My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by ksec » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:13 AM UTC

neves wrote: post #358

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…

My son was a curious kid, a geography nerd, and watched a lot of educational videos on YouTube. Got his phone and now is addicted. Is even going bad in school. Sure there is a pandemic, but we have a lot of fights here.

>Got his phone and now is addicted

Isn't watching educational videos on YouTube exactly the thing most of us ( parents ) would want?

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

#362

Post by sjy » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:16 AM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #202

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is programming or understanding how the device works considered more important than learning another language to speak to other people?

Many HN readers earn a living from programming skills they developed by exploring computers aimlessly as kids in the 1990s and 2000s. I’m a Duolingo addict who has used the app daily for more than three years, so I do think it’s a fun way to build basic language skills. But no matter how much time I spend in the app, I won’t learn how it works or get the ability to change, modify or develop it. The learning experience is stage-managed by a company and funded by ads displayed between the lessons. It is very different to my experience of learning to write HTML and PHP when I was in high school.

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

#363

Post by johnfn » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:22 AM UTC

drdaeman wrote: post #320

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's such a shame to me that the article ends with a note about how the parent will try to convince themselves that creating tiktok videos is creative. What?!? Creating videos isn't creative?? Of course it is! You should be encouraging and reveling in this sort of behavior! My seven year old runs around with my old iPhone 5. We've locked it down to essentially be nothing more than a camera, but she'll still make vi…

> Of course it is! No, definitely not “of course”. Creativity is not defined by the technology or even the result, but is a... well, property of a process. I - personally - can snap a video without being creative at all, and the video may happen to be good. Like how a talking parrot can drop a joke at an appropriate moment, without understanding it at all ;) It all really depends on what goes in one’s head as they do…

"Of course" in the sense that it is literally creative - an act of creation. I'd argue that whether the exact pattern of neurons firing in her head measures up the standards you have is less important than the fact that she's actively using her phone to create content rather than passively ingesting it.

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

#364

Post by sjy » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:24 AM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #213

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Is anything you listed even remotely on the same level as "assembly language and pascal with s3m libraries to program a game" Wasm and WebGL certainly are.

Has anyone ever learned those languages on an iPad though? Even if you know a few languages already, learning a new one by writing software on a device with a small screen, no keyboard, no filesystem, no native app IDE, no browser debugger, and severely limited multitasking, seems almost impossible to me. If I had an iPad rather than a computer running Windows 95 when I was growing up, I don’t think I’d know how to code today.

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

#365

Post by jdbernard » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:24 AM UTC

Xavdidtheshadow wrote: post #315

throwaway201103 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was also an avid reader growing up and spent many nights under the covers with a flashlight. I think the big difference is the adaptivity of the phone. Books don't figure out what personally engrosses you and tweak the rest of the book so you can't put it down. That feels too powerful IMO.

Also, at some point you finish the story. There's a natural stopping point and conclusion that makes it easier to out the book down and spend time doing something else before picking up the next one.

Contrast that with so many apps whose main feed uses some sort of infinite scroll.

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

#366

Post by sjy » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:34 AM UTC

pwinnski wrote: post #69

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a lucky one, because at that time to your interests in computing would lead to job opportunities. I’m afraid it is not so with an iPhone. Our phones take without giving. Now excuse me I should probably log off and do something useful.

The head of technical support at the company for which I work recently quit her job to support her husband's streaming career. He makes in three months more than I do in a year. This idea that things like iPhones, or video games, or any other piece of technology cannot possibly be productive or profitable in the future, it's got to die. When I was young, my passion for computers meant I wouldn't become the lawyer peo…

Don’t most streamers use complex setups involving professional-grade AV equipment, custom-built gaming computers, and complicated software like OBS to glue it all together? I don’t think you can learn how to do all that stuff by spending lots of time on your iPhone as a teenager.

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

#367

Post by munificent » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:38 AM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #359

analog31 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> The best formula I have observed is that obedient, self disciplined children tend to have obedient, self disciplined parents. I agree and hope people don't take this in a defeatist way. I've found that the biggest impact you can have on anyone's behavior (adult or child) is to set the example. Kids can smell hypocrisy a mile away, and besides, they only know how to act the way the see. Work on yourself, and your ki…

> I've found that the biggest impact you can have on anyone's behavior (adult or child) is to set the example.

I agree in principle, but I find that that doesn't map very well to the digital world.

This past Saturday, I spent about six hours staring at a screen. My kids did too. I was making music, an act I find creative, meaningful, and intellectually stimulating. They were mostly watching YouTube videos of people playing Minecraft.

At the primitive monkey brain level where "setting an example" kicks in, all my kids saw was that I was staring at a screen so they did too.

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

#368

Post by bradlys » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:42 AM UTC

sjy wrote: post #362

bradlys wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is programming or understanding how the device works considered more important than learning another language to speak to other people?

Many HN readers earn a living from programming skills they developed by exploring computers aimlessly as kids in the 1990s and 2000s. I’m a Duolingo addict who has used the app daily for more than three years, so I do think it’s a fun way to build basic language skills. But no matter how much time I spend in the app, I won’t learn how it works or get the ability to change, modify or develop it. The learning experienc…

> But no matter how much time I spend in the app, I won’t learn how it works or get the ability to change, modify or develop it.

Who cares? Just because you and many others on HN learned some stuff from fiddling with some computers doesn't mean that learning a language is lesser.

"Ah, you aren't doing things that I did as a kid that lead to my high income! You're trash, kid! Git gud!"

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

#369

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

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.

> None of which is possible on iPhones and iPads these kids are growing up with.

It has a generally standards-compliant browser, so while you may not be able to use assembly language and pascal, you can probably connect to something that lets you write and run programs through the browser (whether they actually run in the browser or remotely).

The UI isn't ideal for it, but neither was the membrane keyboard on my Timex/Sinclair 1000.

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

#370

Post by munificent » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

I'm afraid to wade into this given the negativity and judgementality of the comments here, but I could have written nearly every sentence of this article myself.

My kids will consume unbounded screen time if given the chance. They will forget to sleep. They will ignore requests to hang out with friends. I don't know if they have ever willingly got off their tablets of their own volition, except sometimes to eat.

Now that the kids are schooling virtually, they spend their day staring at a laptop. When they get a break or schools over, what do they want? To stare at their tablets.

I try to regulate it. I'll tell them to get off and do something else. Twenty minutes later, they're back on. "Didn't I tell you to get off?" "Mom, said we could." "Did you tell her I told you to get off screen?" "No..." They are like junkies, pitting us against each other.

But it's not like I can just kick them off. Because some fraction of the time, they're playing Minecraft which I think is pretty creative, and they're playing with their friends. Given how little social interaction they can get right now, I'm loathe to minimize that. But as soon as their friends sign off, they switch to YouTube without saying anything. "Weren't you playing Minecraft with Alice?" "Oh, that was hours ago.".

Sure, if my wife and I were better more disciplined parents maybe this would be less of a problem. But it really sucks having to essentially live in a house that has a big bag of candy-coated heroin right next to the breakfast cereal and have to constantly be vigilant about not letting them have it. And then when someone points out "Hey, maybe we businesses shouldn't be able to leave bags of heroin candy in our houses," all you get is comments like the ones here judging people for letting their kids have it.

And, no, this isn't the same as when we played with our computers as kids any more than caffeine is the same as heroin. A difference in degree is still a difference, especially at this magnitude.

Parenting is hard enough as it is without having to fight a personal uphill battle against the trillion-dollar capitalist attention acquisition industry.