Comment on Every toddler becomes a hackerman when they find a tablet
ManlickerM2001@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Unfun fact: due to growing up with tablets instead of normal computers a lot of kids nowadays don’t know how stuff like directories work.
(Your Steam games all live in a folder called “steamapps” — when was the last time you clicked on that?)
A few days ago, because I’m constantly tinkering with them to add mods, remove unskippable opening movies, etc. Video games are undeniably why I know what I do about directory structures and the like.
I learned all the basics of computers when I was 10 from Minecraft. Learned basic life concepts from there much earlier. I learned file directories from modding Java edition. Learned networking from multilpayer. Get an error message? Read it, Google and try to figure out how to fix it. Learned some Java coding around age 12 from a modding lesson program my parents got me. Also learned electronic skills and soldering at the same age from disassembling broken stuff and savaging motors to make stuff.
If kids are given a difficult, nerdy interface in one hand, and all the world’s knowledge in the other, they’ll be genius. If they’re given an iPad they’ll have no idea what a folder is, much less a MAC address.
This is why all children should start on a $100 ThinkPad running Arch Linux, a cheap rooted phone, and Firefox with the links to stack exchange and arch forums bookmarked for them.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Just yeaterday I couldn’t play a game I bought two years ago because ubiaoft couldn’t authorize my steam.
I spent a whole hour of my own free time trying to fix it. Resetting the password, restarting steam, unlinkin and relinking etc.
My final and only solution that worked was to download 11mb of cracked dlls and executables from that one russian counter strike forums and then drag the files to my game folder.
It took 2 minutes.
Yeah, one of the reasons I’m okay with Steam’s DRM is because I know I can remove it and still play them (single player, at least).
On an unrelated sidenote I noticed video games don’t feel fun anymore.
Various reasons for that. It’s probably a mix of you and the games. I notice that I have a hard time staying interested in most modern games and wonder if I’m just starting to not like them any more, but then a game will come along that grabs my attention.
I learned so much about computing by modding my own games. Adventure Construction Set, shitty mad libs games in basic, and then later spending basically every free hour from 12-18 years old modding Morrowind.
Gotta wonder how many modern programmers learned from modding Minecraft.
The stated article is from 2017. That’s not about kids growing up with tablets.
September 22, 2021
most kids today are technologically illiterate. We didn’t call anyone who watched a ton of tv a tech-wiz, because tv was just a device made for consumption of content. Even though the tv uses electricity to work
It’s not just kids. Some of the phone/tablet kids are in their 20s now. They have no idea that a file or folder/directory is. When greeted with dialog boxes on PC they just click OK or next until they go away without reading at all. They’re just as bad as most people in their 80s trying to use a computer.
More worryingly, shoving them in front of a tablet every time they’re being difficult means they don’t learn how to regulate their emotions.
Difference between my daughter and her cousins is night and day. Few studies confirming this now.
Tried giving it her on a plane once and she had no idea what to do with it and sat and played with her toys instead, so not that intuitive. She has a mechanical keyboard hooked up to a Pi instead.
More worryingly, shoving them in front of a tablet every time they’re being difficult means they don’t learn how to regulate their emotions.
“More worryingly, shoving them in front of the TV every time they’re being difficult means they don’t learn how to regulate their emotions.”
The thing they’re being shoved in front of isn’t the problem.
they don’t learn how to regulate their emotions.
I don’t believe there’s causation. Kids learn to regulate their emotions from their parents, with or without tablets.
There are plenty of people with no regulation and no tablets. And plenty of well regulated kids with tablets.
Point is, it’s a parent problem, not a technology one. Though it’s very possible that shitty parents would use tablets as a pacifier. But they could also use TV, or sticking the kids outside all day, or anything else.
Well yes that is what I was referencing. That is how many people use them; out at restaurants, public places, at friends, etc. Often they are watching TV on them anyway.
But outwith that they have a whole host of problems even when used correctly and little upside. Autoplay, bright colors, fast-paced and visually rich interfaces. Locked in 20cm from the screen. Instead of learning to entertain yourself quietly.
Exception is well developed education apps for cognitive impairments, developmental delays, etc where the crazy engagement the design envokes can be useful.
Also your link is broken It appended my instance to the link for some reason, I think I fixed it now.
Also your link is broken
Guess this guy grew up with a tablet, smh… ~/j~
Working at a university I have seen some astounding shit; people just barely 10 years younger than me who can’t read analog clocks or make change let alone use a mouse or move a file to a flash drive.
Give the next one a Zip drive and document please.
Some of that’s cultural momentum right? Like I don’t know how many Pickles it takes to make a Peck of Pickles despite hours singing about it as a kid. There’s not a lot of reason sans-nostalgia to read an analog clock or drive a manual car. (I love my manual, they’re not getting any less niche with EVs on the way.)
And everyone’s going to learn something the first time, some time. But it is just nuts that for some people that is apparently after getting a job with a Bachelor’s, somehow. So much time, money, and energy was spent in the 90s/00s having computer classes in schools and now so much of it has been cut because the people in charge are so out of touch that watching youtube on a device designed to be easily usable is indistinguishable from “technical skills”.
No, I don’t think not being able to make change or not stopping touching a screen no matter how many times you are told that it isn’t a touch screen is cultural momentum. I genuinely think that we the older generations have failed Gen Z at a common sense and problem solving level and I very much hope that we don’t keep failing Gen Alpha. I was in school still when no child left behind went into effect and the difference was stark. It was said then that it was designed to create a generation of Republican voters and based on the most recent election it looks like it might have worked.
That’s horrifying.
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I have had a worrying amount of 40+ year old colleagues who dont know how directories work either. Just dump everything on the desktop. So I really doubt that has anything to do with tablets.