I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself • Hacker News Board

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#211

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

grapeskin wrote: post #147

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm seriously hoping you corrected her romantic view of the past. Sure, the movies make it seem simple, but... you know, AIDS. It sucked even more if you were queer. "Crack babies" that weren't (that was just poverty we were seeing). Regan starved people with the 'welfare queen' stuff. Misogyny was so much more open. It wasn't the same. It wasn't better. It was different.

I think young people today wish we could be back in the days of AIDS panic instead of covid panic.

Bruh, seriously?

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#212

Post by jvanderbot » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

jasonladuke0311 wrote: post #205

basedgod wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah yes the whole "Coca Cola corp. says you can't just ban your kids from drinking and eating sugar !!! then when they turn 18 they'll fall off the wagon and eat nothing but sugar ! better to have them eat it throughout their childhood so they KNOW how to avoid it" do you people ever try to have an independent thought outside of the propaganda of big business ? what kind of nonsense of this, that children should be ex…

This comment is hilarious. I've known like a dozen people who have experienced the exact scenario you mentioned.

Seems to be the same for alcahol, staying up late, being self motivated for studying, and just about anything else.

If you don't introduce something to your children and give examples of how to use it safely as an authoritative parent, then who will? Of course it can be safer to avoid some things, so I see TFA's point, but it seems extreme to avoid the whole ecosystem completely.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#213

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #79

reader_x wrote: post #20

My 14yo daughter came home from binging 80s movies with friends and wistfully told me, “I wish I’d grown up in the 80s.” I said, “Why??” She said, “Because everything was a lot like it is now, but no smartphones.”

I have encountered multiple Gen Z people recently fascinated with retro gaming, cassette tapes, records, and 80s/90s tv/movies who expressed similar. Some are able to see their phones as addictive and are starting to look for what life was like before them. It gives me hope.

It's the same shit, different generation though; 20 years ago it was the internet, video games and mobile phones, 20 years before that it was cable TV, 20 years before that it was free love and weed and rock & roll and shit.

I think 'we' should, at least to a degree, suck it up and let kids figure things out for themselves. Cable TV didn't give me square eyes, video games didn't turn me into a school shooter, and I don't believe mobile phones fried my brain. I don't like rock & roll though, and free love has never been a thing.

Which is the other thing; a previous generation was throwing a tantrum because the youth was having sex more and more, nowadays people are throwing a tantrum because the youth are having LESS sex. Which one is it? Neither?

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#214

Post by mobiuscog » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

throwaway787544 wrote: post #208

It's sad that people are having this fearful response to technology. Yes, companies are tracking you, manipulating you subconsciously, and making money off you. But you don't have to take it as a threat. You still have agency over your life and you can decide how much you interact with tech and when. You don't have to run screaming. In terms of being opted-in by somebody else: yeah, that sucks, and has been a danger…

> Yes, companies are tracking you, manipulating you subconsciously, and making money off you. But you don't have to take it as a threat.

This is the best summary of why more people should disconnect.

It is not a fearful response to technology - none of this is about technology - it's about large corporations making money from things that they never had the right to take.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#215

Post by someguydave » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #65

reader_x wrote: post #20

My 14yo daughter came home from binging 80s movies with friends and wistfully told me, “I wish I’d grown up in the 80s.” I said, “Why??” She said, “Because everything was a lot like it is now, but no smartphones.”

And I'm seriously hoping you corrected her romantic view of the past. Sure, the movies make it seem simple, but... you know, AIDS. It sucked even more if you were queer. "Crack babies" that weren't (that was just poverty we were seeing). Regan starved people with the 'welfare queen' stuff. Misogyny was so much more open. It wasn't the same. It wasn't better. It was different.

AIDS could have been stopped with quarantines like in Cuba.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#216

Post by someguydave » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

bsenftner wrote: post #156

Thorentis wrote: post #154

The easiest way to achieve something like this, is to embed yourself within a community of like minded people. If you don't give your kid a smartphone, but you send them to a school where everybody has smartphones, you're just setting them up to be an outcast. You need to find a school with parents who are like minded. That way, they will make friends with people who do not have smartphones, etc. Most capital cities…

I don't have kids myself, but every child I've met from a Waldorf School has been a captivating budding intelligence https://www.waldorfeducation.org/ They teach from a creativity standpoint, without technology. I'm a bad advocate, but every interaction with a Waldorf student sticks in my mind as "that kid's going somewhere".

They probably inherited genes for above average IQs

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#217

Post by em-bee » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #152

em-bee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what kind of freeloading does rejecting a mobile phone lead to? sure it restricts me from doing certain things at certain times, but it does not increase my dependence on others compared to having a mobile phone. please elaborate.

It is freeloading on any general improvements in wealth that society gains due to anything the almost ubiquitous usage of cell phones makes more efficient. Lets make a specific example: lets say in 2028, 98% of pizzas are ordered via clicking on a phone app. Over at the pizza place, nobody is on the phone full time, just to punch phone orders into the computer system. As a result, pizza places run with 1 less full ti…

thank you, those examples are very helpful to show what you mean.

now my argument is that i don't see this as a bad thing. yes, maybe some people get an advantage here without contributing themselves, but the alternative is that we stop improving our lives for fear that someone might get a better life without contributing themselves.

that kind of thinking seems to be very common in the US and it prevents a lot of potentially good development.

some people would prefer to suffer rather than allowing others to get an advantage.

we really need to get away from that. as long as we ourselves get an advantage from some development we need to stop worrying if others get an advantage without contributing.

the reality is that my life can't get better if i don't work to make life better for everyone around me, regardless if they like it or not.

but there is another issue that i have with complaints about freeloaders. we don't know if they are freeloaders. we don't know if that person that refuses to buy a smartphone isn't putting that money towards some other good cause. we don't know if that person avoids that pizza app because they happen to know that it contains spyware. or if that parent searching their kids went to the extra effort of getting a very energy efficient car, and the solar panels on their roof that frequently send electricity into the grid and that make up for the wasted energy of searching their kids once in a while many times over.

we don't know if someone is really a freeloader or a contributor.

and it's impossible to come up with an equation that could tell us.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#218

Post by abledon » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

hans1729 wrote: post #44

zo1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fine line and you have to go with some of it safely . However, there are items that are 100% toxic and as parents we need to decide what those are. Things like rap/hip-hop music as an example, or TikTok. There are some things that just can't be consumed safely by impressionable minds. When they're older they can get into them if they so wish, but my hope is that their brains by that point would at least be mat…

This is sarcasm, right? A music genre is categorically toxic? What? They will see TikToks anyway, at latest on the devices of their peers. The only sane course of action is to teach them how to deal with it, not to ignore the consequences of every control-freak-parent we've seen in the last 40 years and cosplay a fantasy-world where those things simply don't exist.

i love my 9 year old nieces and nephews watching CardiB's WAP on repeat, great messages its sending!

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#219

Post by thebean11 » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

kradeelav wrote: post #206

PeterBarrett wrote: post #10

I don't have kids yet but it is something that has been discussed about my nieces and nephews. As you say, you don't want your kids to become social pariahs but you also don't want to give them smart phones, in this day and age it looks like the two are intrinsically linked, which is disappointing. I would like to say that we can teach kids to have a healthy relationship with the internet and social media but sites l…

It's interesting, of all the points being made in this thread, "making kids be more resilient with (and even enjoying) time alone" feels like an area of opportunity that hasn't been mentioned, not something to shut down and banish. My circumstances were a little unusual (only child with physical disabilities) but not once did I feel like a social pariah what with books, games, books again, one or two loyal friends, p…

I think the lack of real social interaction is the problem right now, not lack of alone time. These are kids who essentially spent a year and a half by themselves..

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#220

Post by freediver » Mon, Apr 11, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

Making sure my kids are not tracked and exposed to ads from the early age is the main reason I've built Kagi Search and Orion Browser. It is a long shot, but they already use Kagi as default search engine on their school-provided Chromebooks, and Orion as default browser on their home iMac.