Posted on 01/08/2020 6:15:02 PM PST by LS
All: I'm starting a new book on the impact of cell phones, tablets, etc. on "da yuths" especially, looking at depression, despair, isolation, declining social skills, etc.
If you have any contacts with professionals---psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, priests, educators, etc.---who work with kids in such circumstances who would be willing to be interviewed, please get in touch or freepmail me.
The ability to see whatever you want in video wherever you go has only been around commonly circa 2006. Portable electronic media that allows this is very new compared to the printed word. I think it probably changes the brain much more and differently than the printed word. I suspect this will become more apparent to society as time passes and whether it’s a good or bad thing. I can’t see it going away now, so I guess we are stuck with it in any case.
Freegards
Seek Qanons. Maybe they’re splitting our DNA?
We now live in a world where they need a phone with at least minimal service so that they can call and talk to someone like Grandma or Grandpa while they walk home from school... Then at least there is an audio or video account and witnessing of any events that might happen. Video chat is what we do, and they know that if anything happens they are to point it at their attacker so that we can identify them. It may even be a deterrent if a perp realizes this before an attempt.
Bookmark
It really started with the electronic calculator.
Good luck with your project.
Ironically, it won’t be read by the people who would need to read it, for reasons that you no doubt will describe in the book.
That’s going to be interesting
Jonathan Haidt is not quite conservative, but he has a ton of useful information on exactly that subject. I could not stop watching this lecture:
I’m a professional school bus driver. You may interview me any day.
The worse evil is video games, multitudes being so preoccupied with them that if they did have to go to school they would just stay inside wasting their life for days. As they do when not in school. And with an attention span of about 5 seconds when actually in a conversation.
And many getting obese doing so. If you can, move them out to play, as my parent did often to us.
I have some friends whose daughters are getting all A's and B's in school, but they do not have any cell phones (parents cannot afforded them). They said something like halfways thru a class period a teacher will say, OK, you can go to your phones now. But they feel left out. Modern Classrooms.
I said that is why they get good grades, and not to buy them phones. If they really need them, make them work and buy them. I myself only have a landline, and am not looking for a cell. Desktop PC can handle far more, thank God.
And after 15 minutes or less, they are bored and no longer want to play. If we ever get hit with (just) an EMP there will be some positive changes.
And Latino's as regards blue collar work, yet they are also losing their youngsters. Have some neighbors from Guatemala (parents are working citizens, and one family is Christian) who visit there every year, and as its out in the boonies that have no Internet. But they cry when they have to come back to the US.
The kids do go out and have good family fun in the street in the summer (crowded city), but once the NE cold hits, you do not seem them. All inside mostly playing video games it seems.
Hate to break this to you, but there is a lot of stuff out there already. My favorite on this is Brad Huddleston, he has a lot of good videos and podcasts on this subject, especially looking at the physiological changes to the brain caused by using devices. It’s not pretty, especially what is happening to young people. They are basically being turned into zombies.
Anyway, Huddleston among other things wrote a book called Digital Cocaine and has a bunch of other stuff. Head’s up, he is a pretty conservative Christian and that comes through strong in a lot of his stuff, but he is right and is one of the first to really be sounding the alarms.
He also has some recent videos which he has done together with the Australian police regarding children being lured into sex stuff through the internet and other bad things (Huddleston spends a lot of time in Australia and South Africa, though he’s from Virginia and that’s his home base.)
The Mainland Chinese and South Koreans are ahead of us on this, they are more technologically advanced than the U.S., and as a result they have a lot of problems with digital addiction in their young people. The kids with addiction problems essentially get sent to harsh camps run by ex-military types where they go cold turkey.
Replicated much, esp. in such areas, across the US. and beyond.
A few months ago I was shocked to see a group of eight local male teenagers playing touch football on a quiet residential street. I felt like given them medals -- they were normal! These days, teenagers just stare at their phones.
American kids have been the unwitting subjects of a huge psychological experiment. That experiment has damaged them. They really are different.
Professor Jonathan Haidt has made a serious attempt to figure out what has happened:
given > giving
I shouldn’t have been negative with you on my prior response. The more folks we have pointing out the dangers, the more likely it is society may wake up to what is going on. The tech billionaires are INTENTIONALLY doing this to us, just like cigarettes. They INTENTIONALLY make this technology addictive, because they make their money by capturing our attention and then they spy on us for our personal data.
I personally think the only real answer is going cold turkey and completely cutting the internet off in your life, but we are unbelievably dependent on the digital world now. And it would mean a lot of things, like not being able to access Free Republic just as one example.
At church last week the verse was about walking with grumblers, standing with slanders and sitting with evil doers. (Okay, I can’t remember the exact type of people, but the point was walking, standing and sitting.)
Walking by something on the internet that catches an interest but is a poor influence.
And then the internet makes a concentrated effort to suck you in further. Sure, you might like a certain type of book and the next week, if you remember, you’ll go to the library and find a similar one.
But the internet - “Because you liked this video, you might like this one.”
And, you can always find a site that will reinforce your thoughts and ideas - even if they are wrong.
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