Comment by the_overseer
3 years ago
I have. Those kids will grow up just fine. It's all in your head. Those kids will grow up to invent/innovate on levels you can't even imagine today. Like it has always been. Might as well just stop complaining about the "weird new generation" just because that "back in my day" it was better. It wasn't. It's just rose tinted glasses.
how is this possible, when all of the devices the "kids these days" are using are entirely geared toward content consumption, with the only "content" "creation" they permit is that of the most vapid and useless pointing-a-camera-at-my-face variety? The Youth do not know how to use computers to create new good things, they only know how to consume what is already out there. the only creation they aspire to do is that of insipid Content, built atop the foundations of others' platforms, for others to mindlessly consume.
in decades past, one would be forgiven for supposing that, once devices that could ostensibly be considered to be Personal Computers became pocket-sized and nearly universally ubiquitous, complete with access to a global network of information, that we would've reached the culmination of the technological empowerment that the personal computer revolution promised—but instead, we got TikTok, and kids who aspire to be Famous On TikTok. that's what all of this marvelous technology has wrought: brain-numbing slop piped right into your retinas, in exquisitely high definition, practically from birth, judging by the age at which I've seen kids on tablets in public alone!
It is absolutely possible and it's exactly what will happen. Back in my day parents and grandpas were horrified with these things called video games which sucked the lives out of their kids. And how repetitive and mind numbing it all was and how humanity was doomed. Guess what? Didn't happen. It didn't happen back then it won't happen now. Chillax and go watch a few tik tok videos. Not everything there is garbage. You just need to give it time in order to see the value.
It also seems like more and more people are unable to start their own life until later, living with parents longer, starting work later, etc. I assume there's a correlation.
The people I know that are addicted to video games into their twenties and thirties certainly fit the bill. They're going nowhere fast.
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Agriculture > Manufacturing -> Service -> Content based economy, turns out youth have the head start, as always.
I don't disagree with you regarding the negative cultural shift caused by social media nor your concerns about stuff like kids wanting to be TikTok famous. Where I do disagree though is your suggestion that kids now are exclusively content consumers at a level higher than in the past and the idea that tech like smart phones and tablets have caused that to happen. If anything it feels like kids have access to way more ways to be creative and create new things than ever thanks to those devices.
When I was about 10 years old I wanted to make a movie (it was going to be a basketball version of The Sandlot) but my parents didn't own a camcorder and couldn't afford to buy me one so I was out of luck and never got to experiment creatively in that way. Last time I saw my brother's family his 9 year old was super excited to show me the musical she and her friends had recorded using her Amazon Fire tablet. My cousin's 12 year old has a bunch of (actually rather impressive) stop motion shorts on Youtube that he created and edited on the family's iPad.
In high school it was super time consuming and slow learning to program reading books and writing simple command line programs I could only run after being super careful installing a Linux distro from a CD in a magazine on my family's one PC cause the C book I bought was unix focused. Now my significant other's 16 year old niece is learning to program on an iPad with Swift Playgrounds, she was literally doing it sitting on the beach last time we went on vacation together. My sister's 11 year old meanwhile loves showing off the frankly ridiculous number of levels he built in Roblox just using an iPad.
Like yeah, theres definitely a lot of kids (and adults) that do not create and only consume content, and I've definitely seen all of the kids I mentioned doing the dead-eyed-stare-at-glowing-screen thing, but I don't think thats new, most kids and people in general have always been like that. And yes most devices are mostly used for consumption, but suggesting those devices limit the ability of kids to be creative just seems incorrect when I see them providing so many creative outlets that I never had access to because they didn't exist previously.
Just on a philosophical level: is it possible for a child to have a better or worse childhood, as measured by adulthood competence (critical thinking skills, EQ, IQ, whatever)? Like, assuming that iPads are awesome - is it necessarily true that all new technology always helps no matter what?