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NYT: 'Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction'

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Nov 23, 2010.

  1. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    NYT piece on kids and electronic distractions:


    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html?pagewanted=2&ref=homepage&src=me


    Honestly? This shit needs to get under control. I've always been afraid to come off like a Luddite by saying that. I've always thought, "Oh, people said the same thing about radio when it came out. And board games. And they probably said the same thing about books back in the dark ages."

    But now I think that's like saying, "Oh, Oxycontin is fine. Boys will be boys. They probably said the same thing about pot."

    The video games and gadgetry is absolutely getting out of hand, and it is hurting children's attention spans, their social skills, their families, and their academics. I'm already trying to figure out how to keep my own little ones from getting sucked into the vortex. It probably means that I'll have to cut back on my own recreational usage here soon, to be quite honest. I'm already off of Facebook and social networking.

    From the piece, this response to people - including on this board, on the "Bad Parenting" thread - who claim that kids need their computer for homework!!!

    Several recent studies show that young people tend to use home computers for entertainment, not learning, and that this can hurt school performance, particularly in low-income families. Jacob L. Vigdor, an economics professor at Duke University who led some of the research, said that when adults were not supervising computer use, children “are left to their own devices, and the impetus isn’t to do homework but play around.”

    Also:

    Allison Miller, 14, sends and receives 27,000 texts in a month, her fingers clicking at a blistering pace as she carries on as many as seven text conversations at a time. She texts between classes, at the moment soccer practice ends, while being driven to and from school and, often, while studying.

    Most of the exchanges are little more than quick greetings, but they can get more in-depth, like “if someone tells you about a drama going on with someone,” Allison said. “I can text one person while talking on the phone to someone else.”

    But this proficiency comes at a cost: she blames multitasking for the three B’s on her recent progress report.

    “I’ll be reading a book for homework and I’ll get a text message and pause my reading and put down the book, pick up the phone to reply to the text message, and then 20 minutes later realize, ‘Oh, I forgot to do my homework.’ ”
     
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