6 ms·

Our kids? Hell, my wife and I don't use social media, except in very limited doses for work reasons. Our kids have zero access to it and never will. Their devic

Our kids? Hell, my wife and I don't use social media, except in very limited doses for work reasons. Our kids have zero access to it and never will. Their device usage is kept at a minimum and used for mostly educational or quality conversational purposes. I hate how many people now, whenever we're around them everyone has their phones out scrolling through 30 sec videos. They want to show you things which aren't funny, aren't entertaining, aren't informative... it's damn near Idiocracy levels of content consumption. [Insert video of someone badly dancing with caption that says "me."] Personally, I find it bizarre and extremely boring.

iforgot22 2y ago
People talk about kids being addicted, but I had to deal with my dad constantly showing me some Instagram video. Not necessarily a dumb video, but still not something I cared to watch.
- n00b_heal 2y ago
  let's not forget the parents addicted to tv shows yes they still exist
strix_varius 2y ago
Every week since she was about six months old, I've taken my daughter with me to get groceries. She's absolutely fascinated by the grocery store: the rolling cart, the colors and textures of produce ("ta-to!"), the other shoppers, the illustrations on packaging ("bear!"). I hand her items and give her their names. She shakes them, rotates them, repeats their names back to me. But every time we go, I see at least one child my daughter's age or younger staring mindlessly at a phone or tablet, oblivious to their environment and the parent pushing their cart. It just seems sad.
- tmn 2y ago
  Ahh I just had to share that my 1 year old daughter also loves the grocery store. She doesn't want to leave the cart when it's time to go. Thanks for the comment.
  - jorts 2y ago
    Especially if they have a cart that’s a car or train.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- qwerpy 2y ago
  I used to judge parents who resorted to tablets to keep their children quiet. I don't really anymore. You don't know how exhausted the parents might be or how many hours they've already spent trying to entertain their kids in a more wholesome manner. I've taken a 2 year old on vacation and some of that time is spent going to unique restaurants that take a couple of hours for a meal. My toddler would get bored and squirmy and would quickly ruin dinner for the entire restaurant. Same thing for airplanes. Of course I don't resort to it immediately but if talking, interacting, and other toys don't do the trick, iPad is a very useful tool in the arsenal. A carefully curated list of educational, offline content is acceptable in my opinion. Grocery store, or any other short errand? Sure, that's too much.
  - webdood90 2y ago
    Man, if you don't want to deal with the challenges of children, why have kids? I don't lie to myself, I know I couldn't do it and I didn't. Maybe you just don't get to go out for dinner or ride on planes until they don't need to be hypnotized with a screen? You know it's bad for them but you're putting your comforts and freedoms above theirs and everybody else's. I can't help but feel like the next generation has been completely fucked.
    - gameman144 2y ago
      I feel like this mindset is part of why so many people are nervous about having kids, and I couldn't disagree with it more. Your kid is not an optimization problem, they're a part of your family. If you want to do something unique that's going to bore your kids, it's fine to give them something to do; a half hour of screen time while you enjoy that fancy restaurant while traveling is fine. Your kid will be fine. Sometimes you should put your comforts and freedoms above your kid's. You are not their servant, you are your own person who has your own wants and needs, and those get to win out sometimes. If your kid throws a tantrum when you're in an art museum, yeah, try to discipline them and calm them down and teach them. If you have a rare opportunity to visit a museum you've always wanted to, though, then it's fine to lose a battle or two here or there if the alternative is missing out on unique experiences that you value. There are sacrifices to being a parent for sure, but the mindset that it's taboo to allow anything to happen that's not immediately in the best long-term developmental interest of your child is mind-boggling to me. Don't raise your kids in front of screens, but being a parent isn't some phase change that means you have to abandon all your interests and dreams and desires; it just means there's one more person whose interests and dreams and desires you have to care about now.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
Oh ok, I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds those things idiotic, not fun and not useful
0_____0 2y ago
How old are your kids?
rsanek 2y ago
>my wife and I don't use social media, except in very limited doses for work reasons do you not consider HN to be social media?
trod1234 2y ago
These type of people are the people who haven't realized they've been indoctrinated, addicted, and tortured. They have been induced towards a corruption by dependency scheme in subtle ways, and as a result their rational thought has diminished without them realizing it. This naturally happens in any totalitarian state where you become dependent on the state for your decisions and values. Religion in a way used to help protect against this, but with the spread and rise of nihilism and pacifism, religion has taken a back seat especially given the recent controversy and destructive path orthodoxy is taking. These are the values that are so widely promoted and embedded in things today, following a War and Peace philosophy, which is acceptance of evil, or rather towards inducing a wilful self-inflicted blindness towards evil. You may find the book "On Resistance to Evil by Force", by Ivan Ilyin, an enlightening read, written around the early 1900s, near the dawn of modern psychology. It discusses the topic of evil, in a objectively tied way (not delusion or mere opinion). It does this in a fairly refined way properly following rational principles, first with definition, and then building from there following Method, and the Hyper-rational practices of that generation. A translation to English only recently became available, it was originally written in Russian prior to and through the Bolshevik/Communist takeover. There are aspects discussed that you can see were used incompletely in the design of the modern day prison system in the U.S and many other insights. The book was published to refute War and Peace, since the philosophies written about in that book induce evil over time which follows in line with the Banality of evil (the complacent/slothful) becoming the radical evil (related to the Nazi's, and the Wannsee Conference). A semi-recent movie was produced in 2001, that uses the minutes taken at that conference to depict how it happened (quite excellently, albeit dark). Conspiracy(2001). The problem with totalitarian regimes is people in these societies will attack those that threaten their belief systems, and that threat might include the imposition of the responsibility of deciding things for themselves. See these authors for more material on the torture/menticide aspects: They are all experts in their fields, or have been recognized by established experts for the excellence of their published works. Joost Meerloo, "Rape of the Mind" (1950s) Robert Cialdini, "Influence" (1990s) Robert Lifton, "Thought Reform and the psychology of Totalism" (1950s)

iforgot22 2y ago

People talk about kids being addicted, but I had to deal with my dad constantly showing me some Instagram video. Not necessarily a dumb video, but still not something I cared to watch.

n00b_heal 2y ago
let's not forget the parents addicted to tv shows yes they still exist

strix_varius 2y ago

Every week since she was about six months old, I've taken my daughter with me to get groceries. She's absolutely fascinated by the grocery store: the rolling cart, the colors and textures of produce ("ta-to!"), the other shoppers, the illustrations on packaging ("bear!"). I hand her items and give her their names. She shakes them, rotates them, repeats their names back to me. But every time we go, I see at least one child my daughter's age or younger staring mindlessly at a phone or tablet, oblivious to their environment and the parent pushing their cart. It just seems sad.

tmn 2y ago
Ahh I just had to share that my 1 year old daughter also loves the grocery store. She doesn't want to leave the cart when it's time to go. Thanks for the comment.
- jorts 2y ago
  Especially if they have a cart that’s a car or train.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
qwerpy 2y ago
I used to judge parents who resorted to tablets to keep their children quiet. I don't really anymore. You don't know how exhausted the parents might be or how many hours they've already spent trying to entertain their kids in a more wholesome manner. I've taken a 2 year old on vacation and some of that time is spent going to unique restaurants that take a couple of hours for a meal. My toddler would get bored and squirmy and would quickly ruin dinner for the entire restaurant. Same thing for airplanes. Of course I don't resort to it immediately but if talking, interacting, and other toys don't do the trick, iPad is a very useful tool in the arsenal. A carefully curated list of educational, offline content is acceptable in my opinion. Grocery store, or any other short errand? Sure, that's too much.
- webdood90 2y ago
  Man, if you don't want to deal with the challenges of children, why have kids? I don't lie to myself, I know I couldn't do it and I didn't. Maybe you just don't get to go out for dinner or ride on planes until they don't need to be hypnotized with a screen? You know it's bad for them but you're putting your comforts and freedoms above theirs and everybody else's. I can't help but feel like the next generation has been completely fucked.
  - gameman144 2y ago
    I feel like this mindset is part of why so many people are nervous about having kids, and I couldn't disagree with it more. Your kid is not an optimization problem, they're a part of your family. If you want to do something unique that's going to bore your kids, it's fine to give them something to do; a half hour of screen time while you enjoy that fancy restaurant while traveling is fine. Your kid will be fine. Sometimes you should put your comforts and freedoms above your kid's. You are not their servant, you are your own person who has your own wants and needs, and those get to win out sometimes. If your kid throws a tantrum when you're in an art museum, yeah, try to discipline them and calm them down and teach them. If you have a rare opportunity to visit a museum you've always wanted to, though, then it's fine to lose a battle or two here or there if the alternative is missing out on unique experiences that you value. There are sacrifices to being a parent for sure, but the mindset that it's taboo to allow anything to happen that's not immediately in the best long-term developmental interest of your child is mind-boggling to me. Don't raise your kids in front of screens, but being a parent isn't some phase change that means you have to abandon all your interests and dreams and desires; it just means there's one more person whose interests and dreams and desires you have to care about now.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago

Oh ok, I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds those things idiotic, not fun and not useful

0_____0 2y ago

How old are your kids?

rsanek 2y ago

>my wife and I don't use social media, except in very limited doses for work reasons do you not consider HN to be social media?

trod1234 2y ago

These type of people are the people who haven't realized they've been indoctrinated, addicted, and tortured. They have been induced towards a corruption by dependency scheme in subtle ways, and as a result their rational thought has diminished without them realizing it. This naturally happens in any totalitarian state where you become dependent on the state for your decisions and values. Religion in a way used to help protect against this, but with the spread and rise of nihilism and pacifism, religion has taken a back seat especially given the recent controversy and destructive path orthodoxy is taking. These are the values that are so widely promoted and embedded in things today, following a War and Peace philosophy, which is acceptance of evil, or rather towards inducing a wilful self-inflicted blindness towards evil. You may find the book "On Resistance to Evil by Force", by Ivan Ilyin, an enlightening read, written around the early 1900s, near the dawn of modern psychology. It discusses the topic of evil, in a objectively tied way (not delusion or mere opinion). It does this in a fairly refined way properly following rational principles, first with definition, and then building from there following Method, and the Hyper-rational practices of that generation. A translation to English only recently became available, it was originally written in Russian prior to and through the Bolshevik/Communist takeover. There are aspects discussed that you can see were used incompletely in the design of the modern day prison system in the U.S and many other insights. The book was published to refute War and Peace, since the philosophies written about in that book induce evil over time which follows in line with the Banality of evil (the complacent/slothful) becoming the radical evil (related to the Nazi's, and the Wannsee Conference). A semi-recent movie was produced in 2001, that uses the minutes taken at that conference to depict how it happened (quite excellently, albeit dark). Conspiracy(2001). The problem with totalitarian regimes is people in these societies will attack those that threaten their belief systems, and that threat might include the imposition of the responsibility of deciding things for themselves. See these authors for more material on the torture/menticide aspects: They are all experts in their fields, or have been recognized by established experts for the excellence of their published works. Joost Meerloo, "Rape of the Mind" (1950s) Robert Cialdini, "Influence" (1990s) Robert Lifton, "Thought Reform and the psychology of Totalism" (1950s)