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Comment by dajt | Hacker News Reader

Only the oldest of teens would worry about those things. I agree they're all bad but I'm not convinced they'd have much of an impact on under 17 year olds.

I'm extremely hacked off that the high school I'm sending my kids to requires students to have an ipad. It's expensive for me, of no benefit to the student, and makes it difficult for students and parents to figure out what homework is due becuase it's scattered around various websites depending on the teacher's whim. It also means he has a screen to fight with us over that he would not have had otherwise. Then the younger kids get annoyed he has one and they don't. There is no upside.

I asked my oldest son why he doesn't invite his friends around more often and he said 'I can talk to them online'.

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> I'm extremely hacked off that the high school I'm sending my kids to requires students to have an ipad

My nephews in primary school had android tablets but had to get new ipads (second hand not supported) for the "programming" class that was introduced with proprietary drag'n'drop programming software. A raspberry pi would not only have been much cheaper but would have had much more potential as an educational tool.

Yeah, or a build-it-yourself Z80 kit. I'm not being sarcastic.

An rpi or an arduino would be way better than an iPad.

> no benefit to the student

No benefit? Maybe you mean that you prefer an Android tablet? I didn't have a computer until I was 18. The internet wasn't much of a thing until I got to college. Every day I think about how amazing it would have been to have access to so much free information when I was a kid.

I spent much of my teenage years playing video games, building/overclocking computers, flashing roms on my phones, and devouring wikipedia. my parents were concerned that I was spending too much time online but I'm glad they didn't try to intervene. I was learning tons and by the time I got to college pretty much everything in the CS degree was trivially easy for me (except some of the formal math stuff).

on the flip side, I am quite certain that most of my peers spent their hours primarily on youtube, facebook, and aim. they seemed to take pride in how little they understood the workings of their entertainment devices.

today I hear a lot of parents talking about how they are putting off getting a family computer/tablet for as long as possible and how they intend to severely limit screen time once they finally get one. it makes me sad to think that these children will miss out on all the great learning experiences I had with my computers, but I'm not sure the parents are necessarily wrong, especially with the current buzz around social media and mental health.

I get it, and what I was responding to was the "no benefit" comment. I carry research articles and books on my phone that I can read with any spare moment. It's amazing actually, and I don't see the point of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

> on the flip side, I am quite certain that most of my peers spent their hours primarily on youtube, facebook, and aim. they seemed to take pride in how little they understood the workings of their entertainment devices.

People, kids especially, love wasting time. All that changes is how they do the time wasting.

I spent every waking hour tinkering with my C64, and made a career from that.

But a C64 is a very different beast from a ipad or even a rpi. I think the percentage of owners back then tinkered with them as well as just loading up games was much higher.

I haven't heard of a single kid in my son's classes who has tried programming. The thing is just a TV/mobile game console.

Thank god they haven't hit facebook yet, at least the ones I know.

I guess nothing has changed much haha. I was a teenager in the late 90s and early 00s; none of that existed. The only kids using computers then were interested in games, hacking on them, or using them for some productivity task.

How many people are interested in how cars work vs just use them to get around? Computing is just ubiquitous now but people who really care about how they work are still a small minority.

No, I mean a tablet is a stupid thing for a school student to have. I could sort of see the point of a cheap laptop or chromebook - at least typing on them is reasonable. But there is nothing wrong with writing on paper either.

Teachers giving homework printed on paper makes it easier for the student and parent to know what homework there is to be done.

And printing from tablets? Come on. I don't know about Android tablets but it ain't easy from an iPad.

My kids aren't living in some tech backwater - we have more than enough computers from 8 to 64 bits they could do something useful with.

But there is no upside to me having to buy each of them an iPad - not for me or them. Even iPad games are just stupid free-to-play-pay-to-speed-up-progress games. All the kids give each other for birthday these days are itunes cards that get spend on 'gems'.

The whole thing is a disaster. Get off my lawn.

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