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I agree. it is pretty sobering. Just yesterday before this thread even started (I work as part-time cleaner) I was polishing a window. Through it I saw some ch

I agree. it is pretty sobering. Just yesterday before this thread even started (I work as part-time cleaner) I was polishing a window. Through it I saw some children in a sitting room, one of who was literally standing centimeters away from a giant flat screen television. Glued to it. I thought: "Fuck, they don't have a chance". Their attention spans will be torn to pieces like balls of wool by tiny kittens. Now multiply that effect with the Net + VR and you have an extraordinary psychological effect best compared to a drug. I didn't have a television in my childhood. I read countless books, and without them, I wouldn't be sitting here, I wouldn't have done any of the things I could reasonably consider inventive or innovative. They might not be world changing things, but they were mine and my life was better for doing so. I was speaking to a friend who has children a few months ago. He was in the process of uploading photos of his family to Facebook. I asked him whether he considered what he was doing to be a moral act, since he is for practical purposes feeding his children's biometrics into a system that they personally have not, and could not, opt in to. He was poleaxed by the thought. He was about to say something along the lines of 'well everybody's doing this' but I could visibly see the thought struck him that "wow, that's actually a really bad line of reasoning I was about to make". Instead he agreed with me, uncomfortably, but he got it. I don't know how you get millions of people to have that kind of realization. I do think parental responsibility has a huge role though. My parents got rid of the television in the 80s. It was the right thing to do.

Fr0styMatt88 10y ago
The thing that disturbs me about this argument is that IMHO it's a slippery slope towards "back in my day, we didn't have this new-fangled stuff". We have to be extremely careful that our arguments have more substance than that. That requires a lot of introspection, to be honest. See, my grandparents worried that the new technology that my parents grew up with would somehow make them dumber (growing up with radio, parents getting television); my parents' generation worried that the technology we grew up with would be bad for us (too much computer, too much gaming, too much Internet). The upcoming generation of parents will grow up wondering whether VR and AR is going to ruin their kids' chances. Yet kids ALWAYS adapt. They don't view smartphones or tablets as anything particularly out of the ordinary. It's just their ordinary. I'm certain their brains will build on top of this foundation. That's the thing - brains are extremely adaptable. All of us adapted. There's a term for this worry - it's called 'Juvenoia': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0x7ho_IYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0x7ho_IYc http://time.com/19818/whats-really-wrong-with-young-people-today-juvenoia/ http://time.com/19818/whats-really-wrong-with-young-people-t... Now, I'm not saying that this is a discussion that shouldn't be had - it certainly should. I just think we all need to be mindful about where our concerns might be coming from.
- gkya 10y ago
  I never said myself that tech per se will make kids dumber. What I say is, there should be measures governing their exposure, just like there are for other things. Just like an alcohol drinker and an alcohol addict are different, an internet user and an internet addict are different too. Just because some or most are not addicts, we can't dismiss the addiction altogether.
  - Crespyl 10y ago
    It's just that it seems a bit unfair to decry (or place undue burdens upon) the vast majority of responsible alcohol drinkers because we've found a few people who have an unhealthy relationship with it. Recognizing potential dangers is a far cry from saying that there's a risk of "losing the century" because of easy access to technology and entertainment, and it strikes me as rather belittling to the younger generation. Millennials and their children are still humans, after all, and are just as intelligent, motivated, and adaptable as every generation before them.
    - technomancy 10y ago
      So by that logic, would you say that the only reasons children should not be allowed to buy alcohol are biological development reasons?
    - gkya 10y ago
      Who are responsible alcohol drinkers? In my country the minimum age for consummation of alcoholic products is 18. What would you think of a 10 or 15 years old kid that's a responsible drinker? What I'm arguing is against an analogue of this in tech. There is a certain period during which the exposure of a minor to technological devices should be governed by parents. What do you think of adolescents which get recorded nude on chatrooms? Some of them commit suicide. What do you think of children victim to bullying online? What do you think of paedophiles tricking kids online? Isn't a parent responsible of protecting a minor from such abuses? My general argument on this thread is that we should raise out children as good as we can. Protect them from danger that they cannot be conscious of. We can't certainly place burdens on adults, but we can try to raise adults that are not inept addicts with social deficiencies. And because most of the worlds population is tech-illiterate, it falls on governments to provide education and assistance to parents, just like they do so with health and education. Most of the counter-arguments here has been strawmans, because while I'm mostly targeting children, I've been countered with arguments about adults.

Fr0styMatt88 10y ago

The thing that disturbs me about this argument is that IMHO it's a slippery slope towards "back in my day, we didn't have this new-fangled stuff". We have to be extremely careful that our arguments have more substance than that. That requires a lot of introspection, to be honest. See, my grandparents worried that the new technology that my parents grew up with would somehow make them dumber (growing up with radio, parents getting television); my parents' generation worried that the technology we grew up with would be bad for us (too much computer, too much gaming, too much Internet). The upcoming generation of parents will grow up wondering whether VR and AR is going to ruin their kids' chances. Yet kids ALWAYS adapt. They don't view smartphones or tablets as anything particularly out of the ordinary. It's just their ordinary. I'm certain their brains will build on top of this foundation. That's the thing - brains are extremely adaptable. All of us adapted. There's a term for this worry - it's called 'Juvenoia': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0x7ho_IYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0x7ho_IYc http://time.com/19818/whats-really-wrong-with-young-people-today-juvenoia/ http://time.com/19818/whats-really-wrong-with-young-people-t... Now, I'm not saying that this is a discussion that shouldn't be had - it certainly should. I just think we all need to be mindful about where our concerns might be coming from.

gkya 10y ago
I never said myself that tech per se will make kids dumber. What I say is, there should be measures governing their exposure, just like there are for other things. Just like an alcohol drinker and an alcohol addict are different, an internet user and an internet addict are different too. Just because some or most are not addicts, we can't dismiss the addiction altogether.
- Crespyl 10y ago
  It's just that it seems a bit unfair to decry (or place undue burdens upon) the vast majority of responsible alcohol drinkers because we've found a few people who have an unhealthy relationship with it. Recognizing potential dangers is a far cry from saying that there's a risk of "losing the century" because of easy access to technology and entertainment, and it strikes me as rather belittling to the younger generation. Millennials and their children are still humans, after all, and are just as intelligent, motivated, and adaptable as every generation before them.
  - technomancy 10y ago
    So by that logic, would you say that the only reasons children should not be allowed to buy alcohol are biological development reasons?
  - gkya 10y ago
    Who are responsible alcohol drinkers? In my country the minimum age for consummation of alcoholic products is 18. What would you think of a 10 or 15 years old kid that's a responsible drinker? What I'm arguing is against an analogue of this in tech. There is a certain period during which the exposure of a minor to technological devices should be governed by parents. What do you think of adolescents which get recorded nude on chatrooms? Some of them commit suicide. What do you think of children victim to bullying online? What do you think of paedophiles tricking kids online? Isn't a parent responsible of protecting a minor from such abuses? My general argument on this thread is that we should raise out children as good as we can. Protect them from danger that they cannot be conscious of. We can't certainly place burdens on adults, but we can try to raise adults that are not inept addicts with social deficiencies. And because most of the worlds population is tech-illiterate, it falls on governments to provide education and assistance to parents, just like they do so with health and education. Most of the counter-arguments here has been strawmans, because while I'm mostly targeting children, I've been countered with arguments about adults.