Watching energetic young kids run around, I can see how tempting it is to give them an interactive device which consumes their attention and makes them easier to handle. But phones seem designed to encourage the shortest possible attention spans and rabid multi-tasking, the opposite of deep focus. So what do you do? Is it as simple as banning phones, if you're willing to give them the needed attention? What about friends' phones and the Internet in general? What if they fall in love with web programming at the age of 8? You want them to be familiar with technology and ideally to be able to drift between multi-tasking and deep focus. I haven't read much on how to achieve this from a practical parenting perspective, though.
As much as I am wary of being negative towards children's behaviours that don't match my own, focus related criticism is something that I feel is really valid. I've watched children below the age of 13 Snapchat and watched any number of children aged 2 and above using YouTube. The same behavior shows up where before a video has finished, the children are reaching out to tap to another one. I try not to judge but I do cringe when I see 2 year olds spending 1 minute on a baby rhymes video, then reaching forward, tapping to another one while the first still has 15 minutes to go, and then doing that again and again and again. The older children swiping without fully watching even a Snapchat video is equally bothersome for me. I'm seeing swipes and taps happen in the range of 2 to 3 seconds.
This behaviour is not unique to children though. I watch adults at the hospital using Facebook and it's the same. It's almost like they just want to swipe rather than look at the content for real.
I have no idea what the long term effects of this behaviour are. Perhaps it's nothing and I'm fretting over it needlessly. But I've experienced it myself and it took behaviour similar to rehab to come out of it and be able to slowly enjoy content again. And it always feels easy to slip back into. It's terrifying.
It isn't qualitatively different. I appreciate the term there. Quantitatively however, the abundance of information and the way networks choose to constantly show new content (that is more likely to appeal to you too) makes for a very different scenario from decades ago.
Pick up the news paper, and it's the same thing you have to browse/skim through. Pick up the phone and it's tens of new items every few minutes.
For what it's worth, I recall reading that Bill Gates didn't allow his children to have smartphones until they were like 13. Not that he's a model of perfect parenting but just an interesting example given his relationship to technology. I'm not convinced that an 8 year old who is interested in web development will suffer from not having the device--there's a million other things they could be learning/doing. In fact I would hypothesize that the smartphone would actually cause a young brain to grow into the habit of having a miniscule attention span.
If I wanted to raise my kids to be good with computers, I'd give them machines from the 80s.
For a start, you can program them. (My smartphones make me sad for this reason.) Further, you have to program them to get them to do much of anything. To play a game, you have to type it in! Which means you can type in something different, and make your own games! They always come with a manual. And they are beyond the reach of the tentacles of the attention harvesting monster.
Not from the 80's but I have an X1 Carbon, and I could give this to someone with only the default frame buffer and a POSIX shell, and that would work. Probably would need to install a firmware password at some point... but it's not completely trivial to learn how to install an OS.
If the user can figure out how to install chrome to get to Facebook (or whatever) from just that, well I think they're probably past this line of reasoning.
I can't do this what any mainstream smartphone however, ffs.
I think you would need to go back a little farther than the '80s. The Apple IIe made playing Oregon Trail approximately as easy as inserting the floppy disk. You could also play Microsoft Flight Simulator without much work on your 386 running MS-DOS.
That seems like overkill. Why not just give them a barebones linux box with tty only. No X server, no windows manager, just a cursor blinking at you, daring you to do something. As a christmas present you could install lynx for them.
I just played textual Oregon trail on a working mainframe from the 1970s at the living computer museum in seattle. I think you can teletype in if you want.
To each his own, but I would absolutely not do this. If I were to try to teach my kids car maintenance, I'm not going to insist that they learn to adjust the points under a distributor cap.
Unfortunately this also applies to adults. My parents grew with little more than a radio and a handful of books yet today they're tied into their phones and tablets, constantly checking for FB updates or the latest (irrelevant) news.
My parents and one remaining grandparent have cable TV—mostly news channels—on about 16 hours a day in their house. TV's always on in whichever room one of them's in. The one of them who gets out of the house more than a single-digit count of hours a week spends most of the time driving, which means AM radio (ahem) that entire time.
Practical parenting perspecive: Read them bedtime stories for 30 minutes or longer every evening. (I'm assuming your kids are still young enough for bedtime stories.)
And that's YOU. READ. Not some podcast or audiobook.
It's about time together. It's about you doing voices for the characters. It's about the low visual content of books that activates young imaginations. It's about reading longer books (when they're old enough to be ready for it, of course) that might take a month or longer to read so that they learn about delayed gratification, learn long-term continuity skills.
Banning tech from kids' lives altogether seems unnecessary and is probably impossible (though minimising it seems advisable!) but, above all, it's balance that's wanted.
I don't hold books on the same pedestal, but extended together time I certainly do. Could be building Lego, using a computer, drawing, all of these things help with focus.
I think constructive praise is critical too, so they feel the tangible benefits of putting time into a project. I actually think books are bad in this regard, there is nothing to praise at the end, though it does provoke thought. We switched to comics, they are able to handle much more complex story lines then.
A summer house by the beach with no electricity does the job fine. That's our way of dealing with it. I feel that's more about being able to turn off now and then rather than banning. Learning to control the devices rather than the reverse. Talk about it with the kids, most likely they share the same concern as you and you can find a way forward together.
Not being able to resist is related to how well you resist drugs. So it's important to be aware of.
Yes, a hundred times yes. Addiction is a learned behavior and it is very difficult to unlearn. Once the brain is wired for pleasure seeking, free will is a joke.
Our environment is changing far faster than we can adapt. It will be interesting to see the long-term impact.
Iceland has used a data-driven approach to improve kids health. Youth drug use rates have plummeted. If I had kids, I'd be following their model. This graph[0] is very impressive.
If you already have an inclination to travel to Mongolia, this makes for an interesting "last straw" to justify going. I like the relative desolation of the American Midwest, in part because of the no-tech/no-connectivity of large swaths; any excuse to go there is appreciated.
Once that hurdle is cleared, going to such an extreme for disconnecting helps hammer home the point to the kid: cellular connectivity isn't just a few feet of separation from phone, or a few miles outside cell service, it's far enough that disconnection is absolute & profound - you can drive (not just walk) for days and still not get a connection.
The real horror is a society so deeply dependent on something they use so intimately yet so completely fail to understand. Getting kids "back to the Earth" is very important, full & complete disconnect from "technology" so they can grasp their own ability to live & thrive without it. Clarke: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"; we're there, and while the benefits are good, the psychological dependency & mystery isn't. Go somewhere distant from technology, forage/hunt food, make a meal over an open fire, and sleep under the stars - so vital for a child's psychological well-being.
[ETA: "Midwest" referring to roughly the boundary between central plains and Rocky Mountains.]
Where do you draw the line on technology? Are you hunting and foraging with your own hand made weapons? Is the tent you sleep in composed of furs? Technology is all around us, no matter how far you move or hide, and it seems arbitrary to draw the line at "cell phone bad", then argue that you need to get kids to go "back to the Earth". That's idealistic romanticism, and unless you're running around in leather skins with a wooden bow and hand woven string, it's all pretending that one can survive without the trappings of modern life.
>Where do you draw the line on technology? Are you hunting and foraging with your own hand made weapons? Is the tent you sleep in composed of furs? Technology is all around us, no matter how far you move or hide, and it seems arbitrary to draw the line at "cell phone bad", then argue that you need to get kids to go "back to the Earth"
Just because things aren't black or white and exactly measurable, there doesn't mean we can't make distinctions and decide qualitatively, or that if someone accepts technology X% then they need to accept it 100% and bend over backwards to whatever tech is popular...
The "slippery slope" argument than if you forego cell phone addiction you must also "hunt and foraging with your own hand made weapons" is also bad -- as if every new invention is an absolute must have, and people shouldn't live without it, or set their own criteria, lest they forego civilization entirely.
>That's idealistic romanticism, and unless you're running around in leather skins with a wooden bow and hand woven string, it's all pretending that one can survive without the trappings of modern life.
We survived for millennia without the "trappings of modern life", and we survived without commonly available cellphones even up to 1995 or so, and smartphones up to 1998 or so, so it's not like we absolutely must have them or are savages. Not having a smartphone at all or going on a mobile-diet is actually a thing in hacker circles, which are far from savages...
There are millions of people who do without this or other trappings by choice (not to mention billions by lack of money), who still do just fine.
In fact a couple of the richest people (ship owners level rich) I know use some crappy 20-year old style cellphone (not a smartphone) and avoid being arbitrarily reachable by others. It's not some luxury those "trappings of modern life" often it's the opposite: the passtime of slaves and necessary tools of working stiff to be easily found.
> We survived for millennia without the "trappings of modern life", and we survived without commonly available cellphones even up to 1995 or so, and smartphones up to 1998 or so, so it's not like we absolutely must have them or are savages.
You didn't describe a 1998 style of living, you described roughing it.
> Go somewhere distant from technology, forage/hunt food, make a meal over an open fire, and sleep under the stars - so vital for a child's psychological well-being.
Now you say:
> The "slippery slope" argument than if you forego cell phone addiction you must also "hunt and foraging with your own hand made weapons" is also BS -- as if every new invention is an absolute must have, and people shouldn't live without it, or set their own criteria, lest they forego civilization entirely.
That seems to be two entirely opposite things. If you want to say "cell phones bad", just say that - don't pretend it is because of a desire to be better and healthier for children.
>You didn't describe a 1998 style of living, you described roughing it.
You mean the grandparent did. What they said isn't about permanent living, but about something one can do as a kind of break, and they (and I for that matter) thinks beneficial for the children too: "Go somewhere distant from technology, forage/hunt food, make a meal over an open fire, and sleep under the stars - so vital for a child's psychological well-being."
We used to call those things "going cabing/fishing/hunting/backpacking in the wild" etc, back before 1995 and throughout the 20th century -- and we did them without cellphones or game consoles, and most things. Usually it was a great parent/kid bonding memory too. Sleeping under the stars, making a meal open an open fire, fishing/hunting for food and eating local stuff (from trees etc), were all perfectly normal. Heck, several people I know, in my age and younger (40 to 20-something) still do a lot of those things, go camping, etc. Are they considered inconceivable savagery today?
>That seems to be two entirely opposite things. If you want to say "cell phones bad", just say that - don't pretend it is because of a desire to be better and healthier for children.
You probably confused my response to your comment, to what the grandparent wrote first. Note however, that neither me, nor the grandparent mentioned anything about some permanent retreat from technology. Grandparent basically said - as I read it - "do this X things in nature, without technology, from time to time. It's good for you, and good for the children to learn those things and to not think they're nothing without technology".
That said, nor sure about the distinction you're making here: "If you want to say "cell phones bad", just say that - don't pretend it is because of a desire to be better and healthier for children.".
If I believe that cell phones are bad, I'd naturally also believe spending some time without them is better and healthier for children. So saying one or the other would be based on the same idea.
But you don't have to think "cell phones are bad". It's enough to think that cell phones are not only great, but also have downsides, or that however good cell phones are, one also needs to appreciate / be able to do without them too. It's about not being a slave to one's tech.
==That seems to be two entirely opposite things. If you want to say "cell phones bad", just say that - don't pretend it is because of a desire to be better and healthier for children.==
You clearly want them to say "cell phones bad", but I only see you using those words. One can engage in an activity for multiple purposes. I like to exercise in order to keep my weight down, but it also helps me sleep better and keeps my energy levels up.
Isn't it possible that cell phones as a whole are good, but too much cell p[hone usage is bad? Coffee has many positive benefits, but if you start to drink too much of it, the negative effects can overtake the positive benefits. Isn't it worth exploring where that line is when it comes to a device we keep with us at all times and use "over 4 hours a day" [1]?
I know people who are unable to navigate without their phones. If they spent some time in the wilderness, they would start to learn, intuitively, which direction is north, south, etc. They would learn how to read a map, including topo maps. They would start to learn how to create a mental map of their surroundings or at least remember where they had been. They would start learning what do when lost. All very helpful if the internet is down, their phone dies, or they get caught up in a natural disaster back in civilization.
That seems like two different use cases. While that helps you to tell direction, it doesn't help you navigate to 9134 Grocer Place, which is what I think most people use Google Maps for, and for which a topo map would be less than useless. Do you know people who Google Maps their way camping?
> Do you know people who Google Maps their way camping?
Yes. Google Maps has pretty good coverage of popular trails and topography and can be used if you have signal.
> it doesn't help you navigate to 9134 Grocer Place
It absolutely can if you have some familiarity with the area and no signal. If from previous experience, you generally know where Grocer Place is then finding 9134 just takes patience. You don't even need to have necessarily been to that specific street before if you have a mental map of the area.
> a topo map would be less than useless
For finding a street address, true. But knowing how to read a topo map helps someone learn how to read and navigate natural landmarks which can be helpful in a natural disaster scenario or in a city if they are lost and no signal. I invite you to spend some time orienteering, I think you'll start to understand where I am coming from.
>You don't even need to have necessarily been to that specific street before if you have a mental map of the area.
I, for one, am not going to waste my mental energy making a mental map of Houston. The city PROPER has an area of 670 mi^2, which is equivalent to fifteen San Francisco's. The metropolitan area is over 200 San Francisco's. I regularly drive 40 miles to get from one side of the city to another, for whatever particular errand I need to run that day. The Houston metro area is officially over 10,000 square miles - that's larger than (pick one): Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maryland.
I'm not building a "mental map" of an area larger than the entire state of Massachusetts. Saying it's on par with the total area of the country of Switzerland would not be much of an exaggeration.
Maybe the city was different before cell phones. Maybe each neighborhood either had everything you needed or you just went without. Now, because GPS/Google Maps exist, the highest quality businesses pop up in super random spots around the city, and you'll never be able to have a clue how to get to them all without Google Maps.
"Back in the day" you didn't live in an integrated metropolis the size of Switzerland. But we do now...so the tools we need to enable that are now legitimately "needed" and non-optional. This very well may be hazardous to our health, but its not really an option.
> Yes. Google Maps has pretty good coverage of popular trails and topography and can be used if you have signal.
Ah, I was thinking back country - everywhere I've gone there's no signal, and if I'm front country, you can always just use the obvious trail markers.
Your use case for direction finding isn't relevant to an urban user. If you are familiar with the area, chances are you don't need a topo map, and you don't need to orienteer your way either - you'll understand the street numbers and landmarks. I'm also confused as to how using google maps affects your ability to become familiar with an area - I've found that by the 3rd time I've gone somewhere I no longer need maps at all, but I was using it up until then.
> I'm also confused as to how using google maps affects your ability to become familiar with an area - I've found that by the 3rd time I've gone somewhere I no longer need maps at all, but I was using it up until then.
Many people are naturally good at creating a mental map regardless of how they navigate initially. It sounds like you are one of them. However there are plenty of people who don't seem to have that innate skill. Wilderness orienteering experience would help those people. In my experience, it also helps everyone navigate in unfamiliar surroundings (urban or not) if they don't have signal. It is a form of transfer learning to use an ML analogy.
I'll load up Google Maps offline for the area, plus digital top maps, plus paper maps & GPS & compass, plus have an innate sense of area & direction. GM is most convenient (even with no connection).
That being a bit too long a jump for most people involved in my attempt, I want a progressive one-step-down on everything we use. Home > camper > tent > hammock > foliage > open ground. Stove > grill > campfire > fire drill. Canned food > MRE > dry goods > foraging > hunt/trap. Cheap gear > ultralight gear > iron/leather/wool gear > make your own out there.
The "cell phone bad" issue comes from a new generation fixated on a magic glass slate which mysteriously supplies nearly all their needs, able to conjure up food/shelter/transport/society with just a few taps on some runes - and the users have no idea how it works, nor what they would do without it. Even if they do indeed spend most of their lives relying on it, they must have enough competence & competence to be dropped anywhere in the country, with nothing, and confidently find their way back to safety & society. Too many can't even get home from school/work without a GPS & mapping app.
FWIW: I grew up on wood heat (northern US), raised half our own food, did own car repairs, sewed, had wood/metal/electronic/photo shops, etc. Modern luxuries are, well, luxurious but I aspire to a remote log cabin on a mountain lake with a Starlink connection.
That's ... kinda the point. You have a gigantic blind spot which, tautologically, you can't see. Traveling significant distances under your own power, carrying what you can and living off the land otherwise, being forced to learn how food comes from the earth, being forced to exercise your memory, would do you good in revealing & eliminating that blind spot.
Question is: what happens when those tools fail? How far down the technology stack can you function?
I'm not suggesting a large/dominating percentage of your time go to this. I am suggesting you (and the kids in question) go off-grid to see what extends beyond "today's world" and how others live in it without the tools you have.
Why? Are those tools going to fail? Are you going to destroy them?
Because here's the thing: if those tools fail, you die of dysentery.
Go enjoy the outdoors all you want if that's what you want to do, but this fantasy you're totally setting yourself up to survive...something? is just that - a fantasy.
> Even if they do indeed spend most of their lives relying on it, they must have enough competence & competence to be dropped anywhere in the country, with nothing, and confidently find their way back to safety & society.
Why? What use case are you thinking here? That's survivalist escapist fantasy stuff, nothing to do with the requirements of most modern living. Even in the case of the hypothetical EMP natural disaster, you're probably not in wilderness, you're in a major metropolis surrounded by people and navigating social dynamics will be more important than being able to sew a goat into a cape.
Because that assures sufficient skills for any situation, an awareness of supply chain providence all the way back to natural dirt, and self-confidence transcending anything life can throw at you.
Even the CDC has discovered "zombie apocalypse preparedness" as a means of ensuring people are trained to handle any situation. Sounds preposterous, yes, but in doing so you know you're ready.
The problem with modern living (now app-based) is that power, data, food, fuel, water, and/or money outages leave too many people quickly desperate. Can you quickly preserve the food in your fridge/freezer without electricity? Can you acquire clean water when the tap runs dry? Do you even know where your food/water comes from, and why that matters? This even extends into sociopolitical policy, regarding how governments redistribute taxes to people who ... wait for it ... are incapable of providing for their basic needs when bad things happen, because they don't know how to provide for basic needs when bad things happen.
It's raining outside right now. Have you ever, in earnest, gathered rainwater for drinking? ever even considered it seriously? How reliant on strangers are you for the most important necessity?
> Because that assures sufficient skills for any situation, an awareness of supply chain providence all the way back to natural dirt, and self-confidence transcending anything life can throw at you.
Unless of course it's a modern problem requiring communicating with someone a thousand miles away.
I have no idea how you think a metropolitan centre of millions people, even if all trained in wilderness survival skills, would be able to sustain themselves. They couldn't - there's no way you could feed everyone in a major city by foraging or by killing all the rats or finding wild mushrooms. And I guess you could try to navigate out of city by foot, but you're hoping you're going to be able to outrun the general diaspora.
I still have no idea what apocalypse you're planning for - it's something that you don't have water for, but you do have reliable power, or a generator you'll trust to function after whatever happens. Or you don't plan for any of that, but just assume you can do whatever you need at any time, like a Bear Grylls James Bond.
Understanding how a cell phone works won't help you if you're reduced to stone age tech. Even "iron" would have a hard step to get to with nothing. Stone age man didn't have cell phones not just because they didn't know how to build one, there's layers and layers of society that are relied on in order to work towards modern society.
> And if you understand the complete technology stack, you'll reconsider living in a metropolitan centre.
Only if I assume some survivalist power fantasy fiction will come to pass.
> Can you quickly preserve the food in your fridge/freezer without electricity?
What do you even mean by this?
"The power is out kids! Start a bonfire in the front yard, we're making pemmican and jerky!"
In all seriousness, I've been through a number of multi-day power outages. You leave the door to your fridge/freezer shut as much as possible. When you open it, you make it infrequent and fast. They are well insulated, things stay cold for a long time.
> probably not in wilderness, you're in a major metropolis surrounded by people and navigating social dynamics will be more important than being able to sew a goat into a cape.
I think going "back to the earth" is on a continuum. I don't think we need to revert to stone knives and bearskins to give kids a perspective on how far removed (and yet still how close) we are from those times.
Their having had the experience of disconnect from modern resources, it may be easier for them to realize how fragile our systems are. Like, "Remember how it felt when we were hiking in remotelocation without electricity? What if our electricity went out for a month at home because of an earthquake? What do you think would happen to (us, our neighbors, our town, etc.)?"
Even a minimal "back to the earth" experience can be educational.
This sort of trite opinion is constantly trotted out when someone criticizes technology. Technology is a word, it doesn’t represent anything inherently. It’s perfectly reasonable to be critical of one form of technology and laudatory of another.
> The real horror is a society so deeply dependent on something they use so intimately yet so completely fail to understand. Getting kids "back to the Earth" is very important, full & complete disconnect from "technology" so they can grasp their own ability to live & thrive without it. Clarke: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"; we're there, and while the benefits are good, the psychological dependency & mystery isn't. Go somewhere distant from technology, forage/hunt food, make a meal over an open fire, and sleep under the stars - so vital for a child's psychological well-being.
That seems pretty far down the "no tech" rabbit hole by being critical of pretty much all technology.
Last summer, family vacation. Tetons-Yellowstone-Glacier-Badlands region in particular, scenic backroads also. Was surprised at how extensive coverage (down to 3G) was, but there were large areas of zero connectivity as well. That's overlooking lack of wifi hotspots lest my cell tethering data cap run out. Kids were subject to >week of no TV/data/games, having no internet and no power (solar-gathered electricity used only for lighting & mapping).
From that perspective, methinks Starlink.com will contribute to significant population shifts, making such low/no-connectivity areas viable to those dependent on internet connectivity. I'd move to that region quick were data fast & reliable.
[ETA: "Midwest" as in "west side of mid" a la broad boundary of central plains and Rocky Mountains.]
Also, there is a distinct inter-mountain west between the Rockies and the Sierra/Cascades. Utah isn't really in the Southwest and Eastern WA/OR isn't really in the PNW but close enough.
The Midwest is Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, maybe Minnesota...anything in the mountain time zone is not the Midwest, it is often called the inter mountain west, and covers anything from inland California though Colorado.
Wyoming and Montana are definitely not in the Midwest, and I’d even argue that the Western South Dakota where the Badlands are should be considered the Mountain West as well. The majority of the Midwest is far more populated than this region
Those places have no cell service because nobody lives there, not the other way around. The number of people who would gladly live in the middle of nowhere if only there was internet available is miniscule and basically consists entirely of people who do remote work (because there are no jobs in the middle of nowhere).
> But he also says getting to know his dad was worth it, especially the time they spent off the road in their tents or yurts just cooking and bonding.
> "I was surprised that when he's away from a work environment and family that he acts maybe closer my age," he says.
> Similarly, Mr Clarke was surprised to learn how mature his son was when they weren't confined to their typical father-son parenting dynamic.
This was what I took away as the most important part from this. It's definitely a surreal moment the first time you experience your parents as real people, peers even, and no longer as only a parent. I remember when I first experienced that with my own dad. Finding the opportunity to facilitate a moment like this is something special. I'm looking forward to whatever that might be with my own son one day, likely many years from now.
I regularly retell a story where I was waiting in line with a woman at the DMV who used a smartphone as a pacifier for her toddler. The kid had a full-blown meltdown when she had to take the phone to make a call. This is the kind of behavior we are putting in our children when we take the easy tech-enabled route.
Similar points can be made about the ubiquity of surveillance tech: giving up key personal rights in the name of "convenience".
High-level parenting guideline: never do anything you don't want to have to keep doing basically forever. Like giving your kids snacks or a phone or whatever when you're out, to keep them quiet. Now you have to give them a phone and carry crackers everywhere, forever, or else deal with a period of much worse outburst & behavior problems than before, when you fail to produce them.
Addendum: if there's something you must do that you don't want to keep doing forever, aggressively cut it out as soon as possible. Or you're just deferring and increasing the eventual pain.
I left context out for the sake of brevity, but since you are addressing its absence:
The entire time I was there (and remember, this is the DMV, so it was a while) the kid was glued to the phone. There is a difference between engaging with a smartphone and being engrossed by one. This case was certainly the latter. Yes, again, toddler worldviews have limited scope and the thing in front of them is usually the most important thing ever, but even so this child was clearly addicted.
We let our kids watch our phones sometimes in public, and when we take them away they get sometimes get grumpy. But that’s nothing compared to how my kid lost his sh1t tonight when I told him I wouldn’t sing him jingle bells because it was past his bed time. You would have thought I put all his toys in a fire.
This really just reminds me of how people only notice when kids go off the hook and don’t notice when they behave. My (maybe incorrect) guess is the person at the DMV doesn’t have kids.
The point is that using a device in this way guarantees a meltdown everytime it has to be taken away. And at the age where they can actually start managing their emotions and reactions, this approach remains a handicap for these poor kids.
That's not true, my wife and I have been very liberal in our approach to electronics with our kids and none of them has a meltdown when we take their devices away. Like everything else with parenting, it's all a giant gray area and it's mostly important to set expectations.
The particular reaction from parent taking away the devise may be more important cause here. I've seen this play out: some mom making repeated attempts to take away the ipad with the sad face looking like she was strangling the poor kid. No confidence, no desire to engage with the toddler, make eye contact. It's sad really, the parent behaving like this can't be giving much thought to parenting anyway and such meltdown is much more a cry for attention.
Yup. I sometimes let my 2 year old watch videos on YouTube. I tell her “we’re going to watch one more”, and she accepts that without so much as a whimper.
I think some of it also has to do with the kids personality. If it was a battle getting it away from her, I’d probably avoid giving it to her altogether.
His son's reaction reminds me of the first time I quit social media. I remember just walking about, living my life, and then a thought would occur--a clever remark or an interested photo I could take. And then I had to grapple with not sharing that thought with anyone. The thought would just linger in my head for a bit, then disappear, and there would be no record of it at all. That's been default for 99.9999% of human existence, and in a few short years of social media usage, it became a strange and foreign sensation.
I'm glad I went through that to readjust and see just how much my mind had been warped. I use social media much less than I used to and I'm happier for it.
That goes for passing, trivial questions, too. One pops in your head now, you itch until you answer it, because you can answer it. Pre-ubiquitous-web, fewer such thoughts reached the level of conscious awareness and they were rarely actionable, so, if not important, maybe you ask the people you're with ("hey, who was that guy in that one movie?") and if no-one knew or had the relevant coffee-table trivia book handy (so, most of the time), it went unanswered and the thought just went away. No itch.
I also find I burn a lot of time on meta-media (best-lists and such) and low-value reading (cough) because there's a ton of it available at the command of a whim, where before one had to spend real time seeking out or paying for that sort of thing (magazines and such). It's a pretty serious indictment of my Web activity that I wouldn't pay any money at all for most of it, if the choice were to pay or not to have it (Internet service doesn't count—I pay for it for the few things for which it actually is very useful, not for those).
Actually that word might best describe what we've done with this new environment: we've given vastly more power to whims. The Age of the Whim.
Sometimes I kinda miss just idly pondering a question and having to come up with plausible answers yourself. Of course I have the option to not look up answers -- which I often don't -- but then you still mis out on idly pondering with a group of people. Someone will have their cellphone out before you finish stating the question.
Social media changes the WHY people do things. They go out just so they can post a cool photo of them having a great time outside when really inside they are all fucked up.
> "While his father has climbed Everest twice, Khobe had never climbed a mountain so he had to practise that, too."
This dude has climbed Everest, twice?! I'm starting to think this family would have gone on a vacation to Mongolia regardless of whether there was cell service.
I’ve always been skeptical of “screen time addiction”. In most cases I’ve seen someone addicted to screentime, there’s an underlying issue that’s the real cause. Like a messy divorce causing kids to lose themselves in World of Warcraft, or my own example of picking up coding to “hide” in my own world due to a traumatic childhood. Other cases, I’ll see more normal people binge games or screentime, but usually they pull themselves out and do fewer IRL screen activities after that binge. They don’t lose themselves like I did as a kid trying to escape something.
We use 'crutch' mostly as a pejorative these days but by the original meaning, it's a temporary measure to produce a long-term benefit. It's only when you try to use it past its responsible interval that it becomes a harm. You are supposed to observe that the thing no longer serves a meaningful purpose. Which is very different from saying it served no purpose.
If you don't want to end up with a messy divorce of your own you have to get out there, observe healthy relationships and try to form some of your own.
But to be fair, our knee-jerk reaction to 'addiction' is abstinence and that philosophy is debilitating. Anyone whose spent any time dealing with addiction (as opposed to just making an ass of yourself by reacting to it) will have at least encountered the concept that you have to crowd out undesirable activities with desirable ones. You don't just 'stop drinking'. You also get too busy to be blitzed all the time.
You may or may not also have to abstain. There are games my friends want to play that I won't because I always get sucked in far deeper and longer than they do. Most alcoholics never touch a drop again. That said, I know a 20 year sober alcoholic who figured out he was self-medicating for anxiety, sought treatment, made big lifestyle changes, and can now have a beer once in a while without hulking out.
« The Boy Crisis » by Warren Farrell is a good study, it tells a few causes concerning boys. Basically they are forgotten in class or in family because we’re all focussed on equality for women, and they know they’re not the priority. Addictions to video games, porn, media consumption are only a result of a broader societal change into a society of equality.
He’s said to be controversial like Peterson, he talks about the same topics, but from a male-feminist point of view, as he was president of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women (Peterson is on the opposite spectrum as a Christian/conservative, Farrell is rather a leftist/equalitarian. Both controversial but raising good points).
I have a similar experience. But it's still super helpful for me to first break the content addiction part so that I have the mental space to try and confront the underlying problems...
Yup. Screen timer is a tool to do help break my addiction, which is the first step of the solution (because without doing that first step, I don't think I'd have the mental capacity to deal with the underlying problem).
I'm mostly skeptical because there's often an element of misunderstanding.. my own parents repeatedly accused me of being addicted to video games, but really I just wanted to finish the match and they have a habit of updating me with whatever plan very shortly ahead of the event, so I couldn't plan for it effectively (and of course, I was also young enough that even if I tried to plan ahead, I'd do so incorrectly). Or I wouldn't sleep on time because I was enjoying the game... Which I would have done with anything -- games, books, movies, etc. It just happened to be games.
And I'm looking now at my younger cousins being accused of addiction as well, yet it's clearly not. They're see switching games repeatedly, but their parents can't differentiate so it looks like they're stuck on one thing indefinitely. But reality is much simpler -- they aren't well socialized, and their friend circles are also not very well socialized, so they spend most of their time on games. Sometimes together, on multiplayer games, or solo, and then talk about it together later.
But it's clear they're not addicted -- they just don't know how to do anything else. eg they can't successfully gather a group to go to the beach, and neither can their friends, and thus they only know of the beach as somewhere to go with as family (which is never that much fun), and thus the whole circle has no real concept of going to the beach as a group of friends, and so no one in that circle even attempts it, so the concept is never learned.
And then the fix, taking away the games, manages to accomplish nothing.. they still don't know what to do. Their friend circle is naturally not going to switch to some sport, or whatever movie, or whatever else, because it's not in their culture. But their culture isn't developed/exposed enough to do anything else. So they're stuck, bored, and just waiting to get back to the one thing they know how to do.
In my case, I'm pretty sure my parents could have fixed the "problem" with something like paintball, if they really wanted to get me out of the house, or DnD if they wanted me to socialize more in-person. But my parents were too far removed from the problem to think of anything other than what they would do (my father was social, and would have done the standard set of social activities, and my mother only knew to study). Paintball/DnD were however culturally close to be inherently interesting to my friend circle.
The alternative is parents trying things at random until the kid accidentally finds a new friend circle or interest (eg send them to Mongolia, whatever kids camp, whatever classes).
Claiming addiction is IME the easy way out of actually understanding the problem at hand (in my cousin's case, not properly socialized)
I know of a hearing impaired kid who talks all day to people online because everyone has the same hearing impairment in teleconferencing; we cannot differentiate between two conversations at once. People are forced to take turns or get peer pressured to do so. Few do this in person.
Parents thought he was socially impaired. Turned out he was an organizer and leader among his peer group.
Just these days I was discussing this matter with my partner. I have 3 daughters - one of the yet a teenager, the other 2 over 20 years now - from a previous marriage.
We were talking about the issue of eventually having to give a phone to our 6 yo daughters. Here are just a couple of things I know think I could had done.
Handling a phone to a kid shouldn't be an "all or nothing" predicament. Just as you don't let kids drive 24 hs after the learned how to.
There's should be a concrete set of rules that could - and should - be enforced:
First a foremost, a notice or similar from the school due to incorrect usage of the apparatus (Say, in the middle of a class) would led to confiscation of the phone. Same for
using it whenever the family is gathered on special and not-so-special occasions (Say, watching a movie together). this last rule should apply also to parents, thought.
Of importance as well should be not usage at all of the phone after a certain time in the day (say, 20:00).
I think the most important thing is to let the kid know that the phone is a "lended" item and not something that belongs to them.
My teen also wanted to be a yeta. That's where I put my foot down. "You can be a gay cross-dressing jew, I'm good with dat. But NOW WAY YOU GONNA BE A YETA." I says.
>Khobe admits that at the time he was angry that he had to go, and miserable because without Snapchat or Instagram, he had no idea what his friends back home were up to.
Who cares what "his friends back home were up to" to that extend?
He could catch up with them when he's back, it's not like they'll have some groundbreaking change in their lives and he'll blink and miss it. Are they even close friends or just people he watches their selfies and shots of brunches on FB?
Not to sound callous, but I have trouble understanding crippling device addiction in general. I grew up constantly on a computer, I'm still on it regularly, I'm a pretty heavy phone user, but I have no problem without these things and I do other things. If i'm with people, I don't fuck around on my phone, I don't feel any sense of missing out or loss when I can't be on it. I do other things that don't involve phones or computers at all.
I just tend to look at them as tools that just happen to be handy for a shit ton of things. It sucks when I cant use them, but it's really not the end of the world and i've probably had more screen time than some of these kids or even teenagers have been alive for.
If you focus on apps designed to live on dopamine feedback, and on users who hit adolescence with that in hand, I think a reasonable case can be made for an addiction.
It’s the « People are boring » effect, compared to even a Youtube video which is a compacted speech that constantly catches your attention.
However, relationships are also broken, and we should do something about it as much as decrease phone usage. I’m not sure which way is the causation here, but countless times I have told my needs to people/relatives (I need to avoid being constantly put down as a man, specifically, I have cleaned my room and I have a six-figure job after all) and people are wired to reject that idea and claim men as a class don’t deserve to be told positive things. I retreat to my phone by despair, not because the phone is interesting. More recently I have found far-right friends, but again, it’s just because they respect me, not because it’s awesome: It’s a palliative, not a solution.
It’s discussed in the book « The boy crisis » of Warren Farrell (former president of NOW, the National Organization for Women), but hey, people claim he is « controversial » so no-one’s gonna take it into account.
Men — need — some — love. Or they’ll find it elsewhere.
What group of assholes believes that? It's sexist bullshit.
If you're surrounded by that, it's got to be incredibly unhappy. Some thoughts (unsolicited, I recognize):
- to make space in your life for better people, start deprecating the toxic ones.
- there are lots of positive groups of men. Not always, but places to look: Dojos, Freemasons, sports groups (not necessarily very athletic groups, either).
- some independent fun helps. A motorcycle is fun.
- or start bodybuilding to get some of these assholes to fear you a bit. People compliment those that they fear.
> What group of assholes believes that? It's sexist bullshit.
Yet fairly typical in modern Western society. I can’t count the number of times people have open insulted and/or discounted “males” and particularly “white males” in my presence. “Oh, but you’re different”. I have no idea how to even respond to that.
I can’t even imagine people doing the same to women or minority males 25 years ago without (justifiably) being excluded from polite society (it was happening to gay people back then, and I’m very glad those days are pretty much over, or at least much better).
Ok, to be fair, the “many times” is counting online interactions (including w/fellow devs). So it was misleading in that sense. I should have mentioned it. But it’s also happened in life with coworkers (several times) and even with my own family (a big source of discord). I can even tell you the context of some of the recent interactions: discounting political candidates because they’re “just another white male”. Probably, you will argue that’s not an insult, but can you imagine someone saying they weren’t hiring a woman because she’s “just another woman”.
And it’s usually in the form of “men” and “white men” and not “white males” although people have used those terms, too, in front of me.
As I’m sure you know, this is in the US. I’ve lived overseas in several European countries and never gotten anything like this. It’s also a recent phenomenon, within the past 5 years or so.
But the fact that you asked that question has made me reflect on how I made that assertion (in an exaggerated/misleading manner, since the “many” includes online interactions). If I could, I’d edit it. I’ll be more careful in the future when discussing this.
> As I’m sure you know, this is in the US. I’ve lived overseas in several European countries and never gotten anything like this.
Well, I suspected it, since my experience in Europe, but it's not like I lived in more than a few countries here, so I was curious. I have to admit it does rile me up a bit when people generalize the US as "the West" :)
I do wonder why that hasn't seem to have crossed the pond significantly.
Fair enough. I’ll be more careful about “Western Society”. It’s been over 10 years since I last lived in Europe (France, at that time), and I’ve not been back since (except for a 2-month stay in Turkey), so I’m not entirely use how much of this identity politics has permeated European society.
I think it’s only a matter of time before it crosses over to Britain, and then possibly on to Germany and/or Scandinavia. I can’t see France or Spain moving in this direction any time soon.
I feel you, man, I have many similar experiences with family myself. But may I suggest that the far-right comes with its own hang-ups which may not be healthy or ideal or you (e.g. they seem addicted to rage and anger, similar to the identity-obsessed left).
lallysingh in a adjacent comment has some excellent suggestions for alternative people to hang out with who aren’t biased against men. it’s a list I’ll pay heed to myself, as soon as I get some health issues straightened out.
another possibility is religious groups. Even if you’re not religious yourself, there are groups that fulfill similar roles with less of a role on religion: unitarians, etc.
I think Warren Farrell and Jordan Peterson are absolutely on the money wrt to boys and men in modern society (and for folks reading who would write them off as “alt right”, Farrell is a pretty typical liberal and Peterson is at most center-right, but most everyone has already made up their mind).
+1 to religious groups. There are lots of good ones out there!
Edit: also I'd recommend against groups with an agenda that isn't already inline with your beliefs. If you're feeling unsure about yourself, you can lose yourself to theirs. E.g., religion, politics, even sports.
There are plenty of groups out there, it's worth shopping around. IMHO the goal is to better understand and accept yourself, so stay as close to that as you can.
I’ve been using computers since I was 10 and I can agree with you. However I think it strongly depends on what you do online. I don’t use a lot of social media and I think that’s where most kids end up spending their time. If I had to guess you don’t use too much social media either?
I would consider myself a bit addicted but I don't use any social media unless you consider semi-anonymous (hn?) forums to be a kind of social media. I noticed I am addicted to mostly reading short posts and replies. If I don't, it tends to put me at unrest unless I am engaging in some other activity. I think it sort of acts as a stimulant.
I prefer to be anonymous and interact with different people everytime otherwise it is unsettling so opposite of what social media rewards.
I avoid the more common social media, but I do find myself enjoying places like HN and Reddit a little too much - my brain craves novelty and short clips to amuse me. It's easier to flip through a bunch of GIFs and JPEGs than to read a book. It's probably not the same dopamine hit as Instagram, but it's still very much there.
If you're in the States and looking for something closer to home, I go on camping trips up in the Adirondacks fairly often. The cell coverage is either nonexistent or voice-only, and it's a beautiful area.
There are a few good backcountry campsites I've found that do have 4G - working remotely out of a tent is definitely an experience.
I do have the problem with my daughter that I have to make sure she is almost always on some sort of project, outside, with a friend or something or she is back on the computer playing Roblox, but I haven't considered going to Mongolia yet, so far the local amusement parks seem to suffice in even the most dire situation.
You don't have to go nearly that far. Even within a dense urban area, I can go up the hill 10 minutes from my house in the Oakland hills and the various small valleys in the hills have no cell service.
Now I have a Delorme Inreach satellite messenger so I can stay connected, its cost prohibitive to use excessively, however.
I thought this was a related or a supplementary story for the BBC programme shown across 6 episodes in March-April 2019, titled: Race Across The World. It featured a father-son team bonding over their experiences whilst travelling from London to Singapore on a budget of £2,000, without directly using modern technology or flights to reach their intended destination and competing with other teams.
I do a five day food and technology fast every year [0]. It's an instructive experience to go without these two dependancies. If I have kids it is something I'd want them to partake in when they are the right age, but these extreme measures can't be the only action taken throughout the year.
I use the tools at hand and if those tools are electronic I have no compunction about using them.
My ex pronounced that by day 3 of an international trip I'd be crawling up the walls wanting to check my email. Turned out I wasn't the one crawling up the walls on day 3... I abstained day 4 just to prove the point, and caved in the middle of day 5. And honestly, it wasn't that satisfying.
I like the opening quote about being on a motorcycle and being completely distraction free. A number of years ago I rode a couple thousand miles to key West from my home town in ks. That was one of the most incredible things I've ever done. I had to ride through a tropical depression, heat, cold, but mainly I just got to listen and look at scenery. I'll do it again someday!
You can't help but feel that the Dad has some attention deficit issues that need addressing, let alone having to approach issues in such an indirect way instead of directly.
Though that whole aspect that this made the news, does somewhat fuel my initial thoughts about this.
> "Oh my God, that was terrible! I can't be left with my brain like that!"
> "I had never before that experienced a weekend without my phone, essentially," Khobe told the BBC. "It was very weird for me."
I cannot take this article seriously at all. From the title, to the premise, to idea you have to go to Mongolia to get your kid to put down their phone and interact with you. You can go literally anywhere or nowhere (stay home) and have the exact same experience.
We can absolutely celebrate a father/son camping trip but the idea this is what parents have to do to pull their kids away from their phones is both false and clickbaity as hell.
> "When you're in a group of people and you're supposed to have social interaction time, but everyone's on their phone, that's when I've tried to change my habits," he says.
> "It's rude to not give people your undivided attention."
That's true, it is rude to not give people your undivided attention also if everyone in your "friend" group is on their phones the whole time and not paying attention then you might want to look for better friends...
I don't think the article suggested this is what parents have to do, but maybe I missed it.
I agree that this is a bit "extra", but you obviously haven't experienced what it's like for someone to have a crippling addiction to their smartphone.
This dad feeling like he had to do something extreme is probably not ill-founded. Sometimes people have to pull out all the stops to accomplish something, especially when dealing with an addict (that's what interventions are). Staying at home could have worked, but much harder when you have to trust and rely on the son using his phone responsibly. The dad just avoided all the pitfalls by doing something extreme. Agreed that it's extra, but I think you're dismissing this hastily.
Agree completely. I personally know an otherwise normal healthy teenage girl that cries and can’t sleep at night from anxiety if she doesn’t have her phone. I think there are many more people like this than we realize.
Yeah. I myself dismissed concerns that people have expressed because I tend to be suspicious of alarmism. But there is a real problem, a real addiction. Sure, it might not be the same as a chemical addiction to alcohol or something, but that doesn't make it any less real. I've seen firsthand how relationships have been destroyed, in large part, due to smartphone addiction.
I wrote about the same yesterday. Prevention is always better but if it's too late, understanding addiction is important before you go grabbing his phone and throw it away in a reactionary way.
Addiction usually comes as a consequence of something else wrong with your life - could be your "friends", school/home or expectations.
I remember it was hard to make friends with similar interest in school due to the secluded rural area. I couldn't fit in and I wasn't willing to (parenting might have eased here). I had "friends", everyone believed that and I did too but I didn't interact beyond the usual classes and was isolated emotionally. It was hard to open up and I resorted to online silos where I could talk freely and was emotionally rewarded. It was addicting because even if I had friends irl, I wasn't getting any reward from talking to them. My brain didn't register it.
I didn't like them but I couldn't move places or have new friends somehow that were more aligned with my interest.
It was an inevitable escape.
[1] Role of lifestyle in substance addiction
[2] Problems arising from smartphone addiction
[3] Alternate to blaming smartphones for addiction
[4] General overview and tips on smartphone addiction
When you take a selfie with your phone when being "off the phone" at your house people will laugh, when you take selfie with the phone "you're off from" in Mongolia, people won't notice and click like.
I remember the article saying he had wanted to go to Mongolia all along and that this was an added bonus to his experience.
>"For a long time, he had dreamed of traveling across Mongolia on a bike. Now that his son was older, why not do it with him?"
The article even says that you do not have to go to Mongolia to do this.
>"You don't have to go all to the other side of the world just to bond with your children, says Caroline Knorr, the parenting editor for Common Sense Media, a non-profit organization that educates parents about media and technology."
It also seems weird for the BBC to (apparently) celebrate this and also to constantly have articles about the dangers of climate change. (The connection of course is that international flights to Mongolia are terrible from a carbon emissions standpoint.) I recognize that this particular author might not be concerned about the climate, but it is still striking how dissonant the overall editorial voice is.
A part of me wants to respond to this article with a simple "OK Boomer" because it's easy to see people using this story as justification for a weak "technology bad" argument. However... there really people who are hopelessly addicted to social media. They are a minority, but they exist.
I think of social media the same way I think about alcohol. It can be great at times and in moderation, but it's highly addictive and can absolutely ruin you if you're not careful. The big difference is we don't let minors drink alcohol without supervision.
This may be politically incorrect but I think parents should be able to take a page out of the Asian parents handbook and corporally punish their kids. I find a certain amount of fear in very specific cases works to get kids to focus initially until it becomes a part of their daily routine.
Much more effective would be to follow the Asian method of channeling that energy into something requiring a lot of practice and focus, like martial arts or an instrument, and bonus points if it looks good on a college application.
(If they don’t like the current thing you’re focusing them on though, consider switching lest they dislike you for the rest of their lives.)
Alternatively they could just take away the phone. Unless we're talking late teens (by which point you've hopefully imparted some self control on your kids) the kids are going to lack the ability to get their own phone.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21906727
Watching energetic young kids run around, I can see how tempting it is to give them an interactive device which consumes their attention and makes them easier to handle. But phones seem designed to encourage the shortest possible attention spans and rabid multi-tasking, the opposite of deep focus. So what do you do? Is it as simple as banning phones, if you're willing to give them the needed attention? What about friends' phones and the Internet in general? What if they fall in love with web programming at the age of 8? You want them to be familiar with technology and ideally to be able to drift between multi-tasking and deep focus. I haven't read much on how to achieve this from a practical parenting perspective, though.