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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

#191
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will still say that lacking the ability to communicate via a particular medium is not the same as lacking social skills. My inability to send messages via Morse code over telegraph lines doesn't mean that I lack social skills.

So if a skilled telegraph operator handed you a message including the word "naloopen" you would know what that means? There was not just one but several forms of telegraphese developed. A conversation held entirely in brief dots and dashes has a substantially different flow to it than say typing out a message on an internet forum, which in turn is nothing like how one would communicate with a 5 second fleeting video…

Once again... not knowing how to communicate via a particular medium does not equate to a lack of social skills.

To your point, if a telegraph operator handed me a message I didn't understand, I could just say, "Hey, I don't understand this message. Can you explain it to me?" because that is social skills.

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

#192

A lot of the comments here seem to be saying that (1) kids getting addicted to phones is no different than getting addicted to TV, books, etc, and that this is just the latest iteration of a complaint parents have had for generations and (2) this person is a bad parent. I used to agree with (1), but lately I'm inclined to think that this time, it really is different. Very different. And the primary reason is that unl…

"Bad parent" can be applied to anything that goes wrong, and is an empty assertion. And it seems to be asymmetrically applied to mothers, not fathers. Also, one of the first rules of parenting is, never show any sign of weakness in public, or you will be attacked ruthlessly. It's a variant on the old saying, "Never let them see you sweat." This bias in the literature makes it look like there are some brilliant parent…

It's kind of comforting that the ad industry has thrown billions of dollars into trying to mind-control people, and conversion rates are still super low. Maybe we got lucky; maybe on another planet somewhere, intelligent life is 1000x more susceptible to ads.

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

#193
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…

I see this even with adults. You can certainly toughen up and work long hours and maybe even efficiently. Most people will probably do a better job with less than ~ 6 hours per day at least on intellectual work or learning. If you try to do more you will not be able to sustain it long term with your other obligations in life while staying healthy and happy. As with anything, there are exceptions but they tend to confirm the experience. I have worked more than 12 hours more days in a row on very hard stuff during e.g. infrastructure migrations that didn't exactly follow a plan for unforeseen reasons and I did an exam the next day after the return from this business trip. I had more similar experiences. I am able to script/ program multiple hours without much in terms of break if I am "in the flow". I also like long walks or just sitting down with people drinking tea and having a conversation even about somewhat deep topics. This is a kind of offset of the peak concentration and performance.

The question about energy and motivation is in my opinion also related to tools and methods and not just long hours and early wake up. At OrgPad.com we learn about new approaches to education in conversations with our users and friends all the time since our 2000+ users are mostly students at elementary schools, high schools and universities. We also have a small but very active community of academics using OrgPad to pursue research and personal development. E.g. a teacher created a large OrgPage with many topics related to chocolate. These are roughly: activities, knowledge gathering tasks or experiments and information. Using this approach you can motivate children and their due to COVID-19 involuntary home schooling parents to discover e.g. whether chocolatey burns: https://www.orgpad.com/s/9l8igw The teacher who made all that shares her experiences (in Czech) on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyM6l4FHtb0&list=PLs5kSDmhaz... It seems, the children (and their parents hopefully too) like her approach to digital education a lot. I sincerely think OrgPad.com can help many people with organizing their thoughts and other information and related materials while not sucking their mental energy as other tools and methods do. If you want a short (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtqFWSJT9yw

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how these things always go isn't it? We invent this incredible technology that augments what we do, what we can be, what we can learn, and what we can believe... and then we turn it into an almost-exclusively advertising tool designed to convert a human being into a money making machine. It's one of the reasons I'm not enthusiastic about technology anymore. I see what we do with it. Every. Single. Time. It ma…

Exactly. This is what disillusioned me about information technology as well. Advertising in particular is a cancer that, over time, consumes every single communications medium.

I'll third this. I was so excited about the applications for speech/smart interfaces in the home a la Cherry 2000. But we got Alexa. A tool to buy stuff and spy. I won't denigrate the actual useful functions these devices have - I like to ask Alexa to tell me jokes when I'm at a friend's house that has one. However, it's all the things that come with it that turned me off.

I'm currently pursuing open-source tools to run home automation but it's slow-going. It's complex.

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

#195
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a boy coding assembly a bit different than a girl doing TikTok, OnlyFans etc.?

Isn’t Onlyfans a porn community?

I mean, isn't TikTok one too?

Definitely wouldn't let my kids anywhere near it.

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

#196
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done home schooling and regular public schooling. If you can afford to have a parent be at home full time with your kids, you are amongst the wealthiest in the world. You are fortunate.

Or the poorest. Especially if you cannot find a job that pays more than daytime child care costs. Then it’s cheaper to have a parent stay at home, despite the poverty level, because any daycare available costs more than any available job brings in.

[deleted]

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I turned off all social media notifications on my devices so that I feel more like they're there to serve me rather than me a slave to it. Having it in my pocket is a lot less enticing when it's not constantly nagging me. I feel a lot more in control of it these days. I'm able to leave it on top of the microwave for hours at a time without feeling the anxiety of missing something.

I'm with you. The only audible notifications that I get are phone, text and a couple of other messaging apps that I barely use (I'm talking one message per month per app). I get visual notifications for my personal email. Contrary to many people apparently, I also view texting as an asynchronous activity; I don't fee any urge to view and reply instantly to texts.

I even turned off the visual notifications on my email, facebook, linkedin, everything else that would normally give people the impression that my device is there for their benefit and not mine. The only audible notifications I get are from my girlfriend on WhatsApp and phone calls... which reminds me, I've put my phone down somewhere and I should probably go find it... after my cup of tea.

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

#198
post #96
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…

I have done home schooling and regular public schooling. If you can afford to have a parent be at home full time with your kids, you are amongst the wealthiest in the world. You are fortunate.

If they're buying iPhones for their kids like the original author's post they're also wealthy. So your point is moot.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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.

Is anything you listed even remotely on the same level as "assembly language and pascal with s3m libraries to program a game", what does Duolingo have to do with being able to understand and prod the workings of the machine in your hand.

Still a locked down black box designed around attention algorithms and I'm getting tired of pretending it's not.

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

#200
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if a skilled telegraph operator handed you a message including the word "naloopen" you would know what that means? There was not just one but several forms of telegraphese developed. A conversation held entirely in brief dots and dashes has a substantially different flow to it than say typing out a message on an internet forum, which in turn is nothing like how one would communicate with a 5 second fleeting video…

Once again... not knowing how to communicate via a particular medium does not equate to a lack of social skills. To your point, if a telegraph operator handed me a message I didn't understand, I could just say, "Hey, I don't understand this message. Can you explain it to me?" because that is social skills.

And if someone at the bar buys you a drink and you're not totally sure why, you can go over to them and say "Hey, I don't understand this message. Can you explain it to me?" You posses the social skill to ask for clarification, you lack the social skill of flirting.

That I can have someone translate to and from Urdu for me does not mean I have the social skill required to communicate via Urdu. Likewise, that your parents can ask you whether something is spam or not doesn't mean they have the social skill required to communicate via email.

Wikipedia defines social skills as:

"A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways."

If the ability to effectively communicate via a medium doesn't satisfy that definition, what does? You are welcome to use a different definition, but that's what I am referring to by social skills.

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