's damaging people's cars - even if they could avoid it by driving more cautiously.

I see what you're getting, and I like the pothole analogy. I agree with the fact that it can be used like that in the English language, but I disagree with the idea behind it.

In the pothole analogy - it's like saying potholes are the reason for all these people's cars being damaged.

If no cars were driving over the pothole then the pothole wouldn't be a problem as no damage would ever be caused! It's an inanimate f----- object. It's just there.

It's the fact that people are driving cars on a road that has potholes that causes their cars to be damaged. It's some action that was taken that causes an effect to occur.

Then we get into the murky world of who is actually responsible and what is the solution. Which I don't have an answer for.

Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone

#155

Post by ianseyer »

KungFuJohnny wrote: post #2

Title is completely misleading. The problem has nothing to do with an iPhone. It has 100% to do with bad parenting. The author even acknowledges this, but I guess blaming the iPhone gets more clicks than "Poor parenting harms child".

Here is some peer-reviewed research on how little an affect parent control of phone usage has on phone addiction: https://journals.lww.com/jan/fulltext/2018/04000/does_parent...

There is a multi-billion dollar concerted effort by the largest companies in the world to get an iron grip on the attention of children at a level of granularity never before seen - don't pretend like that isn't a novel cultural force that should be reckoned with.

Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone

#156

Post by Aerroon »

sequoia wrote: post #87

Buried lede: > My daughter doesn’t return home from school until 6:30 pm and still has to eat, bathe, and get ready for bed. Perhaps it is not just the iPhone, but school taking up 100% of her time, energy, and attention that is preventing her from pursuing creative interests? As a homeschooling parent whose kids have been in school at times, I see this first hand. School is exhausting . Between rising unnaturally ea…

Maybe the phone is an escape? Getting home at 6:30 pm plus homework means that school-related things are a 12+ hour day. That's a pretty rough schedule for anyone.

Imagine if you had a 12 hour work schedule every day. Now imagine what you would feel, if you didn't have a choice to be there. You had to be there whether you liked it or not. That's what school is like for a lot of kids. Making it extra long probably doesn't help. Many adults would probably turn to worse vices to cope with a schedule like that - alcohol, drugs etc. Extended phone use seems much more minor in comparison.

Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone

#157

Post by sergiomattei »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #144
parksy wrote: post #45

My dad smashed my computer around the laundry (where the computer lived) with my cricket bat because I was "playing games" instead of studying. "playing games" was using assembly language and pascal with s3m libraries to program a game. With my kids I've felt the rise of anger when they want to be autonomous and pursue their own interests. I mean, I was taught that parenthood is subjugation. But just like my dad coul…

>"playing games" was using assembly language and pascal with s3m libraries to program a game. None of which is possible on iPhones and iPads these kids are growing up with. Even if they did escape the attention algorithm long enough to get bored and explore there is nothing to discover it's a locked black box.

Blanket statements are easy but reality is much more complex.

iSH, code learning apps, Codecademy via the iPad browser, iBooks, Library Genesis for getting any book in existence for free, Duolingo, cloud coding. I could go on...

There's many, many ways of learning through these devices.

Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone

#158

Post by sergiomattei »

jbob2000 wrote: post #80
parksy wrote: post #45

My dad smashed my computer around the laundry (where the computer lived) with my cricket bat because I was "playing games" instead of studying. "playing games" was using assembly language and pascal with s3m libraries to program a game. With my kids I've felt the rise of anger when they want to be autonomous and pursue their own interests. I mean, I was taught that parenthood is subjugation. But just like my dad coul…

Are you happy? I missed so many experiences sitting in front of the computer all day, it didn’t really get me any further than if I had taken a more modest interest. YouTube and Minecraft and these digital realities are fake realities. Whatever happiness they provide is temporary and short lived. It took me until my 30s to realize this and now I’m starting all over again. Digital stuff is fine in moderation, but I wi…

Yes. What's your point?

Moderation has always been necessary.

Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone

#160

Post by donmcronald »

adamzapasnik wrote: post #66

I think a lot of people are missing the point. That could be attributed to the poor title, though. The way I see it, pre-phone their daughter was probably much more engaged with her parents and was doing more manual creative stuff. After the phone appeared, she distanced herself and got absorbed by it. I don't get why so many people here are trying to defend smartphones/social media? Isn't it pretty obvious they are…

Some apps are addictive, not all of them. The biggest problem IMO is that "no phone" isn't an option. Kids need a phone to participate in society. That's just the way it is. The problem I see is that phones have super addictive apps like TikTok that target young kids, so giving them the "good half" of a phone means you also end up giving them the "bad half" and kids aren't good at understanding why the bad half is bad for them.

It's like serving a kid a plate of food with vegetables and meth side-by-side and the meth dealer is making every effort they can to push the meth into the vegetables.

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