... who spends hundreds of dollars on an iPhone for a 12 year old? An awful lot of kids at my inner city middle school have them. They are almost all Latino and qualify for free/subsidized lunch... but they have very expensive toys, and (often) very truculent attitudes when you tell them to put the toys away so we can learn now. Let me tell you, these electronics are like crack to a 12 year old.
Not only are they brain crack, they prevent normal neurological development. Instead of learning how to navigate the world with the senses, kids's brains are being developed inward inside of apps and computer program architecture.
These kids cannot find their way across town without a voice telling them when to turn. The mental city map does not exist in their brain. That critical stage in their mental development never happens. We are raising a generation that will be rendered as helpless as infants if and when the power goes out and the gadgets become an ounce of plastic trash.
Click the pic to the full-text Free Republic thread.
Alas, Brave New Babylon 60-second Youtube trailer