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"A toddler who learns to build with virtual blocks in an iPad game gains no ability to build with actual blocks, according to Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician

"A toddler who learns to build with virtual blocks in an iPad game gains no ability to build with actual blocks, according to Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and a lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines on screen time." This is sad. I myself am addicted to computer games but played with a TON of lego growing up. I can easily rotate 3d shapes and a bunch of stuff in my visual eye, and imagine the 'feel' of how it would interact with other physical things and I think its probably somewhat attributed to all those formative years. Internet didn't exist or when it did , ran at 14.4kbps, not very compelling. Can't believe the struggles modern kids will have growing up trying to combat video game / screen addiction.

samcday 8y ago
Contrived example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk I'm right with you. I grew up on the cusp of the internet's explosive growth. I got online every chance I could get, but until I was in my mid-teens our internet was dial-up and I wasn't allowed to monopolize the phone line. I still spent a lot of time on computers, but without the internet it was a very different dynamic, IMHO. You had to engage the critical-thinking bits of your brain a lot more, since answering questions didn't involve inputting those questions into Google and having StackOverflow/Wikipedia/random blog posts give you the answer sans any of the process/context required to arrive at that answer. I also spent more time interacting with things physically too. Lego (parents bought me a Mindstorm kit one christmas), physical books, even just tearing apart old computers and putting them back together.
XorNot 8y ago
I actually have a different concern then "screen time" which is just "play space". High density living in cities is dreadful for providing enough outdoors / free activity space for kids to be kids - too much noise (or a risk of them making too much noise), too much communal property they shouldn't damage or can't work on. Growing up, I have memories of my dad building things around the house (including our cubby house), having a sandpit etc. How do you do any of that in an apartment in the city? How do you even have reasonable transit distances to places you can do those things?
- anovikov 8y ago
  Well people in all of the free world have been largely living in cities for 2-3 generations now, what's new here?
- crawshaw 8y ago
  There is a city playground 3 minutes walk from my apartment with a sandpit, swings, and climbing structures. Almost always, there is another kid there for mine to play with. We go every day it is warm enough. This is not unusual in Manhattan. Pick any apartment and walk five minutes in every direction. You'll find a playground. In the winter we take the subway 20 minutes to a large indoor complex with better equipment and hundreds of other children. They are not quiet! Of all the places we go, his favorite is the subway, where he gets to say Hi! and Bye! to lots of people. I dread the loneliness of the burbs.
  - pushpop 8y ago
    Depends where you go. Some cities are very social while others are not. Equally some suburbs are social and others are not.
  - ryanworl 8y ago
    Where I used to live on 78th St near the East River there is a park called John Jay Park. It is behind two different schools. There would be literally hundreds of children playing daily in that park when the weather was nice, and usually a smaller number when it wasn’t as nice, but still hardly ever zero during reasonable “kids playing outside hours”. Ages were between kids that could barely walk there with parents or nannies all the way to young teens. I’m sure many other cities are not like this, but in neighborhoods where people with children in NYC actually live (like the UES) there are plenty of parks and people to fill them.
    - exelius 8y ago
      New York (Manhattan in particular) is unique among American urban areas in this way. A big part of the way American cities grow is the interplay between the quality of the various local school districts.
jimmy1 8y ago
Luckily for me, they still sell legos! And you best believe my daughter will be playing with them as soon as she is old enough.
europsucks 8y ago
What will earn him more money in later life, though - stacking bricks, or using a computer? Why can't you do both? Did they also study how much you learn about using a computer by stacking bricks? What if they found that kids who only play with bricks suck at Tetris? Would that be a cause for concern?
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Which will earn him more money in later life, though That's a poor measure of somethings value.
  - europsucks 8y ago
    How do you measure the value of stacking bricks, then?
    - altairiumblue 8y ago
      You really don't. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that it should be ignored
    - _Schizotypy 8y ago
      The ability to manipulate objects is great to foster understanding of our world and development of spacial visualization. Apparently there are some people who don't understand how to properly put an air filter cover back on in their car because they don't understand it just needed to be rotated 90 degrees, which is honestly incredibly sad. The benefits come from brain development and understanding how things work together which, if you want to think about it in monetary terms, helps in any industry. Everything is an interacting system.
      - europsucks 8y ago
        I know a lot of people who can't use a computer or a smartphone, which is also very sad. They never learned to explore and experiment with the user interface. If you explain something to them, they write down every step. When the next software update changes a little thing, they are lost again. That's very similar to your "just turn it by 90°" example. Do you have elderly parents you support with their computers? Then maybe you know what I am talking about. I am not saying kids shouldn't play with bricks. The whole premise of the article seems silly. Nobody claims kids should play with computers instead of bricks. As for becoming computer savvy, I've seen kids pick up quite a lot from playing with computers. They quickly figure out how to find and launch the games they like, for example. And they also experiment, for example rearranging the UI. Then there is Minecraft.
marmaduke 8y ago
I think this incidentally also explains why we have as yet no human like AI: no computer has grown up as a toddler has, learning the same skills etc etc. There’s a whole field of embodied cognition and linguistics that predicts this
- alexheikel 8y ago
  There is one actually. It’s human and looks like AI. Take a look at Hal in the AppStore
protomyth 8y ago
As an aside, get the big (foot cube) blocks for younger children. They do help with stacking and play at an early age.
hopler 8y ago
Marvin Minsky suggested that LEGO corresponded to the decline of America inventiveness, because LEGO structures are mechanically fake. Seems analogous to the argument against video games replacing blocks. https://youtu.be/g5vPVJsZ948 https://youtu.be/g5vPVJsZ948
- egypturnash 8y ago
  "Mechanically fake"? Did he make this argument before or after the Technix line existed? Because that stuff will teach you a ton about how physical machines work.
maehwasu 8y ago
> according to Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and a lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines on screen time And really, if we can’t unthinkingly trust Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Hospital, what can we believe in??? The journalistic practice of inserting quotes from official-sounding people as “evidence” is epistemologically revolting.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  Indeed. I have a hard time believing that a child moving around in a full 3D virtual environment isn’t building spatial skills. Have you ever seen an “old” person play Minecraft or a FPS? Effectively playing a game like that takes immense spatial reasoning.
  - klipt 8y ago
    Sure, but an iPad isn't a full 3D environment. And even what people call full 3D environments don't include all the stimulations of actual 3D real life, e.g. inner ear balance.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      Some non-3D iPad game seems like a bad example to use in the article given the popularity of things like Minecraft. Why not discuss the impact 3D games have instead? Also, playing with blocks doesn’t do anything to your inner ear.
      - hutzlibu 8y ago
        Then there are things like sensatory feelings ... on your hands. Which can be different from a touchscreen..
  - 12298765 8y ago
    We have 2 eyes and stereo vision... No matter what you put on a screen, it'll be 1-dimensional in the body's ability to discern distance and actual spatial awareness.
ekianjo 8y ago
> "A toddler who learns to build with virtual blocks in an iPad game gains no ability to build with actual blocks, Based on what ACTUAL evidence?
mondo9000 8y ago
Video game playing has at least one notable crossover to real-life in the case of race car driving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jann_Mardenborough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jann_Mardenborough
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
traderjane 8y ago
I've seen parents effectively control childrens relationship to digital entertainment by having a specific gaming console like Xbox, and having a computer that isn't that suitable for culturally in-demand games like Fortnite.

samcday 8y ago

Contrived example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk I'm right with you. I grew up on the cusp of the internet's explosive growth. I got online every chance I could get, but until I was in my mid-teens our internet was dial-up and I wasn't allowed to monopolize the phone line. I still spent a lot of time on computers, but without the internet it was a very different dynamic, IMHO. You had to engage the critical-thinking bits of your brain a lot more, since answering questions didn't involve inputting those questions into Google and having StackOverflow/Wikipedia/random blog posts give you the answer sans any of the process/context required to arrive at that answer. I also spent more time interacting with things physically too. Lego (parents bought me a Mindstorm kit one christmas), physical books, even just tearing apart old computers and putting them back together.

XorNot 8y ago

I actually have a different concern then "screen time" which is just "play space". High density living in cities is dreadful for providing enough outdoors / free activity space for kids to be kids - too much noise (or a risk of them making too much noise), too much communal property they shouldn't damage or can't work on. Growing up, I have memories of my dad building things around the house (including our cubby house), having a sandpit etc. How do you do any of that in an apartment in the city? How do you even have reasonable transit distances to places you can do those things?

anovikov 8y ago
Well people in all of the free world have been largely living in cities for 2-3 generations now, what's new here?
crawshaw 8y ago
There is a city playground 3 minutes walk from my apartment with a sandpit, swings, and climbing structures. Almost always, there is another kid there for mine to play with. We go every day it is warm enough. This is not unusual in Manhattan. Pick any apartment and walk five minutes in every direction. You'll find a playground. In the winter we take the subway 20 minutes to a large indoor complex with better equipment and hundreds of other children. They are not quiet! Of all the places we go, his favorite is the subway, where he gets to say Hi! and Bye! to lots of people. I dread the loneliness of the burbs.
- pushpop 8y ago
  Depends where you go. Some cities are very social while others are not. Equally some suburbs are social and others are not.
- ryanworl 8y ago
  Where I used to live on 78th St near the East River there is a park called John Jay Park. It is behind two different schools. There would be literally hundreds of children playing daily in that park when the weather was nice, and usually a smaller number when it wasn’t as nice, but still hardly ever zero during reasonable “kids playing outside hours”. Ages were between kids that could barely walk there with parents or nannies all the way to young teens. I’m sure many other cities are not like this, but in neighborhoods where people with children in NYC actually live (like the UES) there are plenty of parks and people to fill them.
  - exelius 8y ago
    New York (Manhattan in particular) is unique among American urban areas in this way. A big part of the way American cities grow is the interplay between the quality of the various local school districts.

jimmy1 8y ago

Luckily for me, they still sell legos! And you best believe my daughter will be playing with them as soon as she is old enough.

europsucks 8y ago

What will earn him more money in later life, though - stacking bricks, or using a computer? Why can't you do both? Did they also study how much you learn about using a computer by stacking bricks? What if they found that kids who only play with bricks suck at Tetris? Would that be a cause for concern?

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Which will earn him more money in later life, though That's a poor measure of somethings value.
- europsucks 8y ago
  How do you measure the value of stacking bricks, then?
  - altairiumblue 8y ago
    You really don't. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that it should be ignored
  - _Schizotypy 8y ago
    The ability to manipulate objects is great to foster understanding of our world and development of spacial visualization. Apparently there are some people who don't understand how to properly put an air filter cover back on in their car because they don't understand it just needed to be rotated 90 degrees, which is honestly incredibly sad. The benefits come from brain development and understanding how things work together which, if you want to think about it in monetary terms, helps in any industry. Everything is an interacting system.
    - europsucks 8y ago
      I know a lot of people who can't use a computer or a smartphone, which is also very sad. They never learned to explore and experiment with the user interface. If you explain something to them, they write down every step. When the next software update changes a little thing, they are lost again. That's very similar to your "just turn it by 90°" example. Do you have elderly parents you support with their computers? Then maybe you know what I am talking about. I am not saying kids shouldn't play with bricks. The whole premise of the article seems silly. Nobody claims kids should play with computers instead of bricks. As for becoming computer savvy, I've seen kids pick up quite a lot from playing with computers. They quickly figure out how to find and launch the games they like, for example. And they also experiment, for example rearranging the UI. Then there is Minecraft.

marmaduke 8y ago

I think this incidentally also explains why we have as yet no human like AI: no computer has grown up as a toddler has, learning the same skills etc etc. There’s a whole field of embodied cognition and linguistics that predicts this

alexheikel 8y ago
There is one actually. It’s human and looks like AI. Take a look at Hal in the AppStore

protomyth 8y ago

As an aside, get the big (foot cube) blocks for younger children. They do help with stacking and play at an early age.

hopler 8y ago

Marvin Minsky suggested that LEGO corresponded to the decline of America inventiveness, because LEGO structures are mechanically fake. Seems analogous to the argument against video games replacing blocks. https://youtu.be/g5vPVJsZ948 https://youtu.be/g5vPVJsZ948

egypturnash 8y ago
"Mechanically fake"? Did he make this argument before or after the Technix line existed? Because that stuff will teach you a ton about how physical machines work.

maehwasu 8y ago

> according to Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and a lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines on screen time And really, if we can’t unthinkingly trust Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Hospital, what can we believe in??? The journalistic practice of inserting quotes from official-sounding people as “evidence” is epistemologically revolting.

malvosenior 8y ago
Indeed. I have a hard time believing that a child moving around in a full 3D virtual environment isn’t building spatial skills. Have you ever seen an “old” person play Minecraft or a FPS? Effectively playing a game like that takes immense spatial reasoning.
- klipt 8y ago
  Sure, but an iPad isn't a full 3D environment. And even what people call full 3D environments don't include all the stimulations of actual 3D real life, e.g. inner ear balance.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    Some non-3D iPad game seems like a bad example to use in the article given the popularity of things like Minecraft. Why not discuss the impact 3D games have instead? Also, playing with blocks doesn’t do anything to your inner ear.
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      Then there are things like sensatory feelings ... on your hands. Which can be different from a touchscreen..
- 12298765 8y ago
  We have 2 eyes and stereo vision... No matter what you put on a screen, it'll be 1-dimensional in the body's ability to discern distance and actual spatial awareness.

ekianjo 8y ago

> "A toddler who learns to build with virtual blocks in an iPad game gains no ability to build with actual blocks, Based on what ACTUAL evidence?

mondo9000 8y ago

Video game playing has at least one notable crossover to real-life in the case of race car driving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jann_Mardenborough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jann_Mardenborough

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

traderjane 8y ago

I've seen parents effectively control childrens relationship to digital entertainment by having a specific gaming console like Xbox, and having a computer that isn't that suitable for culturally in-demand games like Fortnite.