Comment by caconym_
7 hours ago
None of the things named in your comment, on either side of the line, really matter.
Reading, writing, and critical thinking skills matter. You don't have to "write structured interpretations of 1950s texts [you] have no emotional connection to" or practice "handwriting, and reading stuffy texts from front to end" to develop those skills (very loaded language, nice job!), but you have to put a lot of time into doing something, ideally somethings, where you're the one doing the heavy intellectual lifting.
Or, we can just write these kids off as a generation incapable of thinking or building by themselves without AI tools that do the thinking and building for them. Honestly, it's probably already too late. The way we've allowed kids of all ages to be exposed to these tools is basically equivalent to handing out cartons of cigarettes in a preschool.
One of the weirdest things I noticed when people around me started having kids was how immediately they picked up on their parents obsession with their phones, and would instinctively try to interact with them.
It was odd, disheartening and almost universal (barring the parents who went full 'my kid doesn't use any of the products I build')
Why is that weird? I remember when I was a kid, I tried to imitate what my parents were doing, too. Lucky for me, we didn't have smartphones at the time.
I picked up tinkering and sitting in front of a computer from my dad. And, even then, my parents would prevent me from doing this too much, and send me to read a book or go outside and run around.
A society is self similar because a huge portion of our social actions are not thought about but copied. Being a parrot saves a massive amount of energy in descending the behavior gradient.