Did you even read the article/listen to his bit on Conan? I'm a huge supporter of technology, but a lot of people overlook Louis's point, which is that constant access to everything makes people over-reliant on constant stimulation, and that constant stimulation can actually decrease happiness and satisfaction with life.
He himself has a modern cell phone, so obviously he sees the benefits. But he is also self-aware of the drawbacks, and does a good comedic job of demonstrating those.
"1. The necessity of adapting to the lure of technology in order to successfully navigate the modern world."
It's really not a difficult skill to master. When a child is emotionally and intellectually ready for unfettered cell phone/internet access, mastering how to make a post on Facebook (email-text-blog-instagram-hackernews-whatever) will not be a difficult skill to master.
"2. The incalculable benefit such devices can provide if used correctly."
Do you have the same opinion of television?
There really were people who thought television would be chiefly used as a way to educate the masses. Television is just a medium like any other, mostly crap, with the occasional sublime or brilliant show.
Same thing with your cell phone. Most of the content you access will be crap, occasionally finding something awesome or beautiful or brilliant.
I'm a Dad, so I fully support Louis C.K.'s opinion that parents should filter the content and devices children access in a way that's age appropriate. Most adults have a hard time putting down their device and interacting with their environment. Teaching our kids this skill early in life is to their long term benefit.
His concern for his kid's isn't that they'll state a factual error when communicating with someone. It's that they'll avoid earnest communication altogether. There's one skill that definitely precludes the other, and the other doesn't involve having to fact check every sentence a person utters.
>the other doesn't involve having to fact check every sentence a person utters.
No one is suggesting such a thing.
The ability to maintain effective and skillful communication in a world of constant distraction will be essential in the coming decades. "Protecting" a child from such a smartphone will produce an adult ill equipped to cope with the advances of the future.
"The ability to maintain effective and skillful communication in a world of constant distraction will be essential in the coming decades."
No.
The ability to avoid constant distraction will be one of the most critical skills. The ability to focus, to think through a problem, to write a substantial essay, to plan, to evaluate your goals, values and priorities in life. These skills will be critical to flourishing in the coming decades (as they have always been).
I'm not sure if I've ever had a valuable conversation where I thought that I should manifest and embrace distractions rather than just coping with them. Sure I can use my phone to embellish a conversation, but just like I didn't learn to ride a bike through my dad throwing me on a 10 speed and pointing me to the nearest hill, I don't think Louis wants to introduce a distraction that can sabotage his child's ability to establish effective communication skills.
I'm not so sure about the necessity. It seems to me the phones manufacturers are trying to convince us of this necessity. The whole world operated just fine before smart phones. Well, there is one thing...In America we all are expected to work smarter and longer and never actually leave work. The smart phone readily facilitates that...lifestyle.
First, who said constant access to "all of the world's knowledge" is a good thing? Ever heard of shallow knowledge, dilletantism and dambling?
Second, just because something potentially "has access to all of the world's knowledge" doesn't mean it's used to gain access to that, and not to, say post BS pictures of your food or avoid people while in their presense.
Hopefully the owners of these rocks have more self control than that. Maybe his point is that children aren't capable of that kind of self-control, but adults should be.
Say that sentence out loud and I think you'll understand my point.
Look, I understand the tremendously damaging addictive potential of new technologies. We've seen this again and again, from Pong to World of Warcraft, these devices provide dopamine and must be treated with caution.
But is it wise to cloister our children away from these developments? Or is it better that they learn to adapt, especially in a world where the speed of technological advancement, and the addictive potential inherent therein, is accelerating at a rapid pace?
Personally, I know which choice makes sense to me.
"But is it wise to cloister our children away from these developments? Or is it better that they learn to adapt, especially in a world where the speed of technological advancement, and the addictive potential inherent therein, is accelerating at a rapid pace?"
No, but I think the timing is critical. I do think a lot about the right time to grant access to specific pieces of technology. I think my wife and I are more conservative in this regard than many of the people around us.
With the kind of people my sons are turning into, we're pretty happy with the results so far. Which is obviously a totally unscientific opinion, as we are not going to start running controlled studies on our kids. It's one of the difficult things about being a parent, you never know for sure what the results would be if you had made different decisions.
I guess it depends on how young we're talking when we say "children".
It's all up to each individual parent, but personally, for the early years, I think there is plenty enough to see, learn and experience in the physical and social world that there's no need to introduce the virtual world. Nor do I think that learning about phones, the internet, etc. at a slightly later age is a negative in any sense.
It's called "communication" and "having fun", respectively. Just because the new ways we have didn't exist 100 years ago doesn't mean they're bad, or even worse than what we did in the past.
Agreed. This is more reactionary nonsense I remember hearing in the 1990s when nintendo would ruin everything. Before that cable and MTV was going to ruin society. Before that dancing and horror movies would destroy future generations.
I distinctly recall my parents kicking me off the landline phone in the early 90s every single night from talking to my friends, because they could hear me in my room so instead of staring at a flickering box with mundane sitcoms my other alternative was to jump on IRC or dial STS chatboards to talk to hackers in NYC that gave me (what was at the time) priceless information. How did that hurt my communications skills or development. By the time mobile phones became affordable I was already chatting with all of my IRL friends using online messenger instead of calling them since as kids, you are always kicked off the phone or parents/siblings pick up landlines and would listen in.
One thing I definitely know kids do is lookup safe sex and other awkward questions on sexuality and gender on their phones. Why you would deny your kid access to medical information and peer counselling so they can make correct choices or seek depression outlets I have no idea. They aren't going to ask you anything, and schools have sex ed too late. I used to listen to a call in radio show late at night when I was 13 that was all about sex ed. These shows don't exist anymore, there's nothing on cable, and parents are even more reactionary conservative now just look at the Tea Party nutbar parents attempting to extinguish sex ed from schools at every opportunity. Kids are unlikely to do it on a home computer too because there might be history their parents can find.
How do I know kids are doing this? Because the local schools here told everybody that the majority of searches done on school open wifi was sex ed and gay support groups (not porn, medical sites). They cited this as a reason to start sex ed in Grade 6 instead of the usual Grade 9. They are also looking up drug safety specifically MDMA correct doses and how to identify fake drugs, or how to order testing kits.
Just make sure you tell your kid not to use social media under a real identity ever, and to be careful where they send pictures to avoid future facial recognition software databases, blackmail and stalkers.
Nothing your kids do now is any different than what you did as a kid just you can't remember how shitty it was staring at the wall all night because you were forbidden to go out on a school night, TV was complete shit, the radio played nothing but bland shit and you had nothing interesting to read since your parents denied you any literature they didn't want you to see. My parents discovered a philosophy book that doubted the existence of God and they shredded it in front of me, so I went online and read it. I had to sneak out of my house in the middle of the night just so I could see my Grade 8 girlfriend to talk for a few hours in a dangerous pitch black park. Now you can just text each other or jump on chat instead of wandering the streets at one in the morning.
EDIT: I bet his kids already have smart phones and just hide them. Every school has a small trading economy just trade an older Android in exchange for homework being done or sell something. A kid in my school sold candy in grade 5 all the other kids bought daily. He was super rich by kid standards. I traded a bunch of hacker tfilez and private invites to warez boards in exchange for a pager in 1991. Another kid would rent his father's porn mags and videos out, and in Grade 8 a kid in my school would sell cheat codes and finishing moves to video games in the arcades. You could also pay the kid who worked in the office to give you a late slip instead of getting the standard detention and lecture.
It sounds like you may be projecting your difficult experience with your parents on LCK. I don't get the feeling he is nearly that hardcore. Also, denying access to bad habits is quite different than destroying books with "dangerous" ideas.
