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‘It went nuts’: Thousands join UK parents calling for smartphone-free childhood
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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Uncool boomers be like: "It's the damn phones", when they've created cities where 2+ tons of metal can freely roam around wherever they like. They've created cities where kids cannot go anywhere on their own without being run over by these said metal beasts.
But ofc uncle Kevin, "It's dem damn phones. Can you at least look at me instead of scrolling through Facebook when I'm talking to you?"
It seriously is part 'those damn phones'.
I was a kid long before smart devices, cities were the same urban hellscapes.
Instant gratification from unknown sources under the direction of a 9 year old is a serious problem and people like you who pretend its not are probably part of the generation damaged most by it.
Eh, I have to agree begrudgingly. I remember having this discussion with someone I know about mental health post smartphones. We came across a few studies tracking mental health of adolescents for the past few decades. To compensate for lack of data (due to lack of mental health awareness, yadayadayada), they tried to inductively predict this missing data using various factors. The interesting part however was the increase in mental health issues in the early 2010s. Now of course, while their data might be quite error prone, I think it makes sense logically.
So yeah, I do agree with you. The situation is not black and white. Unfortunately, the uncool boomers (sorry for the lame term,-I use it to not generalize all boomers) do not see it that way. Banning smartphones in schools is one of the stupidest things to do. Uncool boomers purely blame smartphones, and almost always engage dialog in bad faith. It's mudslinging basically.
Now, if I present a nuanced opinion here, it won't be considered at all. Essentially similar to the "leftist long paragraph" meme. Therefore, to combat this, mudslinging back is most effective. At least it drives home some idea (in this case, the idea of walkable city design). Is this bad faith? Yea, unfortunately. But does it make sense to try to have a good faith dialog with someone who doesn't want to have one?
Sorry no, there have been several studies about the negative mental health impacts of always on social media life in teens but you just like muddying the waters so you pretend it's anyone's game and give a backhand at the end of your drivel.
Pretty sophisticated but still just forum sliding bullshit.
Edit: ITT people butthurt about being called out on their toxic social media habits
I haven't come across these, but I don't deny their existence. I just wrote down what I've come across myself. I already agreed with you on this point.
I'm sorry that you feel that way. But as you demonstrated just now, you are not interested in engaging in good faith. You are still stuck on the "social media bad" train, when I already agreed with you on that. This is exactly what I mean by mudslinging. People just want to repeat certain phrases again and again, progressively louder and louder while vomiting ad hominems left and right.
It isn't "forum sliding" if the topic is indeed that complex. But as I stated before, you are not ready to move on from "social media bad". Hence, how can one engage in good faith in such a scenario?
What should I do if I live somewhere where fucked up event happens now? Or what kid in Belgorod/Odessa should do?
People have different experiences. Mine is opposite. It happens.
Suffer. Studies like these are American/European centric in the first place. Their sample size never includes other countries (not because the researchers are evil lmao, but because they want to isolate this "phone factor"). A kid in Odessa is most likely suffering from the war today rather than suffering from the effects of Instagram.
This is the wrong take but it's a part of it for sure.
Lol it has nothing to do with cars. I grew up in the 90s without a phone and my city wasn't much different then than now. I was constantly outside playing and so were all the other kids
I grew up in the 90s and my entire childhood neighborhood is concrete now. The overgrown wash where we built forts is gone. The desert surrounding the area? Gone. It's just roads, shitty apartment buildings, and cement for miles. Maybe it didn't change for you but my kids could never grow up the same way that I did there. Most of the more wild areas are gone. Banished to the outskirts of town now. Hell, we don't even really have sidewalks and hardly anything is walkable due to traffic. It has everything to do with cars in plenty of places. There is literally nowhere for kids to be kids within walking distance of me now either.
Few years ago when I played with kids outside in minecraft on phones.
Is it the boomers this time? I remember millennials thinking that about zoomers and now they've grown up, zoomers have been saying it about Gen Alpha calling them iPad babys
People say many things. It doesn't change the fact that the ruling class is largely boomers. Hence, addressing the most influential voting class doesn't seem so absurd to me.
25% of population gets 100% of representation
Children in countryside are behaving pretty much exactly the same when it comes to whining about smartphones.
Not all doomers did it. But those who didn't were communists.
Loll post this meme as a post!!!
You do realize that everything around you is mostly built by previous generations when you are not a "boomer", cause your generation doesn't do much yet other than differentiate between "cool" and "uncool"? And that's true for every generation.
Criticizing the ruling class is extremely important to a functioning society. Baby Boomers are largely the ones in power around the world. The largest voting bases of all conservative movements are baby boomers. I wouldn't mind if the generations that follow criticize us for stuff. That's just how stuff works.
Not really, criticizing was commonplace and accepted in medieval societies, changes were made by disobedience and rebellions. (I have that fixation on Dutch 80-years war the last few days, hope to get rid of it.)
EDIT: Point is - it doesn't matter what you say when that doesn't serve to exchange ideas without interruption and control, and all the talk in the Web in that spirit is controllable and interruptible. Also this can't be true, there simply were no baby boom in many parts of the world in those years.