Comment by utopiah
11 hours ago
IMHO the intent is good but amalgamating problems causing confusion and strange solutions.
What actually does make "old" tech good?
I'd argue it's agency. It can be the physicality of it too but if so then one has to pinpoint actually what it is, e.g is the presence of CD covers in the living room as reminder that you do have a collection? If so would a poster suffice?
I think kids can absolutely use contemporary tech but it has to be done responsibly.
A smartphone or a laptop is not the problem. The problems are :
- advertisements prompting for "more"
- friction-less unlimited availability
- unmetered unplanned usage
- content that requires no effort, no actual thinking, to consume
but holding the physical medium or have a "retro" look is superficial. It doesn't actually matter.
You can absolutely give a smartphone to a very young kid, say a 5 years old. What you can not do though is hand them that smartphone with installed an app that will provide limitless uncurated videos or games. Give them a phone with a 2hrs long documentary on animals or with challenging pedagogical games and you will see that they enjoy it, for a bit, then have to move on. It's NOT the device, it's the content and the software that makes that content available. I really get tired of "screen" time. No kid get hooked on hard to complete digital homework. They get hooked on apps designed and providing content itself made to be addictive.
It's really not about the shape or age of the device.
PS: I shared some resources at https://forum.techreclaimers.club/d/36-reclaming-for-kids/2 to provide actual alternatives.
Partly agree. I agree that what makes old tech good is agency, but I find it strange that you offer as an example "handing a 5yo a phone with a documentary". Phones give you no agency, other than play and stop. They don't work for you, they work for their master (Google or apple).
I think the point was that the five-year-old will get bored of the documentary, so it's not merely the phone that's addictive, it's the content that the apps have on them.
Exactly, thanks for clarifying.
Indeed, the irony of me complaining that the article confuses problem... only for me to do the same!
Indeed a video on a phone provides very limited agency. I was mostly trying to highlight, as someone else pointed out, that demanding content will not have the same effect. Thus blaming the device itself is wrong.
Edit: shit... now when I acknowledge my mistake I sound like a sycophantic chatbot! Ugh. Edited to replace "You're right" by "Indeed". I'll have to remember that.