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What happens when children don’t have the internet for a whole day
- tkt 10y agoAlternative title "teenagers can't be alone for 8 hours without technology". The issue is being alone with their thoughts. The fact that such a significant number had severe anxiety without access to easy distractions seems problematic. Self-reflection, deeper thinking or ability to focus on a task are important skills.
- oneloop 10y agoKids can't entertain themselves "with things of their making". Let's give them books to read instead. What? I wonder if when books were invented people would complain "this youth, they do nothing but read, they can't even <insert outdated form of entertainment> anymore".
- sevensor 10y agoIndeed. Novels were widely considered frivolous and unfit material for children during the 19th century.
- ch 10y agoThe shortened title is simply the result of HN title length limits.
- witty_username 10y agoI was initially surprised, but then I saw this: > According to the rules of the experiment, the children had to explain the next day how they had coped with being alone under such conditions. Title is misleading; the children didn't have access to any modern technology. tl;dr no modern technology (no TV radio) and no other people. > the today’s generation of young people are too often entertained by things not of their making, are incapable of finding ways to keep themselves busy, and are completely unfamiliar with the idea of the world of their imagination. The experiment doesn't imply that. Even yesterday's generation was also entertained by things not of their making (books, radio, TV). Talking to an imaginary friend can't replace real human interaction, especially for 8 hours. Plus with modern technology they are able to keep themselves busy.
- the-dude 10y agoEven more so: they were forced to be 'alone'. edit: parent comment has been editing and ammending post multiple times.
- satysin 10y agoEvery generation complains that the children of today can't entertain themselves are anti-social, etc. When I was a kid (in my 30s now) I remember people saying it about me reading/watching tv/playing videogames. Now it is smartphones/computers/internet. When my mum was a kid apparently it was listening to records. I am sure if you go back 1000 years you will find some record of an "old" person complaining about how the young ones have no respect for their elders and can't keep themselves entertained.
- mixedCase 10y ago>I am sure if you go back 1000 years you will find some record of an "old" person complaining about how the young ones have no respect for their elders and can't keep themselves entertained. Try 1000 years and some chage earlier: “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” - Socrates
- rfrey 10y agoI see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint. - Hesiod, 8 B.C.
- DanBC 10y agoIt is interesting, and the reactions are extreme. But the experiment forces some element of social isolation that may have distorted the result. I grew up without the Internet, and sometimes without a phone or TV. But I still had friends to play with.
- michaelmcdonald 10y agoThis. I remember the first computer my family bought that had a modem. The internet was a novelty and because it tied up your phone line you had to be careful when you used it (lest you miss out on a call). No mobile phones also meant that solo activities were limited to what these scientists listed: reading, writing, drawing, etc... BUT, I had access to my friends. I could go out and play basketball, run around on the play-gym playing tag, and just walking around town. It's no wonder that these kids had anxiety! Forced solitude is brutal.
- charlieflowers 10y agoI'm skeptical. I need more details about the anxious feelings. That is a key piece of evidence and all we have about it is hearsay.
- damian2000 10y agoThe original source (Russian) from 2012 ... https://snob.ru/selected/entry/45522 https://snob.ru/selected/entry/45522
- nicolas_t 10y agoThis experiment is interesting but doesn't only test what happens when the kids do not have access to internet, it also tests the result of social isolation. They were forced to be alone and not have any contact with other kids. It would be more interesting to redo the same experiment but allow the kids to meet and talk with each other. I think there would probably be a lot less anxiety.
- Tepix 10y agoIs it even true? http://www.theitbaby.com/wordpress/2016/01/25/they-wanted-to-see-what-would-happen-if-they-took-tech-from-kids-for-a-whole-day-it-was-fake/ http://www.theitbaby.com/wordpress/2016/01/25/they-wanted-to...
- vincnetas 10y agoWas thinking the same. The source URL for study is just : <a href="http://According%20to%20the%20book%20E.%20Murashova%20%22Love%20or%20bring%20up%22%20Photo:%20imgmax.com">Ye http://According%20to%20the%20book%20E.%20Murashova%20%22Lov.... Murashova</a>
- omg99 10y agoI could believe it, but I don't think it's fully representative. My high school-aged daughter went without it for a few weeks on a trip and didn't die, amazingly. She wants to go back and do it again.
- nojvek 10y agoI guess, the part where kids weren't allowed to talk to others come into play. A school trip mean you have other friends with you.
- paradite 10y agosee damian2000's comment. It appears to be real. I copy paste the url from damian2000's comment here for you convenience: https://snob.ru/selected/entry/45522 https://snob.ru/selected/entry/45522
- vincnetas 10y agoWhat makes you think that it's real. It's just the same text in russian language... With no references to the study or whatever... With ending like "А что вы об этом думаете?" meaning "And what do you think about this?"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- anotheryou 10y agoThey where not allowed to communicate with friends for 8 hours and stripped of their usual entertainment, while normally they would spend most time in school, sports clubs and with their families? I think you could have done this experiment 20 years ago and get the same results. What will be different nowadays is that your friends are always an your pocket. A situation where you are confronted with something emotional and unable to talk to a friend right away might be more unusual and frightening than it was 20 years ago. Maybe kids 20 years ago could handle boredom better, but I think this study has too many flaws to judge about that.
- gus_massa 10y agoJust to make this more clear, IIUC they were not allowed to go to the home of a friend and pay a visit, or play with their siblings, or ...
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoI was a teenager 20 years ago, and I'm not so sure about that. My brother was an actual child then. The equivelent would have been to take away all social contact, plus television and video games and some freedom of movement to see folks for 8 hours. It wasn't like I generally had 8 hours to myself back then - between school and homework and chores and church (parents insisted) and the few friends and outings I did have, I simply didn't have that. And then, suddenly, some person doing an experiment wants to isolate me for 8 hours? I'd have been horribly bored as well.
- anotheryou 10y agoExactly. Even staying at home alone while the supervising parent went shopping sometimes got boring after the first 30 minutes. Albeit no horrible experience, I went along shopping most of the time, not to stay home alone.
- wingerlang 10y agoInternet (...and human contact whatsoever).
- RamenJunkie_ 10y agoKids locked alone in a room for 8 hours get bored, News at 11....
- jeletonskelly 10y agoI actually find the results to be pretty optimistic. We've become a more connected society because of our technology and it feels good to communicate with other people. That's why we developed the technology in the first place; to shorten the distance between us. What's so wrong with that? We're only moving forward to a world that's even more connected, not back to the 1800's. Sure, we're dependent on things we did not make; we stand on the shoulders of giants, but that's how we move forward. We take the things passed to us, use and build on them to make a better world. It's ok to have some psychological issues when you take it all away.
- CPLX 10y agoI question your premise. Are you and I actually communicating right now in an emotionally meaningful, fulfilling way? Am I less alone now for having this exchange of posts on HN with you than I would be had I spent this time reading from a book, which is of course also a communication, if only in one direction? My instinct tells me that neither of these states involve meaningful (which I'm defining here as personal) human interaction, but I'll freely admit that's more a gut feeling than a scientific truth.
- cyberferret 10y agoI would argue that the minute you checked back in here to see if anyone had responded to your post - it became a meaningful two way interaction, and you would have received the added stimulus of excitement/gladness (that someone had responded) or disappointment/emptiness (if someone hadn't).
- croon 10y ago> I question your premise. Are you and I actually communicating right now in an emotionally meaningful, fulfilling way? I very rarely have that during the 9 hours I'm around people every day at work. Just because we're not engaging in that way right now has nothing to do with the medium, but the participants and the forum/context in which they are engaging. My 2$ is that the digital medium doesn't by design take anything away from how meaningful an interaction is. Emotion can be conveyed in a multitude of ways, most of which carry just fine over the internet.
- MatekCopatek 10y agoThis made sense until I got to the part that said it was forbidden to communicate with others according to the rules of the experiment. This, to me, makes the experiment less convincing and the outcome less of a surprise. A lot of online activities, no matter how brainless, are social. It doesn't seem fair to say "kids can't live without their mobile phones" when it's really about them not being able to communicate. I'm pretty certain the results would be less drastic if they could have just hung out and played boardgames.
- blinkingled 10y agoI don't know about the study but when I cut out the Internet my kids become productive real fast - one cleans up her room other will look out the window and find the lawn needs mowing and will happily mow and sometimes even edge. Some times they come and talk to me. I then give them Internet back - so far it's a good positive feedback loop for them. I guess it won't work with all kids - mine like doing other things but are just too distracted when there's Internet.
- AstralStorm 10y agoIt works in my experience with cousins. Kids can easily go through whole summer break without apparent issues. Both the girls and boys enjoyed physical activity (different kinds most for each kid surprisingly with one exception) Half of the kids liked to draw in a group. All of them liked board games. One boy liked to take apart and analyse computer hardware and other things mechanical. One girl liked to play with the piano and synthesiser. The other boys liked PE more and another girl liked to play football with them. One girl liked much more complex books than expected and talking about them. Sample size of 10. Age and 9-12. Generally 2-3 at a time. Kids were very used to social media and passive entertainment as well as computer games. Also movies on demand. They are allowed to make and talk to friends but not borrow cellphones, computers or watch TV. They were not separated from parents. (also parents are sadly often busy with their lives and earning money. I bet kids like the personal touch and attention)
- FussyZeus 10y agoI get taking away Internet to see what would happen, but why would you remove all social contact altogether? And why remove the telephone? We've had access to the telephone for decades. Plus I'm pretty sure you could find some variant of "damn kids, rap music" engraved on the wall of a cave in mesopotamia. It's somehow ingrained in our genetic structure to think our children are idiots (which I suppose is a little beneficial).
- tym0 10y ago> The author of the experiment, a family psychologist, wanted to prove her working hypothesis that the today’s generation of young people are too often entertained by things not of their making, are incapable of finding ways to keep themselves busy, and are completely unfamiliar with the idea of the world of their imagination. That is not how you do science.
- room271 10y agoOf course it is. The question is: do you accept the results even if they show against your hypothesis?
- AstralStorm 10y agoNo, she directly influenced the experiment and had no control group, plus tiny homogenous sample.
- tym0 10y ago> The author of the experiment, a family psychologist, wanted to prove her working hypothesis that the today’s generation of young people are too often entertained by things not of their making, are incapable of finding ways to keep themselves busy, and are completely unfamiliar with the idea of the world of their imagination. That is not how you do science.
- Tehnix 10y agoMore accurately would be "What happens when you socially isolate children for 8 hours". The social isolation part is probably the most important aspect of the study. I'll bet you that if it only limited modern technology, but allowed the participants to interact with people, we would get totally different results. I think it's quite easy to forego technology for longer periods - you often do that on vacations, to give an example.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y agoThis strongly smells of bullshit and has no place on Hacker News.
- betageek 10y agoA day? How about 6 months https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/01/technology-ban-kids-home-experiment https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/01/technol... This and the article mentioned elsewhere (http://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore-news/what-happens-when-5-students-spend-8-hours-without-internet http://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore-news/what-happens-when-5-st...) are far more accurate representations of what happens - kids may moan a bit but then they adapt. Your kids are not going to have suicidal thoughts because you turned off the internet for a bit (or if they are it's not the switch off that's the problem). The original article is just scaremongering, HN shouldn't be pandering to this kind of clickbait.
- yetihehe 10y agoDid you read the whole article? Researchers mention that many of the children thought this was not a good reaction, tried this experiment again by themselves and reported that on second and third tries they fared much better. So it's just more like sudden withdrawal syndrome and they indeed adapted.
- chrisweekly 10y agoVoluntary solitude is so rare for people of any age. It's also profoundly useful. 24 years ago, as a high school senior, in lieu of regular gym class I elected to take a course in Survival. This culminated in a 3-day, 2-night "solo" -- a sleepover on the edge of one of Boston's outer harbor islands, during which time I didn't see or speak with another human being. (We each had a large section of the island to ourselves, and were instructed to silently turn and walk in the other direction if we happened to see a neighboring student at our site's edge.) I had volunteered for the most-remote site, on the northeastern edge of the island. I made camp on a beach adjacent to the overgrown ruins of a military installment of some sort. Like my classmates, I'd walked in with a duffel bag containing a sleeping bag, 2 or 3 items of clothing, a 10x10' clear sheet of plastic, 40' of twine, a knife, 2 gallons of water, some non-perishable food, 5 waterproof matches in a ziplock bag with a journal and pencil, and a whistle. That's it. No phone (in 1992 nobody had these), no walkman (my tape-playing music player), no walkie-talkie. Just the same essentials available a century or more earlier. After picking my spot and building my shelter, I walked, sat, breathed, and wrote in my journal. As the first day waned, I made a roaring bonfire against the outer wall of the fortress, feeding it the end of a massive driftwood log. I sketched the sun setting over Boston's skyline as the stars came out, listened to the fire and the waves on the beach, and had time, and space, entirely to myself. That weekend gave me a chance to contemplate the myriad huge changes then imminent in my life: things like picking a college, moving out of the home I'd lived in since I was two years old, and moving to a different state in another part of the country. At the time, I thoroughly enjoyed the solo experience. It flew by, and I was grateful to have had the chance to decompress and spend time outside. It was transformative in a few ways, and in writing this I'm realizing it again, and remembering just how valuable -- and rare -- that kind of solitude is. Human connection is so important. But so is the chance to _completely_ unplug and disconnect. I can't recommend it highly enough. My gratitude for that solo experience is profound.
- otaviokz 10y agoSo if you deprive kids of 2 things (internet AND social interaction) for 8h, you can safely infer all abnormal behaviours were caused by the lack of only one of those things? Also, as someone else mentioned, the "study" appears to be nonexistent.
- ausjke 10y agoThey are fine and read more books and do more sports. My internet-at-home is strictly managed and they have to earn credits to use it shortly. I consider internet/games are mental drugs for kids, maybe too harsh, but they can play at will when they grow up and leave my house.
- sigzero 10y agoI have 4 kids. The more I let them use the Internet the less they interact with each other and when they do interact it usually is in a poor way. The less Internet I let them use, the more they interact together, use their imaginations when playing and there are way less fights and bickering.
- cLeEOGPw 10y agoWhen my grandsons (4-6) are brought to visit us, we often leave them in the barn for a day while I and my wife go to the city with business. I have noticed they even started using their own words and other odd gestures to communicate with each other. Glad to see them bonding without modern electric appliances instead choosing to play with the hay.
- BuckRogers 10y agoDue to my age I thought back to my childhood. When we didn't have internet. My first thought was: they use the Commodore as it is? :)
- vorotato 10y agoWhat happens when children don't have magazines for a whole day. Is what this article would be titled in 1740.
- vorotato 10y agoClearly the common theme through history that adults have issue with is learning and socialization.
- AstralStorm 10y agoObvious result if true. 8 hours is not enough, the block on social communication turned it into an experiment on loneliness with strangers not disconnection. The kids should have been allowed to talk with their friends face to face in a monitored way. What was the protocol to prevent interference by researchers? Was the questionnaire vetted against leading question and bias?