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Jobs and Gates banned their kids from iPads and other devices they created

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Jobs and Gates banned their kids from iPads and other devices they created

#61

Post by benreesman »

Buttons840 wrote: post #29
benreesman wrote: post #13

I started working on social media in 2006. I did it for a big name for most of the 2010s. It can be a good thing, it’s easier to make it a good thing. It’s expensive as hell to make a screen more destructive than narcotics, you need PhDs and server farms and shit for that. The problem is that software companies aren’t “allowed to mature”. Sometimes you tap out the market, you aren’t doing 20% next year without pushin…

How could we remove the temptation to squeeze every last dollar from a company, even if it crushes society in the process? What if the market leader in an industry was taxed such that there was no incentive to make more money than the 2nd or 3rd place company in the market? This would encourage competition, and also remove many of the perverse incentives when a single company is dominant.

Because not only do we have something close to functioning representative government here, even in places they don’t?

The United States military is the most terrifying embodiment of force in human history. It could dismantle any regime on earth in a day. And they got their asses kicked by a bunch of semiliterate extremists with a bunch of surplus Soviet small arms and RPGs hidden in basements.

The point of the digression is we make the rules, and no plausible oppression can stop that short of our consent, and for big parts of our history we made a lot of rules in the general public interest, and enforced them as we saw fit.

I abhor violence and a big reason why I post on the Internet is that I want to see people stop parroting arch-Randian narratives that don’t serve them before one of these tent camps drags Altman out of his Tesla and beats him to death with his own iPhone.

Re: Jobs and Gates banned their kids from iPads and other devices they created

#63

Post by ndr_ »

flskafdslaf wrote: post #57
antran22 wrote: post #31

IMHO, the key thing that we need to do is to teach our kids how to create "things" instead of just "consuming". This is important no matter which era you are in, but the average 15th century kid didn't have that many stuffs laying around for him to just consume. This problem is suddenly in our face now and we are scrambling around to try and keep our children away from the cacophony of information, but the better thi…

Tablets and smartphones are designed at every level to be devices for consuming (or being consumed by?) content. And if you do want to create things, they are terrible tools for that.

LumaFusion/LumaTouch is one counter-example, and I‘m certain there are others. At the surface, you may describe it as a „video editor“, but I totally agree that it‘s really about „Story Telling“. I use it on iPad, and I am mesmerised about how ideas click into place every time - there must be serious, long earned expertise at work at the makers of this app. „Designed for consuming“? LumaFusion is the most fun (for me as the creator and my tiny audience of family & friends) creator‘s tool on any device - be it programming on/for small or big iron, writing on Windows, photo editing… you name it. Your statement may be true for anything knock-off or underpowered, though. Your sentiment just not generalises to premium.

Re: Jobs and Gates banned their kids from iPads and other devices they created

#64

Post by julianeon »

The problem with this type of article is that Jobs and Gates have no real world limitations whatsoever. They can do anything with their kids and it won't matter. So that's not relatable to me as a person not in that position.

Example: pretend Gates & Jobs decided to remove their kids from school and teach them full time to be musicians. Completely impractical for me and would not set my kids up for success financially. But for them? Easily done, and their kids would still have hundreds of millions to fall back on at maturity.

Why does that matter here?

Because if their kids don't have screen time, and they get bored and complain, they could hire a dozen people to entertain their kids and look after them (and while the number is probably not that high, they do, actually, use that type of solution). Whereas for me giving kids device time is a practical solution, without those resources: it keeps them entertained, while I work to make money.

These kinds of articles are basically just fun trivia if the people in them have no constraints on their resources.

Re: Jobs and Gates banned their kids from iPads and other devices they created

#65

Post by ghusto »

jimmytucson wrote: post #4

The part I struggle with is, how do I let my kids program and be creative on the computer without being online when daddy can’t program without an internet connection? How will they develop “street smarts” about being on social media without a social media account? How do I let them have the same positive experiences I had playing games without having the deeply negative ones too (I lost that breastplate that took we…

> The part I struggle with is, how do I let my kids program and be creative on the computer without being online when daddy can’t program without an internet connection?

Same way we did "back in my day"? Books are still a thing, and in my opinion, much better. When you have to work for something, you value it more, and in the case of information, are more likely to retain it (this is due to real-world connections being made).

> How will they develop “street smarts” about being on social media without a social media account?

Why do you care? Being the odd one out in a wrong world isn't a bad thing. I was the odd one out in a similar way when I was a kid, and it did me wonders.

> How do I let them have the same positive experiences I had playing games without having the deeply negative ones too

Presuming you mean negative generally, why would you want to? Ups and downs are what make games interesting, not just constant endorphin pushing ups.

Re: Jobs and Gates banned their kids from iPads and other devices they created

#66

Post by ghusto »

julianeon wrote: post #64

The problem with this type of article is that Jobs and Gates have no real world limitations whatsoever. They can do anything with their kids and it won't matter. So that's not relatable to me as a person not in that position. Example: pretend Gates & Jobs decided to remove their kids from school and teach them full time to be musicians. Completely impractical for me and would not set my kids up for success financiall…

I don't have unlimited resources. I work to keep my family afloat. I don't let my kids be on the iPad so I can get on with work.

It's not a practical solution, it's an _easy_ solution. I'm sorry the article makes you feel like a bad parent, but don't go into denial mode to make yourself feel better about what you're doing.

Re: Jobs and Gates banned their kids from iPads and other devices they created

#67

Post by _8j50 »

Discipline is the most valuable and precious thing a parent can give their child. They did good but ideally, the ban would not be a mere removal of ipads and electronics but developing trust with them and teaching them to resist the temptation and possible peer-pressure and FOMO.

Re: Jobs and Gates banned their kids from iPads and other devices they created

#68

Post by flskafdslaf »

ndr_ wrote: post #63
flskafdslaf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tablets and smartphones are designed at every level to be devices for consuming (or being consumed by?) content. And if you do want to create things, they are terrible tools for that.

LumaFusion/LumaTouch is one counter-example, and I‘m certain there are others. At the surface, you may describe it as a „video editor“, but I totally agree that it‘s really about „Story Telling“. I use it on iPad, and I am mesmerised about how ideas click into place every time - there must be serious, long earned expertise at work at the makers of this app. „Designed for consuming“? LumaFusion is the most fun (for me…

That's fantastic, if your jam is investing in premium hardware and story-telling in video format. Personally, I can't think of a bigger waste of everyone's time than videoing my own life.

Edit: I will take your point though, that Apple at least attempts to produce premium products with a purpose. However, judging by the number of iPads and iPhones I see being used as passive content consumption interfaces, I'm not sure the outcome is much different.

Re: Jobs and Gates banned their kids from iPads and other devices they created

#69

Post by flskafdslaf »

julianeon wrote: post #64

The problem with this type of article is that Jobs and Gates have no real world limitations whatsoever. They can do anything with their kids and it won't matter. So that's not relatable to me as a person not in that position. Example: pretend Gates & Jobs decided to remove their kids from school and teach them full time to be musicians. Completely impractical for me and would not set my kids up for success financiall…

>Because if their kids don't have screen time, and they get bored and complain

What is fundamentally different about the world today, compared to 10 years ago (when widespread child usage of phones and tablets was vanishingly rare), that it's impossible to parent without them?

I have friends who say they cannot get their child to brush their teeth without holding a tablet in front of their face. This statement would have been considered a sign of something horribly wrong in the parent-child relationship only a few years ago.

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