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What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

stevemagness.substack.com

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Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#621

Post by Xirdus »

bombcar wrote: post #542
Xirdus wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is huge value in being acquainted with computers at a young age, especially if they end up in STEM or some white collar job.

This was true but accidental when "we" were growing up, because if I wanted to play a game on the family computer, I had to figure out the right drivers and suchwith to make it work. "Acquainted with computers" is closer to endlessly strolling tiktoc now.

Even doomscrolling gives you dozens of skills that never get talked about because they're just so obvious to anyone with those skills - but someone who's not even doomscrolling would literally not have, and it would bite them big time in office setting. Things like navigating touch menus, recognizing interactive and non-interactive UI elements, telling apart user-submitted content from ads, likely how to type, likely how to use multiple apps, likely how to send links and attachments to other people, likely what an account is and why remembering passwords is important.

I used to work in a phone store where almost all customers were 50+. Explaining how to call a saved contact was a daily occurence to us, nevermind creating new contacts. While I do understand why this happens and have nothing but sympathy for these people, I wouldn't want my daughter to be like that at 18.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#622

Post by Xirdus »

buellerbueller wrote: post #343
Xirdus wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is huge value in being acquainted with computers at a young age, especially if they end up in STEM or some white collar job.

infinite tiktok scrolling != "being acquainted with computers" in the way you are stating here

It is very much what I mean here. See my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48314727

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#623

Post by Xirdus »

skandinaff wrote: post #422
Xirdus wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is huge value in being acquainted with computers at a young age, especially if they end up in STEM or some white collar job.

As to continue my anecdotal story, I could safely say that all of my interactions with computers up until the age of 14 were purely gaming with occasional drawing in ms paint. Even so, at the age of 14, I did manage to create a simple html web page, and install a php based web engine, those actions were barely conscious, just following some tutorials in my mother tongue. Only at the age of 17 I made some first real s…

You are not giving your 14 year old self the credit they deserve. Creating simple HTML webpages is beyond capabilities of most adults even when following tutorials. I personally witnessed many 14 year olds who failed at literally that. In school setting. Where they had a human teacher they could ask for help with anything, so much better than just a tutorial. Without PHP, just static HTML files saved on desktop.

Years of gaming let you internalize a huge number of UX idioms that you rely on everyday, like left and right mouse clicks, hierarchical menus, hotkeys, text input, active and inactive UI elements, navigating documents larger than the viewport (drag/scroll wheel/scroll bars), and so on and so forth. Imagine how much harder it would be for your 14 year old self to install and run XAMPP or whatever if they knew none of these things. Imagine how much harder it would be for your 17 year old self to begin their programming journey if they didn't already know what a file is.

Looking back from the end of the road, those 0.1% might look tiny and insignificant. But there's a high chance you'd never go into programming at all if you didn't play video games as a child. Not because of the games themselves, but because they gave you early exposure to computers. If all you did was browse Facebook instead, the effect would be much the same.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#624

Post by paulryanrogers »

jolmg wrote: post #410
paulryanrogers wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was hit with a belt as a child. The possibility nor the reality helped make me a better person. It actually has a negative effect on mental health

It might be like brakes. Some people abuse the brakes for their own self-satisfaction to e.g. brake-check others, others brake hard every time they need to come to a stop (e.g. intersections) because they don't know otherwise, and then others make it seem like the brakes don't even exist as the car glides without disturbance to the point that you might find it normal to have a drink from a open cup throughout. It's a…

Except it's not like car brakes. Long term studies prove corporal punishment has no benefit and actually causes problems.

How people raise kids should be based on evidence and the scientific method. Not tradition or vibes-based analogies.

https://www.apa.org/about/policy/physical-discipline-childre...

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/corporal-pu...

https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/gradesch...

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#625

Post by paulryanrogers »

GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #351
paulryanrogers wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would tell Billy's dad, who would make sure he didn't ever do _that_ again, and that would be the end of it. By beating the child?

Actually no. I don't remember parents actually hitting their kids, even in the 1970's. And this was a very rust-belt working class environment.

Can you elaborate on how Billy's dad would make sure he never threw rocks at people again?

FWIW, I grew up in the Midwest in the 80s and was subject to corporal punishment. Also witnessed only the black children being spanked at school in the South Eastern US.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#626

Post by keepamovin »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #81
keepamovin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential to risks raised in the article I guess, but I cannot understand something that's happening in the US: it's crazy how many demented people there are. That there is a market that captures children in order to traffick them for sex; that there are hundreds of people doing this regularly being wrapped up by LE raids, and dozens of children freed; that these raids happen on the frequency of weeks, or months; th…

There will be many sick people in a nation of hundreds of millions. Stigmatizing mental help drives a lot of problems underground. So does our awkward immigration system that keeps all kinds of migrants in precarious positions, even legal agricultural laborers. Our president has the strongest personal ties to the most prolific sex trafficker in recent decades, second only to Gladwell. Yet he has suffered no legal con…

At one point everyone would have believed Johnny Depp was a creeper too, but it turns out that some people just lie, they make stuff up, that's how they seek power, money, revenge. You can see this in the corporate world, you can see it in friend groups, and you can see it here, too. And when powerful interests are at stake, there can be coordinated lying: solicited, organized, deliberately propagated fabrications.

I don't see any power to those claims about Trump - and 'association', guilt by association? It's like people want the guy to be bad and are seeing stuff that's weak in support of that. And how he talked? You mean "grab them by the pussy" - have you heard how ladies talk? Grabbed him by the dick can just mean you have a the guy wrapped around your little finger, as in "I use sex to control my husband" - another common admission.

It's just those who despise the guy/the policy, make their interpretation match what they want to see there, but if they were more neutral, they'd see it in a mroe balanced way.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#627

Post by ekianjo »

freehorse wrote: post #267
ekianjo wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However a hefty portion of that accident reduction is attributable to other safety improvements. very hard to differentiate between product safety improvement and attitude change of parents, because both are co-factors. There is no good way to dissociate one from the other. > child suicide rates are way up, which research attributes directly to the decline in independence. and brainwashing

> and brainwashing Kids are brainwashed to commit suicide at scale? Could you elaborate?

If you keep telling kids there is no future, climate change will cause mass starvation and whatever of course you increase the propensity towards despair and suicide.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#628

Post by paulryanrogers »

keepamovin wrote: post #626
paulryanrogers wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be many sick people in a nation of hundreds of millions. Stigmatizing mental help drives a lot of problems underground. So does our awkward immigration system that keeps all kinds of migrants in precarious positions, even legal agricultural laborers. Our president has the strongest personal ties to the most prolific sex trafficker in recent decades, second only to Gladwell. Yet he has suffered no legal con…

At one point everyone would have believed Johnny Depp was a creeper too, but it turns out that some people just lie, they make stuff up, that's how they seek power, money, revenge. You can see this in the corporate world, you can see it in friend groups, and you can see it here, too. And when powerful interests are at stake, there can be coordinated lying: solicited, organized, deliberately propagated fabrications. I…

Most adult men I've known would never joke about grabbing strange women by their genitals, certainly not while being recorded. Nor would they go on public radio and declare they'd date girls as young as 13 whilst being a man in their 40s. Nor have they been found liable for sexual assault. Nor walked in on teen girls in dressing rooms. Nor have they faced women publicly accusing them of acosting or pouring drinks down their dresses.

If accusations against Trump are lies then he can sue them for defamation and win in court. Sadly most of the people victimized by him cannot seek remedy in court because of the passage of time. And in the era they were assaulted it was dangerous to accuse rich, powerful, and litigious men with mafia connections.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#629

Post by GlibMonkeyDeath »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #625
GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually no. I don't remember parents actually hitting their kids, even in the 1970's. And this was a very rust-belt working class environment.

Can you elaborate on how Billy's dad would make sure he never threw rocks at people again? FWIW, I grew up in the Midwest in the 80s and was subject to corporal punishment. Also witnessed only the black children being spanked at school in the South Eastern US.

Sure - having raised kids myself, and never once hitting them, there are lots of ways to memorably punish a kid. First and foremost, kids really respond when their parents get upset. They remembered when I was visibly angry with something they did. Throw in some "I am so disappointed with you" from the other parent, maybe grounding them or taking something away they want, and we have something a kid would like to avoid in the future. Like any punishment, it can't be used too much or it loses effectiveness (so if you blow up at your kids constantly all you are doing is funding a future therapist's income...)

FWIW, teachers in my (basically all-white) school in the Northeast US in the 70's and 80's would occasionally paddle kids for egregious behavior (like doing something dangerous or open insubordination.) In my low-N observations, it had dubious effectiveness. Kids who were generally good but just messed up once appeared to be "scared straight", although of course I can't say if it was more effective than non-corporal punishment. The sudden shock and embarrassment of being paddled seemed to be effective though. If the kid was a "behavior problem" paddling wouldn't fix the underlying issues.

Also, if you were punished at school, you could expect to be punished at home, if your parents ever found out. Most parents back then would immediately side with the teachers; that's something else that has really shifted in the last half-century. Today, parents are involved to the point of interference, at least in the more affluent areas.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#630

Post by keepamovin »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #628
keepamovin wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one point everyone would have believed Johnny Depp was a creeper too, but it turns out that some people just lie, they make stuff up, that's how they seek power, money, revenge. You can see this in the corporate world, you can see it in friend groups, and you can see it here, too. And when powerful interests are at stake, there can be coordinated lying: solicited, organized, deliberately propagated fabrications. I…

Most adult men I've known would never joke about grabbing strange women by their genitals, certainly not while being recorded. Nor would they go on public radio and declare they'd date girls as young as 13 whilst being a man in their 40s. Nor have they been found liable for sexual assault. Nor walked in on teen girls in dressing rooms. Nor have they faced women publicly accusing them of acosting or pouring drinks dow…

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