Dad takes son to Mongolia to get him off his phone
bbc.com
bbc.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21906727
Watching energetic young kids run around, I can see how tempting it is to give them an interactive device which consumes their attention and makes them easier to handle. But phones seem designed to encourage the shortest possible attention spans and rabid multi-tasking, the opposite of deep focus. So what do you do? Is it as simple as banning phones, if you're willing to give them the needed attention? What about friends' phones and the Internet in general? What if they fall in love with web programming at the age of 8? You want them to be familiar with technology and ideally to be able to drift between multi-tasking and deep focus. I haven't read much on how to achieve this from a practical parenting perspective, though.
For a start, you can program them. (My smartphones make me sad for this reason.) Further, you have to program them to get them to do much of anything. To play a game, you have to type it in! Which means you can type in something different, and make your own games! They always come with a manual. And they are beyond the reach of the tentacles of the attention harvesting monster.
If the user can figure out how to install chrome to get to Facebook (or whatever) from just that, well I think they're probably past this line of reasoning.
I can't do this what any mainstream smartphone however, ffs.
This behaviour is not unique to children though. I watch adults at the hospital using Facebook and it's the same. It's almost like they just want to swipe rather than look at the content for real.
I have no idea what the long term effects of this behaviour are. Perhaps it's nothing and I'm fretting over it needlessly. But I've experienced it myself and it took behaviour similar to rehab to come out of it and be able to slowly enjoy content again. And it always feels easy to slip back into. It's terrifying.
Pick up the news paper, and it's the same thing you have to browse/skim through. Pick up the phone and it's tens of new items every few minutes.
Not being able to resist is related to how well you resist drugs. So it's important to be aware of.
Our environment is changing far faster than we can adapt. It will be interesting to see the long-term impact.
Iceland has used a data-driven approach to improve kids health. Youth drug use rates have plummeted. If I had kids, I'd be following their model. This graph[0] is very impressive.
[0] https://www.icenews.is/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/GetAsset.a...
I want to see more about social "soft" emergencies where we focus more on the above. That is the reason for most "hard" emergencies.
Hopefully someday. But the meetings where all this is decided does not have people focused mainly on "soft" problems.
And that's YOU. READ. Not some podcast or audiobook.
It's about time together. It's about you doing voices for the characters. It's about the low visual content of books that activates young imaginations. It's about reading longer books (when they're old enough to be ready for it, of course) that might take a month or longer to read so that they learn about delayed gratification, learn long-term continuity skills.
Banning tech from kids' lives altogether seems unnecessary and is probably impossible (though minimising it seems advisable!) but, above all, it's balance that's wanted.
I think constructive praise is critical too, so they feel the tangible benefits of putting time into a project. I actually think books are bad in this regard, there is nothing to praise at the end, though it does provoke thought. We switched to comics, they are able to handle much more complex story lines then.
Once that hurdle is cleared, going to such an extreme for disconnecting helps hammer home the point to the kid: cellular connectivity isn't just a few feet of separation from phone, or a few miles outside cell service, it's far enough that disconnection is absolute & profound - you can drive (not just walk) for days and still not get a connection.
The real horror is a society so deeply dependent on something they use so intimately yet so completely fail to understand. Getting kids "back to the Earth" is very important, full & complete disconnect from "technology" so they can grasp their own ability to live & thrive without it. Clarke: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"; we're there, and while the benefits are good, the psychological dependency & mystery isn't. Go somewhere distant from technology, forage/hunt food, make a meal over an open fire, and sleep under the stars - so vital for a child's psychological well-being.
[ETA: "Midwest" referring to roughly the boundary between central plains and Rocky Mountains.]
Wait, what? When is the last time you went to the midwest!?
From that perspective, methinks Starlink.com will contribute to significant population shifts, making such low/no-connectivity areas viable to those dependent on internet connectivity. I'd move to that region quick were data fast & reliable.
[ETA: "Midwest" as in "west side of mid" a la broad boundary of central plains and Rocky Mountains.]
This map seems to capture how I think of the larger regions in the USA
https://www.touropia.com/regions-of-the-united-states/
Probably would divide Socal from Norcal.
Also, there is a distinct inter-mountain west between the Rockies and the Sierra/Cascades. Utah isn't really in the Southwest and Eastern WA/OR isn't really in the PNW but close enough.
I had a similar experience when visiting this region. Very open. Poor signal, sometimes not even radio.
Just because things aren't black or white and exactly measurable, there doesn't mean we can't make distinctions and decide qualitatively, or that if someone accepts technology X% then they need to accept it 100% and bend over backwards to whatever tech is popular...
The "slippery slope" argument than if you forego cell phone addiction you must also "hunt and foraging with your own hand made weapons" is also bad -- as if every new invention is an absolute must have, and people shouldn't live without it, or set their own criteria, lest they forego civilization entirely.
>That's idealistic romanticism, and unless you're running around in leather skins with a wooden bow and hand woven string, it's all pretending that one can survive without the trappings of modern life.
We survived for millennia without the "trappings of modern life", and we survived without commonly available cellphones even up to 1995 or so, and smartphones up to 1998 or so, so it's not like we absolutely must have them or are savages. Not having a smartphone at all or going on a mobile-diet is actually a thing in hacker circles, which are far from savages...
There are millions of people who do without this or other trappings by choice (not to mention billions by lack of money), who still do just fine.
In fact a couple of the richest people (ship owners level rich) I know use some crappy 20-year old style cellphone (not a smartphone) and avoid being arbitrarily reachable by others. It's not some luxury those "trappings of modern life" often it's the opposite: the passtime of slaves and necessary tools of working stiff to be easily found.
You didn't describe a 1998 style of living, you described roughing it.
> Go somewhere distant from technology, forage/hunt food, make a meal over an open fire, and sleep under the stars - so vital for a child's psychological well-being.
Now you say:
> The "slippery slope" argument than if you forego cell phone addiction you must also "hunt and foraging with your own hand made weapons" is also BS -- as if every new invention is an absolute must have, and people shouldn't live without it, or set their own criteria, lest they forego civilization entirely.
That seems to be two entirely opposite things. If you want to say "cell phones bad", just say that - don't pretend it is because of a desire to be better and healthier for children.
You clearly want them to say "cell phones bad", but I only see you using those words. One can engage in an activity for multiple purposes. I like to exercise in order to keep my weight down, but it also helps me sleep better and keeps my energy levels up.
Isn't it possible that cell phones as a whole are good, but too much cell p[hone usage is bad? Coffee has many positive benefits, but if you start to drink too much of it, the negative effects can overtake the positive benefits. Isn't it worth exploring where that line is when it comes to a device we keep with us at all times and use "over 4 hours a day" [1]?
[1] https://hackernoon.com/how-much-time-do-people-spend-on-thei...
You mean the grandparent did. What they said isn't about permanent living, but about something one can do as a kind of break, and they (and I for that matter) thinks beneficial for the children too: "Go somewhere distant from technology, forage/hunt food, make a meal over an open fire, and sleep under the stars - so vital for a child's psychological well-being."
We used to call those things "going cabing/fishing/hunting/backpacking in the wild" etc, back before 1995 and throughout the 20th century -- and we did them without cellphones or game consoles, and most things. Usually it was a great parent/kid bonding memory too. Sleeping under the stars, making a meal open an open fire, fishing/hunting for food and eating local stuff (from trees etc), were all perfectly normal. Heck, several people I know, in my age and younger (40 to 20-something) still do a lot of those things, go camping, etc. Are they considered inconceivable savagery today?
>That seems to be two entirely opposite things. If you want to say "cell phones bad", just say that - don't pretend it is because of a desire to be better and healthier for children.
You probably confused my response to your comment, to what the grandparent wrote first. Note however, that neither me, nor the grandparent mentioned anything about some permanent retreat from technology. Grandparent basically said - as I read it - "do this X things in nature, without technology, from time to time. It's good for you, and good for the children to learn those things and to not think they're nothing without technology".
That said, nor sure about the distinction you're making here: "If you want to say "cell phones bad", just say that - don't pretend it is because of a desire to be better and healthier for children.".
If I believe that cell phones are bad, I'd naturally also believe spending some time without them is better and healthier for children. So saying one or the other would be based on the same idea.
But you don't have to think "cell phones are bad". It's enough to think that cell phones are not only great, but also have downsides, or that however good cell phones are, one also needs to appreciate / be able to do without them too. It's about not being a slave to one's tech.
Yes. Google Maps has pretty good coverage of popular trails and topography and can be used if you have signal.
> it doesn't help you navigate to 9134 Grocer Place
It absolutely can if you have some familiarity with the area and no signal. If from previous experience, you generally know where Grocer Place is then finding 9134 just takes patience. You don't even need to have necessarily been to that specific street before if you have a mental map of the area.
> a topo map would be less than useless
For finding a street address, true. But knowing how to read a topo map helps someone learn how to read and navigate natural landmarks which can be helpful in a natural disaster scenario or in a city if they are lost and no signal. I invite you to spend some time orienteering, I think you'll start to understand where I am coming from.
Ah, I was thinking back country - everywhere I've gone there's no signal, and if I'm front country, you can always just use the obvious trail markers.
Your use case for direction finding isn't relevant to an urban user. If you are familiar with the area, chances are you don't need a topo map, and you don't need to orienteer your way either - you'll understand the street numbers and landmarks. I'm also confused as to how using google maps affects your ability to become familiar with an area - I've found that by the 3rd time I've gone somewhere I no longer need maps at all, but I was using it up until then.
Many people are naturally good at creating a mental map regardless of how they navigate initially. It sounds like you are one of them. However there are plenty of people who don't seem to have that innate skill. Wilderness orienteering experience would help those people. In my experience, it also helps everyone navigate in unfamiliar surroundings (urban or not) if they don't have signal. It is a form of transfer learning to use an ML analogy.
I, for one, am not going to waste my mental energy making a mental map of Houston. The city PROPER has an area of 670 mi^2, which is equivalent to fifteen San Francisco's. The metropolitan area is over 200 San Francisco's. I regularly drive 40 miles to get from one side of the city to another, for whatever particular errand I need to run that day. The Houston metro area is officially over 10,000 square miles - that's larger than (pick one): Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maryland.
I'm not building a "mental map" of an area larger than the entire state of Massachusetts. Saying it's on par with the total area of the country of Switzerland would not be much of an exaggeration.
Maybe the city was different before cell phones. Maybe each neighborhood either had everything you needed or you just went without. Now, because GPS/Google Maps exist, the highest quality businesses pop up in super random spots around the city, and you'll never be able to have a clue how to get to them all without Google Maps.
"Back in the day" you didn't live in an integrated metropolis the size of Switzerland. But we do now...so the tools we need to enable that are now legitimately "needed" and non-optional. This very well may be hazardous to our health, but its not really an option.
Edit: I just checked and see that it can do some places, mostly day hikes, but didn't have my other hikes or their campgrounds.
You cant just navigate to a random address by knowing which way is north.
That being a bit too long a jump for most people involved in my attempt, I want a progressive one-step-down on everything we use. Home > camper > tent > hammock > foliage > open ground. Stove > grill > campfire > fire drill. Canned food > MRE > dry goods > foraging > hunt/trap. Cheap gear > ultralight gear > iron/leather/wool gear > make your own out there.
The "cell phone bad" issue comes from a new generation fixated on a magic glass slate which mysteriously supplies nearly all their needs, able to conjure up food/shelter/transport/society with just a few taps on some runes - and the users have no idea how it works, nor what they would do without it. Even if they do indeed spend most of their lives relying on it, they must have enough competence & competence to be dropped anywhere in the country, with nothing, and confidently find their way back to safety & society. Too many can't even get home from school/work without a GPS & mapping app.
FWIW: I grew up on wood heat (northern US), raised half our own food, did own car repairs, sewed, had wood/metal/electronic/photo shops, etc. Modern luxuries are, well, luxurious but I aspire to a remote log cabin on a mountain lake with a Starlink connection.
Why? What use case are you thinking here? That's survivalist escapist fantasy stuff, nothing to do with the requirements of most modern living. Even in the case of the hypothetical EMP natural disaster, you're probably not in wilderness, you're in a major metropolis surrounded by people and navigating social dynamics will be more important than being able to sew a goat into a cape.
Even the CDC has discovered "zombie apocalypse preparedness" as a means of ensuring people are trained to handle any situation. Sounds preposterous, yes, but in doing so you know you're ready.
The problem with modern living (now app-based) is that power, data, food, fuel, water, and/or money outages leave too many people quickly desperate. Can you quickly preserve the food in your fridge/freezer without electricity? Can you acquire clean water when the tap runs dry? Do you even know where your food/water comes from, and why that matters? This even extends into sociopolitical policy, regarding how governments redistribute taxes to people who ... wait for it ... are incapable of providing for their basic needs when bad things happen, because they don't know how to provide for basic needs when bad things happen.
It's raining outside right now. Have you ever, in earnest, gathered rainwater for drinking? ever even considered it seriously? How reliant on strangers are you for the most important necessity?
Unless of course it's a modern problem requiring communicating with someone a thousand miles away.
I have no idea how you think a metropolitan centre of millions people, even if all trained in wilderness survival skills, would be able to sustain themselves. They couldn't - there's no way you could feed everyone in a major city by foraging or by killing all the rats or finding wild mushrooms. And I guess you could try to navigate out of city by foot, but you're hoping you're going to be able to outrun the general diaspora.
It's a survivalist power fantasy.
And if you understand the complete technology stack, you'll reconsider living in a metropolitan centre.
Understanding how a cell phone works won't help you if you're reduced to stone age tech. Even "iron" would have a hard step to get to with nothing. Stone age man didn't have cell phones not just because they didn't know how to build one, there's layers and layers of society that are relied on in order to work towards modern society.
> And if you understand the complete technology stack, you'll reconsider living in a metropolitan centre.
Only if I assume some survivalist power fantasy fiction will come to pass.
What do you even mean by this?
"The power is out kids! Start a bonfire in the front yard, we're making pemmican and jerky!"
In all seriousness, I've been through a number of multi-day power outages. You leave the door to your fridge/freezer shut as much as possible. When you open it, you make it infrequent and fast. They are well insulated, things stay cold for a long time.
Get to know your local HAM radio enthusiasts.
I don't see how making people use their phone less helps with this, at all.
> nor what they would do without it.
I have a terrible memory and need to write everything down. If you took away my ability to read and write, I don't know how I would do anything.
Is there anything wrong with this?
I'm not suggesting a large/dominating percentage of your time go to this. I am suggesting you (and the kids in question) go off-grid to see what extends beyond "today's world" and how others live in it without the tools you have.
Because here's the thing: if those tools fail, you die of dysentery.
Go enjoy the outdoors all you want if that's what you want to do, but this fantasy you're totally setting yourself up to survive...something? is just that - a fantasy.
Their having had the experience of disconnect from modern resources, it may be easier for them to realize how fragile our systems are. Like, "Remember how it felt when we were hiking in remotelocation without electricity? What if our electricity went out for a month at home because of an earthquake? What do you think would happen to (us, our neighbors, our town, etc.)?"
Even a minimal "back to the earth" experience can be educational.
Edited for typo
That seems pretty far down the "no tech" rabbit hole by being critical of pretty much all technology.
> "I was surprised that when he's away from a work environment and family that he acts maybe closer my age," he says.
> Similarly, Mr Clarke was surprised to learn how mature his son was when they weren't confined to their typical father-son parenting dynamic.
This was what I took away as the most important part from this. It's definitely a surreal moment the first time you experience your parents as real people, peers even, and no longer as only a parent. I remember when I first experienced that with my own dad. Finding the opportunity to facilitate a moment like this is something special. I'm looking forward to whatever that might be with my own son one day, likely many years from now.
Similar points can be made about the ubiquity of surveillance tech: giving up key personal rights in the name of "convenience".
Your story might just as well have been about candy.
https://www.mommyshorts.com/2014/04/more-reasons-your-kids-a...
The entire time I was there (and remember, this is the DMV, so it was a while) the kid was glued to the phone. There is a difference between engaging with a smartphone and being engrossed by one. This case was certainly the latter. Yes, again, toddler worldviews have limited scope and the thing in front of them is usually the most important thing ever, but even so this child was clearly addicted.
I think some of it also has to do with the kids personality. If it was a battle getting it away from her, I’d probably avoid giving it to her altogether.
We let our kids watch our phones sometimes in public, and when we take them away they get sometimes get grumpy. But that’s nothing compared to how my kid lost his sh1t tonight when I told him I wouldn’t sing him jingle bells because it was past his bed time. You would have thought I put all his toys in a fire.
This really just reminds me of how people only notice when kids go off the hook and don’t notice when they behave. My (maybe incorrect) guess is the person at the DMV doesn’t have kids.
Addendum: if there's something you must do that you don't want to keep doing forever, aggressively cut it out as soon as possible. Or you're just deferring and increasing the eventual pain.
I'm glad I went through that to readjust and see just how much my mind had been warped. I use social media much less than I used to and I'm happier for it.
I also find I burn a lot of time on meta-media (best-lists and such) and low-value reading (cough) because there's a ton of it available at the command of a whim, where before one had to spend real time seeking out or paying for that sort of thing (magazines and such). It's a pretty serious indictment of my Web activity that I wouldn't pay any money at all for most of it, if the choice were to pay or not to have it (Internet service doesn't count—I pay for it for the few things for which it actually is very useful, not for those).
Actually that word might best describe what we've done with this new environment: we've given vastly more power to whims. The Age of the Whim.
This dude has climbed Everest, twice?! I'm starting to think this family would have gone on a vacation to Mongolia regardless of whether there was cell service.
> "I had never before that experienced a weekend without my phone, essentially," Khobe told the BBC. "It was very weird for me."
> "What am I going to do, look at the stars and twiddle my thumbs?"
Holy fucking shit this poor kid!
What are we doing to ourselves?
A.) At least those activities take place in meat-space.
B.) Because those are the only options, right? Phone or delinquency?
C.) You think that's it? The parents are druggies who had unwanted children and so they are content to let the phone raise them? The 60's did it?
And I'm looking now at my younger cousins being accused of addiction as well, yet it's clearly not. They're see switching games repeatedly, but their parents can't differentiate so it looks like they're stuck on one thing indefinitely. But reality is much simpler -- they aren't well socialized, and their friend circles are also not very well socialized, so they spend most of their time on games. Sometimes together, on multiplayer games, or solo, and then talk about it together later.
But it's clear they're not addicted -- they just don't know how to do anything else. eg they can't successfully gather a group to go to the beach, and neither can their friends, and thus they only know of the beach as somewhere to go with as family (which is never that much fun), and thus the whole circle has no real concept of going to the beach as a group of friends, and so no one in that circle even attempts it, so the concept is never learned.
And then the fix, taking away the games, manages to accomplish nothing.. they still don't know what to do. Their friend circle is naturally not going to switch to some sport, or whatever movie, or whatever else, because it's not in their culture. But their culture isn't developed/exposed enough to do anything else. So they're stuck, bored, and just waiting to get back to the one thing they know how to do.
In my case, I'm pretty sure my parents could have fixed the "problem" with something like paintball, if they really wanted to get me out of the house, or DnD if they wanted me to socialize more in-person. But my parents were too far removed from the problem to think of anything other than what they would do (my father was social, and would have done the standard set of social activities, and my mother only knew to study). Paintball/DnD were however culturally close to be inherently interesting to my friend circle.
The alternative is parents trying things at random until the kid accidentally finds a new friend circle or interest (eg send them to Mongolia, whatever kids camp, whatever classes).
Claiming addiction is IME the easy way out of actually understanding the problem at hand (in my cousin's case, not properly socialized)
Parents thought he was socially impaired. Turned out he was an organizer and leader among his peer group.
If you don't want to end up with a messy divorce of your own you have to get out there, observe healthy relationships and try to form some of your own.
But to be fair, our knee-jerk reaction to 'addiction' is abstinence and that philosophy is debilitating. Anyone whose spent any time dealing with addiction (as opposed to just making an ass of yourself by reacting to it) will have at least encountered the concept that you have to crowd out undesirable activities with desirable ones. You don't just 'stop drinking'. You also get too busy to be blitzed all the time.
You may or may not also have to abstain. There are games my friends want to play that I won't because I always get sucked in far deeper and longer than they do. Most alcoholics never touch a drop again. That said, I know a 20 year sober alcoholic who figured out he was self-medicating for anxiety, sought treatment, made big lifestyle changes, and can now have a beer once in a while without hulking out.
He’s said to be controversial like Peterson, he talks about the same topics, but from a male-feminist point of view, as he was president of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women (Peterson is on the opposite spectrum as a Christian/conservative, Farrell is rather a leftist/equalitarian. Both controversial but raising good points).
Handling a phone to a kid shouldn't be an "all or nothing" predicament. Just as you don't let kids drive 24 hs after the learned how to. There's should be a concrete set of rules that could - and should - be enforced: First a foremost, a notice or similar from the school due to incorrect usage of the apparatus (Say, in the middle of a class) would led to confiscation of the phone. Same for using it whenever the family is gathered on special and not-so-special occasions (Say, watching a movie together). this last rule should apply also to parents, thought.
Of importance as well should be not usage at all of the phone after a certain time in the day (say, 20:00).
I think the most important thing is to let the kid know that the phone is a "lended" item and not something that belongs to them.
My teen also wanted to be a yeta. That's where I put my foot down. "You can be a gay cross-dressing jew, I'm good with dat. But NOW WAY YOU GONNA BE A YETA." I says.
Who cares what "his friends back home were up to" to that extend?
He could catch up with them when he's back, it's not like they'll have some groundbreaking change in their lives and he'll blink and miss it. Are they even close friends or just people he watches their selfies and shots of brunches on FB?
I just tend to look at them as tools that just happen to be handy for a shit ton of things. It sucks when I cant use them, but it's really not the end of the world and i've probably had more screen time than some of these kids or even teenagers have been alive for.
I prefer to be anonymous and interact with different people everytime otherwise it is unsettling so opposite of what social media rewards.
However, relationships are also broken, and we should do something about it as much as decrease phone usage. I’m not sure which way is the causation here, but countless times I have told my needs to people/relatives (I need to avoid being constantly put down as a man, specifically, I have cleaned my room and I have a six-figure job after all) and people are wired to reject that idea and claim men as a class don’t deserve to be told positive things. I retreat to my phone by despair, not because the phone is interesting. More recently I have found far-right friends, but again, it’s just because they respect me, not because it’s awesome: It’s a palliative, not a solution.
It’s discussed in the book « The boy crisis » of Warren Farrell (former president of NOW, the National Organization for Women), but hey, people claim he is « controversial » so no-one’s gonna take it into account.
Men — need — some — love. Or they’ll find it elsewhere.
If you're surrounded by that, it's got to be incredibly unhappy. Some thoughts (unsolicited, I recognize):
- to make space in your life for better people, start deprecating the toxic ones.
- there are lots of positive groups of men. Not always, but places to look: Dojos, Freemasons, sports groups (not necessarily very athletic groups, either).
- some independent fun helps. A motorcycle is fun.
- or start bodybuilding to get some of these assholes to fear you a bit. People compliment those that they fear.
Unsolicited, given, but HTH.
Yet fairly typical in modern Western society. I can’t count the number of times people have open insulted and/or discounted “males” and particularly “white males” in my presence. “Oh, but you’re different”. I have no idea how to even respond to that.
I can’t even imagine people doing the same to women or minority males 25 years ago without (justifiably) being excluded from polite society (it was happening to gay people back then, and I’m very glad those days are pretty much over, or at least much better).
And it’s usually in the form of “men” and “white men” and not “white males” although people have used those terms, too, in front of me.
As I’m sure you know, this is in the US. I’ve lived overseas in several European countries and never gotten anything like this. It’s also a recent phenomenon, within the past 5 years or so.
But the fact that you asked that question has made me reflect on how I made that assertion (in an exaggerated/misleading manner, since the “many” includes online interactions). If I could, I’d edit it. I’ll be more careful in the future when discussing this.
Well, I suspected it, since my experience in Europe, but it's not like I lived in more than a few countries here, so I was curious. I have to admit it does rile me up a bit when people generalize the US as "the West" :)
I do wonder why that hasn't seem to have crossed the pond significantly.
I think it’s only a matter of time before it crosses over to Britain, and then possibly on to Germany and/or Scandinavia. I can’t see France or Spain moving in this direction any time soon.
lallysingh in a adjacent comment has some excellent suggestions for alternative people to hang out with who aren’t biased against men. it’s a list I’ll pay heed to myself, as soon as I get some health issues straightened out.
another possibility is religious groups. Even if you’re not religious yourself, there are groups that fulfill similar roles with less of a role on religion: unitarians, etc.
I think Warren Farrell and Jordan Peterson are absolutely on the money wrt to boys and men in modern society (and for folks reading who would write them off as “alt right”, Farrell is a pretty typical liberal and Peterson is at most center-right, but most everyone has already made up their mind).
Edit: also I'd recommend against groups with an agenda that isn't already inline with your beliefs. If you're feeling unsure about yourself, you can lose yourself to theirs. E.g., religion, politics, even sports.
There are plenty of groups out there, it's worth shopping around. IMHO the goal is to better understand and accept yourself, so stay as close to that as you can.
There are a few good backcountry campsites I've found that do have 4G - working remotely out of a tent is definitely an experience.
Now I have a Delorme Inreach satellite messenger so I can stay connected, its cost prohibitive to use excessively, however.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002tvs
Spoiler alert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_Across_the_World
My ex pronounced that by day 3 of an international trip I'd be crawling up the walls wanting to check my email. Turned out I wasn't the one crawling up the walls on day 3... I abstained day 4 just to prove the point, and caved in the middle of day 5. And honestly, it wasn't that satisfying.
Though that whole aspect that this made the news, does somewhat fuel my initial thoughts about this.
> "I had never before that experienced a weekend without my phone, essentially," Khobe told the BBC. "It was very weird for me."
I cannot take this article seriously at all. From the title, to the premise, to idea you have to go to Mongolia to get your kid to put down their phone and interact with you. You can go literally anywhere or nowhere (stay home) and have the exact same experience.
We can absolutely celebrate a father/son camping trip but the idea this is what parents have to do to pull their kids away from their phones is both false and clickbaity as hell.
> "When you're in a group of people and you're supposed to have social interaction time, but everyone's on their phone, that's when I've tried to change my habits," he says.
> "It's rude to not give people your undivided attention."
That's true, it is rude to not give people your undivided attention also if everyone in your "friend" group is on their phones the whole time and not paying attention then you might want to look for better friends...
I agree that this is a bit "extra", but you obviously haven't experienced what it's like for someone to have a crippling addiction to their smartphone.
This dad feeling like he had to do something extreme is probably not ill-founded. Sometimes people have to pull out all the stops to accomplish something, especially when dealing with an addict (that's what interventions are). Staying at home could have worked, but much harder when you have to trust and rely on the son using his phone responsibly. The dad just avoided all the pitfalls by doing something extreme. Agreed that it's extra, but I think you're dismissing this hastily.
I remember it was hard to make friends with similar interest in school due to the secluded rural area. I couldn't fit in and I wasn't willing to (parenting might have eased here). I had "friends", everyone believed that and I did too but I didn't interact beyond the usual classes and was isolated emotionally. It was hard to open up and I resorted to online silos where I could talk freely and was emotionally rewarded. It was addicting because even if I had friends irl, I wasn't getting any reward from talking to them. My brain didn't register it. I didn't like them but I couldn't move places or have new friends somehow that were more aligned with my interest. It was an inevitable escape.
[1] Role of lifestyle in substance addiction
[2] Problems arising from smartphone addiction
[3] Alternate to blaming smartphones for addiction
[4] General overview and tips on smartphone addiction
1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4326198/
2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6449671/
3) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0014...
4) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/reading-between-the-...
self plug) https://notably.cc/#/note?id=oz9fMjsOa
Edit: Tried to make links descriptive. No markdown for links :(
>"For a long time, he had dreamed of traveling across Mongolia on a bike. Now that his son was older, why not do it with him?"
The article even says that you do not have to go to Mongolia to do this.
>"You don't have to go all to the other side of the world just to bond with your children, says Caroline Knorr, the parenting editor for Common Sense Media, a non-profit organization that educates parents about media and technology."
Exactly. I mean, go to a national or state park and you will likely be out of cell range.
Also - if that family had T-Mobile, likely they would have had free data coverage in Mongolia (perhaps not where they went).
https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/roaming?icid=WMM_TM_U_18IN...
Me neither. It's basically junk news, designed to soak up attention cycles. And keep us tapping for more, more, more.
That is to say: part of the same (broader) problem it is ostensibly decrying.
I think of social media the same way I think about alcohol. It can be great at times and in moderation, but it's highly addictive and can absolutely ruin you if you're not careful. The big difference is we don't let minors drink alcohol without supervision.
(If they don’t like the current thing you’re focusing them on though, consider switching lest they dislike you for the rest of their lives.)