I linked to this thread, only because it's what got me thinking about this topic again. Me and my SO talk about phones occasionally, regarding our kids. Neither of them are anywhere close to an age where they might have one. However, as time goes on, we find ourselves so repelled by the idea of the kids having a fully fledged smartphone.

Given the reality that all social media apps are effectively skinner boxes, training you to use them more, the idea of allowing kids on them feels like offering a 10-year-old a cigarette. I have to remind myself that the internet I grew up on is dead and gone. I may have been exposed to some weird ass shit in AOL chat rooms, but there wasn't any kind of algorithmic content feed keeping me itching and scratching.

So far, the only time the oldest uses an iPad is when they use mine, and the only apps they use are Procreate for drawing, and an app that helps kids learn to write letters and words. Watching TV is probably the worst thing we get into at home when it comes to just pure content consumption, but we keep the list of watchable stuff pretty small, and regularly axe shows we feel don't meet our standards when we venture off that list.

I guess this has evolved into a larger discussion about media consumption as I have typed this out, but at the end of the day, that's what's happening on these phones, right?

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Show

    Something that's amazingly consistent about play behaviors in mammals; play teaches you to fight.

    Goat kids rear and headbutt, cats pounce, wolves hound and nip and submit, monkeys chase each other up and down, human kids turn anything they can pick up in to a sword.

    Play teaches many other things - social relationships, fairness, theory of mind, coordination, dance, joy. But it also teaches you how to fight, how to hunt, how to move quickly through unknown terrain, how to hide and deceive.

    Progress is an illusion. We still live in a world of violence and hardship. Not everywhere, not for everyone, not all the time. But look at the former ussr. 35 years ago Russians and Ukrainians were comrades, friends, building communism together. Now after a generation of Nazi lies and NATO manipulations, capital theft and demographic collapse the two nations are locked in a brutal struggle that should have been unthinkable.

    And there are many other, less dramatic cases. Kids will face bullying. Kids will need to lie convincly to teachers and bureaucrats and cops. Kids might need to steal shit. Kids might need to run real goddamn fast, even if it's just to catch the bus.

    Every act of play can be preparation for hardship as well as joy. A tiktok dance might teach you to love life, but it's also teaching you to lead and follow, to have patience when other's can't keep up or with your own limits, to coordinate, to view the world as an interconnect network of people. And dancing is just swordsmanship without the blade. Footwork is the first step in learning to fight, before you learn to control your breath or throw a punch.

    You can view these things holistically. Learning to fight gives you the power to avoid fighting. Learning the wield a sword teaches you to dance with someone you love. Learning to coordinate a dance routine teaches you to lead an army but also to plan a wedding feast.