Single player games with retro graphic were enough to keep me entertained for hours when I was young. I can’t imagine how it’s like for the kids nowadays to have access to all the entertainment the internet provides.
“No one is bored, everything is boring”
Love that.
And the adults back then bitched and moaned about how we were rotting our brains doing this instead of playing outside or reading or other activities they approved of.
Nah, I grew up in the 90s and while we had video games and PC games, we also did a LOT of non video game activities.
Riding our bikes, sports, making shit in our parent’s garage, playing in a band, RISK board game nights, cinema, arcades, hanging out at the mall, rc cars.
I mean, there was almost no time to spend playing video games.
Today’s youth are missing a lot, and they are setting themselves up for a lifetime of mental health issues and the inability to be resilient through a lack of experiences.
My kids, fortunately, had at least part of their youth without a phone. I can’t imagine what disaster awaits kids who only know phones.
Right? Before that it was tv. Before that it was rock and roll. I was actually told to go outside more because I was READING TOO MUCH. Idk why everyone feels like their way of entertainment is better than everyone else’s. It’s so weird that we can’t let people enjoy themselves unless they do it our way.
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DOSBOX & SNESEMU 4 life.
Dang if parents only could do anything about their children smartphone use.
My kid was the last one in their school year to get a smartphone. He was bullied for not having a smartphone. He used to ask me for one several times a day and I stuck to what I’d said, he’ll get one on his birthday. I still feel it was far too early. He was 10 when he got it.
Kids can be real shitheads sometimes
Nope. You can’t expect me to raise my own child How dare you!
Just like the UK bill wanting an ID for porn sites. And, in the EU, Youtube is wanting my ID for age verification to follow EU law. Isn’t a much less authoritarian solution just to use blocklists, or even mandate sites send an unencrypted flag with content that is “adult” and browsers or routers can choose to deal with that or not.
Like if you don’t want you child to use a smartphone - just don’t buy one for them.
Youtube never asked for my ID (I’m in the EU). Which country is this?
They say EU law, and it’s only if I want to watch age restricted videos. But Czech Republic
Something, something, something, and then BREXIT comes to mind. That worked out well.
In Sweden, it was mandatory for kindergartens to have “digital learning tools” up until a year ago. I wonder who came up with that brilliant idea.
What I mean is that it might not be so simple as not giving them access to it if other institutions persist in forcing it on them.
Maybe a hot take, but this goes for everyone. I see older people that can’t stay off their phones, and have little to no ability to multitask while doing it.
Nobody can multi task. I wish this stupid myth would die.
“I’m good at multitasking” is just another way of saying you can’t focus on one thing at a 🐿️ SQUIRREL!
SQUIRREL? WHERE?!
I’m not easily distrac… - oh, wow, a blue car!
Your statement is just another way of saying ‘Since I can’t do it, nobody can, and people who claim to are liars’.
You do know that skilled chess masters can run multiple games at once, right?
Fair point. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
They don’t make a move in each game at the same time though, the moves are still made separately and sequentially. Almost like they are alternating between tasks…
Can’t upvote this enough, I have had ppl literally bragging to me about their ability to “multi-task” 🙄
Or you hate when ppl can walk, talk and eat at same time
Ew you talk with your mouth full
Ew you can’t multitask
What about the left brain right brain simultaneous use, like people drawing two pieces of art at once or like how I can walk and be on my phone while being completely aware of my surroundings.
Sometimes my brain is thinking in one space and my body is doing another. Like I hit auto pilot and stepped away from the cabin, yet the plane is still flying.
Its pretty funny how people will take a single low-population college paper over the evidence of their own experience.
I multitask daily, I have to it’s part of my job.
It depends on the definition I guess. I would consider driving a car to be multitasking. But doing three different office tasks on my laptop feels more like context switching as someone dubbed it here.
But I’m just some dude it’s not like I’ve read any papers on it but that’s what it feels like for me.
Well I guess anything can mean whatever you want with that statement.
Good luck understanding objective reality tho. But at lest you’ll never be wrong or be required to call your assumptions into question.
Must be nice.
That should be no surprise. They have been designed to be purposefully addictive.
That would be TV
Where I live older people don’t know how turn on phone. They watch tv instead. Those who have some sanity left also go outside, sit on benches, talk with each other and keep your bike from being stolen.
The problem is we want/are forced to let kids to have access to the big internet pipe but we also dont, we want to moderate what gets through.
I feel like most adults struggle with maintaining boundries on usage let alone kids. I do not like the antagonistic arelationship between child and parent that smartphones naturally create. I think a dumb phone and some other machine “to fill the void” and “to not feel left out” is the correct solution at least for me.
a dumb phone and some other machine “to fill the void”
So a dumb phone and a stationary computer or laptop for internet access…exactly what most millennials grew up with.
I’m disappointed that most people seem to treat kids as subhuman, not needing the basic right privacy and freedom that they want for adults so much.
“Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along - the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires.”
—Orson Scott Card, Ender’s GameIt’s important to note that a big part of that book is repeated evidence that Ender is not a “normal” child. He is heavily implied to have murdered one of his bullies before he was ever pulled out of society and into training (where he explicitly kills another bully).
Nah that quote’s from the foreword, he’s talking about himself
They don’t want the right to privacy and freedom for adults either though. Sure they might say they do if you ask them but as soon as they’re mildly inconvenienced by a protest or someone mentions children are in danger they’re all in favour of spying and censorship laws
This is a horrible truth. Treating kids as though their opinion matters is considered insanity.
Do people even use the term young adult anymore?
Infantising of adults I think is a huge issue we have in society.
It was the case that 16 was defacto adulthood in years gone by. Now I hear people saying you aren’t an adult till 25 or 30! If there are 25 year old wandering around that aren’t adults it’s a failing of the parents and society.
In school when we hit ~16 we got treated entirely differently, the teachers talked to us instead of parents, we was in control of our time. They joked with us. It really made me grow up because I got treated like a grown up.
Same thing with scouts and rugby when I was younger, being pushed to be responsible made me grow. As eduction improves overtime we should be making more capable 18 year old not less.
*when I use the term young adult I mean ~16. Apparently young adult can also mean 18-25 but I’ve never seen it used in that context before.
It’s more of an American thing I think. A 20-year-old child, I’ve literally seen that phrase used. Mental.
But how will they ever stop these children from just walking into a store and buying a £500 phone and signing their own service contracts ?
why would a kid havy £500
School lunches
A law saying phone companies can’t open a contract for a kid without a parent present?
In most US states kids under 18 can’t be held to a contract so nobody would give one to them anyway.
I think that’s what doublejay1999 is talking about. Look out for the hidden /s.
:-o
Even then, they can go to a dollar store and buy a sim card for super cheap.
After the SORA AI reveal today I’m starting to see that luddites have a point. I don’t think we’ll ever have terminator-style scenarios but the amount of damage misinformation and disinformation is doing to our society and now WILL do to our society is proof enough we need to start stepping back. I’ve seen the amazing benefits of AI first hand - new drugs, new treatments, more medical knowledge than ever before, gene sequencing of never before seen organisms. I’ve seen AI help with all those amazing beneficial things.
But I feel like the bad actors are wining, and winning very hard. Basically everything is unregulated and corporations refuse to take even a modicum of responsibility for anything. The worst thing is knowing that our octogenerian overlords don’t even know how to use a phone. I don’t see why i should continue to be a tech optimist when we all know that things are only going to get worse from here on out. In a post-truth society all we can really do is regress.
quite concerning that misinformation is not taken seriously enough and is allowed to poison minds like a plague with no opposition
The prophecy wasn’t on terminator, it was on metal gear solid 2, the truth will be unrecognizable from the fakes.
Yup Kojima 1000 years ahead of his time.
I think it may get to the point where tracking who owns what is a lost cause and societies with larger commons are going to pull ahead while our “individualism” centered societies will fall into an endless wave of scams and grifting.
I never got a smartphone until 9th grade and it never really affected me that much. Then again, I was the oddball kid who pretty much never used social media outside of yt.
But nowadays social media is so garbage and same goes for maybe 97% of yt, so I can see why parents don’t want their kids having a smartphone. Having pretty much instant access to services designed to keep you on their platform while also making you depressed over the life you could be living but aren’t is never a good idea, especially for impressionable teens trying to find their place in the world.
So then parents should just not get their kid a smartphone and stop trying to police everyone else’s kids. It really is that simple
Fair.
Uncool boomers be like: “It’s the damn phones”, when they’ve created cities where 2+ tons of metal can freely roam around wherever they like. They’ve created cities where kids cannot go anywhere on their own without being run over by these said metal beasts.
But ofc uncle Kevin, “It’s dem damn phones. Can you at least look at me instead of scrolling through Facebook when I’m talking to you?”
It seriously is part ‘those damn phones’.
I was a kid long before smart devices, cities were the same urban hellscapes.
Instant gratification from unknown sources under the direction of a 9 year old is a serious problem and people like you who pretend its not are probably part of the generation damaged most by it.
Instant gratification from unknown sources under the direction of a 9 year old is a serious problem and people like you who pretend its not are probably part of the generation damaged most by it.
Eh, I have to agree begrudgingly. I remember having this discussion with someone I know about mental health post smartphones. We came across a few studies tracking mental health of adolescents for the past few decades. To compensate for lack of data (due to lack of mental health awareness, yadayadayada), they tried to inductively predict this missing data using various factors. The interesting part however was the increase in mental health issues in the early 2010s. Now of course, while their data might be quite error prone, I think it makes sense logically.
- More exposure to fked up world events (like Gaza, Ukraine, lack of climate action and so on) leads to one being depressed of course.
- In my experience, faceless trolls are much worse than in person bullies.
So yeah, I do agree with you. The situation is not black and white. Unfortunately, the uncool boomers (sorry for the lame term,-I use it to not generalize all boomers) do not see it that way. Banning smartphones in schools is one of the stupidest things to do. Uncool boomers purely blame smartphones, and almost always engage dialog in bad faith. It’s mudslinging basically.
Now, if I present a nuanced opinion here, it won’t be considered at all. Essentially similar to the “leftist long paragraph” meme. Therefore, to combat this, mudslinging back is most effective. At least it drives home some idea (in this case, the idea of walkable city design). Is this bad faith? Yea, unfortunately. But does it make sense to try to have a good faith dialog with someone who doesn’t want to have one?
Sorry no, there have been several studies about the negative mental health impacts of always on social media life in teens but you just like muddying the waters so you pretend it’s anyone’s game and give a backhand at the end of your drivel.
Pretty sophisticated but still just forum sliding bullshit.
Edit: ITT people butthurt about being called out on their toxic social media habits
Sorry no, there have been several studies about the negative mental health impacts of always on social media life in teens but you just like muddying the waters so you pretend it’s anyone’s game and give a backhand at the end of your drivel.
I haven’t come across these, but I don’t deny their existence. I just wrote down what I’ve come across myself. I already agreed with you on this point.
Pretty sophisticated but still just forum sliding bullshit.
I’m sorry that you feel that way. But as you demonstrated just now, you are not interested in engaging in good faith. You are still stuck on the “social media bad” train, when I already agreed with you on that. This is exactly what I mean by mudslinging. People just want to repeat certain phrases again and again, progressively louder and louder while vomiting ad hominems left and right.
It isn’t “forum sliding” if the topic is indeed that complex. But as I stated before, you are not ready to move on from “social media bad”. Hence, how can one engage in good faith in such a scenario?
- More exposure to fked up world events (like Gaza, Ukraine, lack of climate action and so on) leads to one being depressed of course.
What should I do if I live somewhere where fucked up event happens now? Or what kid in Belgorod/Odessa should do?
- In my experience, faceless trolls are much worse than in person bullies.
People have different experiences. Mine is opposite. It happens.
What should I do if I live somewhere where fucked up event happens now? Or what kid in Belgorod/Odessa should do?
Suffer. Studies like these are American/European centric in the first place. Their sample size never includes other countries (not because the researchers are evil lmao, but because they want to isolate this “phone factor”). A kid in Odessa is most likely suffering from the war today rather than suffering from the effects of Instagram.
This is the wrong take but it’s a part of it for sure.
Lol it has nothing to do with cars. I grew up in the 90s without a phone and my city wasn’t much different then than now. I was constantly outside playing and so were all the other kids
I grew up in the 90s and my entire childhood neighborhood is concrete now. The overgrown wash where we built forts is gone. The desert surrounding the area? Gone. It’s just roads, shitty apartment buildings, and cement for miles. Maybe it didn’t change for you but my kids could never grow up the same way that I did there. Most of the more wild areas are gone. Banished to the outskirts of town now. Hell, we don’t even really have sidewalks and hardly anything is walkable due to traffic. It has everything to do with cars in plenty of places. There is literally nowhere for kids to be kids within walking distance of me now either.
Few years ago when I played with kids outside in minecraft on phones.
Is it the boomers this time? I remember millennials thinking that about zoomers and now they’ve grown up, zoomers have been saying it about Gen Alpha calling them iPad babys
People say many things. It doesn’t change the fact that the ruling class is largely boomers. Hence, addressing the most influential voting class doesn’t seem so absurd to me.
25% of population gets 100% of representation
Not all doomers did it. But those who didn’t were communists.
Every phone offers simple to use parental controlls.
I don’t really see phones as a problem, it’s the rampant social media and ads that are the problem and unfortunately it’s too intertwined with society/technology to undo it at this point.
Prob a good way to get your kids bullied lolz
They can get bullied for not having phones, they can get bullied through phones and social media. They can get bullied for not having stupid ass Fortnite skins. Anything is an excuse for shitty kids who want to bully,
I don’t give a shit, don’t get them anything. Make them wear raggedy clothes and not use deodorant, I’m sure they will be fine
Pretty sure that clothes are more important than fortnite skins
I’m pretty sure I never said they weren’t.
Humanity never changes, adults still think we know better what’s good for young people than they themselves do. When I was a child and teenager, I hoped that this attitude would die out over the generations, seems that that isn’t happening.
I think part of the issue is that there’s a lot more predatory shit on the internet nowadays. I say this as a person who has had unfettered access to the internet since my tweens. Social media and The Algorithms have changed the internet, and not necessarily for the better.
Just as a for-instance, if you go to YouTube on a freshly installed browser without logging in, the front page is kind of wild. Then the algorithm will pull you down a rabbit hole and kids who haven’t been taught that they’re being manipulated are going to start taking everything as fact from people like Tate.
We didn’t have things trying to get in our heads to this extent; while I do wish the kids had their freedom, I also recognise that the internet has become hell. I can understand why parents would try to shield their kids from that.
Generally they do. Of course they are responsible for all the dumb shit in the world, but also most of the good and interesting.
Young people don’t get dumber as they age. They get smarter, wiser, better able to cope with adversity. Setting sore back and knees aside adults are doing alright when it comes to raising the young.
American Republicans seem pretty dumb to me, they probably were smarter as open minded children
The cult-y parts of republicans shure are, because dumbing down a message so it cannot be refuted is how cults keep members.
Republicans arent inherantly dumb.
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