for what it counts, at age 10 i had no internet... i read physics books, dabbled in analog electronics, carpentry, drawing and other things.. But one day i got internet, then I spent next 10 years playing video games, and watching youtube. So there is certainly an opportunity that was lost somewhere. It helped me learn programming for sure. But could I have watched 5000 hours fewer of youtube videos and spent 9000 hours less on multiplayers games and instead focused on something else? who knows, but i can't rule it out.
My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
291–300 of 467 posts
Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's true for young kids, but not preteens. By that age they're old enough to stay home alone for a couple of hours after school. Hence the term 'latchkey kid'.
Return to employment after years at home can be quite hard. Not saying impossible, but options are severly limited and plus it is massive adjustment.
That's true if you were just managing the home. I know that "homework" and caring for kids alone may sometimes be exhausting, but regularly allocating time for studying is usually worth it for everyone. I personally know two mothers who successfully changed their careers for better during their stay-at-home years.
Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
#293> I realize with horror that she’s spent nine hours on the phone that day. She was only awake at 11. > My daughter doesn’t make collages or jewelry or sew anymore. A child who used to read in the bath won’t pick up a book unless threatened with the loss of her phone. > Getting her to make a card for a family member — something she once did for fun — is like getting her to clean her room > Yet still, each day is a bat…
Honestly, so much of this sounded familiar to me ... but from my own teenage years. My parents were appalled at the amount of time I was spending at a MS-DOS PC (not only playing games but also learning programming). So I'd say that no, it's not that phones are like crack. There seems to be a disconnect on the parent's expectations when children discover the possibilities of a technology that's unfamiliar to them. In…
Yup. There was a moral panic about fiction specifically in the early-to-mid 1800s. Kids (and women, too) were sitting around staring at these made-up stories instead of going out and doing real things.
Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
#294A 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…
I agree with you - when a book is down, a TV is off or a console is off, it doesn't ping you and light up to gain your attention. Sure, as kids we watched a lot of TV, but when it was time to turn it off we didn't get a sound to tell us someone "Liked" your photo. As you said, these aren't bi-directional. I think the hardest thing for this parent was balancing what was right for their child (and they seemed to be con…
IDK. I mean you're right, of course, but I remember getting engrossed in books to the point where I lost sleep, or delayed doing other important things because I either could not put it down or I was drawn back to it. This happened as a teen and as a young adult, not so much lately but I really don't read books nearly as much as I used to.
Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
#295> I realize with horror that she’s spent nine hours on the phone that day. She was only awake at 11. > My daughter doesn’t make collages or jewelry or sew anymore. A child who used to read in the bath won’t pick up a book unless threatened with the loss of her phone. > Getting her to make a card for a family member — something she once did for fun — is like getting her to clean her room > Yet still, each day is a bat…
Honestly, so much of this sounded familiar to me ... but from my own teenage years. My parents were appalled at the amount of time I was spending at a MS-DOS PC (not only playing games but also learning programming). So I'd say that no, it's not that phones are like crack. There seems to be a disconnect on the parent's expectations when children discover the possibilities of a technology that's unfamiliar to them. In…
Now is really not like back then.
I was like you, spending inordinate amounts of time with computers during my teenage years.
But back then, I was learning useful skills from it.
The computer I owned had almost no games for it. All you could do was program it in either basic or assembly.
Move forward 15 years, my kid who owned a PC from around age 10 was never interested in using it as anything but an entertainment platform.
There was simply way more interesting things to do with it than understanding how it worked and bending the hardware to your will.
And this was pre-social networks.
Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did no one besides you read the article? FTA: "My husband and I said she could have a phone when she turned 14..." People are arguing about everything from extended school hours, excessive homework to climate change in this thread. Could it be that the daughter was raised in a highly sheltered environment and once she hit puberty, she had other interests besides collages, jewelry and sewing? I wrote this in another c…
That might be true, if electronic gadgets were the same as previous obsessions. But they're different. They change from second to second, providing a level of stimulation unprecedented in human experience. It's possible we're not going to adapt well to this e-world. There's no reason to think an evolved ape has the wiring to make the transition without trauma. Imagine if the iPhone were heroin. Would we be so casual…
Almost everything in history is "unprecedented in human experience". That's pretty much the defining feature of being a human, that our world is constantly changing (because we're changing it). A smartphone is just another distraction in a long line of man-made distractions that we've invented, worried about, and then adapted to. Oh man the headlines that exist from the past worrying about people reading newspapers on trains and how it will be the end of civilization. Heck if you go back to the 1800s, we were worried that novels would make people unable to tell facts from fiction [1].
>It's possible we're not going to adapt well to this e-world
There are very few things humans have ever created that humans are unable to adapt to (and pretty much all of those things are weapons). That's the other side of the unique thing that makes us human: things are constantly changing, and we are constantly adapting to the changes.
For as long as humans have lived, we've tried to distract ourselves from the banality of life. Some part of the population goes down a rabbit hole and stays lost and unproductive: that's not new. The majority of people are mildly productive and then turn to distractions when work is over. And another small group shuns distractions in order to stay as productive as possible for as long as possible. This bell curve has existed through all of human history.
The people who get addicted to apps and social media and phones are the same people who were addicted to novels in the 1800s and comics in the 1930s and TV in the 1950s and video games in the 1990s. Even infinite scrolling isn't new... libraries have existed for a long time, TV just keeps playing forever and ever, and there are more video games than you can play in a lifetime.
When cars and trains were new, people were questioning if evolved apes could survive speeds faster than 30mph. We are not just evolved apes; our specific evolutionary advantage is the ability to adapt, overcome, and get bored even when presented with unlimited stimulation.
[1] https://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/when-novels-wer...
Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
What sort of job do you have that has homework? Mine certainly doesn't. More generally, i don't think we should make kids lives suck to prepare them for the fact that the rest of their life is also going to suck. That's not the way to make happy people who appropriately prioritize work/life balance.
I have to study for certifications and generally expand my technical knowledge outside of work. It's not constant, but my quarterly objectives aren't achievable without "homework." Everyone is different though. Some people have lower stress jobs where they work for a single company and have plenty of time to learn new stuff on the job (or never really need to acquire new skills). But I work in consulting, so acquirin…
I don't think its fair to call non-billable hours "homework". Having non-billable hours is part of running your own business. If you own your own business, you can do your nonbillable hours at any time in the day, including not in normal working hours, but you can also do your billable hours at any time of the day.
Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did no one besides you read the article? FTA: "My husband and I said she could have a phone when she turned 14..." People are arguing about everything from extended school hours, excessive homework to climate change in this thread. Could it be that the daughter was raised in a highly sheltered environment and once she hit puberty, she had other interests besides collages, jewelry and sewing? I wrote this in another c…
That might be true, if electronic gadgets were the same as previous obsessions. But they're different. They change from second to second, providing a level of stimulation unprecedented in human experience. It's possible we're not going to adapt well to this e-world. There's no reason to think an evolved ape has the wiring to make the transition without trauma. Imagine if the iPhone were heroin. Would we be so casual…
I think the step from books->TV was much more dramatic that TV->SocialMedia. the delta of stimulation is much greater in the former, imho.
In any case, 1hr of iPhone/day is way too strict for a teenager nowadays. I was lucky to be the 3rd child, and my parents didn’t really paid attention to how I was spending my time. I overdosed on a bunch of things as a kid: TV, videogames, my computer, the internet when I got it (I’m in my late 30s), but then I got over them, except computers, which became my profession.
On the other hand, people my age that were only allowed one hour of Nintendo per day as kids, are still craving the next PlayStation like grown up junkies. Last time I played a videogame I was maybe.. 22.
Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
#299> I realize with horror that she’s spent nine hours on the phone that day. She was only awake at 11. > My daughter doesn’t make collages or jewelry or sew anymore. A child who used to read in the bath won’t pick up a book unless threatened with the loss of her phone. > Getting her to make a card for a family member — something she once did for fun — is like getting her to clean her room > Yet still, each day is a bat…
Yeah, I was going to say
> And little by little, our daughter has chipped away at our rules and resolve.
This sounds as simple as "your child is getting older and becoming more of a real person". Kids question rules. That's pretty normal.
Re: My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did no one besides you read the article? FTA: "My husband and I said she could have a phone when she turned 14..." People are arguing about everything from extended school hours, excessive homework to climate change in this thread. Could it be that the daughter was raised in a highly sheltered environment and once she hit puberty, she had other interests besides collages, jewelry and sewing? I wrote this in another c…
That might be true, if electronic gadgets were the same as previous obsessions. But they're different. They change from second to second, providing a level of stimulation unprecedented in human experience. It's possible we're not going to adapt well to this e-world. There's no reason to think an evolved ape has the wiring to make the transition without trauma. Imagine if the iPhone were heroin. Would we be so casual…
Kind of like how TV pictures change from second to second, or city life changes from second to second, or...well, heroin doesn't change from second to second, but it provides a dopamine hit that's even more powerful than things that do. We pretty casually dismiss the Opium Wars now.