Comment on EE warns parents against giving children under 11 a smartphone
todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 3 weeks agoDancing, rock and roll, tv, video games, and now phones. Every time, everyone thinks this time is different and every time it hasn’t been.
- Dancing (with other children at dances)
- Rock and Roll (just listening to it)
- TV (just watching it, and maybe seeing objectionable content)
- Video Games (Addiction / Inappropriate content)
- Internet-connected camera-equipped smartphones (Direct access to scammers, bullies, and child pornographers)
One of these things is not like the other.
glockenspiel@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
No, you don’t get. Or didn’t live it. Or are being purposely obtuse.
None of those qualifiers were attached to those things at the time the applicable fear mongering luddites were vilifying them. What we have right now are 21st century Tipper Gores. People engaging in moral public freakouts over tangentially related things which affirm a much larger fear of the whole (technology in this case). You see it also with how people violently and emotionally react to “AI.”
Remember when D&D would turn you into a Satanist who’d go on to sexually abused children, maybe even engage in ritualist murder? Remember when similar was said for merely listening to even the radio edits of Marilyn Manson?
People pearl clutch over hypotheticals. Parents who engage with their kids and set healthy boundaries which are enforced don’t often run into these problems. Hell, the arguments people make about tech right now could beastly apply as reasons not to let them play outside. Never know where a predator is lurking. I mean, we actually do: in your church and in your house. The two most statistically likely places for children to be preyed upon.
But let’s blame the internet. Apple makes it trivial to lock things down and monitor it all. No kid is able to outsmsrt those restrictions because adults can’t either.
No, what’s happening is yet another hype cycle. The entire reason all these schools are banning devices this year is due to a marketing effort from Haidt’s publisher. They put copies of his book into the hands of higher ranking faculty with purchasing authority for their districts. And they talk with each other. What a brilliant way to weaponize ignorance and make a buck doing so.
And it magically doesn’t make bad parents into even mediocre ones. Who or what will they blame next? Definitely not the person looking back at them in the mirror every morning.