> Just that disciplined experiments are necessary to avoid all these subjective pits. Disciplined experiments would require decades to learn how new media infl

> Just that disciplined experiments are necessary to avoid all these subjective pits. Disciplined experiments would require decades to learn how new media influence development of a child. Disciplined experiments require people subjects and a big moral no-no in the most cases. It is easier (maybe it is the only way for our society) to just watch what happens and to setup a small scale experiments to distinguish causes from effects. While we are designing experiments children grow and become adults. When we finish with experiments the world would be the different place and the only our scientific result would be an ability to explain what happened in the past. (It would be a limited ability, because no one would be able to replicate our experiments and to confirm our findings.) So I agree that speculations about future character of a child of current generation is a pure speculation, but it is the only way to apply brains to a current educational tasks. Alternatively we can say that a pure speculation is not good enough and do nothing, let things flow by the stream. I, personally, believe that the former way is better than the latter, even if it is unscientific.