Kids Today

[Analogue Boy]

We did some stuff as kids that with hindsight were a bit silly, but this latest craze is downright dangerous. Don't these kids have any idea how much pain and anguish they will put their families through?

Or.... parents could make a fake web page ‘Selling Your Children For Medical Experiments’ and leave that laptop accidently open.

Fire with fire.

 

[Xanatic*]

Are we to believe that the kids can go 48 hours without posting something to social media?

 

[Mythopoeika]

Are we to believe that the kids can go 48 hours without posting something to social media?

That is a very good point.

 

[huddsy]

They only have to vanish from their parents view for 48 hours. Vanishing from social media would be a step too far!!!!

 

[huddsy]

That should be the punishment for running away like that - 48 hours locked in a room with no computer, phone, or electronic device of any kind. That would make them think twice about running off again! Better still - make it a week!!

 

[Ulalume]

Of course, maybe young people wouldn't feel the need to vanish if they felt their parents paid attention to them.

 

[Swifty]

My Mum's kindly sent the Mrs some of my past failures in paper form although I've learned my Mum always secretly thought this prank was funny .. I remember enjoying it although not as much as when we filled rubber johnnies with helium in Biology class for 'cheerful earful' (our teacher because he'd had plastic surgery that had filled one of his ears) .. this was an extention of that gag from when we went to watch Octopussy at the cinema, blowed up condoms and patted them down onto the heads of other cinema goers from the balcony we were sitting on ..

 

[Mythopoeika]

You LAD, you.

 

[Swifty]

You LAD, you.

30 years later and I still haven't changed Mytho, I've just learned how to get away with it.

 

[escargot]

we went to watch Octopussy at the cinema, blowed up condoms and patted them down onto the heads of other cinema goers from the balcony we were sitting on

wavy lines

The former Mr Snail and I once dumped the brood on the grampies and went to a matinee of Chariots of Fire. To our delight, when we looked down from the Balcony we spotted my sister and her husband immediately below us in the Stalls.

As the place was nearly empty Sis and Hubby had our full attention. We rained litter down on them throughout the film - sweet wrappers, orange peel, lolly sticks, tissues, whatever shite was lying around.

We thought they'd soon move but they didn't, as Bro in Law was determined to catch the little bastards at it, identify them and kick their arses. So they kept looking up and catching facefuls of rubbish, getting angrier and angrier.

I thought they'd know it was us but they didn't, and afterwards we hurried out and I kept schtum.

So it was 20 years before Sis told me one day how some kids had pelted them with crap at the cinema all through the fillum and caused a HUGE row between them. I said 'Oh yeah, that was me!'
She told me all about how furious Bro in Law'd been and what he was going to do to those little brats when he caught them. He went on about it for years.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Oh, you are evil. But I like you!

 

[MetroGnome]

Really? Are they no longer teaching it at school? All my older kids can read them and my 6 year old is learning at current.

They are still teaching it, but the kids nowadays seldom see any analog clocks anywhere outside of class, so they don't get any practice reading them.

 

[MetroGnome]

I'm not concerned about a decline in 'intelligence' among the youngest generations, mainly because I don't think there is one, and mainly because a good deal of what is thought to be intelligence by the general public is nothing of the sort.

What concerns me, and what I do believe we are seeing, is a decline in curiosity--more specifically a decline in the desire to look beyond the walls of one's own life.

Yeah, I have seen that personally when I was a school teacher. With most of the kids, it was all but impossible to engage them in anything. They were simply not interested in anything, and any practical demonstrations were simply opportunities to goof off a bit.

You know you have a problem when you show them how to make frickin' gunpowder and light up fireworks in the class, and half of them just sit there and stare at it with bored eyes, and the other half take the opportunity to go crazy.

 

[Yithian]

Yeah, I have seen that personally when I was a school teacher. With most of the kids, it was all but impossible to engage them in anything. They were simply not interested in anything, and any practical demonstrations were simply opportunities to goof off a bit.

You know you have a problem when you show them how to make frickin' gunpowder and light up fireworks in the class, and half of them just sit there and stare at it with bored eyes, and the other half take the opportunity to go crazy.

Something happens--something.

My daughter has just turned three and is curious about everything. She brings me pieces of fluff from the floor and wants to know where it came from!

There's something that seems to take hold of some children before they reach double digits that just 'turns them off' because 75% of the older children of our friends are phone-addicted zombies that don't know (for example) that chickens can fly or that Africa is not a country.

Fingers crossed and all that.

 

[huddsy]

They are still teaching it, but the kids nowadays seldom see any analog clocks anywhere outside of class, so they don't get any practice reading them.

No - the clocks are there for them to see. They will be in folk's houses, in the street, on buildings etc. They are there, but its just easier for them to look at their phones. Plus if they don't wear a watch they will have to look at their phones. It must be what they have got used to and the parents have probably let this happen to an extent. So although the clocks are physically there they just don't "see" them.

 

[huddsy]

Something happens--something.

My daughter has just turned three and is curious about everything. She brings me pieces of fluff from the floor and wants to know where it came from!

There's something that seems to take hold of some children before they reach double digits that just 'turns them off' because 75% of the older children of our friends are phone-addicted zombies that don't know (for example) that chickens can fly or that Africa is not a country.

Fingers crossed and all that.

Maybe it's a lack of interaction with parents - maybe this is what it all comes down to. It's easier for parents to let their kids play on electronic gadgets all the time than take the trouble to educate them about the world around them. Education shouldn't be the job of the teacher 100% of the time. There's too much knowledge for even the best teacher to impart.

 

[huddsy]

Yeah, I have seen that personally when I was a school teacher. With most of the kids, it was all but impossible to engage them in anything. They were simply not interested in anything, and any practical demonstrations were simply opportunities to goof off a bit.

You know you have a problem when you show them how to make frickin' gunpowder and light up fireworks in the class, and half of them just sit there and stare at it with bored eyes, and the other half take the opportunity to go crazy.

That's bad isn't it? That's the kind of thing we'd have been excited about.

 

[maximus otter]

Maybe it's a lack of interaction with parents - maybe this is what it all comes down to. It's easier for parents to let their kids play on electronic gadgets all the time than take the trouble to educate them about the world around them. Education shouldn't be the job of the teacher 100% of the time. There's too much knowledge for even the best teacher to impart.

My typical parent/child sighting is of a babbling primary school kid being dragged down the road by a stone-faced mum glued to her ‘phone, grunting an occasional monosyllabic response.

It was reported in the national papers recently that one school now displays posters near its entrance reading “Greet your child with a smile, not a mobile.”

The next generation will have the social skills and conversational deftness of broccoli.

maximus otter

 

[huddsy]

My typical parent/child sighting is of a babbling primary school kid being dragged down the road by a stone-faced mum glued to her ‘phone, grunting an occasional monosyllabic response.

It was reported in the national papers recently that one school now displays posters near its entrance reading “Greet your child with a smile, not a mobile.”

The next generation will have the social skills and conversational deftness of broccoli.

maximus otter

You're right! I noticed the other day, a woman pushing a pushchair, head on one side with mobile phone held there between her head and her shoulder (no doubt developing some kind of neck problem) whilst ignoring the child. Why does everybody have to be in constant contact with everybody else, discussing the minutiae of their lives all the time? You see folk in restaurants as well where the whole family is glued to their own mobile phone. They should be discussing stuff as a family!!! It winds me up!

 

[Mythopoeika]

You're right! I noticed the other day, a woman pushing a pushchair, head on one side with mobile phone held there between her head and her shoulder (no doubt developing some kind of neck problem) whilst ignoring the child. Why does everybody have to be in constant contact with everybody else, discussing the minutiae of their lives all the time? You see folk in restaurants as well where the whole family is glued to their own mobile phone. They should be discussing stuff as a family!!! It winds me up!

I can't imagine what all these people have to talk about that's so urgent it can't wait for later. Before the days of mobile phones, people managed just fine.

 

[huddsy]

I can remember the days when we didn't even have a phone in the house and had to go to the local call box. Kids these days can't bear to be parted from their phones for 2 minutes. It does make you wonder what they are all saying to each other. I remember before I retired, somebody coming into work, commenting about what somebody else in the department had posted on facebook the previous night. Even the youngsters thought that this was extreme. This girl had got up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and then got out her phone, went on to facebook and announced the news that she had just woken up and had to go to the toilet!!!!!!!!!!!
It beggars belief............ !!!!!!!!!!

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

Wow - a group of people discussing the evils of smartphones and digital communication on an online message board...

Maybe if you all went and spoke to your families instead of typing on here etc etc etc

I have no children, I'm allowed to be here.

 

[huddsy]

Wow - a group of people discussing the evils of smartphones and digital communication on an online message board...

Maybe if you all went and spoke to your families instead of typing on here etc etc etc

I have no children, I'm allowed to be here.

Nobody has said the smartphone or computer is evil. There are tremendous benefits from both. What we have said - if you care to read the posts properly - is that they can encourage over-dependency to the exclusion of independent thinking.

 

[escargot]

I noticed the other day, a woman pushing a pushchair, head on one side with mobile phone held there between her head and her shoulder (no doubt developing some kind of neck problem) whilst ignoring the child.

While I hate to join in with parent-demonising, it seems a bit silly to go to the trouble of having a kid and then push it along in a buggy while you're wearing headphones.That seems to be a thing these days.

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

Nobody has said the smartphone or computer is evil. There are tremendous benefits from both. What we have said - if you care to read the posts properly - is that they can encourage over-dependency to the exclusion of independent thinking.

Well....I wasn't being entirely serious....

But I do think it's wrong to assume that young people using phones constantly is a bad thing. It's not a passive activity, it's far more interactive than spending hours watching TV. It can be negative, but there are positives too - they are potentially communicating with a much wider group of people; creating their own videos, blogs, photography, music; making new connections...

Like I say, all of these can have negative aspects...but I was a curious child, and if I'd had a pocket window to the entire breadth of recorded human knowledge and culture, I would have been glued to it too.

 

[huddsy]

Well....I wasn't being entirely serious....

But I do think it's wrong to assume that young people using phones constantly is a bad thing. It's not a passive activity, it's far more interactive than spending hours watching TV. It can be negative, but there are positives too - they are potentially communicating with a much wider group of people; creating their own videos, blogs, photography, music; making new connections...

Like I say, all of these can have negative aspects...but I was a curious child, and if I'd had a pocket window to the entire breadth of recorded human knowledge and culture, I would have been glued to it too.

Oh - sorry I thought you WERE being serious! My mistake. Oops.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

they are potentially communicating with a much wider group of people;

My italics*.

The sad reality is that one dork crossing the road with a mobile glued to her ear is talking to another one doing exactly the same.

It's not the great minds of their generation which attract them to the medium so much as the eternal reinforcement of their already-low standards by their peers. It is just so confidence-building! Entitled, narked, primed and dangerous, they will soon be invading a space near you!

You do see thick men doing this - but they were dangerous to begin with.

* Damn! It italicises everything in a quote. It was the word "potentially" I intended to single-out.

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

Oh - sorry I thought you WERE being serious! My mistake. Oops.

Don't worry....

I very rarely am being serious.

 

[huddsy]

I was out for a meal recently an there was an occurrence which attracted my attention because it was so unusual. There was a family of five sitting at a nearby table. Mother, father and three daughters ranging in age from about 6 to 10. The youngest asked if they might go out to play before the meal came. The father said no. The three girls sat there all quietly playing on phones. (Yes, even with THIS family they were there). The meal arrived. The phones were put away. After the meal the eldest daughter got up, unprompted, and placed all the dirty plates into a neat pile for the waitress to remove. Then they all sat there behaving themselves waiting for the dessert to arrive. It must have been a sight worth commenting on because I'm doing just that now.

 

[escargot]

Well....I wasn't being entirely serious....

But I do think it's wrong to assume that young people using phones constantly is a bad thing. It's not a passive activity, it's far more interactive than spending hours watching TV. It can be negative, but there are positives too - they are potentially communicating with a much wider group of people; creating their own videos, blogs, photography, music; making new connections...

Like I say, all of these can have negative aspects...but I was a curious child, and if I'd had a pocket window to the entire breadth of recorded human knowledge and culture, I would have been glued to it too.

You're right, but there's a time and a place NOT to be doing this. Walking down the road or cycling are not ideal!