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AI is making children even dumber. The death of reading culture, the rise of video games, then smartphones, then social media and doomscrolling, and the lack o
by coldtea 2y ago
AI is making children even dumber.
The death of reading culture, the rise of video games, then smartphones, then social media and doomscrolling, and the lack of tactile physical contact with the environment, and decline in socialization had already made kids much dumber.
Case in point, someone will retort by pointing to IQ scores, or how school knowledge doesn't matter because we can always Google it (or, in 2024, ask AI). That person would be the product of earlier, pre-AI, dumber-ing processes.
- hammyhavoc 2y agoMy reading age was off the chart (beyond 16) at the age of 5 thanks to the combination of voice acting and dialogue boxes in '90s games—prior to that, I struggled. Edutainment value can definitely be a thing. I got some certificate for it and someone outside the school came to validate that it was true as it was so shocking. Was reading "at a university level" and devoured books.
- coldtea 2y agoIt's also a common symptom with high functioning asd, known as "hyperlexia".
- hammyhavoc 2y agoWow! Didn't know that! Guilty as charged in terms of ASD, although it's a recent revelation and went unnoticed versus my ADHD as a child. Would have been great to know that back then, would have made my life much easier going forward! Instead, the "achievement" got celebrated by the school, which is now quite laughable, then really struggled once I got to a school of 2,500 people instead of ~30. Some of these "what happens to 'gifted' children" horror stories of overlooked ASD really resonate.
- orwin 2y agoPeople now read more than anytime in history. In multiple language even. Maybe that changed in the last few years, but millenials read way, way more than baby boomers, and buy more books (and when you compare % of wealth dedicated to books, it's not even a valid comparison, and only GenZ is close). Also i've talked to my librarian recently about the expansion of the political theory aisle, he said that why my generation (Millennial) lead the reduction in adventure novel and the expention of fantasy and anticipation, GenZ read a lot of really "boring" books, about history and political theory. Maybe it's only my country, but that makes me feel less alone and quite optimist about the future.
- coldtea 2y ago>People now read more than anytime in history The consume more tripe (including written tripe) on the internet, not more books (physical or of the e-kind), even when they do buy them it's mostly self-help and other low-brow stuff. Even professors and supposedly educated people read less and less books, and can concentrate less on what they read. Not sure if Gen Z is making a u-turn on this - I doubt it, but am open to be proven wrong (and also, they do it at the library? Maybe a small minority?)
- mcphage 2y ago> The consume more tripe (including written tripe) on the internet, not more books (physical or of the e-kind), even when they do buy them it's mostly self-help and other low-brow stuff. People consuming tripe is nothing new. Nor is buying self-help books.
- orwin 2y agoSorry, it's a mistranslation, I translated 'libraire' by librarian. I meant bookstore teller (I think). And yes, the average age at the bookstore actually came down a lot imho.
- Turing_Machine 2y agoNo one put you in charge of policing the reading tastes of other people. Just sayin'. > Even professors and supposedly educated people read less and less books "Fewer", not "less". "Book" is a countable noun, not a mass noun.
- gaiagraphia 2y agohttps://dictionary.cambridge.org/pl/dictionary/english/less-and-less https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pl/dictionary/english/less-... What's your opinion on Cambridge's entry of "less and less"? More interestingly, what's the purpose of grammar policiing? If enough people use an expression, it becomes language. It's weird how people claim some type of superiority just because they subscribe to a certain phrase.