8 ms·

The parade of concerned parents writing these kinds of articles have conveniently forgotten how much TV and video games many of us consumed in 1980s and 1990s.

by tarr11 8y ago

The parade of concerned parents writing these kinds of articles have conveniently forgotten how much TV and video games many of us consumed in 1980s and 1990s. This stuff reads like satire: “Rather than teach them to absorb material that is slower, duller and decidedly two-dimensional, like a lot of worthwhile information is, schools cave in to what they say children expect: fun. ” The kids are going to be alright.

cortesoft 8y ago
Yeah, it is also interesting how they categorize the activities... apparently reading a book doesn’t count as “avoiding boredom”, but playing a video game does... why? Both are using something to entertain yourself, and it seems pretty arbitrary to distinguish between them. In fact, I am pretty sure there has been times on our history where reading fiction was treated the same way we treat watching YouTube videos today... as bad for your brain.
- hombre_fatal 8y ago
  I think there's some truth to that, though. As a former video game addict, I look back on my time spent gaming as largely a waste. Most of it was a compulsion, like staying up until 4am re-queuing in Dota. Or grinding some armor piece. But I don't look back with regret on any of my time spent reading. I think most people here know what I'm talking about. Why is that? I can think of a few guesses. Books aren't in the same category of quick dopamine releases as most (not all) games. There's an element of imagination and mental world construction in the book with even the cheapest entertainment. You're exposed to different interpretations of the world, possibly integrating the thoughts of others against your own. It also helped me write and spell. I'd certainly categorically rank books higher than games if I had to. Though I know if you told this to my 14-year-old self, I would've made you think I only played MathBlaster and games from The Learning Company all day. "What, you think learning is bad?!" I'm reminded of when I was at my friend's house when he kicked his son off Youtube to go outside. He thought it was the most unfair thing in the world, happy to let you know how many good educational videos there were on Youtube even though he'd just done a four hour binge of screaming Minecraft vids. I chuckled and thought of myself at about that age. At one point I spited my mother by bringing paper and pencils outside to draw instead of playing in the street. That'll show her! Well, I now have a drawing hobby that I still practice weekly in my 30s. :)
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    I think the same arguments you make for books could be made for video games (especially ones like minecraft): they require imagination and exposure to different interpretations of the world. My mom also used to tell me to get off the computer and go outside, while I wanted to stay inside and mess around with the computer. 25 years later, I use those self taught computer programming skills to make a good living as a software developer. I think the point is that it is impossible to know which 'boredom' activities will lead to creativity.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - hombre_fatal 8y ago
      Sure, I remember thinking it was super unfair that I was kicked off the computer even though I was reading content on webdev forums. And I can certainly tell you some positive experiences that were had from making friends with guild members in World of Warcraft or building content in MUDs. If you, as a parent, understand the difference between four hours of an iPad F2P game vs four hours of interacting with friends in Minecraft with voice-chat, you're surely in a good position to make informed decisions here instead of the frustrating "computer=bad" that a lot of kids have to deal with. I'm not yet a parent, but I can sympathize with the idea that you want to see your kids develop well-rounded interests. You see your kid on computers and phones all day (just like adults) and don't necessarily have any insight into how they are actually spending that time (especially on their phone). At which point, it might be a relief when they pick up a book for an hour or two.
  - IdiocyInAction 8y ago
    I count reading entertainment-focused books in the same category as games personally. At the end of the day, it's usually ecsapism. Good point with learning to read and spell though, that's a plus books have over TV and games, especially for kids.
    - cortesoft 8y ago
- CalmStorm 8y ago
  This. I cannot agree more. I grew up in China when there were no video games. I loved reading fiction books but my teacher strictly forbade it for the similar reason we forbid our kids to watch youtube these days. Now in Canada, my son's English class requires reading of many novels ...
- UnpossibleJim 8y ago
  Lol, I still remember my grandmother rolling her eyes at me reading Stephen King books as "serialized trash" when I was in my preteens during the summer months, while there was nothing else to do as she didn't believe in television.
  - sudosteph 8y ago
    Hah, same story here. Stephen King books totally made middle school and high school bearable for me. The fact that every public library and used bookstore usually had over a dozen to pick from sure helped too.
- watwut 8y ago
  Sure there was such periods and plenty of books are/were trash. And when the kid did nothing but read books, parents got concerned and tried to socialize the kid and force it outside. That being said, book readers don't yell at the rest of familly because they lost level. They don't swear into microphone. They don't hit things in frustration and while they don't like much interruptions either, generally they are able to answer basic questions.
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    Many kids play video games and don't do those behaviors, and I think the frustration level at being interrupted is even between readers and gamers.
    - watwut 8y ago
      I think that kids who don't display those behaviors are mature enough to play and it is fine.
  - leetcrew 8y ago
    > That being said, book readers don't yell at the rest of familly because they lost level. They don't swear into microphone. They don't hit things in frustration and while they don't like much interruptions either, generally they are able to answer basic questions. if you let children play sports in the backyard, they are liable to do all those annoying things. also I take particular issue with the "able to answer basic questions" item. if you respect a person (even a child), you shouldn't expect them to drop what they're doing and answer whatever random question you have at the exact moment that it's convenient for you. unless it's truly urgent, why not just ask at family dinner?
    - watwut 8y ago
      It is much less of a problem on yard. There is less lashing out toward unplaying family members and they are more likely to abandon or solve frustrating situation. See, and when they are not playing video game they are responding questions without trouble and I don't have to tiptoe around then. They are more willing to breat the game for answer or help. I don't have to treat them as someone special who can be approach only at certain times and with bigger caution then actually working adult. I think this is honestly what they call gamer entitlement - the idea that other people are there solely as your service and you have no duty to communicate politely.
- Reedx 8y ago
  Besides, it's too reductionist to compare them that way. It entirely depends on what kind of books you're reading vs kind of games playing vs kind of videos watching. Every medium has content that can be placed on a spectrum ranging from trash to nutritious.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Actually, in the late 19th and even going into earlier 20th centuries, reading books to avoid boredom did count (unless it was the Bible) in many families. Then they were afraid of radio and moving pictures, then TV, video games, etc...now its screen time on mobile devices, tomorrow we won’t worry about that anymore, but start instead worry about our kids being addicted to virtual realities....and so on.
  - rjf72 8y ago
    Just because some people may have had concerns about one thing that is not necessarily justified does not then mean that we can extrapolate concerns about new technology going forward to then be defacto unjustified. I'm not sure of the entire psycho-physiological effects that books had on society, but we can see many very real negatives that are very likely causally related with our new technological pursuits. For instance there have been sharp increases in all sorts of psychological disorders, physically people are becoming grossly unfit, fertility rates are plummeting among higher income, well educated, secular individuals. Less talked about issues are things such as a worldwide reversal of the Flynn Effect [1] in numerous developed nations. The Flynn effect is the observation that real IQ scores were increasing over time. IQ is normalized to always have a 100 mean with a standard deviation of about 15. But what Flynn found is that the mean 100 in e.g. 1920 was substantially higher than the one in e.g. 1900 and similarly moving forward. People were becoming 'smarter' over time, so much as IQ can measure. Sometime in the 1990s this trend began to reverse and quite sharply. IQ scores are dropping around the world by rates up to around 1.5 points per decade. This might not seem like much at first, but remember that a whole standard deviation is only 15 points. Imagine you are one standard deviation (15 points) ahead of the population. That means you are 'smarter' than 84% of people. Drop that just 1.5 points and you're down to only being ahead of 80% of the population. For that scale of change to be happening as a population level event, every decade, is really insane. It could be that these are all spurious correlations that have nothing at all to do with the rise of the internet, 24/7 digital tech, social media, and so forth. However, I think that the probability of that being the case is something very close to 0%. This will probably be a self correcting problem (many of these issues are going to correlate strongly against successful reproduction) but it'd be much more pleasant if we could resolve this without going full darwin on ourselves. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Yeah, it is also interesting how they categorize the activities... apparently reading a book doesn’t count as “avoiding boredom”, but playing a video game does... why? - Why? Because a video game move forward at it's speed, setting, since it keeps things going regardless, it's own agenda. A book only moves forward at the speed of a child's own thinking. There's always an opportunity to stop and think when reading a book.
  - IggleSniggle 8y ago
    Every game I played as a kid moved at my speed because they were turn based or puzzle based, with the exception of WarCraft. Even many games today that are popular with kids, like Minecraft, can move at real-time speed but still be designed to be self-paced. In Minecraft, there’s always an opportunity to stop and think.
    - ThalesX 8y ago
      I’ve never played Minecraft but it is my understanding that you have some sort of zombies that come nighfall. If these zombies catch you without shelter, they would presumably kill you. While this is a simple mechanic, I imagine even this small element of gameplay would turn a player towards thinking about survival rather than taking the opportunity to stop and think.
      - solipsism 8y ago
        It's clear that your college course in game design is of less value, in the context of this conversation, than having actually done lots of gaming. Minecraft has a Creative Mode where all you do is build. Or explore. Or whatever you want, at your own pace. It's incredibly popular -- spend some time on YouTube looking up people's creations. Let's remember the context. This is the quote we're talking about: Because a video game move forward at it's speed, setting, since it keeps things going regardless, it's own agenda. A book only moves forward at the speed of a child's own thinking. There are games that push you through like watching a movie. But even the most linear games let you make choices. Some games are slow, some are fast, some require quick thinking, some require slow calculated thinking. Some involve creativity, some involve math. Talking about games as if they're just push you through some rigid narrative like a movie is just incredibly ignorant.
twic 8y ago
> The parade of concerned parents writing these kinds of articles have conveniently forgotten how much TV and video games many of us consumed in 1980s and 1990s. One of the great things about growing up in the UK in the '80s is that there were only four television channels, and they were all a bit rubbish (we got a fraction of the cartoons the US did, and our local children's programmes were often extremely dull). I did watch TV, but there was usually nothing worth watching on, so i had no choice but to go and do other things - read, draw, make things, try and program a computer, etc.
- c22 8y ago
  I grew up in the US, but I had a similar limitation because my parent's house was in a ravine. Eventually in my tweens I wired an antenna up on the roof (my room was in the attic) and was able to capture a handful of signals, but changing the channel involved climbing out on the roof to adjust the antenna, so it was not convenient. I definitely credit this with stoking my interest in computers and other hobbies. The neighbor kids had cable and they never seemed to do anything else.
- kurthr 8y ago
  Unless you were in a big media area like NY/LA most of the country had 4-5 stations (CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, then Fox) of varying reception quality. Cable's (and satellite TV in more remote regions) 40, then 100, then 100s of channels were the boom in channel surfing. When you can flip between all the channels in <15sec there's not a lot of reason (dopamine boost) to keep flipping. Commercial breaks were shorter and more simultaneous as well.
seanhandley 8y ago
When I was growing up in the 90s we had 2 hours of kids TV programming after school and that was it. It's a far cry from the "everything on demand" culture we have today. You can see the dopamine hits while the kids constantly hit "next" on YouTube - like a gambler at the slots. I know how a "think of the children!" article comes across but when you dig into the neuroscience it's all rather concerning. The kids will be alright - but what state will their neurons be in?
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  That's roughly what we duplicated via router restrictions, open access at weekend. Several of my tech aware friends did similar things - some looser, some tighter. More to make sure there was free space to do homework, chores, read, get ready for school etc without 24/7 WoW, youtube, facebook or messaging, than any scare. Terrible parents that we were, during peak Harry Potter we'd even tell them to put the book down now and then. :)
floatingatoll 8y ago
As a kid from the 80s, my parents prohibited video game consoles except for a GameBoy during Thanksgiving trips. It took me years of work as a child to successfully overcome their restrictions and get games onto the family computer. At one point I synthesized a hybrid of every Jazz Jackrabbit level and bonus level into a single launcher sceeen, something the publisher hadn’t because DLC and GOTY weren’t things yet. I was bored out of my skull as a child and applied every ounce of that boredom to making my life interesting. My parents didn’t ban games because, apparently, I had to work hard to play them at all. I would have been much less interested in computers if I’d had a Nintendo console that I could just play games on, to the point that I might have become a math professor instead of an IT guru. TLDR: Take care not to conflate 80s-90s PC gaming with “one-click” gaming such as consoles, Steam, etc. Their effect on children can vary wildly.
- hopler 8y ago
  I don't thing Super Mario Brothers makes one a math professor
  - floatingatoll 8y ago
    No single game would, but my parents taking a console-gaming money spending path would have had drastic effects on my childhood time investments in computers (since we weren’t wealthy, it would have been one or the other).
Pharmakon 8y ago
My memory of those years was that a lot of TV was shit by any standard, and most of it wasn’t aimed at kids. Sure, you had Saturday morning cartoons, and endless reruns, but it was painfully easy to be bored in front of the TV. Games were fun if you had them, but the lack of complexity and depth, alongside limited supply of them meant they got boring too. I don’t think comparing the TV most people had in the 80’s and 90’s, and the games, to the Internet, modern MP games, and streaming “tv” is remotely fair. It might also be unwise when you consider those same decades saw an explosion of childhood obesity. A kid with an internet connection today has access to most of the world’s entertainment, either to purchase or pirate. We also weren’t able to be in 24/7 contact with each other, so boredom was very real. Even as an avid reader, I was limited by what books I owned, or were available at the library. Now there are no limits at all. If you want to, you stay plugged in without coming close to exhausting novel entertainment, and never be bored. Maybe that will prove to be harmless, or maybe not. Maybe using a whole generation of people as lab rats for profit is unwise and unethical?
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with you about the lack of complexity and depth thing. Perhaps I was too young to notice. But I don't recollect ever getting bored, as a kid, with computer games in the 80s and early 90s. Heck, I still play 80s and early 90s classics every so often when I've too much time on my hands. Mid-90s and later games are a different story -- good titles seem rare. (Perhaps you're older than me and snapped out of games before I did.)
- beobab 8y ago
  Have you observed the phenomenon of “being bored with the internet”? I’m not sure boredom is completely satiated by novelty. I have experienced “I’m bored” events, where I had plenty of new experiences to try if I wanted.
  - technofiend 8y ago
    Oh heck yeah. I've definitely gotten bored of reading Amazon Kindle Unlimited books, surfing the web and YouTube. That's usually when I turn my hand to creative pursuits. Writing a book is still more entertaining than reading yet another obvious shill or karma whore post.
semerda 8y ago
TV in the 80s/90s was limited to a handful of channels. Now you have unlimited channels with YouTube, Netflix et al. Also gaming in the 90s was you'd play one game till the end. Today kids (and adults) jump in true adhd style between the ~100 games they got for free from the app store. Rarely finishing a game till the end. As a kid I remember having to create my own games and toys using nature (sticks, stones, etc). Today kids get handed a toy and they play. Not much thought is given to creation just consumption. Same with TV/entertainment media. So comparing the old days to new days is a misnomer. One thing that's been known for a long time is that boredom breeds creativity. Hence why folks go on sabbaticals, walks etc... when your mind is constantly consumed consuming it doesn't have time to create. And these patterns lead to consumer habits. On the kids front most parents have seen what happens to their kids when they over consume media. Idiocracy (the movie) nailed this issue well.
- joeberon 8y ago
  > true adhd style That is ableist
- wernercd 8y ago
  > Rarely finishing a game till the end. Today's games don't have an "end". They have a journey. But seriously... can you blame game companies? How many millions are made by one-and-done games? Even block busters the likes of Final Fantasy and Zelda? How many millions are made by never-ending games like Team Fortress, Clash of Clans, Bubble Bobble, etc? Game companies are rewarded for not having an end.
- solipsism 8y ago
  As a kid I remember having to create my own games and toys using nature (sticks, stones, etc). Today kids get handed a toy and they play Actually my kid gets handed a forest. He chops trees down to get sticks, which he turns into forts and weapons and vehicles and things you've never dreamed of. Then he writes code to make them do things. Playing with physical things is great. Playing outside is great. But you guys have a very narrow view of what digital media is like these days.
sandworm101 8y ago
Shakespeare. Hamlet. Remarks are made about both Hamlet and Ophelia reading books. Ophelia is driven insane. Hamlet has his issues too. The reading of too many books was seen as something that could lead to madness, at least something that looked very strange to others who did not read.
birksherty 8y ago
I am a millennial myself. We watched tv, had video games. But also we played lot more in playgrounds for fun, talk, meet up, discuss in real space and had real laughs. Now I have seen kids in my neighborhood who don't know each other. In the free time they watch tv alone and uses social media most of the time. Only time they go out is for school, occasional shopping and other chores. I have not seen them with friends. Few days back I saw a teenager using an app called Tiktok. It's like vine. Teenagers do funny weird short videos. They pretend doing funny amusing things but none of those actually are. They act like something unbelievable just happened. All the laughs are fake. They are in a competition to get more likes and shares to get famous. A reality show but at a lower level.
- baroffoos 8y ago
  I don't know how it was for you but when I was in school I didn't know any of the kids in my suburb. Outside had endless roads and cars and no footpaths. Anything of interest requires having a parent to drive you there. The nearest playground is about 6km away. Online games was the only way to interact with friends outside of school.
- hopler 8y ago
  When I was a kid (in the Jurassic era) kids did stupid stunts to be popular and overreacted to everything too.
  - flukus 8y ago
    Kids (and adults to a lesser extent) always have an always will do stupid stunts to try and standout or increase their dignitas. The social circle this happened in used to be a lot smaller though, just friends, family or maybe the school. Now they're trying to do this in the world stage where standing out is a lot harder.

by tarr11 8y ago

cortesoft 8y ago

Yeah, it is also interesting how they categorize the activities... apparently reading a book doesn’t count as “avoiding boredom”, but playing a video game does... why? Both are using something to entertain yourself, and it seems pretty arbitrary to distinguish between them. In fact, I am pretty sure there has been times on our history where reading fiction was treated the same way we treat watching YouTube videos today... as bad for your brain.

hombre_fatal 8y ago
I think there's some truth to that, though. As a former video game addict, I look back on my time spent gaming as largely a waste. Most of it was a compulsion, like staying up until 4am re-queuing in Dota. Or grinding some armor piece. But I don't look back with regret on any of my time spent reading. I think most people here know what I'm talking about. Why is that? I can think of a few guesses. Books aren't in the same category of quick dopamine releases as most (not all) games. There's an element of imagination and mental world construction in the book with even the cheapest entertainment. You're exposed to different interpretations of the world, possibly integrating the thoughts of others against your own. It also helped me write and spell. I'd certainly categorically rank books higher than games if I had to. Though I know if you told this to my 14-year-old self, I would've made you think I only played MathBlaster and games from The Learning Company all day. "What, you think learning is bad?!" I'm reminded of when I was at my friend's house when he kicked his son off Youtube to go outside. He thought it was the most unfair thing in the world, happy to let you know how many good educational videos there were on Youtube even though he'd just done a four hour binge of screaming Minecraft vids. I chuckled and thought of myself at about that age. At one point I spited my mother by bringing paper and pencils outside to draw instead of playing in the street. That'll show her! Well, I now have a drawing hobby that I still practice weekly in my 30s. :)
- cortesoft 8y ago
  I think the same arguments you make for books could be made for video games (especially ones like minecraft): they require imagination and exposure to different interpretations of the world. My mom also used to tell me to get off the computer and go outside, while I wanted to stay inside and mess around with the computer. 25 years later, I use those self taught computer programming skills to make a good living as a software developer. I think the point is that it is impossible to know which 'boredom' activities will lead to creativity.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - hombre_fatal 8y ago
    Sure, I remember thinking it was super unfair that I was kicked off the computer even though I was reading content on webdev forums. And I can certainly tell you some positive experiences that were had from making friends with guild members in World of Warcraft or building content in MUDs. If you, as a parent, understand the difference between four hours of an iPad F2P game vs four hours of interacting with friends in Minecraft with voice-chat, you're surely in a good position to make informed decisions here instead of the frustrating "computer=bad" that a lot of kids have to deal with. I'm not yet a parent, but I can sympathize with the idea that you want to see your kids develop well-rounded interests. You see your kid on computers and phones all day (just like adults) and don't necessarily have any insight into how they are actually spending that time (especially on their phone). At which point, it might be a relief when they pick up a book for an hour or two.
- IdiocyInAction 8y ago
  I count reading entertainment-focused books in the same category as games personally. At the end of the day, it's usually ecsapism. Good point with learning to read and spell though, that's a plus books have over TV and games, especially for kids.
  - cortesoft 8y ago
CalmStorm 8y ago
This. I cannot agree more. I grew up in China when there were no video games. I loved reading fiction books but my teacher strictly forbade it for the similar reason we forbid our kids to watch youtube these days. Now in Canada, my son's English class requires reading of many novels ...
UnpossibleJim 8y ago
Lol, I still remember my grandmother rolling her eyes at me reading Stephen King books as "serialized trash" when I was in my preteens during the summer months, while there was nothing else to do as she didn't believe in television.
- sudosteph 8y ago
  Hah, same story here. Stephen King books totally made middle school and high school bearable for me. The fact that every public library and used bookstore usually had over a dozen to pick from sure helped too.
watwut 8y ago
Sure there was such periods and plenty of books are/were trash. And when the kid did nothing but read books, parents got concerned and tried to socialize the kid and force it outside. That being said, book readers don't yell at the rest of familly because they lost level. They don't swear into microphone. They don't hit things in frustration and while they don't like much interruptions either, generally they are able to answer basic questions.
- cortesoft 8y ago
  Many kids play video games and don't do those behaviors, and I think the frustration level at being interrupted is even between readers and gamers.
  - watwut 8y ago
    I think that kids who don't display those behaviors are mature enough to play and it is fine.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  > That being said, book readers don't yell at the rest of familly because they lost level. They don't swear into microphone. They don't hit things in frustration and while they don't like much interruptions either, generally they are able to answer basic questions. if you let children play sports in the backyard, they are liable to do all those annoying things. also I take particular issue with the "able to answer basic questions" item. if you respect a person (even a child), you shouldn't expect them to drop what they're doing and answer whatever random question you have at the exact moment that it's convenient for you. unless it's truly urgent, why not just ask at family dinner?
  - watwut 8y ago
    It is much less of a problem on yard. There is less lashing out toward unplaying family members and they are more likely to abandon or solve frustrating situation. See, and when they are not playing video game they are responding questions without trouble and I don't have to tiptoe around then. They are more willing to breat the game for answer or help. I don't have to treat them as someone special who can be approach only at certain times and with bigger caution then actually working adult. I think this is honestly what they call gamer entitlement - the idea that other people are there solely as your service and you have no duty to communicate politely.
Reedx 8y ago
Besides, it's too reductionist to compare them that way. It entirely depends on what kind of books you're reading vs kind of games playing vs kind of videos watching. Every medium has content that can be placed on a spectrum ranging from trash to nutritious.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Actually, in the late 19th and even going into earlier 20th centuries, reading books to avoid boredom did count (unless it was the Bible) in many families. Then they were afraid of radio and moving pictures, then TV, video games, etc...now its screen time on mobile devices, tomorrow we won’t worry about that anymore, but start instead worry about our kids being addicted to virtual realities....and so on.
- rjf72 8y ago
  Just because some people may have had concerns about one thing that is not necessarily justified does not then mean that we can extrapolate concerns about new technology going forward to then be defacto unjustified. I'm not sure of the entire psycho-physiological effects that books had on society, but we can see many very real negatives that are very likely causally related with our new technological pursuits. For instance there have been sharp increases in all sorts of psychological disorders, physically people are becoming grossly unfit, fertility rates are plummeting among higher income, well educated, secular individuals. Less talked about issues are things such as a worldwide reversal of the Flynn Effect [1] in numerous developed nations. The Flynn effect is the observation that real IQ scores were increasing over time. IQ is normalized to always have a 100 mean with a standard deviation of about 15. But what Flynn found is that the mean 100 in e.g. 1920 was substantially higher than the one in e.g. 1900 and similarly moving forward. People were becoming 'smarter' over time, so much as IQ can measure. Sometime in the 1990s this trend began to reverse and quite sharply. IQ scores are dropping around the world by rates up to around 1.5 points per decade. This might not seem like much at first, but remember that a whole standard deviation is only 15 points. Imagine you are one standard deviation (15 points) ahead of the population. That means you are 'smarter' than 84% of people. Drop that just 1.5 points and you're down to only being ahead of 80% of the population. For that scale of change to be happening as a population level event, every decade, is really insane. It could be that these are all spurious correlations that have nothing at all to do with the rise of the internet, 24/7 digital tech, social media, and so forth. However, I think that the probability of that being the case is something very close to 0%. This will probably be a self correcting problem (many of these issues are going to correlate strongly against successful reproduction) but it'd be much more pleasant if we could resolve this without going full darwin on ourselves. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
joe_the_user 8y ago
Yeah, it is also interesting how they categorize the activities... apparently reading a book doesn’t count as “avoiding boredom”, but playing a video game does... why? - Why? Because a video game move forward at it's speed, setting, since it keeps things going regardless, it's own agenda. A book only moves forward at the speed of a child's own thinking. There's always an opportunity to stop and think when reading a book.
- IggleSniggle 8y ago
  Every game I played as a kid moved at my speed because they were turn based or puzzle based, with the exception of WarCraft. Even many games today that are popular with kids, like Minecraft, can move at real-time speed but still be designed to be self-paced. In Minecraft, there’s always an opportunity to stop and think.
  - ThalesX 8y ago
    I’ve never played Minecraft but it is my understanding that you have some sort of zombies that come nighfall. If these zombies catch you without shelter, they would presumably kill you. While this is a simple mechanic, I imagine even this small element of gameplay would turn a player towards thinking about survival rather than taking the opportunity to stop and think.
    - solipsism 8y ago
      It's clear that your college course in game design is of less value, in the context of this conversation, than having actually done lots of gaming. Minecraft has a Creative Mode where all you do is build. Or explore. Or whatever you want, at your own pace. It's incredibly popular -- spend some time on YouTube looking up people's creations. Let's remember the context. This is the quote we're talking about: Because a video game move forward at it's speed, setting, since it keeps things going regardless, it's own agenda. A book only moves forward at the speed of a child's own thinking. There are games that push you through like watching a movie. But even the most linear games let you make choices. Some games are slow, some are fast, some require quick thinking, some require slow calculated thinking. Some involve creativity, some involve math. Talking about games as if they're just push you through some rigid narrative like a movie is just incredibly ignorant.

twic 8y ago

> The parade of concerned parents writing these kinds of articles have conveniently forgotten how much TV and video games many of us consumed in 1980s and 1990s. One of the great things about growing up in the UK in the '80s is that there were only four television channels, and they were all a bit rubbish (we got a fraction of the cartoons the US did, and our local children's programmes were often extremely dull). I did watch TV, but there was usually nothing worth watching on, so i had no choice but to go and do other things - read, draw, make things, try and program a computer, etc.

c22 8y ago
I grew up in the US, but I had a similar limitation because my parent's house was in a ravine. Eventually in my tweens I wired an antenna up on the roof (my room was in the attic) and was able to capture a handful of signals, but changing the channel involved climbing out on the roof to adjust the antenna, so it was not convenient. I definitely credit this with stoking my interest in computers and other hobbies. The neighbor kids had cable and they never seemed to do anything else.
kurthr 8y ago
Unless you were in a big media area like NY/LA most of the country had 4-5 stations (CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, then Fox) of varying reception quality. Cable's (and satellite TV in more remote regions) 40, then 100, then 100s of channels were the boom in channel surfing. When you can flip between all the channels in <15sec there's not a lot of reason (dopamine boost) to keep flipping. Commercial breaks were shorter and more simultaneous as well.

seanhandley 8y ago

When I was growing up in the 90s we had 2 hours of kids TV programming after school and that was it. It's a far cry from the "everything on demand" culture we have today. You can see the dopamine hits while the kids constantly hit "next" on YouTube - like a gambler at the slots. I know how a "think of the children!" article comes across but when you dig into the neuroscience it's all rather concerning. The kids will be alright - but what state will their neurons be in?

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
That's roughly what we duplicated via router restrictions, open access at weekend. Several of my tech aware friends did similar things - some looser, some tighter. More to make sure there was free space to do homework, chores, read, get ready for school etc without 24/7 WoW, youtube, facebook or messaging, than any scare. Terrible parents that we were, during peak Harry Potter we'd even tell them to put the book down now and then. :)

floatingatoll 8y ago

As a kid from the 80s, my parents prohibited video game consoles except for a GameBoy during Thanksgiving trips. It took me years of work as a child to successfully overcome their restrictions and get games onto the family computer. At one point I synthesized a hybrid of every Jazz Jackrabbit level and bonus level into a single launcher sceeen, something the publisher hadn’t because DLC and GOTY weren’t things yet. I was bored out of my skull as a child and applied every ounce of that boredom to making my life interesting. My parents didn’t ban games because, apparently, I had to work hard to play them at all. I would have been much less interested in computers if I’d had a Nintendo console that I could just play games on, to the point that I might have become a math professor instead of an IT guru. TLDR: Take care not to conflate 80s-90s PC gaming with “one-click” gaming such as consoles, Steam, etc. Their effect on children can vary wildly.

hopler 8y ago
I don't thing Super Mario Brothers makes one a math professor
- floatingatoll 8y ago
  No single game would, but my parents taking a console-gaming money spending path would have had drastic effects on my childhood time investments in computers (since we weren’t wealthy, it would have been one or the other).

Pharmakon 8y ago

My memory of those years was that a lot of TV was shit by any standard, and most of it wasn’t aimed at kids. Sure, you had Saturday morning cartoons, and endless reruns, but it was painfully easy to be bored in front of the TV. Games were fun if you had them, but the lack of complexity and depth, alongside limited supply of them meant they got boring too. I don’t think comparing the TV most people had in the 80’s and 90’s, and the games, to the Internet, modern MP games, and streaming “tv” is remotely fair. It might also be unwise when you consider those same decades saw an explosion of childhood obesity. A kid with an internet connection today has access to most of the world’s entertainment, either to purchase or pirate. We also weren’t able to be in 24/7 contact with each other, so boredom was very real. Even as an avid reader, I was limited by what books I owned, or were available at the library. Now there are no limits at all. If you want to, you stay plugged in without coming close to exhausting novel entertainment, and never be bored. Maybe that will prove to be harmless, or maybe not. Maybe using a whole generation of people as lab rats for profit is unwise and unethical?

ddebernardy 8y ago
I'm not sure I agree with you about the lack of complexity and depth thing. Perhaps I was too young to notice. But I don't recollect ever getting bored, as a kid, with computer games in the 80s and early 90s. Heck, I still play 80s and early 90s classics every so often when I've too much time on my hands. Mid-90s and later games are a different story -- good titles seem rare. (Perhaps you're older than me and snapped out of games before I did.)
beobab 8y ago
Have you observed the phenomenon of “being bored with the internet”? I’m not sure boredom is completely satiated by novelty. I have experienced “I’m bored” events, where I had plenty of new experiences to try if I wanted.
- technofiend 8y ago
  Oh heck yeah. I've definitely gotten bored of reading Amazon Kindle Unlimited books, surfing the web and YouTube. That's usually when I turn my hand to creative pursuits. Writing a book is still more entertaining than reading yet another obvious shill or karma whore post.

semerda 8y ago

TV in the 80s/90s was limited to a handful of channels. Now you have unlimited channels with YouTube, Netflix et al. Also gaming in the 90s was you'd play one game till the end. Today kids (and adults) jump in true adhd style between the ~100 games they got for free from the app store. Rarely finishing a game till the end. As a kid I remember having to create my own games and toys using nature (sticks, stones, etc). Today kids get handed a toy and they play. Not much thought is given to creation just consumption. Same with TV/entertainment media. So comparing the old days to new days is a misnomer. One thing that's been known for a long time is that boredom breeds creativity. Hence why folks go on sabbaticals, walks etc... when your mind is constantly consumed consuming it doesn't have time to create. And these patterns lead to consumer habits. On the kids front most parents have seen what happens to their kids when they over consume media. Idiocracy (the movie) nailed this issue well.

joeberon 8y ago
> true adhd style That is ableist
wernercd 8y ago
> Rarely finishing a game till the end. Today's games don't have an "end". They have a journey. But seriously... can you blame game companies? How many millions are made by one-and-done games? Even block busters the likes of Final Fantasy and Zelda? How many millions are made by never-ending games like Team Fortress, Clash of Clans, Bubble Bobble, etc? Game companies are rewarded for not having an end.
solipsism 8y ago
As a kid I remember having to create my own games and toys using nature (sticks, stones, etc). Today kids get handed a toy and they play Actually my kid gets handed a forest. He chops trees down to get sticks, which he turns into forts and weapons and vehicles and things you've never dreamed of. Then he writes code to make them do things. Playing with physical things is great. Playing outside is great. But you guys have a very narrow view of what digital media is like these days.

sandworm101 8y ago

Shakespeare. Hamlet. Remarks are made about both Hamlet and Ophelia reading books. Ophelia is driven insane. Hamlet has his issues too. The reading of too many books was seen as something that could lead to madness, at least something that looked very strange to others who did not read.

birksherty 8y ago

I am a millennial myself. We watched tv, had video games. But also we played lot more in playgrounds for fun, talk, meet up, discuss in real space and had real laughs. Now I have seen kids in my neighborhood who don't know each other. In the free time they watch tv alone and uses social media most of the time. Only time they go out is for school, occasional shopping and other chores. I have not seen them with friends. Few days back I saw a teenager using an app called Tiktok. It's like vine. Teenagers do funny weird short videos. They pretend doing funny amusing things but none of those actually are. They act like something unbelievable just happened. All the laughs are fake. They are in a competition to get more likes and shares to get famous. A reality show but at a lower level.

baroffoos 8y ago
I don't know how it was for you but when I was in school I didn't know any of the kids in my suburb. Outside had endless roads and cars and no footpaths. Anything of interest requires having a parent to drive you there. The nearest playground is about 6km away. Online games was the only way to interact with friends outside of school.
hopler 8y ago
When I was a kid (in the Jurassic era) kids did stupid stunts to be popular and overreacted to everything too.
- flukus 8y ago
  Kids (and adults to a lesser extent) always have an always will do stupid stunts to try and standout or increase their dignitas. The social circle this happened in used to be a lot smaller though, just friends, family or maybe the school. Now they're trying to do this in the world stage where standing out is a lot harder.