Spent a morning out on the town on my day off, and everyone is just fucking buried in their phones 24/7. This realization was so absurd to me
Of course I’m not exempt from this shit, but no wonder people are having so much trouble making friends and creating meaningful relationships in this day and age. So fucking bleak
I find it much more worrying to see kids constantly on ipads and shit. Like how it's much more concerning to see a child smoking than an adult smoking.
I don't blame the parents btw. Everyone is tired, child care is unaffordable. Society atomizes us and keeps us away from our extended families that would have provided childcare in the past. A one-income family is basically impossible for most people.
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Holy shit. My kids love playing games and watching things on devices, but it always takes at least 30 minutes to get them anywhere near willing to leave the playground.
I grew up playing games all the time, and I still spend a lot of free time playing games. But the whole family ALSO uses these devices for creative endeavors. They started doing animations, mini-movies, digital art, music, etc. When they show an interest in new things we try to encourage them to pursue it at least to see if they find enjoyment and fulfilment.
I used to comfort myself by saying that I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid and I grew up okay, but TV wasn't available anywhere on demand.
Also, at least TV tends to have a narrative that's supposed to hold a kid's attention and might be educational. YouTube is just nonsense lights and sounds for 60 seconds at a time.
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure that screen time and internet access restrictions on minors like China is imposing are probably the way forward, but they'll never happen in the West because the social media oligarchs control the government.
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IMO this kind of reflexive and unconditional individualism is one of the core causes of Western social rot.
Yup turns out having a majority of your population think "it's me verses society" isn't great for that society.
Extra hilarious how Americans will tell you about how it's a part of Chinese culture to fuck other people over to get ahead as they raise millions of people out of poverty every year.
Meanwhile in America people don't support universal Healthcare because other people might benefit from it.
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Do people on Hexbear post that stuff unironically? I think I've only seen it dunked on.
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The "homework is slavery" struggle session was particularly embaressing.
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100% agree on the creative apps thing, similarly whenever I meet a kid at work (I like to treat kids with respect and if they talk to me about their interests I try to engage them like I would a peer) I always try to recommend games like Kerbal Space Program, or Space Engineers if they bring up videogames for example. Kids want to do what they want to do and what we can do is at least guide them to the sort of stuff we wish we had as a kid that might also be healthy activities in a sea of unhealthy and predatory options.
KSP is spyware https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/ksp
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My nephew was like that for a bit but the thing that stuck with me was when his parents joked about him having "ipad withdrawal."