Deeply disturbing NY Times article on psychological effects of technology on kid

[JurisDoctorOfDoom]

This raises some issues I had not considered before, these kids are so inudated to this stuff they may never be able to even think that maybe our level of tech inudation has gone past helpful and into dysfunctional.. Those of us over 30 can at least remember when nobody had cell phones, when the net was a novelty (I remember my 9th grade bio class got an email account to email a class in the Netherleands, oh wow that was so exciting!), and maybe even when kids had pen pals (I had one in fifth grade from Spain). Emphasis mine:

Children my daughter’s age are also more likely to have some relaxed notions about privacy. The idea of a phone or any other device that is persistently aware of its location and screams out its geographic coordinates, even if only to friends, might seem spooky to older age groups.

But the newest batch of Internet users and cellphone owners will find these geo-intelligent tools to be entirely second nature, and may even come to expect all software and hardware to operate in this way.

Here is where corporations can start licking their chops. My daughter and her peers will never be “off the grid.” And they may come to expect that stores will emanate discounts as they walk by them, and that friends can be tracked down anywhere.

“If it’s something you grow up with, you have a completely different comfort with it than someone who has had to unlearn something about the world,” said Mr. Rainie, of the Pew project.

It’s not yet clear whether these disparities between adjacent groups of children and teenagers will simply fade away, as the older groups come to embrace the new technology tools, or whether they will deepen into more serious rifts between various generations.

But the children, teenagers and young adults who are passing through this cauldron of technological change will also have a lot in common. They’ll think nothing of sharing the minutiae of their lives online, staying connected to their friends at all times, buying virtual goods, and owning one über-device that does it all.

They will believe the Kindle is the same as a book. And they will all think their parents are hopelessly out of touch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/weekinreview/10stone.html?pagewanted=2&em

[kopperhead]

you are correct, very disturbing. it also begs the question, among others, of what effects this uberconnectedness will have - once we have crashed and ALL their plugs have been pulled.  a lot of ramifications there.

[pamela]

kopper, sometimes i feel like the only thing that will save us is for everything to go ahead and crash.

[Harcken]

By now, newborn kids pretty much don't have any defense against invasive technology. In the recent past even, people could still be more selective, but now kids will have instant 24/7 matrix connectivity without ever having been aware of a time before it.

I notice that as technology "advances," it becomes a counterfeit for something: constant connectivity instead of community, digital words instead of handwritten or printed words, television instead of entertainment(including ability to entertain oneself), contacts instead of friends, virtual friends instead of real friends, videogames instead of adventure. I guess I could make any comparisons. And it isn't like I don't participate with and use these technologies either; it seems like the only alternative is to be a hermit - it is everywhere.

It isn't even the technology that is the problem, it's that it's being used to take the place of real experience, real sense, real adventure, real relationships, real lives. Perhaps it is part of a diminishing world - the less real things there are, the more counterfeits we produce and use. But in the end, there is nothing else that truly provides what we aren't getting in this world.

And going cold turkey on an oil crash, it isn't hard to imagine much of the young population going mad within days to weeks of not having the matrix.

[kopperhead]

i know...scary. the real mzb's may be marauding teens lookin for a functioning cell tower or ipod dock...lol

[tobyjones]

In the event our society has some sort of "reset" event I have no hope of any real recovery till we have a generation that grows up without all of the technology that we have all become so used to.  I think it will be very hard for us to unlearn all that we have been surrounded with all these years.

[rbrgs]

You will be assimilated...resistance is futile.....

[ArmaGoof]

Technology supplants the development of many critical thinking and problem solving skills.  When I was in high school in the late 60's, calculators were forbidden in school!  Not that many could afford them - they cost several hundred dollars back then.  And of course there were no cell phones or internet or computers or even word processors.  We actually had to learn to do math in our heads, look up definitions and spelling in a BOOK (with pages - it's called a dictionary) and our thumbs were only used to hit the space bar on the typewriter when we had to do book reports - or maybe to hitch hike.

Most of my young employees today can not subtract 33 from 100 and get the correct answer in their heads.  Their eyes grow frantic when faced with determining 50% off a given price point.  They have no common sense and must be micromanaged to a degree perhaps ten times that of those I managed 30 years ago.  Even training has been relegated to bodiless voices and crude representations of reality on a computer screen.  They must be spoon fed the basics and endlessly coached on how to handle exceptions.  Their priority is themselves which requires a great deal of free time.  As payroll allocations decline, they complain about making less money, but ultimately are happy to have more free time with which to trade anagrams in text messages with "friends" they've never even met.

They cannot manage their own lives, much less their job description without substantial intervention by their parents and much older employees.  This digression in competence began in the 90's and accelerated beyond repair between 2003 and 2008.  My personal staff of 25 now includes but 5 individuals under the age of 40; thirty years ago, it was the other way around.  90% of my time is spent guiding those five young people while most of the older ones require nothing more than to be informed of broad objectives.

Their attention and purpose is not in reality, but in cyberspace.  When it crashes, they will be marooned in a world they cannot comprehend, much less interact with successfully.

[Doom4ever]

Dennis Meadow gave a very bleak description of this problem. related to Matts post and worth watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iHr9mzLEZU#noexternalembed

[max_power]

Idiocracy is one of the most underated movies of all time

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2682654/idiocracy_opening_sequence/

[max_power]

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/767091/

[max_power]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0O7_3o3BrI#noexternalembed

[WeedEater]

Matt,

Thanks again for another eye-brow raising topic.  As a parent of a large family, it is my daily battle to enforce choices like Play-doh over Dora the Explorer.  To turn off the television before school, and to pull their apathetic rear-ends off the couch to get their chores done.  Not an easy task with me working long hours, often away from home, and my wife a full-time student online.  There is an obvious point of diminishing return with technology and the human need for it.  We are still genetically and physically the same as our persistence hunter-gatherer ancestors, and therefore have the same needs.  Replacing those needs with a techno-simulation only creates an some sort of problem, as the original need still has not been met.  Obesity, depression, lack of purpose, lack of community, spirituality, etc.  I have seen children who don't know how to use a shovel and whose bare feet have never felt grass underneath them.  We have schools opening up with outdoor curriculum that attempt to cure this problem.  There are exercise programs that are to replicate living a cave-man lifestyle.  It is still only a placebo to the symptoms and not a cure. 

I worry about my children to no end.  We used to homeschool, but now with work requirements, and my wife online endlessly and about to embark on an apprenticeship, who is there to give my children what they really need?  Not what they want, but what they NEED?!  The same things that attract kids to junk food attract them to technology.  It's just easier.  I'll rant more later, but it's a complicated issue.

[Brigadoom]

1.  real live dog
2.  concept of "dog"
3.  word "dog"
4.  written word "dog"
5.  drawing of "dog"
6.  photograph of "dog"
7.  digital representation of "dog"
8.  Nintendogs

Repeat as required. 

I'm not very optimistic about how these young people are going to cope when they're confronted with the real world.

[MEA]

I'd have put the drawing before the written word.

Once nice thing about having younish children is all this crap maybe over and done with by the time they are old enough for it to matter to them.