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It is what I say to everybody: I am very happy that you can find no traces of my childhood on the Internet. I was never a problem kid, teen and student, but we

by Loic 5y ago

It is what I say to everybody: I am very happy that you can find no traces of my childhood on the Internet. I was never a problem kid, teen and student, but we had parties, fun, we enjoyed life knowing that the day after what happened would simply stay as memories which would later vanish with the time. We have 3 boys (8, 12 and 14) and I can see how for our oldest one, all the social medias (or whatever social "App du jour") is putting more pressure on how he looks. He has a tendency to pay attention to clothes, hair style, whatever and all this tech is increasing the pressure. At the moment it has no effects on the two others but they do not have this interest at all. The amplification effect of an existing tendency is real and very hard to manage because you can talk a lot with your kids but you cannot cut them from these "built to be addictive" apps which are used by all the friends. And these stuff last... nothing is erased...

laurent92 5y ago
Counterpoint: The iPhone saved me. Yes, it’s also a source of the problem compounding, but when dealing with people was absolutely unbearable (especially during lockdown where everyone had rules for others), being able to override all of those suicidal/psychopathic/rage thoughts with a tasteless podcast/youtube video has proven successful. In another generation I would gave gotten myself drunk to sleep, at least I can binge-watch until sleep. Of course phone addiction is here a signal correlated with things going extremely bad, but plays various roles in that.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  A lot has changed from when I was a kid, but one thing I noticed hasn't: teachers (and other education system "contributors") are still very quick and eager to sort kids into buckets. Gifted, lazy, ESL, troublemaker, creative, well-behaved-but-dumb, etc. and once your kid is in a bucket, good luck getting them out. I couldn't imagine the hopelessness of being a kid where all the authority figures around you just assessed one day you were headed for failure and treated you that way forever, but it's standard at school. In my day, it was blatant: we were actually on numerically assigned tracks, 1 to 6, where 1 was "college bound," 6 was "prison bound," and the numbers in between were on a step-function spectrum between those two extremes. And people rarely if ever changed tracks.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    Yeah that's just wrong and horrible. We know most kids love to learn and you see that from infancy to kindergarten. That's innate. I don't think we spend enough time teaching behavioral and emotional regulation skills which is the core skill you need to strengthen throughout life.

by Loic 5y ago

laurent92 5y ago

Counterpoint: The iPhone saved me. Yes, it’s also a source of the problem compounding, but when dealing with people was absolutely unbearable (especially during lockdown where everyone had rules for others), being able to override all of those suicidal/psychopathic/rage thoughts with a tasteless podcast/youtube video has proven successful. In another generation I would gave gotten myself drunk to sleep, at least I can binge-watch until sleep. Of course phone addiction is here a signal correlated with things going extremely bad, but plays various roles in that.

ryandrake 5y ago
A lot has changed from when I was a kid, but one thing I noticed hasn't: teachers (and other education system "contributors") are still very quick and eager to sort kids into buckets. Gifted, lazy, ESL, troublemaker, creative, well-behaved-but-dumb, etc. and once your kid is in a bucket, good luck getting them out. I couldn't imagine the hopelessness of being a kid where all the authority figures around you just assessed one day you were headed for failure and treated you that way forever, but it's standard at school. In my day, it was blatant: we were actually on numerically assigned tracks, 1 to 6, where 1 was "college bound," 6 was "prison bound," and the numbers in between were on a step-function spectrum between those two extremes. And people rarely if ever changed tracks.
- sjg007 5y ago
  Yeah that's just wrong and horrible. We know most kids love to learn and you see that from infancy to kindergarten. That's innate. I don't think we spend enough time teaching behavioral and emotional regulation skills which is the core skill you need to strengthen throughout life.