Digital Addiction

In my opinion, if you want to develop good enterprise Java programmers, I would start by teaching kids to be creative, imaginative problem solvers.

I definitely wouldn’t want to inflict that fate on my kids!

They can tear it into pieces, roll it up or fold it 3 dimensionally. They can stick it to other things, etc, etc. That activity engages all sorts of imagination and physical spatial skills, and you need to work a bit for your reward.
However clever a tablet game is, you are still pushing pixels in a 2D physical plane

I agree that physical play is good (and the two are not mutually exclusive) but I think you are under-estimating what games can involve.

A tablet game could have you moving the tablet on 3-axes, whilst tapping or making multi-finger gestures on the screen and reacting to dynamic events signalled by visual, audio or touch cues.

Or of course, you can just fold paper:

you are still pushing pixels in a 2D physical plane

Not really. Lots of 3D games around where the plane of the tablet is only a representation of 3D space. I’m not saying it’s more or less important to a child’s development – how could I when we don’t know what the end result of development is meant to be?

I’m not advocating excluding anything. Kids should fold paper, paint, dig, all the rest of it AND play tablet games, both fun and educational.

I heard an old story that when the US air force was training pilots in some allied country in the middle east they found that controlling the planes (with a little joystick in the right hand) was pretty easy for the American students to learn because they’d grown up learning fine motor control on computer games, and much harder for those who hadn’t. Not sure if true, but it’s plausible. And yes I know they have computers in the middle east.

Actually the US and UK military use off-the-shelf Xbox/Playstation/Wii game controllers (or ruggedised proprietary copies of them) to control things like drones and bomb disposal robots.

Game Controllers Driving Drones, Nukes

Makes sense really – the pilots are familiar with them and they are readily available.

With reference to the XKCD cartoon (and another one I can never find which makes the same point),

The reason this is so contentious is, it’s all so new. Parents didn’t have iPads when they were kids, so the long-term effects are unknown and won’t be until it’s too late. And parents being parents, most will want the best for their little darling / hellspawn (delete where applicable). Kids growing up with tablets is the unknown, and the unknown is something to be treated with suspicion, feared even.

Thing is, we’ve been here before. Every generation has seen new things that We Didn’t Have When We Were Growing Up, and every generation was scared. Before tablets it was computer games rotting your brain; before that, video; television; rock & roll; if you go back far enough we were burning books.

And you know what? All those kids who listened to punk music, watched grainy VHS video ‘nasties’, found hedgerow grumble, read Harry Potter, played Grand Theft Auto, hung out in arcades… they all turned out ok. And the ones that didn’t, the ones you see in the headlines as “shooting spree caused by [demonised thing de jour]”, they were broken in the head to start with.

The analogy does not necessarily hold though. Sooner or later something will be invented that kids think is cool but will kill them.

Oh wait… Cigarettes.. drugs.. umm…

We’ll be burning those next.

Not really. Lots of 3D games around where the plane of the tablet is only a representation of 3D space.

I’d still call that a 2D physical plane.

I remember watching my son starting to play with Lego, and just lining up bricks and snapping them together was a challenge initially. I hadn’t really thought about that before. I bet I could have sat him in front of Minecraft and he would have effortlessly assembled virtual block piles.

I bet not.

lost the ability to write or draw years ago. Last week I discovered I could no longer write my signature (or not the same one in three places in one document).
I doubt writing or drawing will be a thing in 20 years.

In my current job, working through an agency, I have to use old-skool NCR forms to record details of the cars I’m picking up and transporting, whereas the self-employed ‘platers’ use custom software on smartphones, and on a number of occasions the person signing off the pickup or delivery has commented how it’s really nice to have forms with legible writing!
The thing is, though, is that the majority of drivers are edging into middle age, so I think the ability to write neatly has been gradually diminishing for years, not being considered particularly important.
My handwriting was pretty shonky when I left school, I was taught a form of copperplate cursive, which is difficult to write neatly quickly, whereas other mates were taught an italic style, which I really envied, so I’ve taught myself to develop a style which is neat and reasonably easy to write fairly quickly; working in print/publishing I had to be able to communicate changes to text clearly, which I’m keen to maintain.
I’m not sure that handwriting will die completely, what with proper fine-point styli being developed for touch-screen phones/tablets.
Things have certainly changed a lot in the fifty or so years since I was a nipper, but perhaps not so much in other ways.

It’s the future. Deal with it, join in, or get out of the way.

lost the ability to write

Same here, I often have to write out a post-it note to myself two or three times it’s so bad….

There’s a Windows Ink app that purports to smooth out handwriting as you use the pen.

I use my iPad to write notes with by hand when in meetings.

my handwriting is getting worse and my typing is getting faster

all the tech opinionators are pushing the switch from typing to voice input; I’m not sure that this will work so well in open plan offices but I’ll be one of those old geezers that says nowt pecking away at the keys while all the young turks use voice, mobile as primary devices and networked working better than we do

and good on em, some of the new generation of analysts we have in our department are brilliant

my 3 and 6 year old ladies know that screen time (regardless of device) don’t have unlimited access but it’s all a two way negotiation

I used voice input today. Realised that when you are alone its a lot quicker than typing on a phone.

Kids today hey! Drinking less, smoking less, getting up the duff less, stealing less, fighting less etc etc.

Every generation thinks the things they don’t quite have a handle on are damaging their kids. As with everything in our media-hyperbolic lives, people seem incapable of doing things sensibly these days. Just use your common sense!
An occassional binge at the weekend of 2am computer games is not going to destroy your kids entire futures- and depriving them will make them want it more. Tech isn’t going away- your kids need to have a handle on it to stay relevant.

Sent from my iPad whilst simultaneously watching family guy, checking emails on my iPhone whilst riding my variable resistance indoor trainer in a virtual race around a fictional course against a foreigner I’ll never meet on Zwift 😀

talking about forgetting how to write.
Most of my colleagues at work here in China are forgetting how to write.
Using phones, computers etc., these days, mostly write in Pinyin (using abc, not writing in Characters) when we get up to do whiteboard work, they often have to glance at their phones, or ask others how to write the characters, as using a pen is becoming less common these days.

As for children using devices.
You can’t avoid it.
They need to learn to use it, their friends use it (peer pressure may also come in)

Ours have quite an active lifestyle, and we let them use it to chill out for a little while (and Mummy and Daddy can have a bit of our time too)

My lad would choose zwift though over minecraft though.

Every generation thinks the things they don’t quite have a handle on are damaging their kids. As with everything in our media-hyperbolic lives, people seem incapable of doing things sensibly these days. Just use your common sense!

Yeah but the point is about the addictiveness of these things, not whether or not they are intrinsically harmful.

Yeah but the point is about the addictiveness of these things, not whether or not they are intrinsically harmful.

Absolutely. I do not think that technology is intrinsically harmful; nor do I think is its use for gaming (or whatever). Certainly no more so than something like alcohol.

The reason I posted the article I did is that in an increasingly digitised world, it seems to me that real experience has the potential to get crushed under the ubiquitousness of technology.

he reason I posted the article I did is that in an increasingly digitised world, it seems to me that real experience has the potential to get crushed under the ubiquitousness of technology.

Real technology free experiences are the thing of nightmares. Try a week naked in a wood and see how you enjoy it.

Try a week naked in a wood and see how you enjoy it.

You’re assuming I haven’t. It’s a Canadian rite of passage.

real experience has the potential to get crushed under the ubiquitousness of technology.

Are digital experiences ‘fake’? Or just different…?

Playing devil’s advocate here.

My 2 and half year old is sat next to me here, tapping away on her phone.. It’s almost unbelievable how quickly she picked up the basics

It’s not limited to kids. Recently noticed just how much time I was spending checking my phone. I found that uninstalling Facebook app on my phone and unfollowing all commercial pages (including Singletrack) helped a lot. I transferred most of the things I was still interested in following onto Twitter and/or Instagram. Also on Facebook, I unfollowed people I don’t really keep in touch with anymore and seem to ‘like’ everything under the sun. (a friend cull may follow)

Facebook had become an advert stream, with tiny bits of original content (photos, statuses, videos) from friends. It’s got a lot better after doing the actions above. Now I instigate checking it and the content doesn’t change as much as before, so I actually view it less. Still I think it’s demise is coming, for me at least.

I think the root of the problem is that a lot of apps ‘push’ content with alerts demanding attention, and devices are constantly on. Today’s issues are different to previous concerns about TV. Your TV doesn’t switch itself on when it deems something might interest you*, off is off.

*Although I can see this happening in the future….

Yes – ‘liking’ lots of stuff on fb turns your feed into ads. I think that FB only shows you so many posts, and the more commercial stuff in there the fewer real friends’ posts.

Facebook is also using an annoying ‘edge’ interest algorithm, i.e. it shows you thinks you’ve not indicated you’re directly/strongly interested in. I think this is to get you to explore other things/advertisers.

I’ve found the result of this is I get shown things from people I have no real world link to, e.g. a friend of a friend updates their profile picture and my friend likes it. I get shown this updated picture, yet I have no link to the friend of a friend, other than my friend. It’s bonkers.

I used voice input today.

Get with the times granddad, thats so 1982. Back in the 80’s my dad was involved in a pilot introducing computing as a subject (rather than a lunch time club as it was in my school) into the schools in his region. Including computers going into primary schools.

He arranged the supply of a primary school’s first computer and was there for the first lesson. Teacher invites one of the kids to come to the front of the class.

“put your name into the computer Alice”

so the kid stands in front of it and says

“Hello, my names Alice”
“My.. Name… is…Alice”
“ALICE!”
“ALICE!”
“ALICE!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAA-lice”

Then stormed off in a huff.

10 Print “Who the F** is Alice?”;
20 GOTO 10

RUN

Oric1

“ALICE!”
“ALICE!”
“ALICE!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAA-lice”

An entire episode of Luther right there

I think the root of the problem is that a lot of apps ‘push’ content with alerts demanding attention

I turn all that crap off. Very few of my apps are allowed any kind of notification, and only a selected sub-set of those are allowed to actually alert me.

I’ve found the result of this is I get shown things from people I have no real world link to, e.g. a friend of a friend updates their profile picture and my friend likes it.

Yeah that is getting irritating on Facebook these days.

It also means that I comment/like less things myself because I’m aware I could pollute my friend’s timelines with stuff they don’t care about – which seems counter to the whole business model of facebook.

“put your name into the computer Alice”

so the kid stands in front of it and says

“Hello, my names Alice”

Yep, my 3 year old sometimes gets frustrated because some of the toys and apps that she plays with do respond to voice and most don’t.

Likewise when my eldest was in Reception year her teacher commented that she was the only pupil that knew how to use a mouse. The rest of them all prodded at the monitor assuming it was a touch-screen. 🙂

And I can vividly remember when she was still just a baby and was confused because she couldn’t get swipe/pinch gestures to work on the pictures in a magazine.

Their everyday childhood would have been science fiction in our childhood.

I remember my Daughter when she was in her twos walking up to the TV, and swiping the screen to turn it off 😆

Wekk a lot of this is generational, also remember when your parents had to deal with all this, they just penned a letter to <insert agaony aunt/uncle> of choice or maybe phoned into a radio show. Maybe they discussed it at a dinner party or down the pub…

My folks grew up with only live television
When I grew up it was possible to program a video recorder to tape something that was on at a different time!! Like on demand, well sort of. We moderated that by having 1 VHS tape each to record stuff on and any sneaky attempts to record smut etc. were clamped down upon (you can only get the end time wrong so many times for late night C4)
Then along came the walkman and the game boy – all of those things caused problems – mostly due to the cost of batteries but responsible parenting was the key.

These days as I sit at work I’m better read, better informed and across so much more. 20 years ago the only real option for learning was to find a book or an expert. Now if I want to know something I have facts, opinions and the rest at my fingertips.

From a school point of view history was one of the most important subjects where we learnt how to read, review and interperate sources, take into acount bias and motivations and to present a summary of the information. These days the sources are greater and more varied but the approach remains.

The technology changes are scary but worth embracing.