8 ms·

Modern Luddites: On Being a Digital Minimalist Family in a Tech-Saturated World

58 points by trevin 2y ago

maxehmookau 2y ago
> But great tools don’t automatically make great toys, and I want my kids to learn the difference. Quote of the century. I couldn't agree more. As someone who makes a living from tech, I want it less and less in my life in my spare time. That doesn't mean it's not important, useful and gives us boundless opportunities.
starquake 2y ago
Saying "tech is bad" or "screens are bad" sound very narrow-minded to me. Sure, there are issues in this "Tech-Saturated World" but I don't think avoiding Tech as much as possible is the answer. I prefer a digital balance over digital minimalism.
- maxehmookau 2y ago
  I don't think that's what the author is saying. I think they're saying that over-use of tech from a very young age is damaging in later life and that the data from Gen Z is beginning to paint that picture.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- droopyEyelids 2y ago
  I agree with your point. I also dont think recreational drugs are bad. BUT i dont want my kids using recreational drugs till their prefrontal cortex has matured (or as close to that time as possible)
- biorach 2y ago
  she does not say "tech is bad" or "screens are bad" > I’m not anti-tech. My entire career as a writer and editor has been enabled by the Internet, and I wouldn’t want to go back to a time without it. But great tools don’t automatically make great toys, and I want my kids to learn the difference.
- arp242 2y ago
  > Saying "tech is bad" or "screens are bad" sound very narrow-minded to me The article says nothing of the sort. Nor does it advocate "avoiding Tech as much as possible". Your comment is completely disconnected from the content of the article.
no_wizard 2y ago
I know this isn’t directly related to the article, but for what it’s worth Luddites weren’t anti technology at all[0] in fact they were quite adept at using technology. It was a labor movement that fought for worker rights in the face of new technologies. [0]: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-luddites-in-the-age-of-ai https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-l...
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
  They were like, "this technology is pretty cool and all, but not so much if it means I'm going to lose my source of income and starve homeless in the streets".
  - nostrebored 2y ago
    A specific kind of worker not realizing that something else driving productivity doesn’t mean they won’t be able to still contribute to society and be compensated? Very apropos
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
      I mean I get the point and all, but the idea that 'don't worry because the capitalist economy has your back and would never let anyone starve in the streets' doesn't hold up too well, especially at that time.
      - JohnFen 2y ago
        Or any time since.
  - corimaith 2y ago
    Maybe so, but 50 years, a hundred years from now, do you want to be doing the same things as today? And if it's not us, it's going to the developing world that picks up that mantle anyways. In a few decades you might find yourself in the same situation as former colonial states. Blocking creative destruction has been cited as one of the major factors in why nations fail.
gizmo 2y ago
One downside of having an unusual childhood -- even if it is by most metrics a good childhood -- is that it might make it much harder for the kids to relate to other kids as they get older. > “Conformity is overrated,” I tell them jokingly, but that is small consolation when you are the only kid going into tenth grade without a smartphone. My oldest son wants a phone badly because everyone else has one, but that’s not a compelling enough reason to buy him one. It's easy for parents to completely misjudge how the child will be affected by being the only one in their class who has to live by different rules. In some ways, this feels more like a sociological experiment the parent is interested in doing, when really, the parent should be setting up the children for success in adulthood. > For instance, my son cannot participate in any classroom activity that involves a QR code, a fact I’ve had to point out to his teachers. Sometimes it’s hard for my kids to find information about group projects or extracurricular activities when social media is used to communicate with students, as opposed to updating a website or sending an email. Come on.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  The older you get the wider the range of people you're able/expected to relate to. When you're young, a 1 or 2 year age difference is a big deal. By the time you're middle age, a decade difference makes little difference. Basically, what you're talking about isn't a long term problem.
  - gizmo 2y ago
    If the kids turn out alright then of course it won't be a problem. But that's question-begging. My argument is that parental dogmatism is dangerous. When you set out like "we're right about technology and all other parents are wrong" it's very hard to change your mind later when evidence to the contrary accumulates. Maybe 2 of out 3 kids will have a happy "digitally minimalist" childhood and the 3rd one will be absolutely miserable. Could easily happen. Kids have their own personalities after all. How will these parents respond? My bet is the unhappy child will get blamed for being unhappy and the happy siblings will be used as proof that the parents are right.
  - watwut 2y ago
Bumblonono 2y ago
My only problem with this is the good content on the internet like good YouTube videos explaining to you how the world and things work. If i could have a good filter which really can control my internet usage without giving away my privacy that would be awesome. But no first of, everything goes through chrome and i do not trust random addons, i can also circumvent it too easily. Then even services like YouTube introduced there shorts. Do i watch them? Sometimes. Do i want to watch them? no Can i deactivate them? no.. I will continue paying for YouTube premium! But pls give me a personal pseudo budget and not some ass weak timer i can just click away...
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  I spend more time offline. I started downloading lists of videos I find interesting and consume those offline. Not being recommended videos when I'm not looking for recommendations feels like it I have a lot more control.
- nxpnsv 2y ago
  Shorts are terrible, they suck you in and 15 mindless videos later you can't even remember what you've seen. I almost only want to search for videos or check subscriptions, the main page with recommendations is full of traps...
  - wasteduniverse 2y ago
    [dead]
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    I was talking to my friend about this the other day. How you can watch video shorts for an hour and come away with no new knowledge at all. Nothing sticks. It's like shorts are a brain glitch where you can artificially quench your desire to do stuff with empty filler.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      This is often my experience reading the comment section on Reddit or HN. a lot of hot takes, stimulating social disputes, interesting logical constructions, but it is all gone within 5 minutes of getting up.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
myth_drannon 2y ago
Everyone I know in the neighbourhood is reading or read the "The Anxious Generation". It looks like the tide is turning and there is very strong anti-tech sentiment everywhere. And now that we have smartwatches with GPS/LTE connectivity, kids don't need cellphones to be in touch with their parents.
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  Yes, I can see some signs of that as well. Lots of street library bookcases with free books and 2 new actual bookstores popped up in my neighborhood. Yesterday I went to one and it was a great experience and couldn't resist buying an absolutely beautiful book on lichens [1] and a book for my kid. Reading this book feels different than reading an efemeral digital copy. I think we were to quick to dismiss paper books. [1] Lichenpedia: A Brief Compendium
- JohnFen 2y ago
  Is it actually an anti-tech sentiment, or are people recognizing that we have tended to incorporate tech into our lives in an unhealthy way and they are trying to rebalance things?
drewcoo 2y ago
Thus was Ned Ludd finally laid to rest, his name taken up by helicopter parents who chose to battle against screen time instead of autism-inducing vaccines or power lines.
em500 2y ago
Time to update his old xkcd https://xkcd.com/1299/ https://xkcd.com/1299/ s/I/My children s/TV/phone s/1950/2010 s/2000/2020
toddmorey 2y ago
I am a parent, youngest now 13. Could I do it all again, would absolutely have this approach. Note she’s not anti-tech but pro childhood & the time & space & innocence you need to develop yourself. The device access my kiddos had was not an enrichment. I see that now. I like her compromise of tech in the common area but no individual social accounts until 18.
pwillia7 2y ago
I do like the author trying to find some balance, but how does this not poorly prepare your kids to live in the world with their peers?
- throwaway173738 2y ago
  It doesn’t. Facebook and Instagram are such a tiny part of everyone’s life. I don’t use any of those sites, and a brief stint on Nextdoor recently reminded me that they contribute nothing but anxiety and comparison to my life. I’ve never needed an Instagram account to get a job or find an apartment or my significant other. The lure of those sites is that they make you think they’re revealing the whole world to you when they’re barely scratching the surface like a magazine. There’s a whole world of people and places out there that aren’t on social media because they have better things to do with their lives.
  - jajko 2y ago
    It goes much further - social media is the new bread for the poor, rich folks travel, do expensive dining and adventuring and similar. Sure, its highly addictive due to short dopamine hits so even rich are not immune to it, but most rich / upper middle class I ever saw are smart enough and well off enough to stay the hell away from it. Also, article makes it like that's almost an unique behavior, while where we live (Switzerland), its more like default of good parenting, definitely a majority of our peers do it similarly. Doctors went through cancelling their FB accounts, we know number around us (wife is a doctor so I mean tens of various doctors mostly with smaller kids). Instagram was never a thing for them, neither for us. Raising their kids without digital screens either altogether or in a minimal fashion, till teenage years. It gets harder for parents, but anybody can see how much additional quality this brings into parenting. But this goes with the example parents set - if they are half-present and glued to screens themselves, don't expect miracles from those poor kids which imitate everything they see, and are very vulnerable to addictive behavioral patterns. When I compare such parenting with allowing screens almost infinitely due to laziness/exhaustion of parents, its heartbreaking how kids often end up later in life.
    - 2y ago
hellweaver666 2y ago
The author talks about all the benefits of a "screen free" childhood and I remember my own fondly (although as an older millennial it was rapidly interrupted as technology spread). What I always wonder though, is if this kind of upbringing is so positive for kids, why are so many boomers so self-centered and spiteful? Surely, they should be happy, beautiful and kind?
- JohnFen 2y ago
  Boomers aren't any more self-centered and spiteful than any other generation, it seems to me. As to the younger generations, we don't know what they'll be like when they reach the age boomers are now.
- jajko 2y ago
  I think its a very complex topic - what sort of average societal behavior then leads to some dominant trait X in given part of population. Its definitely not online vs park reduction. Older generations experienced often very little emotional intelligence, men were told from very early age to man-up, men don't cry, you don't discuss your feelings because that would be / make you gay. Women were raised from small girls to be obedient wives and mothers and not strive for much else in lives, just shut up and listen. I can see this massive EQ (or whatever is more appropriate term) difference myself, even me vs my dad, if you know what to look for its in plain sight and its massive. Now some folks from current generation didn't 'escape' this and are still like that, pushing this to their own kids, I somehow did and further I went away the clearer the picture was. I don't blame previous generation, this is how literally everybody functioned and how they were raised. But overall they had more freedom to play and also way more restriction and punishment. Lets see how today's young will fare in retirement, I don't think it will be a nice picture, definitely not for new generation of young.
kkfx 2y ago
Well... Some have said that I'm a modern Luddite because I do not use a macrobug aka smartphone except for Google Maps navigation, very limited on the go phone usage, very rare personal feeds (tt-RSS on my home server). Actually I'm an architect (sysadmin who design and implement infra, I do not choose the title anyway) and I've built a new home, all electric with p.v. and integrated as much as possible anything via Home Assistant but for some being desktop-centric means being Luddite. I tend to say that some are Luddite because even if they perfectly can they refuse to operate autonomously from their desktops, they choose not to care their digital life, they choose to stick with deprecated solutions, who cost them more money and trouble than choosing the current tech. Long story short: I think we should describe a bit more the meaning of Luddite, because as a mere tag seems to be a bit too much versatile...
jabroni_salad 2y ago
I really appreciate their approach to 'free range' children but most kids with cell phones are not doing it just because they asked for one. It's because mom & pop want their kid to be able to communicate their every movement and be tracked by a mapping app. To really get a handle on this we need to figure out what is going on with helicopter parents, a phenomenon that predates cell phones by decades.
- techjamie 2y ago
  What doesn't help is now so many people are even moreso on the stranger danger train than even a few years ago because of doomscrolling social media posts. Even if you aren't a helicopter parent, if you don't keep your kid attached to you, you risk a Karen calling CPS on you and getting a visit.
- watwut 2y ago
  It is simple - whenever something happens to a child, parents are blamed super hard. Every single issue child has is parents fault. Parents spend more time and effort actively parenting kids, much more then previous generations did. And in a put 99% of discussions, there is majority throwing scorn on parents in general. It is simple, parents are internalizing those lessons and do what out current society want from them. Plus parents are not allowed good time or something for themselves. They have only duties. Note even motivations in this article - parents ts are compassionate toward kids or want easy way for themselves. It is plan to engineer more competitive kid.
corimaith 2y ago
I can't really agree with the author's outlook on a completely tech free childhood. As with most things, you need to strike a balance. I'm reminded of stories in China where parents do similar things for gaming, then once college starts the kids swing in excess to the opposite. Some even die of a heart attack. It's much better if kids find their own limits under a safe environment with parents than alone where there is no one to stop them when things go to far. Plus there's going to be a huge social cost in being excluded from group chats or socializing through common interests. On the flipside, of course that dosen't mean letting kids go online virtually unsupervised all day, but it's the same issue of parents taking the simple, "easy" route of parenting rather than a more nuanced approach.
pajamasam 2y ago
> By the end of it, I hope my sons have a rich repository of childhood memories that will someday make them smile, laugh, and possibly even cringe. Playing video games on the TV during the afternoons in our summer holidays are some of my favourite memories. As an introvert and nerd, it gave me time to decompress and practice some skills, while it gave my parents some time to nap and have kid-free time after a morning of playing on the beach in the sun. Video games were also one of the things I could bond over and practice some comptetition with my dad and much-older sibling. Balance is key.
keybored 2y ago
> Looking ahead, I believe children will thrive if we teach them the life skills that set them apart from machines. I do not buy the argument that kids need to be exposed to tech from a young age in order to be professionally successful. The technology they use is designed to be intuitive (we all learned to use it later in life), and it won’t be the same in a decade. What matters more is teaching them how to be human—how to have conversations, make eye contact, be attentive and alert, be thoughtful and considerate, feel their emotions keenly, be insatiably curious about the real world. Training for that takes years and starts from birth. There is no time to lose. Okay but this doesn’t mean anything. It’s fine and meaningful if it just means interacting with each other instead of everyone staring at their own tablets or the same TV. But sometimes people get this idea that if they just remove something civilizational, they’ll get back to being human. But that’s never how it works. Either the mere exposure to it has tainted you forever or it was never that simple to begin with. The problem with moving to another country in order to get away from your problems (or whatever) is the constant of you. To simplify a lot: your own habitual thoughts. There’s no modern veneer which is obfuscating the real you. The real you is already there. And that takes more than a vipassana retreat/keto diet/tech diet to unravel.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Yes, but there are tons of cases that go either way, and sometime it is neither the thing or the individual, but the combination of the two which lead to undesired outcomes. In this case, I think it is reasonable to believe that training certain skills in the absence of distractions and impediments makes sense.
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    Provided these skills really stick, will the kid be able to activate them when they'll be in an environment full of distractions and impediments ? How well will they deal with SNS, work notifications, scams, dark patterns and addictive stuff thrown at them at every corner ? This reminds me of Mean Girls, where a kid raised with lions is thrown into the college environment. Except we now have so many other layers of complications to also deal with.
anticorporate 2y ago
I wish we had better agreement on a society on the terminology we use to describe types of technology. Even among HN readers on this thread, there seems to be a lot of conflating "technology" with the spyware and attention kidnapping products of surveillance capitalism. I grew up in the 80s and 90s with plenty of technology for the era; sure, we had a lot less of it than the rich kids did, but that was mostly just jealousy that my friends could play "better" games than I could. Technology was a thing you used when you sat down and intended to use it. It wasn't a thing that told you that you were missing out every second you weren't using it, and it wasn't a thing that gatekept access to conversations with people you knew or even basic commercial needs like transportation or food delivery. The problem isn't tech, it's carrying around dozens of corporations in your pocket.
TONIA1942 2y ago
[dead]

58 points by trevin 2y ago

> But great tools don’t automatically make great toys, and I want my kids to learn the difference. Quote of the century. I couldn't agree more. As someone who makes a living from tech, I want it less and less in my life in my spare time. That doesn't mean it's not important, useful and gives us boundless opportunities.

starquake 2y ago

Saying "tech is bad" or "screens are bad" sound very narrow-minded to me. Sure, there are issues in this "Tech-Saturated World" but I don't think avoiding Tech as much as possible is the answer. I prefer a digital balance over digital minimalism.

maxehmookau 2y ago
I don't think that's what the author is saying. I think they're saying that over-use of tech from a very young age is damaging in later life and that the data from Gen Z is beginning to paint that picture.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
droopyEyelids 2y ago
I agree with your point. I also dont think recreational drugs are bad. BUT i dont want my kids using recreational drugs till their prefrontal cortex has matured (or as close to that time as possible)
biorach 2y ago
she does not say "tech is bad" or "screens are bad" > I’m not anti-tech. My entire career as a writer and editor has been enabled by the Internet, and I wouldn’t want to go back to a time without it. But great tools don’t automatically make great toys, and I want my kids to learn the difference.
arp242 2y ago
> Saying "tech is bad" or "screens are bad" sound very narrow-minded to me The article says nothing of the sort. Nor does it advocate "avoiding Tech as much as possible". Your comment is completely disconnected from the content of the article.

no_wizard 2y ago

I know this isn’t directly related to the article, but for what it’s worth Luddites weren’t anti technology at all[0] in fact they were quite adept at using technology. It was a labor movement that fought for worker rights in the face of new technologies. [0]: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-luddites-in-the-age-of-ai https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-l...

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
They were like, "this technology is pretty cool and all, but not so much if it means I'm going to lose my source of income and starve homeless in the streets".
- nostrebored 2y ago
  A specific kind of worker not realizing that something else driving productivity doesn’t mean they won’t be able to still contribute to society and be compensated? Very apropos
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
    I mean I get the point and all, but the idea that 'don't worry because the capitalist economy has your back and would never let anyone starve in the streets' doesn't hold up too well, especially at that time.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      Or any time since.
- corimaith 2y ago
  Maybe so, but 50 years, a hundred years from now, do you want to be doing the same things as today? And if it's not us, it's going to the developing world that picks up that mantle anyways. In a few decades you might find yourself in the same situation as former colonial states. Blocking creative destruction has been cited as one of the major factors in why nations fail.

gizmo 2y ago

One downside of having an unusual childhood -- even if it is by most metrics a good childhood -- is that it might make it much harder for the kids to relate to other kids as they get older. > “Conformity is overrated,” I tell them jokingly, but that is small consolation when you are the only kid going into tenth grade without a smartphone. My oldest son wants a phone badly because everyone else has one, but that’s not a compelling enough reason to buy him one. It's easy for parents to completely misjudge how the child will be affected by being the only one in their class who has to live by different rules. In some ways, this feels more like a sociological experiment the parent is interested in doing, when really, the parent should be setting up the children for success in adulthood. > For instance, my son cannot participate in any classroom activity that involves a QR code, a fact I’ve had to point out to his teachers. Sometimes it’s hard for my kids to find information about group projects or extracurricular activities when social media is used to communicate with students, as opposed to updating a website or sending an email. Come on.

lupusreal 2y ago
The older you get the wider the range of people you're able/expected to relate to. When you're young, a 1 or 2 year age difference is a big deal. By the time you're middle age, a decade difference makes little difference. Basically, what you're talking about isn't a long term problem.
- gizmo 2y ago
  If the kids turn out alright then of course it won't be a problem. But that's question-begging. My argument is that parental dogmatism is dangerous. When you set out like "we're right about technology and all other parents are wrong" it's very hard to change your mind later when evidence to the contrary accumulates. Maybe 2 of out 3 kids will have a happy "digitally minimalist" childhood and the 3rd one will be absolutely miserable. Could easily happen. Kids have their own personalities after all. How will these parents respond? My bet is the unhappy child will get blamed for being unhappy and the happy siblings will be used as proof that the parents are right.
- watwut 2y ago

Bumblonono 2y ago

My only problem with this is the good content on the internet like good YouTube videos explaining to you how the world and things work. If i could have a good filter which really can control my internet usage without giving away my privacy that would be awesome. But no first of, everything goes through chrome and i do not trust random addons, i can also circumvent it too easily. Then even services like YouTube introduced there shorts. Do i watch them? Sometimes. Do i want to watch them? no Can i deactivate them? no.. I will continue paying for YouTube premium! But pls give me a personal pseudo budget and not some ass weak timer i can just click away...

onemoresoop 2y ago
I spend more time offline. I started downloading lists of videos I find interesting and consume those offline. Not being recommended videos when I'm not looking for recommendations feels like it I have a lot more control.
nxpnsv 2y ago
Shorts are terrible, they suck you in and 15 mindless videos later you can't even remember what you've seen. I almost only want to search for videos or check subscriptions, the main page with recommendations is full of traps...
- wasteduniverse 2y ago
  [dead]
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  I was talking to my friend about this the other day. How you can watch video shorts for an hour and come away with no new knowledge at all. Nothing sticks. It's like shorts are a brain glitch where you can artificially quench your desire to do stuff with empty filler.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    This is often my experience reading the comment section on Reddit or HN. a lot of hot takes, stimulating social disputes, interesting logical constructions, but it is all gone within 5 minutes of getting up.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

myth_drannon 2y ago

Everyone I know in the neighbourhood is reading or read the "The Anxious Generation". It looks like the tide is turning and there is very strong anti-tech sentiment everywhere. And now that we have smartwatches with GPS/LTE connectivity, kids don't need cellphones to be in touch with their parents.

onemoresoop 2y ago
Yes, I can see some signs of that as well. Lots of street library bookcases with free books and 2 new actual bookstores popped up in my neighborhood. Yesterday I went to one and it was a great experience and couldn't resist buying an absolutely beautiful book on lichens [1] and a book for my kid. Reading this book feels different than reading an efemeral digital copy. I think we were to quick to dismiss paper books. [1] Lichenpedia: A Brief Compendium
JohnFen 2y ago
Is it actually an anti-tech sentiment, or are people recognizing that we have tended to incorporate tech into our lives in an unhealthy way and they are trying to rebalance things?

drewcoo 2y ago

Thus was Ned Ludd finally laid to rest, his name taken up by helicopter parents who chose to battle against screen time instead of autism-inducing vaccines or power lines.

em500 2y ago

Time to update his old xkcd https://xkcd.com/1299/ https://xkcd.com/1299/ s/I/My children s/TV/phone s/1950/2010 s/2000/2020

toddmorey 2y ago

I am a parent, youngest now 13. Could I do it all again, would absolutely have this approach. Note she’s not anti-tech but pro childhood & the time & space & innocence you need to develop yourself. The device access my kiddos had was not an enrichment. I see that now. I like her compromise of tech in the common area but no individual social accounts until 18.

pwillia7 2y ago

I do like the author trying to find some balance, but how does this not poorly prepare your kids to live in the world with their peers?

throwaway173738 2y ago
It doesn’t. Facebook and Instagram are such a tiny part of everyone’s life. I don’t use any of those sites, and a brief stint on Nextdoor recently reminded me that they contribute nothing but anxiety and comparison to my life. I’ve never needed an Instagram account to get a job or find an apartment or my significant other. The lure of those sites is that they make you think they’re revealing the whole world to you when they’re barely scratching the surface like a magazine. There’s a whole world of people and places out there that aren’t on social media because they have better things to do with their lives.
- jajko 2y ago
  It goes much further - social media is the new bread for the poor, rich folks travel, do expensive dining and adventuring and similar. Sure, its highly addictive due to short dopamine hits so even rich are not immune to it, but most rich / upper middle class I ever saw are smart enough and well off enough to stay the hell away from it. Also, article makes it like that's almost an unique behavior, while where we live (Switzerland), its more like default of good parenting, definitely a majority of our peers do it similarly. Doctors went through cancelling their FB accounts, we know number around us (wife is a doctor so I mean tens of various doctors mostly with smaller kids). Instagram was never a thing for them, neither for us. Raising their kids without digital screens either altogether or in a minimal fashion, till teenage years. It gets harder for parents, but anybody can see how much additional quality this brings into parenting. But this goes with the example parents set - if they are half-present and glued to screens themselves, don't expect miracles from those poor kids which imitate everything they see, and are very vulnerable to addictive behavioral patterns. When I compare such parenting with allowing screens almost infinitely due to laziness/exhaustion of parents, its heartbreaking how kids often end up later in life.
  - 2y ago

hellweaver666 2y ago

The author talks about all the benefits of a "screen free" childhood and I remember my own fondly (although as an older millennial it was rapidly interrupted as technology spread). What I always wonder though, is if this kind of upbringing is so positive for kids, why are so many boomers so self-centered and spiteful? Surely, they should be happy, beautiful and kind?

JohnFen 2y ago
Boomers aren't any more self-centered and spiteful than any other generation, it seems to me. As to the younger generations, we don't know what they'll be like when they reach the age boomers are now.
jajko 2y ago
I think its a very complex topic - what sort of average societal behavior then leads to some dominant trait X in given part of population. Its definitely not online vs park reduction. Older generations experienced often very little emotional intelligence, men were told from very early age to man-up, men don't cry, you don't discuss your feelings because that would be / make you gay. Women were raised from small girls to be obedient wives and mothers and not strive for much else in lives, just shut up and listen. I can see this massive EQ (or whatever is more appropriate term) difference myself, even me vs my dad, if you know what to look for its in plain sight and its massive. Now some folks from current generation didn't 'escape' this and are still like that, pushing this to their own kids, I somehow did and further I went away the clearer the picture was. I don't blame previous generation, this is how literally everybody functioned and how they were raised. But overall they had more freedom to play and also way more restriction and punishment. Lets see how today's young will fare in retirement, I don't think it will be a nice picture, definitely not for new generation of young.

kkfx 2y ago

Well... Some have said that I'm a modern Luddite because I do not use a macrobug aka smartphone except for Google Maps navigation, very limited on the go phone usage, very rare personal feeds (tt-RSS on my home server). Actually I'm an architect (sysadmin who design and implement infra, I do not choose the title anyway) and I've built a new home, all electric with p.v. and integrated as much as possible anything via Home Assistant but for some being desktop-centric means being Luddite. I tend to say that some are Luddite because even if they perfectly can they refuse to operate autonomously from their desktops, they choose not to care their digital life, they choose to stick with deprecated solutions, who cost them more money and trouble than choosing the current tech. Long story short: I think we should describe a bit more the meaning of Luddite, because as a mere tag seems to be a bit too much versatile...

jabroni_salad 2y ago

I really appreciate their approach to 'free range' children but most kids with cell phones are not doing it just because they asked for one. It's because mom & pop want their kid to be able to communicate their every movement and be tracked by a mapping app. To really get a handle on this we need to figure out what is going on with helicopter parents, a phenomenon that predates cell phones by decades.

techjamie 2y ago
What doesn't help is now so many people are even moreso on the stranger danger train than even a few years ago because of doomscrolling social media posts. Even if you aren't a helicopter parent, if you don't keep your kid attached to you, you risk a Karen calling CPS on you and getting a visit.
watwut 2y ago
It is simple - whenever something happens to a child, parents are blamed super hard. Every single issue child has is parents fault. Parents spend more time and effort actively parenting kids, much more then previous generations did. And in a put 99% of discussions, there is majority throwing scorn on parents in general. It is simple, parents are internalizing those lessons and do what out current society want from them. Plus parents are not allowed good time or something for themselves. They have only duties. Note even motivations in this article - parents ts are compassionate toward kids or want easy way for themselves. It is plan to engineer more competitive kid.

corimaith 2y ago

I can't really agree with the author's outlook on a completely tech free childhood. As with most things, you need to strike a balance. I'm reminded of stories in China where parents do similar things for gaming, then once college starts the kids swing in excess to the opposite. Some even die of a heart attack. It's much better if kids find their own limits under a safe environment with parents than alone where there is no one to stop them when things go to far. Plus there's going to be a huge social cost in being excluded from group chats or socializing through common interests. On the flipside, of course that dosen't mean letting kids go online virtually unsupervised all day, but it's the same issue of parents taking the simple, "easy" route of parenting rather than a more nuanced approach.

pajamasam 2y ago

> By the end of it, I hope my sons have a rich repository of childhood memories that will someday make them smile, laugh, and possibly even cringe. Playing video games on the TV during the afternoons in our summer holidays are some of my favourite memories. As an introvert and nerd, it gave me time to decompress and practice some skills, while it gave my parents some time to nap and have kid-free time after a morning of playing on the beach in the sun. Video games were also one of the things I could bond over and practice some comptetition with my dad and much-older sibling. Balance is key.

keybored 2y ago

> Looking ahead, I believe children will thrive if we teach them the life skills that set them apart from machines. I do not buy the argument that kids need to be exposed to tech from a young age in order to be professionally successful. The technology they use is designed to be intuitive (we all learned to use it later in life), and it won’t be the same in a decade. What matters more is teaching them how to be human—how to have conversations, make eye contact, be attentive and alert, be thoughtful and considerate, feel their emotions keenly, be insatiably curious about the real world. Training for that takes years and starts from birth. There is no time to lose. Okay but this doesn’t mean anything. It’s fine and meaningful if it just means interacting with each other instead of everyone staring at their own tablets or the same TV. But sometimes people get this idea that if they just remove something civilizational, they’ll get back to being human. But that’s never how it works. Either the mere exposure to it has tainted you forever or it was never that simple to begin with. The problem with moving to another country in order to get away from your problems (or whatever) is the constant of you. To simplify a lot: your own habitual thoughts. There’s no modern veneer which is obfuscating the real you. The real you is already there. And that takes more than a vipassana retreat/keto diet/tech diet to unravel.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
Yes, but there are tons of cases that go either way, and sometime it is neither the thing or the individual, but the combination of the two which lead to undesired outcomes. In this case, I think it is reasonable to believe that training certain skills in the absence of distractions and impediments makes sense.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  Provided these skills really stick, will the kid be able to activate them when they'll be in an environment full of distractions and impediments ? How well will they deal with SNS, work notifications, scams, dark patterns and addictive stuff thrown at them at every corner ? This reminds me of Mean Girls, where a kid raised with lions is thrown into the college environment. Except we now have so many other layers of complications to also deal with.

anticorporate 2y ago

I wish we had better agreement on a society on the terminology we use to describe types of technology. Even among HN readers on this thread, there seems to be a lot of conflating "technology" with the spyware and attention kidnapping products of surveillance capitalism. I grew up in the 80s and 90s with plenty of technology for the era; sure, we had a lot less of it than the rich kids did, but that was mostly just jealousy that my friends could play "better" games than I could. Technology was a thing you used when you sat down and intended to use it. It wasn't a thing that told you that you were missing out every second you weren't using it, and it wasn't a thing that gatekept access to conversations with people you knew or even basic commercial needs like transportation or food delivery. The problem isn't tech, it's carrying around dozens of corporations in your pocket.

TONIA1942 2y ago

[dead]