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Retro-Tech Parenting

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Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#11

Post by CalRobert »

EmiliaStar wrote: post #2

Useful reframe: it's not old vs. new tech, it's tools you command vs. media that commands you. "Retro" correlates with "good for kids" mostly because old tools aren't engagement-optimized — they sit there until the kid acts. A modern non-algorithmic tool can be just as good. What a dumbphone doesn't solve is the social tax — opting a kid out of the addictive layer can also opt them out of the group chat. That's the a…

True - for what it's worth, I find having my own library on Jellyfin much nicer than Netflix (or god help us, youtube). Just downloading the videos you like from youtube and setting them up as Jellyfin "channels" is a much calmer experience than using YT.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#12

Post by SubmarineClub »

jjulius wrote: post #3
EmiliaStar wrote: post #2

Useful reframe: it's not old vs. new tech, it's tools you command vs. media that commands you. "Retro" correlates with "good for kids" mostly because old tools aren't engagement-optimized — they sit there until the kid acts. A modern non-algorithmic tool can be just as good. What a dumbphone doesn't solve is the social tax — opting a kid out of the addictive layer can also opt them out of the group chat. That's the a…

>What a dumbphone doesn't solve is the social tax — opting a kid out of the addictive layer can also opt them out of the group chat. That's the actually-hard part. It's hard to say how this'll go in the long run. I have two littler children right now, and a lot of the parents of much younger kids, at least in the area we live in, seem to be trying really hard to move in the "dumb phone/don't let them fall into these…

I imagine it’ll be quite socially stratified - upper-middle class parents will be giving their kids dumbphones and keeping them off social media, possibly sending them to ‘tech-free’ schools, while poorer parents won’t.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#14

Post by EvanAnderson »

EmiliaStar wrote: post #2

Useful reframe: it's not old vs. new tech, it's tools you command vs. media that commands you. "Retro" correlates with "good for kids" mostly because old tools aren't engagement-optimized — they sit there until the kid acts. A modern non-algorithmic tool can be just as good. What a dumbphone doesn't solve is the social tax — opting a kid out of the addictive layer can also opt them out of the group chat. That's the a…

Yeah-- the group chat is / was the damned problem.

My daughter's sports teams, since moving up to 12U, have had group chats. She was absolutely getting left behind in the social interaction. It was painful to watch.

It's still a pain point because we've been limiting her SMS to known contacts. We're probably coming to have to capitulate on that because other parents don't seem to grok what we are trying to do and don't understand why we want to get their kids' phone numbers to add to my daughter's approved contact list. I guess we're the only people who have ever done this... >sigh<

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#15

Post by rad-b »

SubmarineClub wrote: post #12
jjulius wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What a dumbphone doesn't solve is the social tax — opting a kid out of the addictive layer can also opt them out of the group chat. That's the actually-hard part. It's hard to say how this'll go in the long run. I have two littler children right now, and a lot of the parents of much younger kids, at least in the area we live in, seem to be trying really hard to move in the "dumb phone/don't let them fall into these…

I imagine it’ll be quite socially stratified - upper-middle class parents will be giving their kids dumbphones and keeping them off social media, possibly sending them to ‘tech-free’ schools, while poorer parents won’t.

Unfortunately this seems quite plausible from today’s POV. As the old saying goes if you don’t want to be the product, you’ll have to pay for it. And I see only a silver of people being rich enough to afford and educated enough to care for paying privacy- or sanity-preserving tools and services.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#16

Post by sidravi1 »

We recently got a landline. A few of my daughter’s friends got the “tin can phone” but it looked so poorly made and over-priced. It was easy enough to setup voip with one of those old school stretchy cabled phones.

It pretty cute watching her get excited when it rings and sweet that she gets to talk to her friends any time she likes… from the living room.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#17

Post by throw03172019 »

jumpkick wrote: post #6

Ironic, the picture on this article appears to be AI generated. I thought the Sony CD player looked neat, and I'd never seen one like it before. I thought I might try to buy one on eBay, that's how cool I thought it was. But Google says "Digital fingerprints embedded within the file verify that this is an artificially generated rendering."

He is a technologist as stated.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#18

Post by TimTheTinker »

Some of the things my wife and I have provided for our kids:

- lots of bookcases with probably >1500 books (including lots of kids/picture books) - what we've collected over the years

- a family laptop (2012 MacBook Pro) with no internet connection, pre-loaded with Pages, Sheets, Affinity Photo/Designer, a few small games, and some coding tools (Python, Ruby, VSCode, Scratch, etc.).

- Lego Spike and Spike Prime robotics learning sets (with software on an iPad, no internet)

- an upright piano (originally for me, but now they're taking lessons; I got it for $700 at a closeout sale at a piano store)

- a MIDI keyboard connected to Pianoteq running on an iPad in single-app mode with a couple of self-powered studio monitors and headphones

- an old-school landline phone connected to a VoIP box, served by UniFi Talk ($10/month).

- Each of them has their own CD player boombox, we have a large collection of CDs

- An iPad with Audible, disconnected from the internet, but with our audio book collection available (over the years, it's gotten into the hundreds of books)

- starting from when they were very young, I've been periodically loading up Cosmic Osmo (CD edition, from an un-stuffed .img file) running on an emulated Quadra 650 in System 7.5.3 on InfiniteMac.org and let them play for an hour or two at a time. This is such a good game for kids - literally black and white (dithered grays), not overstimulating, very thoughtfully built, sparks imagination and curiosity, full of easter eggs.

- some good play equipment and a hammock in the back yard :)

I hope it has been and will be enriching to them.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#19

Post by themanmaran »

As someone who grew up in the 90's, I think seeing the live progression of tech was really helpful for my own understanding. For instance we saw:

- CDs moving to Mp3s moving to the ipod and finally streaming

- Games moving from 8bit to early 3d graphics to where they are today

- Family computer moving to laptops and eventually to ipads

- Landlines to early cell phones to the iphone today

All of these experiences helped ground the core principals behind this technology. And the pace of these transformations (while rapid) was still something you could keep up with. Everything was built on the same principals.

But today kids go from zero to iPad + AI generated tiktoks by time they turn 2. Sure parents can try to hide the tech, but it doesn't change the fact that it's out there and available as soon as they enter school.

Maybe I'm overindexing on my childhood, but I would love to recreate some abridged history of this for my kids. I think seeing the building blocks helps build a much more healthy relationship with technology.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#20

Post by juris »

nahaha

probably the -worst- thing I ever did as a kid was take my parents' (mostly ripped) collection of VHS tapes and drop them into the 80 gallon fish tank to raise the fish up so I CoUlD ToUCh the FiBsCH. ah, then i blamed my brother... yup that memory still hurts!

i soo can't wait for my karmic come-uppance with my... exceedingly large retro video game collection.

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