Comment by piloto_ciego
9 hours ago
The "trauma" from staying at home? Please. If the parents let them watch youtube for 2 years then the parents were stupid. I have 3 kids in school, all but one of them were in school at the time. Staying at home with Grandma and Papa while they did zoom school didn't break their brains. You know what my kids don't have? My kids don't have a smart phone. You know what my kids don't have? Unlimited access to devices.
Now, I will say that the Pandemic was pretty traumatic here in the US, at least a million people died last time I looked at it. Those people were somebody's neighbors, grandparents, uncles, etc. So maybe the realization that "nobody gives a shit about you except for your productivity" was a lesson they internalized?
Largely, I think it is the parents though. Like I said, I have kids, and when their grades slump, I get on them to fix it. A lot of people are really unwilling to do that.
> Like I said, I have kids, and when their grades slump, I get on them to fix it. A lot of people are really unwilling to do that.
This is a massive, wide-spread decline, it's not isolated to the US, and all you can think of is to brag about how you're a better parent than the average? As if kids who made the mistake of having being born to parents who are "stupid" unlike you should just be left hanging in the wind? Come on.
So much about how so many acted during the pandemic, both pro and contra, whatever, was messed up, and a lot of kids got to pay a hefty price for it through no fault of their own. And I think much more interesting than what exactly caused it how much and who should be ranked where on the value totem when it comes to how they handled this or what they proposed, is how to change it, how to help.
And for that I'd rather listen to affected kids than parents parading their personal achievements, because while that is all very good, and well done, if you don't understand the sheer vastness and range of humans and how they live, it's still like someone who has perfect photographic memory wondering why cameras are so popular, or why people re-read books instead of saving time by remembering anything they read forever. It's precisely because you are so far above the average parent that you offer nothing helpful.
> I have 3 kids
So they got at least some of what a lot of kids missed out on: socialization.
With homeschooling, parents go out of their way to find other kids for theirs to socialize with, but during lockdowns this wasn't allowed (if the parents even had any idea about it, since it was forced on them and not something they chose to do).
I live in Alaska, there were only like 3 months were things were actually curtailed in any meaningful way. We didn't really "lock down" here really. Again, the socialization thing? Not a problem from COVID, now, maybe the skinner box I see kids carrying around in their pockets? Yeah, probably not great? But they didn't lose their socialization here despite whatever right-wing grifters say.
I think the only thing that was really curtailed was my sons took a few months off of karate? A lot more traumatic was probably mom having to sleep in a hotel for a few nights because she got inadvertently exposed to COVID as nurse (when we really didn't know how dangerous things were), or me having to camp out in my folks' motorhome for a week because I was at the tip of the spear medevac-ing people out of camps in the arctic. I know that was scary for my kids because they told me it was.
Them not being able to have playdates being some generational trauma is nonsense. What wasn't nonsense was watching aunts and uncles die from a pandemic that we did next to nothing to fix in America until the vax came out. Also, I would not be surprised if there aren't some cognitive effects to COVID. Despite being very careful, we got it too. Everyone had it here. That probably ain't good for kids' development.
But mostly, I think it's the phones that are having the biggest impact on social development and probably on learning too. Read this paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w35310
If people like doom scrolling more than they like screwing, it's probably not unlikely that they like doom scrolling better than studying.
> I live in Alaska, there were only like 3 months were things were actually curtailed in any meaningful way.
Here in Illinois it was over a year, possibly two in some places. The schools didn't return to in-person right away after the government mandates were lifted.
Edit:
> But mostly, I think it's the phones that are having the biggest impact on social development and probably on learning too.
Please re-read the comment from the other person you originally replied to.
(2nd edit: removed something based on a misread)
Yeah, because everywhere in the world is Alaska and did exactly what Alaska did. Man, somehow you out-US-exceptionalismed the usual US exceptionalism you see around here.
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Obviusly you and your family were not affected by lockdown so badly, congrats. Not everyone was so lucky though.
> Staying at home with Grandma and Papa
Lockdown prevented relatives visits.
> Pandemic was pretty traumatic here in the US, at least a million people died last time I looked at it.
Millions die every year, that is normal for a country with 350 million people!
> You know what my kids don't have? My kids don't have a smart phone. You know what my kids don't have? Unlimited access to devices.
My kid did not had device before pandemic, we got tablet for lockdowns. My kid was social and full of energy, it always wanted to play outside and climb trees. Two years of isolation, in tiny apartment were pretty bad!
Now it does not want to go outside, it does not want to socialize! It adapted and got new hobies.
> Largely, I think it is the parents though
Yes, i blame myself. For not ignoring lockdowns and not fighting back! Against sociopaths who enforced this bs!
You should direct your anger at sociopaths, who can't keep their asses at home with the first symptoms of illness or who couldn't skip partying for dutation of few months, showing middle finger to all of us and especially to medical services who were actually the main advocates of the lockdown, because well, the hospitals were overcrowded. If you would bother to remember all this of course
Seriously. I cannot stand this revisionist history nonsense about how "terrible" the lockdowns were.
Meanwhile my wife was on the front lines watching people die on vents, and I was literally medevac-ing people out of camp in the arctic with totally inadequate PPE (but we had to do what we had to do, if it got into the camp there was no way to treat people). Seriously one of the most stressful times of my life and I see these people trying to reimagine the history of this. I remember this, I was there...
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