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What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

theatlantic.com

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Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#21

Post by tstrimple »

dcow wrote: post #14
jeffbee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it either, especially because I don't know any parents who act like this. All the kids in my neighborhood just roam around, including mine. I wonder if this is another coastal/inland, liberal/conservative rift where the conservatives are for some reason afraid of everything.

Over parenting and hyper-paranoia are liberal traits in my experience.

Yep. It's the liberals who are taking over school boards to restrict book access because their precious little snowflakes might learn something outside the strict bounds of what they are allowed to know and understand. Could you imagine the absolute travesty it would be if little Billy knew that gay people existed and were actually just people?! Preposterous!

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#22

Post by yonaguska »

dcow wrote: post #14
jeffbee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it either, especially because I don't know any parents who act like this. All the kids in my neighborhood just roam around, including mine. I wonder if this is another coastal/inland, liberal/conservative rift where the conservatives are for some reason afraid of everything.

Over parenting and hyper-paranoia are liberal traits in my experience.

I see it as less political, more "crunchy" vs standard- it's just that recently the crunchy crowd has shifted conservative as opposed to liberal.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#23

Post by mtalantikite »

> ...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted.

During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our bikes to wherever we wanted, and aside from stopping back to eat lunch and dinner, I'd be out until the streetlights went on. I don't recall any major injuries, aside from getting scraped or bumped up from time to time.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#24

Post by richardlblair »

kasperni wrote: post #4

> Fewer than half of the 8- and 9-year-olds have gone down a grocery-store aisle alone; Really? Is this just an American thing?

Can't speak for others, but my 3yr old has definitely gone done an aisle alone. Much to my dismay, but alas, it did happen. These are the things that happen when you don't put your kid in carts and strollers all the time.

It also has the added benefit that he interacts with a lot of strangers while we're about 10ft away. It's good for him to learn that people are usually good.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#25

Post by closewith »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The whole stranger danger thing in my view as an adult feels like a downward spiral. It's not like this in many countries. In the UK it's kind of like - kids don't wander about alone because they might run into baddies, and now adults are afraid to interact with kids because they might be seen as a baddy, and this kind of loops around until no-one is interacting. Basically, it's like any adult man is seen as a potent…

In the UK, about 5% of children have been sexually abused. Nobody wants to risk that happening to their children and it's mostly perpetrated by people known to the children, so trust is understandably at an all time low.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#26

Post by gambiting »

mtalantikite wrote: post #23

> ...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted. During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our…

At 7 years old my parents would leave for work before I had to go to school, so I had to eat breakfast, dress myself and go to school, locking the door behind me - the walk was across few busy streets which I was told how to cross. Then I would come back before they were home so likewise, I had to let myself in and just wait for them to come back.

I think nowadays if I did that with my son I would have child services called on me.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#27

Post by jeffbee »

dcow wrote: post #14
jeffbee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it either, especially because I don't know any parents who act like this. All the kids in my neighborhood just roam around, including mine. I wonder if this is another coastal/inland, liberal/conservative rift where the conservatives are for some reason afraid of everything.

Over parenting and hyper-paranoia are liberal traits in my experience.

Well, I haven't observed that. Research this century has tended to suggest that conservatism is associated with physiological hyper-fixation on negative stimuli. E.g. Carraro L, Castelli L, Macchiella C. The automatic conservative: ideology-based attentional asymmetries in the processing of valenced information. PLoS One. 2011

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#29

Post by dyeje »

“What kids told us about how to get off cigarettes”

While I agree there’s a problem with how helicopter-y society is with kids these days, I think it’s ridiculous to expect kids to resist a device that is designed to be addictive. Teams of tens of thousands of the most highly skilled people in the world are laser focused on squeezing every second of attention out of _adults_ let alone kids. We need regulation, full stop. I don’t know what that looks like, but if you’ve ever seen a toddler scrolling TikTok like a zombie you should know what’s at stake.

Re: What kids told us about how to get them off their phones

#30

Post by Jyaif »

mtalantikite wrote: post #23

> ...we asked parents what they thought would happen if two 10-year-olds played in a local park without adults around. Sixty percent thought the children would likely get injured. Half thought they would likely get abducted. During summer vacation when I was 10 (early 90s) I'd leave the house in the morning and head down to the local park to play basketball or roam the neighborhood with the other kids. We'd ride our…

Your testimony is quite literally survivor bias.

What would not be survivor bias is you telling us what happened to the kids around you.

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