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

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

#351
I could have written that article about my own daughter. To those of you suggesting that "maybe it's the schedule", you are wrong.

I got my daughter to sit with me and watch "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix, and she still wouldn't leave her iphone alone. I could not believe it. Her exact behaviour is being acted out in front of us, and she's busy maintaining her streaks. I pause the show and "Really? Are you seriously using your phone right now?"

She's totally addicted to snap. so much so that she will even make little snap poses during a normal face-to-face conversation, which prompted me - the first time I saw it - to say "Did you just pose for a snap photo?" to which she embarrassingly agreed that she had.

Just as the author of the article related, my daughter cannot be without her phone and exhibits many of the same behaviours described in the article. Sounds like we've had the same arguments.

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're taking one example and generalizing it. I'm sure someone did something productive with cocaine once too, but that's not generally its outcome. (just a random example that occurs to me, I do not agree with the "War on some drugs" btw it was just an example)

I'm sorry, I fail to see how providing a counter-example to someone pooh-poohing phone use by children is now analogous to advocating for productive cocaine use. It seem unproductive to deal with bizarre flights of fancy on the part of HN commenters, so I'll get back to my phone or something else productive now.

I explicitly added the disclaimer to preempt your attempt to ignore my question, which you did anyway. Fantastic.

You know exactly what I was trying to say. ONE counter example to a statistic doesn't invalidate the statistic and you were trying to say that just because very very very rarely someone makes productive use of their phone (one out of millions), that therefore there's no problem with how people use phones. Even you have to see how that argument misses the mark.

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a legitimate life skill. ...this month, maybe this year, until the next fad hits the 'net and all those influency types need to adapt or exit.

Video editing has nothing to do with being an influencer lol. That is a very transferrable skill to a lot of industries.

Video editing is a useful skill in exactly one industry...

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

#354
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…

I've thought about schooling quite a lot, and I've come to the conclusion that a kid maybe needs 5 years of full time schooling to become proficient in reading, mathematics, civics and their government structure, and a high school level understanding of sciences. The rest of it is just government funded daycare. And that's what school is supposed to be for, right? To make a literate population capable of measuring and counting and abstractly understanding the world around them. So why does it take 13 years?

Kids are curious. Kids learn. They want to learn. You don't have to force them to do it.

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

#355
post #239

> I realize with horror that she’s spent nine hours on the phone that day. She was only awake at 11. > My daughter doesn’t make collages or jewelry or sew anymore. A child who used to read in the bath won’t pick up a book unless threatened with the loss of her phone. > Getting her to make a card for a family member — something she once did for fun — is like getting her to clean her room > Yet still, each day is a bat…

Honestly, so much of this sounded familiar to me ... but from my own teenage years. My parents were appalled at the amount of time I was spending at a MS-DOS PC (not only playing games but also learning programming). So I'd say that no, it's not that phones are like crack. There seems to be a disconnect on the parent's expectations when children discover the possibilities of a technology that's unfamiliar to them. In…

> My parents were appalled at the amount of time I was spending at a MS-DOS PC (not only playing games but also learning programming).

Whatever, social networks are a different thing. I wouldn't mind my kids spend as much time using their gadgets as they want except for social networks. Consuming information, hacking and even some chatting are okay, Instagram addiction is not.

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

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video editing has nothing to do with being an influencer lol. That is a very transferrable skill to a lot of industries.

Video editing is a useful skill in exactly one industry...

Television news? Hollywood movies? Video games? Corporate presentations? Online schooling? Which is your "exactly one industry"?

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

#357
post #345
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like your kid just isn’t interested in the same things you are. If the flashy entertainment were stripped away, they probably would’ve never cared about it. And that’s okay.

I don't think it's that easy. The dopamine-traps of today can hardly be compared to the ones from twenty years ago. Compared to the effort of creating, there's some seriously low hanging fruit these days.

The poster said their kid wasn't interested in fiddling with workings of computers before social media was a thing, so I don't think that's the problem in their specific case.

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

#358
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.

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

#359

A lot of the comments here seem to be saying that (1) kids getting addicted to phones is no different than getting addicted to TV, books, etc, and that this is just the latest iteration of a complaint parents have had for generations and (2) this person is a bad parent. I used to agree with (1), but lately I'm inclined to think that this time, it really is different. Very different. And the primary reason is that unl…

"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 kids will follow.

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

#360
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…

that's always irked me about one of the common arguments against permanent DST -- "without DST kids would be going to school in the dark" (instead of coming home in the dark). i mean obviously the clock is the problem
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