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One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of th

One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. One of them even tried to swipe one of those adverts that's made of a big flatscreen. What confuses them is that some flatscreens aren't touchscreens, eg my macbook, while most of the smaller screens like phones and tablets are. Overall I'd say it's pretty hard to stay conservative about exposing them to screens. They're all over the place now, if I don't give them one they'll want mine. Plus their friends see them everywhere, too. I'm trying to at least steer the screen time towards useful things like math and coding, but it's not always easy. I have this scary feeling that how you spent your screen time as a kid of this generation (current children) is going to be one of the major determinants of your life. You can use the relatively new power of having all the world's knowledge at your fingertips, or you can use your time looking at cat pictures. The difference is going to magnify the natural differences that occured in previous generations, as the kids who want to learn about stuff can teach themselves while there's never been a better way to waste time for kids who are inclined that way.

aantix 6y ago
My oldest (7) is logged into my Google account for Youtube. He subscribes to Minecraft and Fortnite Youtubers all the time. Periodically I will unsubscribe him to *most of those video game channels. And in turn, subscribe him to a few Science channels. He's recently gotten into soccer, so I subscribed him to a couple of beginner-howto soccer channels as well. His Youtube recommendations are now more science oriented and he seems to enjoy them. He doesn't seem to notice, yet. You can manage your channel subscriptions here: https://www.youtube.com/feed/channels https://www.youtube.com/feed/channels
- asadlionpk 6y ago
  that's a neat idea. Let me try that.
- grugagag 6y ago
  Kudos for currating their videos. My nephew who was initially very bright and interested in so many things ended up being captured by minecraft youtube videos for years. He eventually stopped but that time was completely wasted. I used to play chess with him but a soon as he got into youtubing he lost interest into everything else
  - ksdale 6y ago
    Is chess better than Minecraft?
    - grugagag 6y ago
      Chess is a game based on simple rules that yields complexity but i can't say it is “better” than Minecraft, it’s just something else. Minecraft is not a bad thing, what is bad is sinking countless hours only in this game! What do you come out of it with? Chess is a game that has a defined purpose. It has a beginning, a middle game and an endgame. One can learn openings, strategies, concentration etc. That translates to some interesting thinking tools that could be used outside of chess. Minecraft players usually wonder around and kick blocks and collect trinkets without a specific aim. Sure, some users build stuff which I find as cool. And leisurely playing isn't a bad thing. I have a problem with sinking too much time into just computer games or even more specifically with only one game and even worse, not playing the game but passively watch others play on youtube or twitch. Kids learn things all the time but if they're stuck in a virtual reality that starts to have diminishing returns fast.
      - ksdale 6y ago
        What do you come out of chess with? I've spent a lot of time playing computer games, they sparked a love of history, geography, technology, new kinds of music, they've informed my taste and sense of humor, and helped me be more circumspect when it comes to life "strategy". Without the love of history, I never would have gotten into chess, either, but it is something I enjoy. At any given time, it would have looked an awful lot like sinking countless hours into one game. Currently, jumping on a Discord call and playing with friends is an excellent substitution for social visit. Everyone has hobbies, and personally, I don't think the specific hobby matters as much as pursuing something with the possibility of intellectual growth.
        kazinator 6y ago
        I suspect that chess will hone your ability to analyze, categorize and prioritize the cases occurring in a complex situation that has many possibilities. Poor case analysis in chess leads to easy defeat.
vmception 6y ago
> I noticed my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. eh I'm in my 30s and am angry at car dashboards that clearly have GUI buttons on them but can only be used by the corresponding physical button on the side, or in some random other place nearby. Be nice if they did both if use while driving and not looking at that interface is the concern. I want to sink all of those cars. Like, in the ocean.
- barrkel 6y ago
  Similarly but contrariwise, I want to sink those driving devices which have removed physical buttons and mandated screen taps precisely because they can't be used without taking your eyes off the road. You can feel physical buttons. If the UI has a consistent menu system and a reset mechanism (e.g. a home button), you can navigate it blind. If it has different input modalities (switches, dials, toggles of different shapes and sizes) for different functions, even better.
- randomdata 6y ago
  The car I have allows both touching the elements on the screen as well as using physical knobs and levers to control the same elements. When it was new, I found myself reaching for the screen, but now that it has some age on it, the physical controls win every time. Which leads me to believe that touch is better for discoverability, but not general use. Which kind of mirrors my experience using computers with physical input devices versus touchscreen tablets/phones.
  - enobrev 6y ago
    I feel like a hybrid would be excellent. A big, advanced system built into a touchscreen UI, with a series of physical buttons and knobs around / beneath that can control that UI - with the ability to adjust presets for those physical knobs and buttons to driver-preference Edit: Of course I think it's been well proven that most car companies tend to write bad UIs so I don't imagine this will work as well as I envision it.
- jerrysievert 6y ago
dx87 6y ago
> One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen I've talked to teachers who said that they've started seeing young children with picture books doing the zoom in/out pinching motion on pages.
- Romanulus 6y ago
  Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Reminds me of the video of a very inebriated old Polish man doing a breathalizer test who mistakenly takes a swig of the device (instead of blowing into it) and then promptly falling over. We are drunk on information.
  - jdietrich 6y ago
    >Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Early versions of iOS were rife with skeuomorphism. Is it sad that iBooks displayed your books on a wooden shelf and played page-turn animations that look like paper, or is it just an application of existing skills and knowledge to a different technology? Paper books are obsolete. Some people think that they aren't obsolete because they're using tiny low-res monitors or don't know how to use a document manager or haven't used an Apple Pencil, but digital text is just better. I don't care whether young people know what to do with a paper book, but I do care that they know how to interact effectively with text. I'm far more perturbed that schools waste countless person-hours teaching cursive handwriting, but most don't teach typing.
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      Partial damage to a paper book leaves the rest of it functional. Partial damage to a digital book leaves it unable to boot.
      - WalterSear 6y ago
        Partial damage to a paper book leaves you with a partially damaged book that costs as much time and money as a new one to replace. Restoring/downloading a new copy of a partial damaged digital book takes less time than it took me to type up this reply.
birdyrooster 6y ago
I can’t tell you how many time I think the iMac for signing vendors/guests into the building is a touchscreen even though I know iMac isn’t touch sensitive.
- svachalek 6y ago
  Yeah, I occasionally find myself tapping my MacBook's screen even though I was an adult before I ever encountered a touchscreen. It's just so natural it becomes reflex in no time at all.
turtlebits 6y ago
The problem is that parents are using screen time as a nanny, and are training their kids to rely on them as such. IMO, kids need to be taught self-control and have the ability to entertain themselves before screens are introduced. Toddler age is definitely too early, I am in the opinion that as little as necessary until it starts to be required in school. My 2nd grader knows that screens are useful and has seen limited use, wikipedia, video calls, but he is always accompanied by me. And he has no reliance on them.
- novok 6y ago
  The automated nanny of the past was other kids in the neighbourhood, but due to laws and a culture of helicopter parenting that developed during the 80s/90s, kids are basically forbidden from playing by themselves with local kids unless they are literally next door. Parenting is more work today than it used to be. In the past you sent out your kids to the local neighborhood all day, they came back to fix boo-boos and food and then you tucked them in to sleep. Sometimes you had family game nights or similar or everyone would watch TV / listen to the radio together. Now they must have adult eyes on them 24/7 lest you get CPS called on you.
  - jbaber 6y ago
    This 1000 times. About half the time we consciously choose to let our 8-year-old just open a car door or walk across a parking lot independently, some adult scurries over and "Hey! Your kid just carefully walked behind this parked car! Lucky I found his."
  - jbaber 6y ago
    This 1000 times. About half the time we consciously choose to let our 8-year-old just open a car door or walk across a parking lot independently, some adult scurries over and "Hey! Your kid just carefully walked behind this parked car! Lucky I found him."
- grvdrm 6y ago
  +1 to this. I saw a fellow parent dump their kid on an iPad whenever he fussed, regularly, for months. Seemed like he learned that he could whine to get what he wanted (the iPad) rather than learning how to play/interact elsewhere. All parents are guilty of something like this, but I remain firmly in the camp of not handing over the device just because my kid wants or whines for it.
dublin 6y ago
A good study would be to compare how these screen-trained toddlers compare with screen-free toddlers (you might have to go rural to find those) in interacting and recognizing things in the real 3D world. My guess is that screenies exhibit a marked bias towards 2D perception and thinking, with weaker 3D.
- jdietrich 6y ago
  Related: video gamers are better at performing keyhole surgery. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17309970/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17309970/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
speedgoose 6y ago
A modern MacBook should have a touch screen though. I can't blame the children that Apple hasn't managed to release a MacBook with a touchscreen in the last 10 years.
jerrysievert 6y ago
> One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. I had a cat like that once. he had been playing a cat game on the iPad and managed to get pretty good at it. later, I was doing a project that involved several small touch screens. it became difficult to work on the project when he was around, as he saw images on the screen and started pawing them, trying to get them to move and make sound. not just kids. cats as well.

aantix 6y ago

My oldest (7) is logged into my Google account for Youtube. He subscribes to Minecraft and Fortnite Youtubers all the time. Periodically I will unsubscribe him to *most of those video game channels. And in turn, subscribe him to a few Science channels. He's recently gotten into soccer, so I subscribed him to a couple of beginner-howto soccer channels as well. His Youtube recommendations are now more science oriented and he seems to enjoy them. He doesn't seem to notice, yet. You can manage your channel subscriptions here: https://www.youtube.com/feed/channels https://www.youtube.com/feed/channels

asadlionpk 6y ago
that's a neat idea. Let me try that.
grugagag 6y ago
Kudos for currating their videos. My nephew who was initially very bright and interested in so many things ended up being captured by minecraft youtube videos for years. He eventually stopped but that time was completely wasted. I used to play chess with him but a soon as he got into youtubing he lost interest into everything else
- ksdale 6y ago
  Is chess better than Minecraft?
  - grugagag 6y ago
    Chess is a game based on simple rules that yields complexity but i can't say it is “better” than Minecraft, it’s just something else. Minecraft is not a bad thing, what is bad is sinking countless hours only in this game! What do you come out of it with? Chess is a game that has a defined purpose. It has a beginning, a middle game and an endgame. One can learn openings, strategies, concentration etc. That translates to some interesting thinking tools that could be used outside of chess. Minecraft players usually wonder around and kick blocks and collect trinkets without a specific aim. Sure, some users build stuff which I find as cool. And leisurely playing isn't a bad thing. I have a problem with sinking too much time into just computer games or even more specifically with only one game and even worse, not playing the game but passively watch others play on youtube or twitch. Kids learn things all the time but if they're stuck in a virtual reality that starts to have diminishing returns fast.
    - ksdale 6y ago
      What do you come out of chess with? I've spent a lot of time playing computer games, they sparked a love of history, geography, technology, new kinds of music, they've informed my taste and sense of humor, and helped me be more circumspect when it comes to life "strategy". Without the love of history, I never would have gotten into chess, either, but it is something I enjoy. At any given time, it would have looked an awful lot like sinking countless hours into one game. Currently, jumping on a Discord call and playing with friends is an excellent substitution for social visit. Everyone has hobbies, and personally, I don't think the specific hobby matters as much as pursuing something with the possibility of intellectual growth.
      - kazinator 6y ago
        I suspect that chess will hone your ability to analyze, categorize and prioritize the cases occurring in a complex situation that has many possibilities. Poor case analysis in chess leads to easy defeat.

vmception 6y ago

> I noticed my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. eh I'm in my 30s and am angry at car dashboards that clearly have GUI buttons on them but can only be used by the corresponding physical button on the side, or in some random other place nearby. Be nice if they did both if use while driving and not looking at that interface is the concern. I want to sink all of those cars. Like, in the ocean.

barrkel 6y ago
Similarly but contrariwise, I want to sink those driving devices which have removed physical buttons and mandated screen taps precisely because they can't be used without taking your eyes off the road. You can feel physical buttons. If the UI has a consistent menu system and a reset mechanism (e.g. a home button), you can navigate it blind. If it has different input modalities (switches, dials, toggles of different shapes and sizes) for different functions, even better.
randomdata 6y ago
The car I have allows both touching the elements on the screen as well as using physical knobs and levers to control the same elements. When it was new, I found myself reaching for the screen, but now that it has some age on it, the physical controls win every time. Which leads me to believe that touch is better for discoverability, but not general use. Which kind of mirrors my experience using computers with physical input devices versus touchscreen tablets/phones.
- enobrev 6y ago
  I feel like a hybrid would be excellent. A big, advanced system built into a touchscreen UI, with a series of physical buttons and knobs around / beneath that can control that UI - with the ability to adjust presets for those physical knobs and buttons to driver-preference Edit: Of course I think it's been well proven that most car companies tend to write bad UIs so I don't imagine this will work as well as I envision it.
jerrysievert 6y ago

dx87 6y ago

> One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen I've talked to teachers who said that they've started seeing young children with picture books doing the zoom in/out pinching motion on pages.

Romanulus 6y ago
Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Reminds me of the video of a very inebriated old Polish man doing a breathalizer test who mistakenly takes a swig of the device (instead of blowing into it) and then promptly falling over. We are drunk on information.
- jdietrich 6y ago
  >Ouch... that's kind of bleakly sad. Early versions of iOS were rife with skeuomorphism. Is it sad that iBooks displayed your books on a wooden shelf and played page-turn animations that look like paper, or is it just an application of existing skills and knowledge to a different technology? Paper books are obsolete. Some people think that they aren't obsolete because they're using tiny low-res monitors or don't know how to use a document manager or haven't used an Apple Pencil, but digital text is just better. I don't care whether young people know what to do with a paper book, but I do care that they know how to interact effectively with text. I'm far more perturbed that schools waste countless person-hours teaching cursive handwriting, but most don't teach typing.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Partial damage to a paper book leaves the rest of it functional. Partial damage to a digital book leaves it unable to boot.
    - WalterSear 6y ago
      Partial damage to a paper book leaves you with a partially damaged book that costs as much time and money as a new one to replace. Restoring/downloading a new copy of a partial damaged digital book takes less time than it took me to type up this reply.

birdyrooster 6y ago

I can’t tell you how many time I think the iMac for signing vendors/guests into the building is a touchscreen even though I know iMac isn’t touch sensitive.

svachalek 6y ago
Yeah, I occasionally find myself tapping my MacBook's screen even though I was an adult before I ever encountered a touchscreen. It's just so natural it becomes reflex in no time at all.

turtlebits 6y ago

The problem is that parents are using screen time as a nanny, and are training their kids to rely on them as such. IMO, kids need to be taught self-control and have the ability to entertain themselves before screens are introduced. Toddler age is definitely too early, I am in the opinion that as little as necessary until it starts to be required in school. My 2nd grader knows that screens are useful and has seen limited use, wikipedia, video calls, but he is always accompanied by me. And he has no reliance on them.

novok 6y ago
The automated nanny of the past was other kids in the neighbourhood, but due to laws and a culture of helicopter parenting that developed during the 80s/90s, kids are basically forbidden from playing by themselves with local kids unless they are literally next door. Parenting is more work today than it used to be. In the past you sent out your kids to the local neighborhood all day, they came back to fix boo-boos and food and then you tucked them in to sleep. Sometimes you had family game nights or similar or everyone would watch TV / listen to the radio together. Now they must have adult eyes on them 24/7 lest you get CPS called on you.
- jbaber 6y ago
  This 1000 times. About half the time we consciously choose to let our 8-year-old just open a car door or walk across a parking lot independently, some adult scurries over and "Hey! Your kid just carefully walked behind this parked car! Lucky I found his."
- jbaber 6y ago
  This 1000 times. About half the time we consciously choose to let our 8-year-old just open a car door or walk across a parking lot independently, some adult scurries over and "Hey! Your kid just carefully walked behind this parked car! Lucky I found him."
grvdrm 6y ago
+1 to this. I saw a fellow parent dump their kid on an iPad whenever he fussed, regularly, for months. Seemed like he learned that he could whine to get what he wanted (the iPad) rather than learning how to play/interact elsewhere. All parents are guilty of something like this, but I remain firmly in the camp of not handing over the device just because my kid wants or whines for it.

dublin 6y ago

A good study would be to compare how these screen-trained toddlers compare with screen-free toddlers (you might have to go rural to find those) in interacting and recognizing things in the real 3D world. My guess is that screenies exhibit a marked bias towards 2D perception and thinking, with weaker 3D.

jdietrich 6y ago
Related: video gamers are better at performing keyhole surgery. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17309970/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17309970/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

speedgoose 6y ago

A modern MacBook should have a touch screen though. I can't blame the children that Apple hasn't managed to release a MacBook with a touchscreen in the last 10 years.

jerrysievert 6y ago

> One interesting thing I noticed is my kids who have grown up with touchscreens think that everything is a touchscreen. I had a cat like that once. he had been playing a cat game on the iPad and managed to get pretty good at it. later, I was doing a project that involved several small touch screens. it became difficult to work on the project when he was around, as he saw images on the screen and started pawing them, trying to get them to move and make sound. not just kids. cats as well.