4 ms·

Before the internet I siloed knowledge that I could lookup to books. Don't worry, the kids will be ok.

mallowdram 1y ago
Sorry, kids lack the foundational ability to remember, reason, imagine because their phones cauterize their basic intelligence foundations in sharp wave ripples: navigation, adventurous short-cuts, vicarious trial and error, these are the basis for memory consolidation. And we build this developmentally until we are 16 or so. Once we offload this dev to phones, we are essentially unintelligent buffoon, lacking the basis for knowledge. The kids are DOA.
- bccdee 1y ago
  No, you're just saying that. There's no evidence that using phones makes teenagers stupid.
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    Anyone who understands the development of intelligence and creativity is directly linked to the allocortex's ability to navigate freely, use vicarious trial and error, to invent novel short-cuts, built from both egocentric (landmark memories) and allocentric (extra body mapping) up until around the age of 16 in order to develop the basics of memory consolidation can take anecdotal evidence of kids that can't take a walk without a cellphone's help and extrapolate that these kids lack critical thinking skills. It's elementary deduction from basic learning practices we've known since O'Keefe in 1973.
    - bccdee 1y ago
      Given that the current generation of kids missed out on several crucial years of socializing due to Covid and were forced to find community online, I'm skeptical of arguments that point to poorly-socialized kids and say, "it must be the phones." Even if this was based on real data and not a hodgepodge of anecdotes, the phones themselves would not be my #1 suspect. > allocortex's ability to navigate freely If your allocortex is navigating freely, something has gone badly wrong. Put it back under the neocortex where it belongs and seek immediate help from a neurologist.
      - mallowdram 1y ago
        Sorry, that's a narrative argument, lack of covid socializing, the sciences tell us otherwise. Phones correlate to cog decline. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4
        bccdee 1y ago
        > Phones correlate to cog decline. Do they? Let's check your source. > To investigate this hypothesis, participants aged 20–34 perform a concentration and attention test in the presence and absence of a smartphone. The results of the conducted experiment imply that the mere presence of a smartphone results in lower cognitive performance, which supports the hypothesis of the smartphone presence using limited cognitive resources. So, no. The presence of your smartphone on the desk in front of you is distracting, but that distraction goes away if you remove the smartphone. That's not "cognitive decline." > Sorry, that's a narrative argument No, that's me pointing out a competing plausible hypothesis. I'm not saying Covid is necessarily responsible for your anecdotal incidents; I'm saying that until you can prove Covid wasn't responsible, you have no standing to state conclusively that phones were.
        mallowdram 1y ago
        We're in an attentional crises that isn't because kids didn't go to school for two years. It's destroying their ability to experience reality as paths, free navigation, vicarious trial and error, all of this is fundamental to memory consolidation: the brain's fundamental unit: action-syntax in memory, is built from non-screen topological integrations of landmark and allocentric experiences. Phones destroy this. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6059409/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6059409/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-20922-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-20922-0 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/brb3.70656 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/brb3.70656 https://www.mdpi.com/2254-9625/15/6/98 https://www.mdpi.com/2254-9625/15/6/98 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40255102/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40255102/ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00246-025-03862-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00246-025-03862-0 https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9067/12/4/503 https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9067/12/4/503 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40172268/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40172268/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40173157/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40173157/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-025-04024-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-025-04024-x https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022395625001281?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00223... “A growing body of evidence has found that children’s brains can structurally and functionally change due to prolonged media multitasking, such as diminished gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, where attentional control and complex decision making abilities reside, among other really important skills, like the development of empathy and understanding nonverbal social communication,”
  - steezeburger 1y ago
    There is no evidence that using phones makes teenagers stupid? I see several studies. I feel like you're the one just saying things.
    - bccdee 1y ago
      Which studies? Could you attach them?
defanor 1y ago
Indeed, I thought that "decades old" sounds like an underestimate there: Socrates is said to have criticized writing for letting people to not train their memory, so that would be millennia by now. Though of course it is possible that the article's author would not agree with that, and would have a beef with more easily searchable content only, like the people who criticized tables of contents. I do not mean that they were all wrong though: probably the degree to which knowledge is outsourced matters, maybe some transitions were more worthwhile than others, and possibly something was indeed lost with those.
- Barrin92 1y ago
  >Socrates is said to have criticized writing for letting people to not train their memory And he likely had a point. What I recently noticed is that my father, who had very little formal education but happened to have very old-school teachers who hammered him with memorizing a lot of poetry, which he continued in adult life, is more verbally fluent somehow than a lot of young kids who don't have command of grammar any more. ("would of") Granted they likely don't write or read much either but directionally if you keep outsourcing mental work, you degrade. When I studied Japanese I liked the term a teacher had for his defense of memorizing Kanji by handwriting, which he called "neuro-muscular". Like playing scales on the guitar or piano there is something that keeps you snappy in memorization and rote practice that goes away if you only passively search.
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    "Neuro-muscular" great insight.

Sorry, kids lack the foundational ability to remember, reason, imagine because their phones cauterize their basic intelligence foundations in sharp wave ripples: navigation, adventurous short-cuts, vicarious trial and error, these are the basis for memory consolidation. And we build this developmentally until we are 16 or so. Once we offload this dev to phones, we are essentially unintelligent buffoon, lacking the basis for knowledge. The kids are DOA.

bccdee 1y ago
No, you're just saying that. There's no evidence that using phones makes teenagers stupid.
- mallowdram 1y ago
  Anyone who understands the development of intelligence and creativity is directly linked to the allocortex's ability to navigate freely, use vicarious trial and error, to invent novel short-cuts, built from both egocentric (landmark memories) and allocentric (extra body mapping) up until around the age of 16 in order to develop the basics of memory consolidation can take anecdotal evidence of kids that can't take a walk without a cellphone's help and extrapolate that these kids lack critical thinking skills. It's elementary deduction from basic learning practices we've known since O'Keefe in 1973.
  - bccdee 1y ago
    Given that the current generation of kids missed out on several crucial years of socializing due to Covid and were forced to find community online, I'm skeptical of arguments that point to poorly-socialized kids and say, "it must be the phones." Even if this was based on real data and not a hodgepodge of anecdotes, the phones themselves would not be my #1 suspect. > allocortex's ability to navigate freely If your allocortex is navigating freely, something has gone badly wrong. Put it back under the neocortex where it belongs and seek immediate help from a neurologist.
    - mallowdram 1y ago
      Sorry, that's a narrative argument, lack of covid socializing, the sciences tell us otherwise. Phones correlate to cog decline. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4
      - bccdee 1y ago
        > Phones correlate to cog decline. Do they? Let's check your source. > To investigate this hypothesis, participants aged 20–34 perform a concentration and attention test in the presence and absence of a smartphone. The results of the conducted experiment imply that the mere presence of a smartphone results in lower cognitive performance, which supports the hypothesis of the smartphone presence using limited cognitive resources. So, no. The presence of your smartphone on the desk in front of you is distracting, but that distraction goes away if you remove the smartphone. That's not "cognitive decline." > Sorry, that's a narrative argument No, that's me pointing out a competing plausible hypothesis. I'm not saying Covid is necessarily responsible for your anecdotal incidents; I'm saying that until you can prove Covid wasn't responsible, you have no standing to state conclusively that phones were.
        mallowdram 1y ago
        We're in an attentional crises that isn't because kids didn't go to school for two years. It's destroying their ability to experience reality as paths, free navigation, vicarious trial and error, all of this is fundamental to memory consolidation: the brain's fundamental unit: action-syntax in memory, is built from non-screen topological integrations of landmark and allocentric experiences. Phones destroy this. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6059409/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6059409/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-20922-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-20922-0 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/brb3.70656 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/brb3.70656 https://www.mdpi.com/2254-9625/15/6/98 https://www.mdpi.com/2254-9625/15/6/98 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40255102/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40255102/ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00246-025-03862-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00246-025-03862-0 https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9067/12/4/503 https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9067/12/4/503 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40172268/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40172268/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40173157/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40173157/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-025-04024-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-025-04024-x https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022395625001281?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00223... “A growing body of evidence has found that children’s brains can structurally and functionally change due to prolonged media multitasking, such as diminished gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, where attentional control and complex decision making abilities reside, among other really important skills, like the development of empathy and understanding nonverbal social communication,”
- steezeburger 1y ago
  There is no evidence that using phones makes teenagers stupid? I see several studies. I feel like you're the one just saying things.
  - bccdee 1y ago
    Which studies? Could you attach them?

defanor 1y ago

Indeed, I thought that "decades old" sounds like an underestimate there: Socrates is said to have criticized writing for letting people to not train their memory, so that would be millennia by now. Though of course it is possible that the article's author would not agree with that, and would have a beef with more easily searchable content only, like the people who criticized tables of contents. I do not mean that they were all wrong though: probably the degree to which knowledge is outsourced matters, maybe some transitions were more worthwhile than others, and possibly something was indeed lost with those.

Barrin92 1y ago
>Socrates is said to have criticized writing for letting people to not train their memory And he likely had a point. What I recently noticed is that my father, who had very little formal education but happened to have very old-school teachers who hammered him with memorizing a lot of poetry, which he continued in adult life, is more verbally fluent somehow than a lot of young kids who don't have command of grammar any more. ("would of") Granted they likely don't write or read much either but directionally if you keep outsourcing mental work, you degrade. When I studied Japanese I liked the term a teacher had for his defense of memorizing Kanji by handwriting, which he called "neuro-muscular". Like playing scales on the guitar or piano there is something that keeps you snappy in memorization and rote practice that goes away if you only passively search.
- mallowdram 1y ago
  "Neuro-muscular" great insight.