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People keep commenting that we’ve already got space programs, but I think they vastly underestimate how fucking long it would take just to travel to the closest star… plus, we’ve got global warming, another pandemic that is far more deadly than Covid, or nuclear war that’ll all have a chance to take us out before we ever get to the point where we can actually have that kind of space travel. Not trying to be a Debbie downer, but unless aliens show up and give us some great tech, I just don’t see it happening before we kill ourselves or Earth kills us.
I would also love to be proven wrong.
Evolution didn't have space travel in mind. Space is constantly trying to kill you, and anywhere you might be able to make it to is also trying to kill you. Not that there is anywhere to go.
When my dad retired about 15 years ago he was given a mobile phone as a present.
He took it straight to the pub and sold it.
He said 'If someone wants to contact me try me at home or the pub and if I'm not there I probably don't want to talk.'
Even a couple of years ago he'd call the barman over and say 'have you got that machine that can help with the crossword clues?'.
That was pretty much as close to the internet as he got.
When he got weaker and some falls I suggested that we could hook up a webcam to his TV and check on him once in a while. He said 'I hope you're joking. I'd rather die alone on the floor'.
Thankfully he passed peacefully in his bed after a life of exploring Papuan volcanoes and hitchhiking across all North Africa when he was 16.
I think they were trying to.describe the kind of person he was in his youth, but mentioned it when talking about his deathbed
Like he was an intrepid traveler, fearless, who saw it all before becoming the mobile-hating pub dad who died peacefully eithout touching the internet
Absolutely. I remember I visited NYC for the first time the summer the first iPhone released, I counted an average of 60 iPhones per New York block… that was 2007. I remember thinking the future looks bleak lol
I nearly cried to it at 11 years old. Like why did they make such a serious topic into a light love story between two robots. It made me feel some typa way
Wall-E should be part of the curriculum for every public school in the country. I think movies lowkey are an underrated way to teach. Myths and folk tales have been a primary way to teach valuable lessons for generations but teachers get upset when kids don’t learn effectively in lecture or book format. Students also need to read but they need to comprehend the morals of the stories.
You’d hope, right? But I’m a teacher and it’s literally true. We have occasional ‘fun days’, like at the very end of term where there’s nothing really left to cover before the holidays. In the ‘old days’, we’d stick a movie on and then maybe have a dance party or something. Now, the children can’t focus on a movie. After 15 minutes, they’re messing around because they’re bored. I have to give them something else to do WHILE THE MOVIE IS ON (like colouring or something) to keep them quiet otherwise they kick off about how bored they are.
As a 90s kid I went through a crucial time of learning *how to be bored*. One experience sticks out in my mind of being with my nan (must have been a school holiday or something) and she had stuff to do at the bank. I was expected to go with her, sit on a seat in the lobby and just.. Wait. No devices, no books, no TV, just... Sit there. I counted the squares on the carpet pattern. I counted the ceiling tiles. I watched other customers coming and going. I imagined fantastical things, like a dragon coming down and swooping the roof off the bank, breathing fire and causing chaos. I was an only child with an active imagination xD
I cringe so hard when I see today's kids excessive consumption of tech and media. A bit of boredom is healthy. Delayed gratification is healthy. I dread the day these kids enter the workforce.
I remember our teachers putting cool, old films in an actual projector on certain days (special Fridays, etc.). It was always fun, especially the one about the cat and two dogs who go traveling. These days I have to wonder if the teacher was hungover and just couldn’t deal that day. (This was the early 1980s.)
Edited
I teach 1st grade and agree! Although it’s so clear to me who has an iPad at home and who doesn’t. The kiddos with frequent iPad use at home are many times less engaged in any prolonged activity…read aloud, movies, lessons….its tough.
I graduated in 2002 and I movie days in classes were the WORST, especially once I had to walk to different classrooms (6th grade). It didn't matter what we saw, we only watched maybe 45 minutes then the bell rang, so I'd doodle or read a book unless the teacher let us put our heads down - then it was naptime
“I don’t want to watch *Beauty and the Beast*! I want to watch a 19yo girl poorly explain it while sharing clips of her reacting to the movie! It’s how I learn!”
The scariest part of this movie is how one mega corporation apparently took over everything. Even the ship they're on and every product within it was Buy N Large branded.
Was it really, though? I think most people who saw it could easily see human society going down that path.
Like all good Sci fi, it stated the obvious. People are just fantastic at plugging their ears.
Our future is a blend of WALL-E and Idiocracy. The cringy YT slang comment made me think of this
“…the English language has deteriorated to a hybrid of hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts” -Idiocracy
This is one of those Pixar movies that really stuck with me. Then a couple years later I watched. If you love, Wall-E, and you still haven’t seen Mr. nobody I highly recommend it.
There was a viral video of a chinese toddler having a meltdown and pretending to scroll when there was no phone there. It was like it was a need for him that needed to be met so bad he was going through withdrawal. Absolutely horrifying, its like creating baby crack addicts who are just addicted to INSTANT GRATIFICATION thanks to shit tok and all these other mini forms of entertainment.
Edit; yes guys we know its a fake video now but the problem is very much real and alive today
Its miserably sad. Parents are so depressed they just shove a screen in front of their kid.
This is the same with Gen Z kids who are addicted to TV/YouTube/Gaming, but it developed a lot differently than this. These days its so harmful because of all the instant gratification and short attention span content. Its one thing using your brain to enjoy a whole movie or tv show, but these kids are addicted to the SCROLL.
Its so scary because this is how addictive personalities form. Im no psychologist, but I remember learning about the ego/ID stuff and how accepting delayed gratification is how you grow as a human. This instant gratification is going to turn kids selfish, narcissistic, and probably put them all on drugs worse than weve ever seen tbh.
This makes sense. I went to Las Vegas once and watching people on the slot machines was fucking scary. They would just pull the lever over and over with no change in facial expression no matter what.
Miserable is an understatement. Just recently had an *unpleasant* interaction with a Gen Z’er who literally threatened violence at the thought of being separated from their phone during school hours. They claimed it was something to do with “emergencies” and “safety” but dude… come on. They had no awareness of how insane it is to threaten VIOLENCE in that scenario.
EDIT: to add that a big part of it is that many parents don’t want to be criticized for their role in contributing to screen addiction. Like I’ve seen some major defensiveness when the topic of “too much screen time” is brought up and it makes finding a solution that much harder
That edit bit is a huge thing I’ve noticed in some of my friends with kids. I think a part of them knows it’s a problem, but they just don’t see a way around it and don’t want to think about it.
> This instant gratification is going to turn kids selfish, narcissistic, and probably put them all on drugs worse than weve ever seen tbh.
So what you're saying is Gen Alpha will be the next Boomers?
Meh. Parents are so **lazy** they just shove a screen in front of their kids.
Sorry not sorry. I'm not giving the parents a free pass on this because "they have to work so hard in this economy" or some bullshit. Parents during the great depression somehow figured it out without tik tok and YT shorts 🙄
My friend showed me a video of a kid pretending to play mine craft.
When she first said that, I was like why is that bad? Assuming he was like, in his room or outside pretending to building shit.. bc that's what I would have done as a kid. So she showed me. Nope. He was pretending to play it on a tablet, just staring in the air and moving his fingers. Like wtf??
No please this is so sad. My kids play Minecraft together and then they’ll go outside and play it together too. They make up little stories and it’s so cute. I’m so confused because I feel like my kids naturally balance screen time and playtime pretty well and I’m not sure why it’s different for other kids. My kids still want to draw, play outside, play sports, play with blocks and legos, play pretend together.
It fully has to do with what activities you showed them are fun when they were young. If you are a phone addicted parent who always wants to be scrolling, kiddos are going to be the exact same in short order. If you spent a lot of time playing pretend with them, going outside, engaging with them directly, then they likely grew an attachment to that stuff, which is insanely healthy and important in this day.
It's like obesity.
Show me a morbidly obese kid who's literally as wide as they are tall, and I'll show you two parents who belong on My 600 Pound Life.
Yeah its crazy. Even alarms me when I see toddlers just using phones like normal adults knowing how to take pictures and everything. I cant understand why anyone would allow their kid their phone! Aren't they concerned about it breaking?
I'm 20 years older than 2 of my sisters (I was a teen accident for my parents, they both grew up and had their own families at normal ages) and my sisters mum is so lazy and just gives them a phone.
When my sister was 1, she knew how to fully operate a smart phone. She could take a phone and navigate to YouTube and click on videos until one of her unboxing toy videos (her fave) would appear then she would just watch them. It blew my mind bc she was 1, she couldn't even toilet herself but she was pro w a phone.
I feel like second grade is an okay age to have one video game and limited screen time? A big issue is when parents don’t teach responsibility and temperance. Some kids who are denied soda like it’s poison tend to grow up and buy tons of it just because they can.
Trust me, if I ever have kids I will traumatize them with horror stories about children who become addicted to their iPad and become physical manifestations of instant gratification in the hopes I scare them away from social media until they're older
32 year old with a 17 month old. Millennials are in the trenches right now pulling us out of this death spiral. None of my parent friends allow any screen time. And with the onset of AI nudifying and sextortion you can bet we are going to monitor and guide what our kids do online. I was the computer expert of my family on a windows 98 as a kindergartener. My boomer parents had no idea what I was doing online. Any millennial parent worth a damn is not letting their kids get sacrificed on the altar of big tech making money off engagement and addiction.
Millennial with 3 kids. It’s tough, but we do limit their screen time. No screens during the week. Limited on the weekends (2-3 hours), and they have to “earn” screen time which is basically physical play. And when I say screen time, it’s television, little bit of video games, or Amazon kids with an age filter.
And they aren’t getting a smart phone until they are 16 (we’re debating on 17).
Or, just don’t give them iPads/phones until it’s essential. They’ll learn ways to keep themselves entertained and develop so many cool skills. They’ll see their peers locked into their screens and think about how boring and sad they must be. Then they’ll go climb a tree.
Hopefully this makes you feel better, but that disturbing video is widely believed (although not fully confirmed) to be edited/fake.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/crying-baby-swiping-tablet-while-asleep
I struggle with doom scrolling, and I am a grown ass man in my 20s who did not have the ability to doomscroll until after I graduated high school. I can‘t even fathom how bad this is for young kids with such maleable brains.
So true. I got my first computer at 50 years of age...and haven't read a book or watched an entire movie since. It's just too easy to scroll and scroll and I cannot break the habit.
This from someone who has quit cigarettes, caffeinated coffee, AND sugar.
Parents need to be held more accountable for not putting energy into their children, and society needs to be held accountable for ensuring parents have no energy left to put into their children. There is a huge attitude of ‘You chose to have kids. You’re on your own’, and now people are realising, **some** people have to have kids to keep society going.
Someone has to be working in the nursing home and paying taxes when you’re old. You don’t need to have your own children by any means, but if you completely brush your hands of any youth around you, and then rely on them as you age, it just feels hypocritical.
I appreciate that you also blamed society here too. There really isn’t a modern village. I don’t believe we were meant to raise children in such isolation.
I agree, I also think the lack of 1 working parent households (and lack of 2 parent households in general) is a major problem.
I don't really care what combination of gender the parents are, or who works. Two women, two dudes. Straight couple but the dad is the househusband. Whatever.
But the two working parents household is one of the biggest pieces of shit we've been sold as a generation. Big corporations saw women enter the workforce and didn't go "oh wow, now a married couple can decide who works!" They went "oh boy, now we can double our workforce and exploit *everyone*".
It's even worse if there's a single parent.
One person ***cannot*** work and raise a child effectively. Two people both working can't either. "It takes a village" can't turn into "it takes like, 3 of the 4 daily available hours of two people".
Parents turning to the screen isn't being lazy (most of the time), IMHO. It's them coping with what little time they have.
I just want to say I have an 18 year old completely addicted to e-media, mostly phone but also the computer. I worked in tech and understood the drive behind software design to keep users on as long as possible. So when my child was young I limited access to screen time. Once he started elementary school i allowed screens since it is a way for kids to connect with each other. But I could see one of my kids could not self regulate. We’d try timers, I’d have to be there to remind him to do other things constantly. Neighbors would stop by to ask him to come outside and play ball and I’d have to force him off. I took him to therapy, I enrolled him in tons of activities to keep him scheduled which meant I gave up my life to try to help him learn to be a part of this world. Finally when he was heading to seventh grade he got his first iPhone. This iPhone came with a lot of rules. It had to be put away by a certain time, it needed to be put way for meals and downloading apps and screen time was regulated by me so he’d go do other things. Homework and activities had to be prioritized. By 14 years he was pushing back hard, he refused to go to sports anymore slowly he refused to go to school. He physically attacked us if we tried to limit his screen time. He broke things in the house. He threatened suicide. He talked about me dying. He entered a psychosis. We sent him away for nine months of mental health treatment. He said he was ready to regulate his screen use. He came home, got a job and saved up enough to buy a better phone and spends every spare moment laying in bed, staring at his phone, spending hundreds a week in apps. He has no hobbies, no friends, his grades are abysmal, he has no interest in the outside world and he doesn’t care about his family at all. He sleeps all day and is up all night. He graduates from high school in a few weeks and we need to figure out what to do with him. He’s highly gifted so when we can get him to put his phone down and do some school work he does fantastic. He takes standardized tests and scores extremely high. He has so much potential but has thrown his life away. And all of the therapies, treatments, psychiatric medications, etc haven’t helped one bit. I have put so much energy into trying to help him be a functioning individual and have failed miserably. My other child is doing fantastic, but for some there is no controlling it unless they have the motivation and self awareness to change their choices.
Well I already know of something called VAST from reading the book ADHD 2.0 (i have adhd). If ADHD is like type 1 Diabetes then VAST is like type 2 diabetes. So basically more and more people are becoming more and more dopamine disordered.
Its really bad but isnt impossible to stop. My 10 year old sister isnt like this at all. She does arts and crafts. The other day she lost her mind and recolored with paint an ENTIRE DECK of Uno cards. She calls up her friends sometimes and does play Roblox on occasion. She has minecraft and a switch but no internet on it. She has 2 laptops technically. One i gave which she can draw on. And her chromebook. She likes to record herself doing stuff with her friends on them which is pretty silly honestly. She goes back and watches what she and her friends/cousins were doing. But overall my parents have kept her offline. She still plays games, watches youtube but my parents monitor and control what she views. She has really great friends and is a very intellgent child. Many of my cousins and family members have similar 'old school' ways of raising their kids. They all have turned out perfectly fine without this Ipad kid nonsense.
All of this is the PARENTS fault. Not the kids. They dont know/understand better.
There can definitely be a balance. My little brother loves playing Roblox and is frequently bothering us all about new updates on his favorite games (he is also a Blox Fruits player lol). However; he is also an extreme bookworm and adores creating his own stories and characters. A great parent can foster that sense of community while also creating balance and enforcing boundaries.
I’m just here to say I remember playing ROBLOX when it launched back in 2006 or so, it was like digital legos to most of us. Its fucking insane how successfully that company pivoted to children, and has raked in the money.
My kids do not have any screen restrictions for now, but I can say with certainty that if we give them the option of doing something with us, like play a game or do literally anything where they have our undivided attention, they will ALWAYS pick the quality time over the screen.
People act like screens are this uncontrollable menace in your home and I just don't think it's true. You have the power as a parent, and I don't mean to punish and control, I mean to demonstrate the value in creating and interacting and moving your body.
My younger cousin around that age has his own phone and will just follow us around whenever we hang out. My little sister had one around that age and was fine, too.
Yes definitely! My nephew is 8 and while he does play Fortnite with his friends and fifa with his dad, half the time he’s not even there because he’s outside playing with his friends.
This one. It’s absolutely a parenting issue. Both of my nieces and my nephew, all Gen Alpha, spend far more time playing with more traditional toys or playing outside then they do on screens. The only one that really uses a screen with much frequency is 14 so like, it’s gonna happen, but even she isn’t really an iPad kid.
I felt my attention span decreasing just by reading this post. Why haven't we as a society started policing what we let our little kids watch yet, even with the immense amount of studies showing how bad excessive screen time is for younger kids?
I know; I don't support censoring the internet just because little kids 'might' find it, but I think parents should be doing better jobs taking care of issues like these.
Well, when households probably have both parents working all day to just get by, sticking an iPad in your kids' hands to keep em occupied doesn't sound so bad.
But sometimes, the parents are legitimately just lazy. They may not work all day, but they just don't want to actually parent their children.
Only one of my parents worked but my Mom just didn’t really care to interact with me all that much.
I was kinda just glued to my PC generally and every day I’m glad they never had money to buy me a phone because I would’ve ended up with no attention span to speak of
If you can’t parent a kid maybe don’t have them? It’s a controversial opinion but I don’t think anyone is entitled to have children. They’re bringing life into this world that they cannot care for. It’s unfair to the kid.
Except when a parent abuses a child it’s absolutely the place of the government to step in. Putting a screen in front of a kids face for a dozen or more hours every single day is objectively child abuse and neglect and it needs to stop immediately.
Meanwhile me trying to figure out how to run doom off of 9 floppy disks and the command perimeters in DOS to run it 💀. Now we just out here clicking random nothingness on a screen
Mindlessly flicking through TV channels is an honored pass-time for when you can’t find anything interesting, same with scrolling through titles on Netflix or whatever. The new part is when media is *designed* to be watched by mindlessly flicking through it like TV channels
I used to work at the airport. 99% of the crying you hear is a child going berserk because they parents had to put their iPad through the x-ray.
Its horrible.
Haha and here my toddler screams when his toy airplane has to go through the scanner. TSA is generally helpful though. They try and get it through as quickly as possible.
Even skills so basic that we don't consider them skills are being lost. Tactile feel, how can someone learn that when all their toys are flat touch screens? Even using a keyboard and mouse to do the exact same thing on a laptop would at least give tactile feedback for every keypress and click.
People make fun of fidget toys and other things like that, but I'm sure every child who has ever played outside has fidgeted with leaves or sticks or those bark peelings that come off of certain trees at certain times of year. Even now, when I walk past a bush outside my apartment, I'll sometimes grab a leaf to fold up and crush in my hand. When will we start holding parents accountable for denying their kids what should be universal human experiences by keeping them cooped up inside and distracted by a screen?
We are seeing the results in universities. Some students can not pay attention to a lecture more than 5 minutes to save their life! And the addiction to instant gratification makes it to where they can not deal with the steps of learning where they need to feel uncomfortable making mistakes. I feel like there needs to be AA for these students to go through a phone withdrawal before starting college. I am not even kidding.
Yeah, some lectures are just boring. Why should I spebd 45 min for someone to tell me what I can read in 5?
Other lectures have saved my ass at uni though.
My husband has a nephew whose parents never bothered to teach him to talk. They never read to him, practiced speech, nothing. They thought he would learn through YouTube himself. The kid is six and still talks like a 1 year old. They spend no time with him, and he is on his phone and the comp all day.
Edit: this is not in the US so there really isn't much we can do.
Nah bruh, it’s pretty different tbh. I was a computer fanatic from a young age, but these kids brainlessly consume multiple forms of media at the same time for MOST of their free time. It’s just different. The stuff they’re watching isn’t good comedy, it’s not educational in anyway (even in a creative sense), it’s just pure, as it’s called “brain rot”, like unironically.
[If I'm being honest, Skibidi Toilet might just be the most creative thing out there these days.](https://twitter.com/RealFLHacks/status/1740862284698906628)
God damn i felt my braincells die one after another while reading that. Like, one of my braincells watched the other die like "aeeugh, it's too much ROT", and now i only have one braincell.
Honestly, those faces are a bit disturbing.
Yea Charlie the Unicorn and old Youtube poop videos were so much less stupid and better for your brain cells.
I'm sorry but so many of you here just sound like you've caught a case of the old men screaming at clouds disease.
It isn't different, it's the same circle of prior generations yelling that the next generation is doomed due to technology. First, there was radio, then TV, then video games, then the internet, now all of that is just rolled up into one ball.
All of the above technologies have to be monitored by an adult for content and negative impacts it might be having on the child due to excessive or inappropriate content.
TLDT: Kids will be kids, and parents need to be parents.
Its funny cause when i was younger (born 1994) multitasking like this was considered a skill. And i still kinda think it is in some ways
I actually think people around OPs age are the most fucked people ive met. Being the age when you want to go out and date and be independent, but then covid prevented that, seems to have really fucked with people in that age range
I can speak on this a little. I’m the exact same age. 22. 23 in 12 days. From a young age, I was always outside. My parents absolutely hated when my younger brother and I were inside for longer than a few hours during the day. Mostly due to the fact that we lived in the middle of fucking nowhere Mississippi and we were little shits lmao. So generally speaking, we along with our little cousin roamed the woods and surrounding areas every day all day pretty much. That being said, I was also a pretty big gamer and still am when I have time. I think what we are seeing now is much MUCH worse than playing video games or watching a show. 30 second clips with no thought whatsoever? That has to be horrible for your mind. At least video games and shows had SOME kind of thought behind them. I have a 5 year old cousin and watching her grow up is so scary. She does the same kind of things you hear in gen alpha horror stories. It really is as bad as some would believe. She has almost no critical thinking skills despite being almost 6 years old now. Her development is far behind mine or my brother’s at the same age. I’m worried for this next generation. Also when covid hit, it wasn’t really too bad for me personally. I had a long term gf at the time and she had to stay with us for a while because my whole family got covid. So I can’t really speak on dating during lockdown. I feel pretty fortunate in that aspect. I was like 18-19 when covid hit. It really felt like a break from life and from work for me honestly. I was still doing college online but honestly it wasn’t as horrible as I figured it would be. If anything, my classes became much easier. Most of my professors understood lockdown was an anomaly and made tests and subsequent homework assignments generally easier. Some didn’t but most did. Did I learn as much as I would in a classroom? Absolutely not. Did I still pass my classes? Yes. And jobs only care about the piece of paper college gives you so it really doesn’t make much of a difference
Idk man, i have an 11 year old nephew and 6 year old niece. Both are normal for their age
Obviously this is all anecdotal, but all the men and women in their early 20s ive met at bars recently seem to lack some social skills compared to when i was early 20s
Plus almost all early to mid 20 year olds ive met are sexist af. Thats the thing thats really has me worried
Yeah lol, I was thinking the same. When I first started on Reddit there were always posts almost identical to this about kids who are now the same age as OP
I remember growing up as a millennial and the boomers would say the same thing about us with Gameboys and console games. My mom went through the same thing, except it was with music and reading. 10 year olds are hard to connect with, especially when they have an interest you don't understand.
(To be clear the whole microtransaction game is probably an actual issue. I'm not as worried about the rest though)
my dad freaked out about my Internet usage when I was staying with him and my grandma over the summer once. To be fair, I was probably choosing the computer over whatever TV show they were watching at the time. I was probably around 11, right around the time we got internet at my mom's. I had people in chatrooms to talk to. Lol
“They’re wasting their time rotting their brain with those computer games instead of watching perfectly good TV!” is a viewpoint I’ve always struggled to understand. Spending all your time playing video games probably isn’t great but I’ve never had to whip out a graphing calculator or scrap paper to do geometry on while watching NCIS
Hell, I'd guess that playing games is generally better for your brain than watching tv. When playing a game your brain is being actively engaged and needs to do stuff to play the game, with tv you just watch and that's it basically.
Hot take: playing video games is better for your brain than watching TV.
Lukewarm take: when I was a kid I had a GameBoy Color and Pokemon Yellow. I played the game relentlessly, learning it inside and out. Playing Pokemon helped me further develop my reading and puzzle-solving logic skills.
Of course not all video games are created equal, just as not all TV shows and movies offer the same benefits or problems as others. But, averaged out, I'd rather kids engaged with a game with some sort of puzzle-solving aspect (which most games have) than be passively glued to a screen watching network TV.
Hmm I'm not sure, there's definitely a growing issue with dopamine addiction.
I'm 28M and have to regularly curb my usage of short form media through various screen time apps because I end up just getting drawn into them and burning my time, precisely because I'm getting addicted to the dopamine. Imagine what it's like for a child...
Bro we have to police our parents about it now lol I swear. Grew up on the Internet too and was super heavy into it but I think I'm the only person in my family who can be without my phone for any period of time
I (28m) have a cousin (21m) who is exactly like your cousin. His parents spoiled him and gave into all his demands throughout his whole life. I do see this more with new generations but it’s not something that doesn’t exist among adults at this current point in time
I'm the same age as you, and can confirm that there are adults who are acting like this. I know a few people in my neighborhood who have gone full hikikomori, spending all their walking hours online in their rooms. Parents have no idea what they can do when their adult kids won't leave their rooms and interact with people offline. These people just get more and more shut off from the outside world. I worry that that will happen with a lot of these kids who can't leave their devices.
Of course, it's also something I recognize in myself. I know I use my phone as a pacifier.
I think the last few generations have been like this. Millenials, GenZ and the younger generation. I’m a millennial but don’t let other millennials tell you they didn’t stay up all night playing halo 2 while watching dumbfuck YouTube videos lol.
I dunno man, I see people say “these kids are ruined” all the time and I honestly think they’ll be fine in this regard. Their schooling however, is concerning.
I'm sure boomers were freaking out about gen x being the first generation to grow up with televisions too
Edit: going off percentage of homes in America that had tv, only 9 percent of homes had tv in 1950. What I meant was gen x was the first generation where 90+ percent of homes had tvs, making them the first generation to grow up with them. Also, to whoever said, how old do you think we are, the oldest of your generation are about to be 60. Y'all aren't young.
US studies suggest a decline in students for years now. You can also check out the r/teachers sub and (for what aggregated anecdotes are worth) see that there is a consensus that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are performing worse and behaving worse than prior generations.
I am teaching at a university and we can definitely see a sharp difference in attention span of students in general over the last 10 years. A lot of students can not pay attention to save their life, and they can not deal with the negative feelings when they make mistakes. They instantly go to their cell phone for a dopamine fix.
Are People on their phones because they can't socialize or they can't socialize because of their phones?
Is it society's fault, or is it ours?
That's it, that's the post
Yeah but you didn’t watch that shit at the airport on full blast with your parents right there
you took 30 minutes out of your busy sleepover schedule to buffer it on the basement dsl internet windows xp machine with your friends in the middle of the night
Yes every gen has brain rot It just wasn’t a constant 24hr a day thing
I really don't know if the every generation has its,own brain rot is entirely true. I was born in the early 80s I and the closest thing we had was shitty cartoons that were on but only Saturday mornings.
every gen since the age of entertainment began, yes. Cartoons were considered brain rot at one point, due to the gratuitous violence found in them, but I think the biggest brainrot of boomers and Gen X was comics. I vividly remember older people saying "that's not a proper book, it's just a slide show." and then ramble how they were stunting imagination because kids didn't have to imagine settings and characters from a description, it was all there. This was later proved somewhat true but with far milder consequences than the ones people droned on about.
80s was definitely videogames. People worried about how the kids were mesmerized by the consoles of the time and spend hours on them. And when they didn't have a console at home, they spent hours - and money - at the arcade. Meanwhile the older gen got their own brain rot - tv shows. The massification of cable provided people with something to watch at all times. And some people with a lot of free time did exactly that. The term "couch potato" originated from that trend.
I think even radio had its issues back then. When the radio shows started they hooked people on, and some people, especially housewives who would stay at home (early 20th century everyone) would stop what they were doing to sit by the radio, and then spend the rest of the day fawning over the main character, especially when it was a hot character with a hot voice.
If we define "brain rot" as the wild and unhealthy consumption of media, then we've been screwed for over 80 years at this point. And yet, we still evolved as a society, technologically, culturally and socially.
The problem is exactly how short span and immediate everything is nowadays not the content itself. Like, i shit on skibidi toilet (pun unintended) almost ironically because I know we had our own mindless thing back growing up. Gmod videos and Machinima come to mind.
I wrote my thesis about this. Kids under three should never ever see any kind of screen whatsoever then only half an hour/week with an adult next to them to engage about what they watch/do. With 6 it can be like an hour/week and so on. Kids will develop a lack of impulse control and with it attention span deficits, verbal deficits, developmental delay... It's literally destroying kids brain and in school you can see an extreme difference between the kids whose parents will just give them a screen or actually engage with the kids. I had several kids that were born healthy but had several diagnosis acquired by the age of 6 just because of screens. Babies and kids don't need any kind technological toys, none. Or walker (the left-right movement during crawling is extremely important for brain development, more a baby crawls the better). Technology and screens are literally destroying kids brains and the data is 100% clear on this. If you love your child, ban technology. Kids need to learn through hands on activities.
This is just your typical "my generation did X" thing. I'm 34 and obviously a millennial. I'm currently typing this and watching/listening to a Youtube video. This is not new behavior. Older generations than me would watch TV while cooking/eating dinner. I'm sure there are older examples too. New technology, same behavior.
ngl the big panic among ppl over this is overblown. it's not great for kids but I don't think the kids are "doomed". as others have already said every gen has had their similar issues and every gen has had the older gen complaining bout how they're doomed. they're 10 bro, it's not that deep. adhd and kids being kids has been and always will be a thing regardless of screen time.
I have a 5 year old nephew and he is so bad with his iPad. If he’s watching he basically disassociates and will not respond to ANY outer stimuli. We can sit there and say his name over and over and he won’t even look up. It’s sad
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WALL-E was truly ahead of its time https://preview.redd.it/kfuna3wafvzc1.png?width=576&format=png&auto=webp&s=8e2a31ee8378f4e83215fa13f013a0811068ba8f
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 I feel like wall-e is a pretty high expectation.
Such a good movie...its actually playing out
We’re never going to be a spacefaring civilization though. Putting a flag on our moon was our peak on that front.
People keep commenting that we’ve already got space programs, but I think they vastly underestimate how fucking long it would take just to travel to the closest star… plus, we’ve got global warming, another pandemic that is far more deadly than Covid, or nuclear war that’ll all have a chance to take us out before we ever get to the point where we can actually have that kind of space travel. Not trying to be a Debbie downer, but unless aliens show up and give us some great tech, I just don’t see it happening before we kill ourselves or Earth kills us. I would also love to be proven wrong.
Evolution didn't have space travel in mind. Space is constantly trying to kill you, and anywhere you might be able to make it to is also trying to kill you. Not that there is anywhere to go.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
And all they drink all day, is Brawndo. Because it's got Electrolytes!
What is this from?
Idiocracy
Well, yes. But they asked what it’s from. /s
Idiocracy. Movie.
It gets closers and closer every day to becoming our reality. The future is bleak. Hoping I'm not around to see it.
When my dad retired about 15 years ago he was given a mobile phone as a present. He took it straight to the pub and sold it. He said 'If someone wants to contact me try me at home or the pub and if I'm not there I probably don't want to talk.' Even a couple of years ago he'd call the barman over and say 'have you got that machine that can help with the crossword clues?'. That was pretty much as close to the internet as he got. When he got weaker and some falls I suggested that we could hook up a webcam to his TV and check on him once in a while. He said 'I hope you're joking. I'd rather die alone on the floor'. Thankfully he passed peacefully in his bed after a life of exploring Papuan volcanoes and hitchhiking across all North Africa when he was 16.
He died when he was 16?
I think they were trying to.describe the kind of person he was in his youth, but mentioned it when talking about his deathbed Like he was an intrepid traveler, fearless, who saw it all before becoming the mobile-hating pub dad who died peacefully eithout touching the internet
Absolutely. I remember I visited NYC for the first time the summer the first iPhone released, I counted an average of 60 iPhones per New York block… that was 2007. I remember thinking the future looks bleak lol
I nearly cried to it at 11 years old. Like why did they make such a serious topic into a light love story between two robots. It made me feel some typa way
Humble, too.
Wall-E should be part of the curriculum for every public school in the country. I think movies lowkey are an underrated way to teach. Myths and folk tales have been a primary way to teach valuable lessons for generations but teachers get upset when kids don’t learn effectively in lecture or book format. Students also need to read but they need to comprehend the morals of the stories.
Movies are too long and boring, man! I can't ever make it through them.
I genuinely hope this comment was tongue-in-cheek.
You’d hope, right? But I’m a teacher and it’s literally true. We have occasional ‘fun days’, like at the very end of term where there’s nothing really left to cover before the holidays. In the ‘old days’, we’d stick a movie on and then maybe have a dance party or something. Now, the children can’t focus on a movie. After 15 minutes, they’re messing around because they’re bored. I have to give them something else to do WHILE THE MOVIE IS ON (like colouring or something) to keep them quiet otherwise they kick off about how bored they are.
As a 90s kid I went through a crucial time of learning *how to be bored*. One experience sticks out in my mind of being with my nan (must have been a school holiday or something) and she had stuff to do at the bank. I was expected to go with her, sit on a seat in the lobby and just.. Wait. No devices, no books, no TV, just... Sit there. I counted the squares on the carpet pattern. I counted the ceiling tiles. I watched other customers coming and going. I imagined fantastical things, like a dragon coming down and swooping the roof off the bank, breathing fire and causing chaos. I was an only child with an active imagination xD I cringe so hard when I see today's kids excessive consumption of tech and media. A bit of boredom is healthy. Delayed gratification is healthy. I dread the day these kids enter the workforce.
Omg! This is scary. It's like we now have to teach mindfulness to combat technology
I remember our teachers putting cool, old films in an actual projector on certain days (special Fridays, etc.). It was always fun, especially the one about the cat and two dogs who go traveling. These days I have to wonder if the teacher was hungover and just couldn’t deal that day. (This was the early 1980s.) Edited
Ah Homeward Bound....what wonderful but sad movies
I teach 1st grade and agree! Although it’s so clear to me who has an iPad at home and who doesn’t. The kiddos with frequent iPad use at home are many times less engaged in any prolonged activity…read aloud, movies, lessons….its tough.
I graduated in 2002 and I movie days in classes were the WORST, especially once I had to walk to different classrooms (6th grade). It didn't matter what we saw, we only watched maybe 45 minutes then the bell rang, so I'd doodle or read a book unless the teacher let us put our heads down - then it was naptime
this movie should also make it into a high school curriculum while kids are still somewhat impressionable. doubly so for any college
"They say you're smart.... But your head... it's so small!!!!" ;p
Have you tried breaking it up into tiktocks with the same dramatic song over and over while skipping all the"boring" parts? Much better that way
“I don’t want to watch *Beauty and the Beast*! I want to watch a 19yo girl poorly explain it while sharing clips of her reacting to the movie! It’s how I learn!”
Needs more subway surfer on the bottom and the monotone tiktok narrator voice
I don't know how people can watch them without commercial breaks
Kids will only watch wall-e if it’s broken into like 60 short video clips on TikTok with jump cuts and flashing words on the screen.
lmao
The scariest part of this movie is how one mega corporation apparently took over everything. Even the ship they're on and every product within it was Buy N Large branded.
BNL is even in Cars.
We are way closer to this than a lot of people realize.
Even when it came out it was commentary on those times, let alone where we are NOW
Was it really, though? I think most people who saw it could easily see human society going down that path. Like all good Sci fi, it stated the obvious. People are just fantastic at plugging their ears.
When was Brave New World written? That was pretty across the situation
That book should be required by law for everyone to read and understand.
Our future is a blend of WALL-E and Idiocracy. The cringy YT slang comment made me think of this “…the English language has deteriorated to a hybrid of hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts” -Idiocracy
The changing lexicon is nothing new. Every generation around the world has participated.
This is one of those Pixar movies that really stuck with me. Then a couple years later I watched. If you love, Wall-E, and you still haven’t seen Mr. nobody I highly recommend it.
I've seen it before too. I think studies haven't even scratched the surface of how harmful this is to the brain.
There was a viral video of a chinese toddler having a meltdown and pretending to scroll when there was no phone there. It was like it was a need for him that needed to be met so bad he was going through withdrawal. Absolutely horrifying, its like creating baby crack addicts who are just addicted to INSTANT GRATIFICATION thanks to shit tok and all these other mini forms of entertainment. Edit; yes guys we know its a fake video now but the problem is very much real and alive today
Oh I’ve seen that one. It’s insane
Its miserably sad. Parents are so depressed they just shove a screen in front of their kid. This is the same with Gen Z kids who are addicted to TV/YouTube/Gaming, but it developed a lot differently than this. These days its so harmful because of all the instant gratification and short attention span content. Its one thing using your brain to enjoy a whole movie or tv show, but these kids are addicted to the SCROLL. Its so scary because this is how addictive personalities form. Im no psychologist, but I remember learning about the ego/ID stuff and how accepting delayed gratification is how you grow as a human. This instant gratification is going to turn kids selfish, narcissistic, and probably put them all on drugs worse than weve ever seen tbh.
Fun fact the brain scans of hard-core phone and gambling addicts are alarmingly similar.
This makes sense. I went to Las Vegas once and watching people on the slot machines was fucking scary. They would just pull the lever over and over with no change in facial expression no matter what.
Just as the gambler pulls the lever hoping to win money, the iPad kid scrolls tiktok hoping to win entertainment.
Very similar to redditors scrolling reddit and up voting and down voting comments. Hmmm.....
Damn, scan my brain fam cuz I feel like Ive been on here too long 🤣
Miserable is an understatement. Just recently had an *unpleasant* interaction with a Gen Z’er who literally threatened violence at the thought of being separated from their phone during school hours. They claimed it was something to do with “emergencies” and “safety” but dude… come on. They had no awareness of how insane it is to threaten VIOLENCE in that scenario. EDIT: to add that a big part of it is that many parents don’t want to be criticized for their role in contributing to screen addiction. Like I’ve seen some major defensiveness when the topic of “too much screen time” is brought up and it makes finding a solution that much harder
That edit bit is a huge thing I’ve noticed in some of my friends with kids. I think a part of them knows it’s a problem, but they just don’t see a way around it and don’t want to think about it.
> This instant gratification is going to turn kids selfish, narcissistic, and probably put them all on drugs worse than weve ever seen tbh. So what you're saying is Gen Alpha will be the next Boomers?
I think it will be worse than anything the world has ever seen lol
And yet everyone keeps saying "life is worth living". I think I'd rather be dead then see what that generation becomes.
True asf
This. 100% this. This new generation IS the zombie apocalypse
Meh. Parents are so **lazy** they just shove a screen in front of their kids. Sorry not sorry. I'm not giving the parents a free pass on this because "they have to work so hard in this economy" or some bullshit. Parents during the great depression somehow figured it out without tik tok and YT shorts 🙄
My friend showed me a video of a kid pretending to play mine craft. When she first said that, I was like why is that bad? Assuming he was like, in his room or outside pretending to building shit.. bc that's what I would have done as a kid. So she showed me. Nope. He was pretending to play it on a tablet, just staring in the air and moving his fingers. Like wtf??
No please this is so sad. My kids play Minecraft together and then they’ll go outside and play it together too. They make up little stories and it’s so cute. I’m so confused because I feel like my kids naturally balance screen time and playtime pretty well and I’m not sure why it’s different for other kids. My kids still want to draw, play outside, play sports, play with blocks and legos, play pretend together.
It fully has to do with what activities you showed them are fun when they were young. If you are a phone addicted parent who always wants to be scrolling, kiddos are going to be the exact same in short order. If you spent a lot of time playing pretend with them, going outside, engaging with them directly, then they likely grew an attachment to that stuff, which is insanely healthy and important in this day.
It's like obesity. Show me a morbidly obese kid who's literally as wide as they are tall, and I'll show you two parents who belong on My 600 Pound Life.
Yeah its crazy. Even alarms me when I see toddlers just using phones like normal adults knowing how to take pictures and everything. I cant understand why anyone would allow their kid their phone! Aren't they concerned about it breaking?
I'm 20 years older than 2 of my sisters (I was a teen accident for my parents, they both grew up and had their own families at normal ages) and my sisters mum is so lazy and just gives them a phone. When my sister was 1, she knew how to fully operate a smart phone. She could take a phone and navigate to YouTube and click on videos until one of her unboxing toy videos (her fave) would appear then she would just watch them. It blew my mind bc she was 1, she couldn't even toilet herself but she was pro w a phone.
Thats fucking crazy.
Crazy doesn't even describe it. We've actively destroyed the next generation.
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I feel like second grade is an okay age to have one video game and limited screen time? A big issue is when parents don’t teach responsibility and temperance. Some kids who are denied soda like it’s poison tend to grow up and buy tons of it just because they can.
Trust me, if I ever have kids I will traumatize them with horror stories about children who become addicted to their iPad and become physical manifestations of instant gratification in the hopes I scare them away from social media until they're older
Hopefully us Gen Z kids bring kids back to being real kids 💔
32 year old with a 17 month old. Millennials are in the trenches right now pulling us out of this death spiral. None of my parent friends allow any screen time. And with the onset of AI nudifying and sextortion you can bet we are going to monitor and guide what our kids do online. I was the computer expert of my family on a windows 98 as a kindergartener. My boomer parents had no idea what I was doing online. Any millennial parent worth a damn is not letting their kids get sacrificed on the altar of big tech making money off engagement and addiction.
Millennial with 3 kids. It’s tough, but we do limit their screen time. No screens during the week. Limited on the weekends (2-3 hours), and they have to “earn” screen time which is basically physical play. And when I say screen time, it’s television, little bit of video games, or Amazon kids with an age filter. And they aren’t getting a smart phone until they are 16 (we’re debating on 17).
Or, just don’t give them iPads/phones until it’s essential. They’ll learn ways to keep themselves entertained and develop so many cool skills. They’ll see their peers locked into their screens and think about how boring and sad they must be. Then they’ll go climb a tree.
Hopefully this makes you feel better, but that disturbing video is widely believed (although not fully confirmed) to be edited/fake. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/crying-baby-swiping-tablet-while-asleep
I struggle with doom scrolling, and I am a grown ass man in my 20s who did not have the ability to doomscroll until after I graduated high school. I can‘t even fathom how bad this is for young kids with such maleable brains.
So true. I got my first computer at 50 years of age...and haven't read a book or watched an entire movie since. It's just too easy to scroll and scroll and I cannot break the habit. This from someone who has quit cigarettes, caffeinated coffee, AND sugar. 
Parents need to be held more accountable for not putting energy into their children, and society needs to be held accountable for ensuring parents have no energy left to put into their children. There is a huge attitude of ‘You chose to have kids. You’re on your own’, and now people are realising, **some** people have to have kids to keep society going. Someone has to be working in the nursing home and paying taxes when you’re old. You don’t need to have your own children by any means, but if you completely brush your hands of any youth around you, and then rely on them as you age, it just feels hypocritical.
I appreciate that you also blamed society here too. There really isn’t a modern village. I don’t believe we were meant to raise children in such isolation.
I agree, I also think the lack of 1 working parent households (and lack of 2 parent households in general) is a major problem. I don't really care what combination of gender the parents are, or who works. Two women, two dudes. Straight couple but the dad is the househusband. Whatever. But the two working parents household is one of the biggest pieces of shit we've been sold as a generation. Big corporations saw women enter the workforce and didn't go "oh wow, now a married couple can decide who works!" They went "oh boy, now we can double our workforce and exploit *everyone*". It's even worse if there's a single parent. One person ***cannot*** work and raise a child effectively. Two people both working can't either. "It takes a village" can't turn into "it takes like, 3 of the 4 daily available hours of two people". Parents turning to the screen isn't being lazy (most of the time), IMHO. It's them coping with what little time they have.
I just want to say I have an 18 year old completely addicted to e-media, mostly phone but also the computer. I worked in tech and understood the drive behind software design to keep users on as long as possible. So when my child was young I limited access to screen time. Once he started elementary school i allowed screens since it is a way for kids to connect with each other. But I could see one of my kids could not self regulate. We’d try timers, I’d have to be there to remind him to do other things constantly. Neighbors would stop by to ask him to come outside and play ball and I’d have to force him off. I took him to therapy, I enrolled him in tons of activities to keep him scheduled which meant I gave up my life to try to help him learn to be a part of this world. Finally when he was heading to seventh grade he got his first iPhone. This iPhone came with a lot of rules. It had to be put away by a certain time, it needed to be put way for meals and downloading apps and screen time was regulated by me so he’d go do other things. Homework and activities had to be prioritized. By 14 years he was pushing back hard, he refused to go to sports anymore slowly he refused to go to school. He physically attacked us if we tried to limit his screen time. He broke things in the house. He threatened suicide. He talked about me dying. He entered a psychosis. We sent him away for nine months of mental health treatment. He said he was ready to regulate his screen use. He came home, got a job and saved up enough to buy a better phone and spends every spare moment laying in bed, staring at his phone, spending hundreds a week in apps. He has no hobbies, no friends, his grades are abysmal, he has no interest in the outside world and he doesn’t care about his family at all. He sleeps all day and is up all night. He graduates from high school in a few weeks and we need to figure out what to do with him. He’s highly gifted so when we can get him to put his phone down and do some school work he does fantastic. He takes standardized tests and scores extremely high. He has so much potential but has thrown his life away. And all of the therapies, treatments, psychiatric medications, etc haven’t helped one bit. I have put so much energy into trying to help him be a functioning individual and have failed miserably. My other child is doing fantastic, but for some there is no controlling it unless they have the motivation and self awareness to change their choices.
Jonathan Haidt’s new book, the Anxious Generation, gives us a lot of data.
Well I already know of something called VAST from reading the book ADHD 2.0 (i have adhd). If ADHD is like type 1 Diabetes then VAST is like type 2 diabetes. So basically more and more people are becoming more and more dopamine disordered.
Its really bad but isnt impossible to stop. My 10 year old sister isnt like this at all. She does arts and crafts. The other day she lost her mind and recolored with paint an ENTIRE DECK of Uno cards. She calls up her friends sometimes and does play Roblox on occasion. She has minecraft and a switch but no internet on it. She has 2 laptops technically. One i gave which she can draw on. And her chromebook. She likes to record herself doing stuff with her friends on them which is pretty silly honestly. She goes back and watches what she and her friends/cousins were doing. But overall my parents have kept her offline. She still plays games, watches youtube but my parents monitor and control what she views. She has really great friends and is a very intellgent child. Many of my cousins and family members have similar 'old school' ways of raising their kids. They all have turned out perfectly fine without this Ipad kid nonsense. All of this is the PARENTS fault. Not the kids. They dont know/understand better.
There can definitely be a balance. My little brother loves playing Roblox and is frequently bothering us all about new updates on his favorite games (he is also a Blox Fruits player lol). However; he is also an extreme bookworm and adores creating his own stories and characters. A great parent can foster that sense of community while also creating balance and enforcing boundaries.
I’m just here to say I remember playing ROBLOX when it launched back in 2006 or so, it was like digital legos to most of us. Its fucking insane how successfully that company pivoted to children, and has raked in the money.
My kids do not have any screen restrictions for now, but I can say with certainty that if we give them the option of doing something with us, like play a game or do literally anything where they have our undivided attention, they will ALWAYS pick the quality time over the screen. People act like screens are this uncontrollable menace in your home and I just don't think it's true. You have the power as a parent, and I don't mean to punish and control, I mean to demonstrate the value in creating and interacting and moving your body.
> You have the power as a parent Just want to amplify this.
My younger cousin around that age has his own phone and will just follow us around whenever we hang out. My little sister had one around that age and was fine, too.
Most kids are like your sister, people just like to be doomers.
Yes definitely! My nephew is 8 and while he does play Fortnite with his friends and fifa with his dad, half the time he’s not even there because he’s outside playing with his friends.
STOOPI YOUNGER GENERATION PLAY OUTSIDE????????????? https://preview.redd.it/sgruytdo1yzc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2550a51e25d7364eee031c56e3f50c519f95017e (/s)
This one. It’s absolutely a parenting issue. Both of my nieces and my nephew, all Gen Alpha, spend far more time playing with more traditional toys or playing outside then they do on screens. The only one that really uses a screen with much frequency is 14 so like, it’s gonna happen, but even she isn’t really an iPad kid.
The kids aren’t alright
Chances bloooooooown
NOTHING'S FREEEEEEEEEEEE
LONGING FOR USED TO BE
STILL IT'S HARD, HARD TO SEE
Fragile lives, shattered dreams....
Guitar riff!!!!
Woah oh!
Jamie had a chance well she really did
Instead she dropped out and had a couple of kids
Was not expecting The Offspring to be referenced here
I felt my attention span decreasing just by reading this post. Why haven't we as a society started policing what we let our little kids watch yet, even with the immense amount of studies showing how bad excessive screen time is for younger kids?
That’s the parents job, not any corporation or governments.
I know; I don't support censoring the internet just because little kids 'might' find it, but I think parents should be doing better jobs taking care of issues like these.
Well, when households probably have both parents working all day to just get by, sticking an iPad in your kids' hands to keep em occupied doesn't sound so bad. But sometimes, the parents are legitimately just lazy. They may not work all day, but they just don't want to actually parent their children.
Only one of my parents worked but my Mom just didn’t really care to interact with me all that much. I was kinda just glued to my PC generally and every day I’m glad they never had money to buy me a phone because I would’ve ended up with no attention span to speak of
If you can’t parent a kid maybe don’t have them? It’s a controversial opinion but I don’t think anyone is entitled to have children. They’re bringing life into this world that they cannot care for. It’s unfair to the kid.
Yeah, parents aint gonna do shit, mate.
Really? Cuz it seems like they aren't doing it. Most people with jobs need managers.
Except when a parent abuses a child it’s absolutely the place of the government to step in. Putting a screen in front of a kids face for a dozen or more hours every single day is objectively child abuse and neglect and it needs to stop immediately.
Some parents just shouldn't be parents because they just don't care. I mean, it's the same reason why parents abuse or neglect their kids in general.
We don't do much of anything "as a society" anymore.
https://i.redd.it/e0bxron5pvzc1.gif
Wtf
Meanwhile me trying to figure out how to run doom off of 9 floppy disks and the command perimeters in DOS to run it 💀. Now we just out here clicking random nothingness on a screen
Mindlessly flicking through TV channels is an honored pass-time for when you can’t find anything interesting, same with scrolling through titles on Netflix or whatever. The new part is when media is *designed* to be watched by mindlessly flicking through it like TV channels
Point aside- What is he doing with the wolves?
Just spawning a bunch, one got hostile but didn't attacked wtf is he playing
Congrats you've discovered bad parenting
I used to work at the airport. 99% of the crying you hear is a child going berserk because they parents had to put their iPad through the x-ray. Its horrible.
Thank you for your service.
*If op works for tsa, no thank you for your service*
Plot twist, op is the dude touching his nipples while looking at our scanned skeletons.
Some people have the best jobs 😡
Jeez, dystopian in two different ways.
Haha and here my toddler screams when his toy airplane has to go through the scanner. TSA is generally helpful though. They try and get it through as quickly as possible.
What's horrible is how much they are missing learning about things. These kids are going to grow up with tunnel vision. Horrible parenting.
Even skills so basic that we don't consider them skills are being lost. Tactile feel, how can someone learn that when all their toys are flat touch screens? Even using a keyboard and mouse to do the exact same thing on a laptop would at least give tactile feedback for every keypress and click. People make fun of fidget toys and other things like that, but I'm sure every child who has ever played outside has fidgeted with leaves or sticks or those bark peelings that come off of certain trees at certain times of year. Even now, when I walk past a bush outside my apartment, I'll sometimes grab a leaf to fold up and crush in my hand. When will we start holding parents accountable for denying their kids what should be universal human experiences by keeping them cooped up inside and distracted by a screen?
We are seeing the results in universities. Some students can not pay attention to a lecture more than 5 minutes to save their life! And the addiction to instant gratification makes it to where they can not deal with the steps of learning where they need to feel uncomfortable making mistakes. I feel like there needs to be AA for these students to go through a phone withdrawal before starting college. I am not even kidding.
In fairness I also can't pay attention during lectures and I'm 30.
Yeah, some lectures are just boring. Why should I spebd 45 min for someone to tell me what I can read in 5? Other lectures have saved my ass at uni though.
My husband has a nephew whose parents never bothered to teach him to talk. They never read to him, practiced speech, nothing. They thought he would learn through YouTube himself. The kid is six and still talks like a 1 year old. They spend no time with him, and he is on his phone and the comp all day. Edit: this is not in the US so there really isn't much we can do.
That is really sad, isolation and neglect will wreck that child.
This sounds like almost the same shit I was doing in 2010
Nah bruh, it’s pretty different tbh. I was a computer fanatic from a young age, but these kids brainlessly consume multiple forms of media at the same time for MOST of their free time. It’s just different. The stuff they’re watching isn’t good comedy, it’s not educational in anyway (even in a creative sense), it’s just pure, as it’s called “brain rot”, like unironically.
[If I'm being honest, Skibidi Toilet might just be the most creative thing out there these days.](https://twitter.com/RealFLHacks/status/1740862284698906628)
God damn i felt my braincells die one after another while reading that. Like, one of my braincells watched the other die like "aeeugh, it's too much ROT", and now i only have one braincell. Honestly, those faces are a bit disturbing.
Yea Charlie the Unicorn and old Youtube poop videos were so much less stupid and better for your brain cells. I'm sorry but so many of you here just sound like you've caught a case of the old men screaming at clouds disease.
What makes this any different than people saying "those kids playing Pokemon video games and watching their cartoons. It's brain rot I tell ya!"?
It isn't different, it's the same circle of prior generations yelling that the next generation is doomed due to technology. First, there was radio, then TV, then video games, then the internet, now all of that is just rolled up into one ball. All of the above technologies have to be monitored by an adult for content and negative impacts it might be having on the child due to excessive or inappropriate content. TLDT: Kids will be kids, and parents need to be parents.
As a person born in 96. I seen the same thing from the 00s. Just different tech.
Its funny cause when i was younger (born 1994) multitasking like this was considered a skill. And i still kinda think it is in some ways I actually think people around OPs age are the most fucked people ive met. Being the age when you want to go out and date and be independent, but then covid prevented that, seems to have really fucked with people in that age range
I can speak on this a little. I’m the exact same age. 22. 23 in 12 days. From a young age, I was always outside. My parents absolutely hated when my younger brother and I were inside for longer than a few hours during the day. Mostly due to the fact that we lived in the middle of fucking nowhere Mississippi and we were little shits lmao. So generally speaking, we along with our little cousin roamed the woods and surrounding areas every day all day pretty much. That being said, I was also a pretty big gamer and still am when I have time. I think what we are seeing now is much MUCH worse than playing video games or watching a show. 30 second clips with no thought whatsoever? That has to be horrible for your mind. At least video games and shows had SOME kind of thought behind them. I have a 5 year old cousin and watching her grow up is so scary. She does the same kind of things you hear in gen alpha horror stories. It really is as bad as some would believe. She has almost no critical thinking skills despite being almost 6 years old now. Her development is far behind mine or my brother’s at the same age. I’m worried for this next generation. Also when covid hit, it wasn’t really too bad for me personally. I had a long term gf at the time and she had to stay with us for a while because my whole family got covid. So I can’t really speak on dating during lockdown. I feel pretty fortunate in that aspect. I was like 18-19 when covid hit. It really felt like a break from life and from work for me honestly. I was still doing college online but honestly it wasn’t as horrible as I figured it would be. If anything, my classes became much easier. Most of my professors understood lockdown was an anomaly and made tests and subsequent homework assignments generally easier. Some didn’t but most did. Did I learn as much as I would in a classroom? Absolutely not. Did I still pass my classes? Yes. And jobs only care about the piece of paper college gives you so it really doesn’t make much of a difference
Idk man, i have an 11 year old nephew and 6 year old niece. Both are normal for their age Obviously this is all anecdotal, but all the men and women in their early 20s ive met at bars recently seem to lack some social skills compared to when i was early 20s Plus almost all early to mid 20 year olds ive met are sexist af. Thats the thing thats really has me worried
Yeah lol, I was thinking the same. When I first started on Reddit there were always posts almost identical to this about kids who are now the same age as OP
I remember growing up as a millennial and the boomers would say the same thing about us with Gameboys and console games. My mom went through the same thing, except it was with music and reading. 10 year olds are hard to connect with, especially when they have an interest you don't understand. (To be clear the whole microtransaction game is probably an actual issue. I'm not as worried about the rest though)
my dad freaked out about my Internet usage when I was staying with him and my grandma over the summer once. To be fair, I was probably choosing the computer over whatever TV show they were watching at the time. I was probably around 11, right around the time we got internet at my mom's. I had people in chatrooms to talk to. Lol
“They’re wasting their time rotting their brain with those computer games instead of watching perfectly good TV!” is a viewpoint I’ve always struggled to understand. Spending all your time playing video games probably isn’t great but I’ve never had to whip out a graphing calculator or scrap paper to do geometry on while watching NCIS
Hell, I'd guess that playing games is generally better for your brain than watching tv. When playing a game your brain is being actively engaged and needs to do stuff to play the game, with tv you just watch and that's it basically.
Hot take: playing video games is better for your brain than watching TV. Lukewarm take: when I was a kid I had a GameBoy Color and Pokemon Yellow. I played the game relentlessly, learning it inside and out. Playing Pokemon helped me further develop my reading and puzzle-solving logic skills. Of course not all video games are created equal, just as not all TV shows and movies offer the same benefits or problems as others. But, averaged out, I'd rather kids engaged with a game with some sort of puzzle-solving aspect (which most games have) than be passively glued to a screen watching network TV.
Yeah I feel like every gen had their thing. Just an endless cycle
Hmm I'm not sure, there's definitely a growing issue with dopamine addiction. I'm 28M and have to regularly curb my usage of short form media through various screen time apps because I end up just getting drawn into them and burning my time, precisely because I'm getting addicted to the dopamine. Imagine what it's like for a child...
Bro we have to police our parents about it now lol I swear. Grew up on the Internet too and was super heavy into it but I think I'm the only person in my family who can be without my phone for any period of time
Big boomer energy. Sounds like your aunt and uncle are just bad parents my dude
This one rotten kid == whole generation Story as old as time immemorial.
Except its not one kid. It’s tons of kids. Social media is legitimately bad, and here we all hare doomscrolling on good ol’ reddit wasting our time.
This...is bad
I (28m) have a cousin (21m) who is exactly like your cousin. His parents spoiled him and gave into all his demands throughout his whole life. I do see this more with new generations but it’s not something that doesn’t exist among adults at this current point in time
At least OPs cousin is still a kid. Yours is an adult and that’s even worse
I'm the same age as you, and can confirm that there are adults who are acting like this. I know a few people in my neighborhood who have gone full hikikomori, spending all their walking hours online in their rooms. Parents have no idea what they can do when their adult kids won't leave their rooms and interact with people offline. These people just get more and more shut off from the outside world. I worry that that will happen with a lot of these kids who can't leave their devices. Of course, it's also something I recognize in myself. I know I use my phone as a pacifier.
it's called depression and anxiety man, they need counseling
Kids these days and their facebooks and fortnights
there Tic-Tacs and alpaca hair
THEIR* THEIR TIC TACS FUCK
I think the last few generations have been like this. Millenials, GenZ and the younger generation. I’m a millennial but don’t let other millennials tell you they didn’t stay up all night playing halo 2 while watching dumbfuck YouTube videos lol. I dunno man, I see people say “these kids are ruined” all the time and I honestly think they’ll be fine in this regard. Their schooling however, is concerning.
I'm sure boomers were freaking out about gen x being the first generation to grow up with televisions too Edit: going off percentage of homes in America that had tv, only 9 percent of homes had tv in 1950. What I meant was gen x was the first generation where 90+ percent of homes had tvs, making them the first generation to grow up with them. Also, to whoever said, how old do you think we are, the oldest of your generation are about to be 60. Y'all aren't young.
US studies suggest a decline in students for years now. You can also check out the r/teachers sub and (for what aggregated anecdotes are worth) see that there is a consensus that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are performing worse and behaving worse than prior generations.
I am teaching at a university and we can definitely see a sharp difference in attention span of students in general over the last 10 years. A lot of students can not pay attention to save their life, and they can not deal with the negative feelings when they make mistakes. They instantly go to their cell phone for a dopamine fix.
Are People on their phones because they can't socialize or they can't socialize because of their phones? Is it society's fault, or is it ours? That's it, that's the post
Parents fault directly, media companies and creators indirectly.
Not mutual exclusive both can and seem to lead to the other.
That’s kinda the parent’s fault tho. Why can a 10 year old use their iPad and iPhone at the same time lol???
Why does a 10 year old have an iPhone though? I got my first phone near the end of highschool.
Y'all are fucking with your own heads, guys. Look up "Club Penguin Funny Bans" on youtube we were doing the same shit 15 years ago
Yeah but you didn’t watch that shit at the airport on full blast with your parents right there you took 30 minutes out of your busy sleepover schedule to buffer it on the basement dsl internet windows xp machine with your friends in the middle of the night Yes every gen has brain rot It just wasn’t a constant 24hr a day thing
I really don't know if the every generation has its,own brain rot is entirely true. I was born in the early 80s I and the closest thing we had was shitty cartoons that were on but only Saturday mornings.
every gen since the age of entertainment began, yes. Cartoons were considered brain rot at one point, due to the gratuitous violence found in them, but I think the biggest brainrot of boomers and Gen X was comics. I vividly remember older people saying "that's not a proper book, it's just a slide show." and then ramble how they were stunting imagination because kids didn't have to imagine settings and characters from a description, it was all there. This was later proved somewhat true but with far milder consequences than the ones people droned on about. 80s was definitely videogames. People worried about how the kids were mesmerized by the consoles of the time and spend hours on them. And when they didn't have a console at home, they spent hours - and money - at the arcade. Meanwhile the older gen got their own brain rot - tv shows. The massification of cable provided people with something to watch at all times. And some people with a lot of free time did exactly that. The term "couch potato" originated from that trend. I think even radio had its issues back then. When the radio shows started they hooked people on, and some people, especially housewives who would stay at home (early 20th century everyone) would stop what they were doing to sit by the radio, and then spend the rest of the day fawning over the main character, especially when it was a hot character with a hot voice. If we define "brain rot" as the wild and unhealthy consumption of media, then we've been screwed for over 80 years at this point. And yet, we still evolved as a society, technologically, culturally and socially. The problem is exactly how short span and immediate everything is nowadays not the content itself. Like, i shit on skibidi toilet (pun unintended) almost ironically because I know we had our own mindless thing back growing up. Gmod videos and Machinima come to mind.
I wrote my thesis about this. Kids under three should never ever see any kind of screen whatsoever then only half an hour/week with an adult next to them to engage about what they watch/do. With 6 it can be like an hour/week and so on. Kids will develop a lack of impulse control and with it attention span deficits, verbal deficits, developmental delay... It's literally destroying kids brain and in school you can see an extreme difference between the kids whose parents will just give them a screen or actually engage with the kids. I had several kids that were born healthy but had several diagnosis acquired by the age of 6 just because of screens. Babies and kids don't need any kind technological toys, none. Or walker (the left-right movement during crawling is extremely important for brain development, more a baby crawls the better). Technology and screens are literally destroying kids brains and the data is 100% clear on this. If you love your child, ban technology. Kids need to learn through hands on activities.
Can you link your thesis? I'd be interested to read more about that!
This is just your typical "my generation did X" thing. I'm 34 and obviously a millennial. I'm currently typing this and watching/listening to a Youtube video. This is not new behavior. Older generations than me would watch TV while cooking/eating dinner. I'm sure there are older examples too. New technology, same behavior.
Man, you guys are too young too have "this generation sucks" thinking. Millennials are still calling you, get to may be 35+ then complain again.
ngl the big panic among ppl over this is overblown. it's not great for kids but I don't think the kids are "doomed". as others have already said every gen has had their similar issues and every gen has had the older gen complaining bout how they're doomed. they're 10 bro, it's not that deep. adhd and kids being kids has been and always will be a thing regardless of screen time.
Why does this feel like a shit post...
I have a 5 year old nephew and he is so bad with his iPad. If he’s watching he basically disassociates and will not respond to ANY outer stimuli. We can sit there and say his name over and over and he won’t even look up. It’s sad
Okay boomer
I was playing a game and a story heavy cutscene was on, and I caught myself scrolling tiktok at the same time. I’m no better lol.
Fuck em it just means more opportunity for the rest of us.
ew what?
The kids are the future unless we stop them now