I don’t think I can convey to my kids the wonder of the 80s and 90s, when people were able to get a personal, general purpose computing. It was not just that every month, something new came along. There was a wide diversity of software, even among the same kind of software. People tried to write their own. Although more difficult to use, users also had a lot more power over their computing environment.
The computing landscape we have now:
- we deliberately created computing appliances in which the design of the app are driven by A/B testing, growth hacks, and dark patterns
- being able to talk with your affinity group used to mean not feeling as alone. Now, it means those are the only viewpoints you see, with algorithms feeding your view point back to you. The ancient Greek had a cautionary tale about that, called Narcissus and Echo.
- My wife is a beneficiary of online “mom” groups, and it was through there, we learned about current toys and interactions on developmental psychology. We got a Lovevry subscription, and learned about the “mental leaps”. Yet, those very things show how kids learn through interacting with objects, building neural connections in 3-d, learning through touch, smell, taste, kinesthetic and not just through sight and sound. The Montesorri method of education lets the kids choose what they are interested, but the environment is thoughtfully curated and constructed, and there is direct attention from an adult.
Algorithms are no substitute for parenting.
I first heard that from Neal Stephenson’s _Diamond Age_, but seeing how the tech landscape is now, and having a kid, that is more incisive than it had been when I first read it.
All that mental leap stuff is conjecture. I was unable to find any data to support it, and the person behind it (Frans Plooij) was discredited.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonder_Weeks
I assume any claims about mental development and personalities and whatnot is bullshit. We don’t have the technology to test it, nor even the ability to properly define things in order to test them.
I always wonder how I'll handle these types of situations if and when I myself become a parent. I imagine it's much more difficult in reality than it is in my head.
Answering your questions in that context is sort of ridiculous, but I’ll give it a shot:
1. At that age, my kid would watch whatever was on the screen, basically slack jawed. No bandwidth for anything else, really.
2. See above
3. There was no conversation.
And to answer your comments accusative sibling comment, my kid found it by tapping “next” repeatedly, or whatever was in the sidebar. Fwiw, I know “the phone isn’t the parent,” but the grandparents don’t have the same sensibilities around tech.
Aside from that, whether the child is enjoying them or not isn't all that relevant. My kid would enjoy eating ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day but I know what's good for them better than they do.
Curious what your opinions are on the epidemic of pornography use in young children.
also read somewhere that sexual assault perpetration is occurring at younger ages.
I was under the impression that that was US law, so I was initially surprised at the rapid fluorishing of child accounts on nearly every service. But there seems to be a "...without parental consent" rider in our laws about data collection, and that consent is now assumed to be freely given.
Really though, children should not be using these devices to communicate or access web services unsupervised. You are the parent, not the phone.
Banning children from social media has generally been an easy way to avoid the highly stringent regulations concerning data protection in the USA. The FTC doesn’t mess around with COPPA and it’s very easy to find yourself in the hole.