6 ms·

I kinda wish we could pump those numbers up, esp for children on the internet. Thinking back to the 80s and 90s growing up, it sure seems like people were happi

I kinda wish we could pump those numbers up, esp for children on the internet. Thinking back to the 80s and 90s growing up, it sure seems like people were happier. But what do I know!?

lainga 8y ago
Laughs in Moodle
thatswrong0 8y ago
I feel like this is the same thing they said about tv, before that radio, before that..
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  Right, could be a repeating pattern, but could also be a downward slope.
  - pasquinelli 8y ago
    or just shifting around how people zonk out.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  I don't remember it ever being said about radio. TV certainly, but mainly it became a common theme after the arrival of Sky in UK. Now the kids had 13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from, and even dedicated channels for effortless excess consumption. For the early part of our kid's lives there was only an hour or two of kids TV a day - between end of school and around 5:30pm in time for the evening news. Limiting consumption was far easier. Course there'd still be opportunity to watch soaps etc with parents
  - soared 8y ago
    Are you 70 years old? Radio was at the same stage as the internet in the 50s and 60s.
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      Grew up with kids TV in the 70s and 80s thanks :p I have never once heard anyone criticise radio consumption that I can remember. Walkmans in the 80s, yes; games, yes; TV, definitely as mentioned. All of those have cropped up in the news more than a few times while they were topical. Maybe UK radio got a different reaction to the US?
      - derekp7 8y ago
        Back in the 60's and 70's, it was mostly criticism of radio stations that played rock music.
      - soared 8y ago
        That’s because it was normalized in the 70s and 80s. When it was still new people moaned about overconsumption, just like the internet.
      - jdietrich 8y ago
        >I have never once heard anyone criticise radio consumption that I can remember. You're far too young to remember. There were two distinct moral panics about radio; the first in the 1930s when radio first became popular in the home, and the second in the early 1960s when transistorisation allowed teenagers to have radios of their own. Until 1967, the BBC did not have a pop music station. Until 1973, commercial radio was illegal. The pirates who filled the demand for pop radio in the interim were hugely controversial. A great many column inches were spent fretting over the corrupting influence of foreign broadcasters, beaming salacious rock and roll music into the bedrooms of British children.
        NeedMoreTea 8y ago
        Fair enough. Of course I also remember the huge moral panic over us all going to hell for playing rock records backwards for satanistic messages. We all tried, and failed, to find one of course after hearing of this. :) I'm rather surprised about the 1930s - early British radio was so worthy and busy and educating the populace. I'm surprised there was much scope left for panic.
  - holygrail111 8y ago
    Nice pink floyd reference, see my above post about the mexicans and the africans, too.
- radicalbyte 8y ago
  The quality of content on TV is way better than YouTube. Thankfully my kids really like the learning series on Netflix (Umizoomi, True etc) instead of the horrible 'daddy finger' to cheap animation of babies which qualifies as 'child content' on YouTube.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    The quality of content on TV is way better than YouTube. IF you're talking only about children-specific stuff, then maybe so. But otherwise I totally disagree. There is SO much amazing content on Youtube (especially educational content); where nothing on TV can come close to match it. Pick a subject you want to learn, and there are hours and hours of content, a not insignificant amount from top tier universities, covering same.
    - radicalbyte 8y ago
      Yes, I'm talking about content for children; in my case children who cannot read/write. YouTube is a horrible wasteland of mind destroying insanity for that age group. I'm replying to a comment talking about the experience for kids. I agree about YouTube for adults and older children; there is an amazing amount of top quality content there for people who are capable of searching for it :-)
  - radicalbyte 8y ago
    To the downvoter(s): I assume that you don't have young children. If you want to get an idea of how bad it is, search for "baby daddy finger" and then only follow the brightly colored links featuring babies or recognizable cartoon characters. Randomly subscribe to channels you see. Then you get the full < 6-7 year-old experience of YouTube.
simmons 8y ago
I don't know if people or specifically children were happier in the 80s/90s, but after spending a couple of weeks with my 10-year-old niece, I'm completely floored at how she tries to fill every waking minute passively consuming content such as YouTube. It wouldn't be so bad if children were using the Internet to do something constructive or educational. Of course, plenty of people from my generation spent their childhoods in front of the TV, but perhaps that was more easily regulated. (My parents, at least, wouldn't let me watch TV endlessly.)
- superbaconman 8y ago
  I just realized that growing up computers were basically only for research and creating content. Now that bandwidth is so cheap computers are only for consumption.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Don't know when you grew up, but computer games were already a thing before the internet became widely available. (Of course, a video game is vastly more engaging and interactive than a random YouTube video.)
  - readhn 8y ago
    They dont call us "consumers" for nothing.... soon they'll take away the keyboards and other ways/inputs to mess with the "insides" of a computer ... and all you'll have is a touch screen to choose this or that.. while consuming...actually thats happening already with iPad etc..
    - readhn 8y ago
      http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201803290068.html http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201803290068.html
  - slededit 8y ago
    "computers" as in traditional PCs are regaining their creator role. Microsoft even calls their windows update "Creator Edition". Phones and tablets are almost pure consumption devices with a few exceptions.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
soneil 8y ago
I think it's over-simplifying the issue to blame children for that. I mean, when I was 12 we built a little fort in the woods. My parents didn't mind letting us disappear with hammer, nails, saw and sandwiches for the weekend, as long as they knew we weren't going alone. Now there's places where the parent can get in trouble just for letting their kid walk to school. So the kids end up building their fort in minecraft instead of the woods, but I don't think the kids can take 100% of the blame for it.
- adamweld 8y ago
  The children shouldn't take any of the blame - that falls on the parents and society that have allowed things to come to this point. We are faced with technology that is designed to be as addictive as possible, and unleashing it on the developing brains of our children without limits. Personally I think it's absolutely terrifying the effects that we'll be seeing down the road from this.
  - AgentOrange1234 8y ago
    Who is unleashing this on kids without limits? It’s quite easy to limit screen time. (Not talking about any parental controls stuff, just “turn that off.”)
scarface74 8y ago
My son has been able to keep in touch with friends and play video games with them online that he hasn’t seen in person in years. They live in the same metro area but being an hour and half away in traffic they might as well be in different parts of the country.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Do you consider those to be just as meaningful relationships with the people he would otherwise have to meet in going out with in person? Keeping in touch with people is great, but I think there is value in children learning the lesson that the people you hang out with today might not be your forever friends. To lesson most people don’t learn to well after high school would’ve been beneficial to know earlier. Just posing the question. I don’t know your kid. Nor our specific kids but I was talking about my post. Of course her benefits and features, at the cost of possibly losing the ability to deal with people in the real world. Maybe.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    The male friends that I grew away from wasn’t because of distance, it was because our interest and lifestyle changed but I’ve actively kept in touch with a few even while we have lived in different parts of the country since 1997. We see each other maybe once a year since we are both from the same hometown and go back to visit relatives. What benefit do you get from seeing people in person? When I see my friends in person we talk, play cards, and play video games. We may go out and eat/drink but everything else we can do online. I don’t need to physically see other men to keep a friendship with them. I did specifically call out my male friends. I purposefully distanced myself from my (platanic) female friends after getting married except for the ones where I was friends with the couple because having friends of the opposite sex as a married man just brings in too many complications.
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      >What benefit do you get from seeing people in person? Yea, IDK, social ques maybe? Are you really arguing that there is no difference talking to friends in person vs on the internet or phone? The short version is, your digital friends, aren't real people. You can hang up on them, or not answer when you don't feel like. The second you put your controller or phone down, they disappear and wait to be pulled back into your existence. Real people you can't manage like that, so you have to use different methods of interaction.
keithnz 8y ago
I'm not sure whether people were happier or not, perhaps some people were happier because they lived in ignorance of what was happening around them... I know for me that is probablly true. I grew up in the 70s / 80s, in my family / community bubble I was unaware of bad things. Only later through the internet and people telling their stories on the internet that I realized my experience of life being pretty good for everyone I knew was completely wrong and quite a few people were having a miserable time... but I thought they were relatively happy.
azernik 8y ago
Judging by the article, this number is only going to go down; the numbers are in the 2-3% range for everyone under 50, and are made up by a whopping 34% offline in the over-65 age bracket. I would also be strongly suspicious of childhood nostalgia were I in your shoes.
- gurkendoktor 8y ago
  There are at least some signs that our childhood nostalgia is not misplaced: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suicide-youth-teens-whats-behind-rise/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suicide-youth-teens-whats-behin... (I don't live in the US, but I'm afraid this trend will arrive here soon enough.)

I kinda wish we could pump those numbers up, esp for children on the internet. Thinking back to the 80s and 90s growing up, it sure seems like people were happier. But what do I know!?

lainga 8y ago

Laughs in Moodle

thatswrong0 8y ago

I feel like this is the same thing they said about tv, before that radio, before that..

WillPostForFood 8y ago
Right, could be a repeating pattern, but could also be a downward slope.
- pasquinelli 8y ago
  or just shifting around how people zonk out.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
I don't remember it ever being said about radio. TV certainly, but mainly it became a common theme after the arrival of Sky in UK. Now the kids had 13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from, and even dedicated channels for effortless excess consumption. For the early part of our kid's lives there was only an hour or two of kids TV a day - between end of school and around 5:30pm in time for the evening news. Limiting consumption was far easier. Course there'd still be opportunity to watch soaps etc with parents
- soared 8y ago
  Are you 70 years old? Radio was at the same stage as the internet in the 50s and 60s.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Grew up with kids TV in the 70s and 80s thanks :p I have never once heard anyone criticise radio consumption that I can remember. Walkmans in the 80s, yes; games, yes; TV, definitely as mentioned. All of those have cropped up in the news more than a few times while they were topical. Maybe UK radio got a different reaction to the US?
    - derekp7 8y ago
      Back in the 60's and 70's, it was mostly criticism of radio stations that played rock music.
    - soared 8y ago
      That’s because it was normalized in the 70s and 80s. When it was still new people moaned about overconsumption, just like the internet.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      >I have never once heard anyone criticise radio consumption that I can remember. You're far too young to remember. There were two distinct moral panics about radio; the first in the 1930s when radio first became popular in the home, and the second in the early 1960s when transistorisation allowed teenagers to have radios of their own. Until 1967, the BBC did not have a pop music station. Until 1973, commercial radio was illegal. The pirates who filled the demand for pop radio in the interim were hugely controversial. A great many column inches were spent fretting over the corrupting influence of foreign broadcasters, beaming salacious rock and roll music into the bedrooms of British children.
      - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
        Fair enough. Of course I also remember the huge moral panic over us all going to hell for playing rock records backwards for satanistic messages. We all tried, and failed, to find one of course after hearing of this. :) I'm rather surprised about the 1930s - early British radio was so worthy and busy and educating the populace. I'm surprised there was much scope left for panic.
- holygrail111 8y ago
  Nice pink floyd reference, see my above post about the mexicans and the africans, too.
radicalbyte 8y ago
The quality of content on TV is way better than YouTube. Thankfully my kids really like the learning series on Netflix (Umizoomi, True etc) instead of the horrible 'daddy finger' to cheap animation of babies which qualifies as 'child content' on YouTube.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  The quality of content on TV is way better than YouTube. IF you're talking only about children-specific stuff, then maybe so. But otherwise I totally disagree. There is SO much amazing content on Youtube (especially educational content); where nothing on TV can come close to match it. Pick a subject you want to learn, and there are hours and hours of content, a not insignificant amount from top tier universities, covering same.
  - radicalbyte 8y ago
    Yes, I'm talking about content for children; in my case children who cannot read/write. YouTube is a horrible wasteland of mind destroying insanity for that age group. I'm replying to a comment talking about the experience for kids. I agree about YouTube for adults and older children; there is an amazing amount of top quality content there for people who are capable of searching for it :-)
- radicalbyte 8y ago
  To the downvoter(s): I assume that you don't have young children. If you want to get an idea of how bad it is, search for "baby daddy finger" and then only follow the brightly colored links featuring babies or recognizable cartoon characters. Randomly subscribe to channels you see. Then you get the full < 6-7 year-old experience of YouTube.

simmons 8y ago

I don't know if people or specifically children were happier in the 80s/90s, but after spending a couple of weeks with my 10-year-old niece, I'm completely floored at how she tries to fill every waking minute passively consuming content such as YouTube. It wouldn't be so bad if children were using the Internet to do something constructive or educational. Of course, plenty of people from my generation spent their childhoods in front of the TV, but perhaps that was more easily regulated. (My parents, at least, wouldn't let me watch TV endlessly.)

superbaconman 8y ago
I just realized that growing up computers were basically only for research and creating content. Now that bandwidth is so cheap computers are only for consumption.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Don't know when you grew up, but computer games were already a thing before the internet became widely available. (Of course, a video game is vastly more engaging and interactive than a random YouTube video.)
- readhn 8y ago
  They dont call us "consumers" for nothing.... soon they'll take away the keyboards and other ways/inputs to mess with the "insides" of a computer ... and all you'll have is a touch screen to choose this or that.. while consuming...actually thats happening already with iPad etc..
  - readhn 8y ago
    http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201803290068.html http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201803290068.html
- slededit 8y ago
  "computers" as in traditional PCs are regaining their creator role. Microsoft even calls their windows update "Creator Edition". Phones and tablets are almost pure consumption devices with a few exceptions.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

soneil 8y ago

I think it's over-simplifying the issue to blame children for that. I mean, when I was 12 we built a little fort in the woods. My parents didn't mind letting us disappear with hammer, nails, saw and sandwiches for the weekend, as long as they knew we weren't going alone. Now there's places where the parent can get in trouble just for letting their kid walk to school. So the kids end up building their fort in minecraft instead of the woods, but I don't think the kids can take 100% of the blame for it.

adamweld 8y ago
The children shouldn't take any of the blame - that falls on the parents and society that have allowed things to come to this point. We are faced with technology that is designed to be as addictive as possible, and unleashing it on the developing brains of our children without limits. Personally I think it's absolutely terrifying the effects that we'll be seeing down the road from this.
- AgentOrange1234 8y ago
  Who is unleashing this on kids without limits? It’s quite easy to limit screen time. (Not talking about any parental controls stuff, just “turn that off.”)

scarface74 8y ago

My son has been able to keep in touch with friends and play video games with them online that he hasn’t seen in person in years. They live in the same metro area but being an hour and half away in traffic they might as well be in different parts of the country.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
Do you consider those to be just as meaningful relationships with the people he would otherwise have to meet in going out with in person? Keeping in touch with people is great, but I think there is value in children learning the lesson that the people you hang out with today might not be your forever friends. To lesson most people don’t learn to well after high school would’ve been beneficial to know earlier. Just posing the question. I don’t know your kid. Nor our specific kids but I was talking about my post. Of course her benefits and features, at the cost of possibly losing the ability to deal with people in the real world. Maybe.
- scarface74 8y ago
  The male friends that I grew away from wasn’t because of distance, it was because our interest and lifestyle changed but I’ve actively kept in touch with a few even while we have lived in different parts of the country since 1997. We see each other maybe once a year since we are both from the same hometown and go back to visit relatives. What benefit do you get from seeing people in person? When I see my friends in person we talk, play cards, and play video games. We may go out and eat/drink but everything else we can do online. I don’t need to physically see other men to keep a friendship with them. I did specifically call out my male friends. I purposefully distanced myself from my (platanic) female friends after getting married except for the ones where I was friends with the couple because having friends of the opposite sex as a married man just brings in too many complications.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    >What benefit do you get from seeing people in person? Yea, IDK, social ques maybe? Are you really arguing that there is no difference talking to friends in person vs on the internet or phone? The short version is, your digital friends, aren't real people. You can hang up on them, or not answer when you don't feel like. The second you put your controller or phone down, they disappear and wait to be pulled back into your existence. Real people you can't manage like that, so you have to use different methods of interaction.

keithnz 8y ago

I'm not sure whether people were happier or not, perhaps some people were happier because they lived in ignorance of what was happening around them... I know for me that is probablly true. I grew up in the 70s / 80s, in my family / community bubble I was unaware of bad things. Only later through the internet and people telling their stories on the internet that I realized my experience of life being pretty good for everyone I knew was completely wrong and quite a few people were having a miserable time... but I thought they were relatively happy.

azernik 8y ago

Judging by the article, this number is only going to go down; the numbers are in the 2-3% range for everyone under 50, and are made up by a whopping 34% offline in the over-65 age bracket. I would also be strongly suspicious of childhood nostalgia were I in your shoes.

gurkendoktor 8y ago
There are at least some signs that our childhood nostalgia is not misplaced: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suicide-youth-teens-whats-behind-rise/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suicide-youth-teens-whats-behin... (I don't live in the US, but I'm afraid this trend will arrive here soon enough.)