2 ms·
Nah, screen time is the video games (1980s) of the 21st century, or the TV (1960s), or the radio (1930s), or the gin (1800s). I’m on mobile now, but if I were
by nostrademons 2y ago
Nah, screen time is the video games (1980s) of the 21st century, or the TV (1960s), or the radio (1930s), or the gin (1800s).
I’m on mobile now, but if I were on desktop I’d dig up Clay Shirky’s essay on gin and the Industrial Revolution. There has always been a moral panic about new forms of entertainment and time-wasting, because people look at these diversions and think “Why don’t people use all that time to benefit society (ie me)?” That’s just a refusal to admit that people don’t have any obligation to you or larger society, and fundamentally are out to make themselves feel good.
- ajsnigrutin 2y agoLet's be fair, replacing involved parenting with any of those is bad and was bad in the past.
- nostrademons 2y agoI don't disagree, but I think we often look at the past through rose-colored glasses of survivorship bias. Most parenting was bad by those standards. If you look at how children have historically been parented across a wide range of pre-industrial cultures, it's alloparenting (care by someone other than the biological parent). You had a village of extended family, neighbors, tribewomen, clan members, whatever, and they would trade off care of large groups of village children. Or the kids would just run around and make up their own games. This is actually considered fairly healthy today - it's what daycares, preschools, schools, aftercares, etc. do in an institutionalized setting, but maintained through person-to-person relationships. The nuclear family and industrial revolution was pathological from an anthropologic POV, and brought all sorts of other pathologies into child-rearing.