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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

#341

Post by [deleted] »

bluedays wrote: post #262
saiya-jin wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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." I agree with everything you say except for this. We have friends (2 kids now) where mom is like that. On first glance all is perfect, she is perfect mom that manages to do so many things, all is great etc. Apart from actual rea…

Ah, but do you have kids? Because whooboy, lemme tell ya... Speaking as a parent, I can honestly say there is nobody more judgemental than other parents. I can't tell you how many times I've heard parents criticize other people's parenting. Parenting is a thankless job is fraught with insecurity and doubt, and every parent thinks they are not doing good enough, and constantly comparing themselves to other parents. Se…

[deleted]

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

#342

Post by rdtwo »

sirspacey wrote: post #130
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…

Thank you! Our obsession with packing children’s lives with empty calorie activities to “prepare the for the real world” is destructive - to their potential, their mental health, and our ability to level up as a species.

Yeah but us poors are stuck in this perpetual cycle. Only the ultra rich can escape

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

#344

Post by RandallBrown »

mixedCase wrote: post #330
retube wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi - how did you lock down your kids iPhone? Am more of an android man but will be getting a refurbed iPhone 7 for my daughter (apparently they are "better" than Samsung)

You sure you don't want to give them a fallible sandbox they could reason their way out of?

One of my coworkers did that with his son. He had his carrier's tracking app installed on his son's phone so he could see where he was. The son figured out how to disable it.

So he wrote an android service that'll send him the location whenever he needs it and installed it on the phone. His son doesn't know about it... yet.

He fully understands this is an "arms race" of sorts and I think he feels like if his son is smart enough to outsmart his dad, he's probably smart enough to handle himself with a little less supervision. (I think the kid was in about 8th grade at the time.)

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

#345

Post by mckirk »

fiblye wrote: post #307
ur-whale wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Seems like your kid just isn’t interested in the same things you are. If the flashy entertainment were stripped away, they probably would’ve never cared about it. And that’s okay.

I don't think it's that easy. The dopamine-traps of today can hardly be compared to the ones from twenty years ago.

Compared to the effort of creating, there's some seriously low hanging fruit these days.

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

#346

Post by sirspacey »

rdtwo wrote: post #342
sirspacey wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! Our obsession with packing children’s lives with empty calorie activities to “prepare the for the real world” is destructive - to their potential, their mental health, and our ability to level up as a species.

Yeah but us poors are stuck in this perpetual cycle. Only the ultra rich can escape

We’re doing it with a Montessori school in a state with low cost of living. It’s a significant cost, but the generational impact massively outweighs the impact to our retirement.

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

#347

Post by irrational »

lqet wrote: post #239

> 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…

Maybe. My teenage years were spent reading and being creative. I spent more time creating artwork during those years than in all the subsequent decades put together. But if I had had a smartphone back then? I doubt I would have read a single book or created any artwork. Would that made me a better or worse person than I am now? Well, that's impossible to say. I don't regret how I spent my teenage years. Will those who are growing up fully engrossed in their phones every feel regret? We probably won't know for about 30 more years when they have enough life experience to look back and reflect. It will be interesting to see what people have to say around 2050. Then again, what do they have to compare it with? They can't compare a life lived constantly on a phone with a life not lived constantly on one. So... maybe it is impossible for any person to say which way is better. Maybe it is just the aggregate of all of society over many decades that we can determine whether this experiment has a positive or negative (or neutral) outcome.

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

#348

Post by evilduck »

ertian wrote: post #293
adrianb wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Chess was no exception to moral outrage either:

   "We answer, chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while at the same time it affords no benefit whatsoever to the body" - Scientific American, circa 1859
https://books.google.com/books?id=90hGAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22a+perni...

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

#349

Post by funkaster »

phones/tech are of course a problem if you don't set limits. But to me the biggest issue is not being able to connect to your kid. I have a 4yo and he loves to play on his tablet, and he even plays some videogames with me. But I try super hard to do other things with him as well, and try hard to enjoy them as much as I can. We play (non-digital) games he wants to play. We build legos. We also started playing some tabletop RPGs that are super simple for kids and he loves them. He asks me at least once a week to play (we actually always play the same scenario and he doesn't care, he still has tons of fun).

The parent in this article is struggling with too many things at the same time: kid becoming a teenager, tech, and lack of connection with your kid. Having kids and growing them to healthy human beings is super hard. I wouldn't blame the daughter's behavior to any single thing, it looks more like a combination of multiple issues. Hopefully they both can find a good path moving forward.

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

#350

Post by betwixthewires »

Phones are addictive. But we can't just call that the beginning and end of it.

I read books on my phone. I've probably read hundreds of thousands of pages, I've got a library that is a very respectable size on my phone. Is reading them a sign of addiction to my phone? Or is it the same as reading paper? Am I just using my phone as a tool?

I don't take pictures except to document things. I don't have any of those social media accounts people use to share photos or videos of themselves or whatever. I see women (and men) on the beach (or elsewhere) who's goal is to get a cute photo. I feel like they're wasting such a wonderful experience on a narcissistic persuit.

But I spend hours on sites like this one talking to other people. Talking to people I don't know, people I do know, people I only know online. Sometimes about stupid stuff, sometimes about interesting stuff. It's not something I use for passive entertainment really very often. If I'm pondering life, making bonds, questioning my own beliefs, is that as simple as a social media addiction? Is it constructive?

I know I am addicted to my phone and the internet in general. And it has detrimental effects on my life. But it has been very intellectually constructive for me. I have expanded my vocabulary quite a lot, I have learned to articulate my thoughts very well. I have learned to write code and about quantum particles and I've read research papers. I've talked to some very interesting people, even some very important people. So is it all bad?

I think the trick is to not make it your life. Go outside, dig your hands in the soil, grow something. Immerse yourself in the moment where what is going into your senses is not curated by you or someone else. I do a decent job of not touching my phone when I'm out there. But I'd say I haven't struck that balance quite yet, because I don't go out there enough. I used to go out there every day and get dirty. I need to do that again.

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