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Comment by ryandrake

1 day ago

This seems like a common theme around very young computer users: Applications and operating systems have, for over a decade, deliberately tried to blur the line between "files on your computer" and "files in the cloud". Photo apps present you a list of photos, and deliberately hide what filesystem those photos are actually on. "They're just your photos. Don't think too much about where they are!" The end result is that the median computer user has no idea that files exist in some physical space and there is a difference between local and remote storage.

My kid struggles with this. She can't intuitively grasp why one app needs the Internet and another app does not. I try to explain it but it all goes over her head. The idea that you need the Internet when your app needs to communicate with something outside of the phone is just foreign to her: In her mind, "the app" just exists, and there's no distinction between stuff on the phone and stuff on the network.