Spent a morning out on the town on my day off, and everyone is just fucking buried in their phones 24/7. This realization was so absurd to me

Of course I’m not exempt from this shit, but no wonder people are having so much trouble making friends and creating meaningful relationships in this day and age. So fucking bleak

  • Unfortunately there’s no established rule book on how kids should deal with devices and denying them entirely often alienates them from their peers. I push my kids to use creative apps. Educational apps are nice but those have always had a knack for seeming like adult propaganda to trick you into learning in your downtime. But drawing, animation, video editing, writing, etc? All full of great free apps that will occupy their attention for hours and are still way easier to disengage from than, say, Roblox. It feels less like a vice to yank them away from and more like a cultivation of hobbies to balance out their activities. My oldest is extremely physically active and loves playing outside on their own despite having intense ADHD that would stereotypically have them glued to a device. They also create fan fiction, write original comics, and draw constantly. A lot of that is on the iPad.

    • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      100% agree on the creative apps thing, similarly whenever I meet a kid at work (I like to treat kids with respect and if they talk to me about their interests I try to engage them like I would a peer) I always try to recommend games like Kerbal Space Program, or Space Engineers if they bring up videogames for example. Kids want to do what they want to do and what we can do is at least guide them to the sort of stuff we wish we had as a kid that might also be healthy activities in a sea of unhealthy and predatory options.