ATTN, NIGEL...You might find this interesting.

[Doktor Howl]

During the daytime, my daughter hangs out with her friends IRL.  In the evenings, they all get on their computers and watch bad movies together, laughing theirs asses off in the channel they're using.

My son does basically the same thing.  And given the nature of this sort of thing, the groups slowly expand, so there's always a dozen or more people watching the really bad movie of the night.  All it takes is logging in.

So they're never alone, unless they choose to be alone.

We've discussed how kids are so much more civilized over the last generation or two, and perhaps this has something to do with it?  Each generation has more and more communications capability, to the point where every night is a bad movie party, even with friends that live hundreds of thousands of miles away?

[Ben Shapiro]

Wasn't a experiment done in Africa with kids using a cell phone, or laptop? Literally the kids retaught the village everything.

It showed communication is vital for progression.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

During the daytime, my daughter hangs out with her friends IRL.  In the evenings, they all get on their computers and watch bad movies together, laughing theirs asses off in the channel they're using.

My son does basically the same thing.  And given the nature of this sort of thing, the groups slowly expand, so there's always a dozen or more people watching the really bad movie of the night.  All it takes is logging in.

So they're never alone, unless they choose to be alone.

We've discussed how kids are so much more civilized over the last generation or two, and perhaps this has something to do with it?  Each generation has more and more communications capability, to the point where every night is a bad movie party, even with friends that live hundreds of thousands of miles away?

I think you may very well be on to something... our kids are vastly more connected than we are, to the point where our generation, the Last of the Rugged Individualists, writes opinion articles about Kids These Days and their Horrible Internet Addiction.

What's most interesting about it, to me, is that not only are kids more socially connected, but they care more about what happens to other people. They have a stronger sense of compassion and social justice. They are very concerned about issues like fairness and oppression. They may be too young to yet have the complexity of intellect and experience to put it all together into a cohesive values package that directs their behavior, but they have a better start on it than most of our generation did... and our generation has a better handle on these things, as you mentioned, than the deeply dysfunctional generation before us.

When people talk disparagingly about internet addiction, in a sense what they're putting down is the natural human desire to socialize and be part of a community. The desire of kids to connect online is fundamentally no different from the desire of all people from time immemorial to gather around a fire, drinking, telling stories, and laughing. This is fundamental to the human experience.

I've noticed that my children don't give a crap about toys, or stuff, anymore, other than stuff that helps them connect with other kids. Stuff that puts them online. Their rooms are, bizarrely, nearly empty, and when I ask them what they want for their birthdays they have no idea, other than a laptop or maybe a tablet. Recently they've started asking for kitchenware, so they'll be equipped to throw dinner parties when they move out.

What's wrong with these kids? Don't they want to shut themselves up in their rooms, with their things, and disconnect from their communities, like Good Americans?

And what will it mean for our future that they don't?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Wasn't a experiment done in Africa with kids using a cell phone, or laptop? Literally the kids retaught the village everything.

It showed communication is vital for progression.

Yep. A bunch of kids in a village were given tablets. The kids taught themselves to use the tablets, taught themselves English, and started hacking them and writing programs within 30 days, all without any outside instruction. They also taught the adults how to use them and started teaching them English.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Basically, these kids went from complete computer illiteracy to Skyping and writing Minecraft hacks in just a few weeks.

[Ben Shapiro]

Instagrammers,techies,neckbeards, internet cat junkies unite we must rebuild a better future. I forgot all about young people spreading more and more awareness about assholes shitting on people.

[Doktor Howl]

During the daytime, my daughter hangs out with her friends IRL.  In the evenings, they all get on their computers and watch bad movies together, laughing theirs asses off in the channel they're using.

My son does basically the same thing.  And given the nature of this sort of thing, the groups slowly expand, so there's always a dozen or more people watching the really bad movie of the night.  All it takes is logging in.

So they're never alone, unless they choose to be alone.

We've discussed how kids are so much more civilized over the last generation or two, and perhaps this has something to do with it?  Each generation has more and more communications capability, to the point where every night is a bad movie party, even with friends that live hundreds of thousands of miles away?

I think you may very well be on to something... our kids are vastly more connected than we are, to the point where our generation, the Last of the Rugged Individualists, writes opinion articles about Kids These Days and their Horrible Internet Addiction.

What's most interesting about it, to me, is that not only are kids more socially connected, but they care more about what happens to other people. They have a stronger sense of compassion and social justice. They are very concerned about issues like fairness and oppression. They may be too young to yet have the complexity of intellect and experience to put it all together into a cohesive values package that directs their behavior, but they have a better start on it than most of our generation did... and our generation has a better handle on these things, as you mentioned, than the deeply dysfunctional generation before us.

When people talk disparagingly about internet addiction, in a sense what they're putting down is the natural human desire to socialize and be part of a community. The desire of kids to connect online is fundamentally no different from the desire of all people from time immemorial to gather around a fire, drinking, telling stories, and laughing. This is fundamental to the human experience.

I've noticed that my children don't give a crap about toys, or stuff, anymore, other than stuff that helps them connect with other kids. Stuff that puts them online. Their rooms are, bizarrely, nearly empty, and when I ask them what they want for their birthdays they have no idea, other than a laptop or maybe a tablet. Recently they've started asking for kitchenware, so they'll be equipped to throw dinner parties when they move out.

What's wrong with these kids? Don't they want to shut themselves up in their rooms, with their things, and disconnect from their communities, like Good Americans?

And what will it mean for our future that they don't?

Thing is, my daughter goes out IRL more now, because of the connections she has made with her friends and their friends.  I have a house full of teenagers on a regular basis.  And they're all very nice and polite, and they DO STUFF (they're really involved in stage makeup, etc), because they talked about it and then arranged it on channel while watching a zombie flick.

I think this is great, obviously.  These kids are ten times more socialized¹ than I ever was in my whole life, let alone at age 17. 

Best part is, their parties don't involve alcohol or anything.  Just Really Bad Movies.

One of their friends is from the CDO district, and couldn't manage a computer that was fast enough to manage this activity.  The crowd found a messed up laptop, diagnosed it with the help of one of the UK tards, and repaired it for cheap, got the kid online.

I can't say enough about this.

[Doktor Howl]

¹  It occurs to me that we could have a lot of fun with the two definitions of "socializing" kids.

Make some teabaggers roar.

[Ben Shapiro]

¹  It occurs to me that we could have a lot of fun with the two definitions of "socializing" kids.

Make some teabaggers roar.

[McGrupp]

I can't help but notice that many of the parents who write those articles about internet addiction and kids these days seem to be the same people who made everything else about being a kid not fun.

Scheduling regulated activities from morning to night, constantly looking over their shoulders, making it untenable for them to go outside and ride bikes or catch frogs. I'm mainly talking about my extended family here (most who are overbearing and rather uptight) I see my younger cousins get needled with a thousand invasive questions about their life and then the older generation shrugs when they lurk off and tap on their phones.

Of course they've retreated into the internet! It's the last bastion for them to be connected to each other without being chaperoned.

What gets me, is that much of the older generation can't see the difference between a healthy internet activity (watching bad movies with friends) and something that actually is internet addiction (Warcraft for 12 hours a day). They just blanket the entire technological marvel of the internet age as 'just a fancy pacman'

[P3nT4gR4m]

I can't help but notice that many of the parents who write those articles about internet addiction and kids these days seem to be the same people who made everything else about being a kid not fun.

Scheduling regulated activities from morning to night, constantly looking over their shoulders, making it untenable for them to go outside and ride bikes or catch frogs. I'm mainly talking about my extended family here (most who are overbearing and rather uptight) I see my younger cousins get needled with a thousand invasive questions about their life and then the older generation shrugs when they lurk off and tap on their phones.

Of course they've retreated into the internet! It's the last bastion for them to be connected to each other without being chaperoned.

What gets me, is that much of the older generation can't see the difference between a healthy internet activity (watching bad movies with friends) and something that actually is internet addiction (Warcraft for 12 hours a day). They just blanket the entire technological marvel of the internet age as 'just a fancy pacman'

Couldn't agree more. Something happened between my generation, when we were allowed, hell we were expected, to fuck off miles away and explore the wilderness with our friends from an early age and then, suddenly, someone invented pedophiles and insisting that kids wear fucking crash helmets on pushbikes and a whole bunch of other shit which, if it had been imposed on me when I was that age, would have felt like fucking Belsen

[Cramulus]

This reminds me of what McLuhan wrote about how communication mediums change the structure of society far more than anything said via that medium.

He talked about how these electric communications were leading to a "re-tribalization". When you read a book, you are having an individual, personal, internal experience. But when you watch live TV, or post on a forum, or read a blog, it becomes a shared experience. And this leads to different types of communities forming.

In old literate culture, the literate experience led to specialization. It forms us around hierarchies and niches. But the electric culture, McLuhan suggested, is leading us to form better groups, think as groups, interpret things as groups. Spontaneously.

PLAYBOY: Would you describe this retribalizing process in more detail?

McLUHAN: The electronically induced technological extensions of our central nervous systems, which I spoke of earlier, are immersing us in a world-pool of information movement and are thus enabling man to incorporate within himself the whole of mankind. The aloof and dissociated role of the literate man of the Western world is succumbing to the new, intense depth participation engendered by the electronic media and bringing us back in touch with ourselves as well as with one another. But the instant nature of electric-information movement is decentralizing — rather than enlarging — the family of man into a new state of multitudinous tribal existences. Particularly in countries where literate values are deeply institutionalized, this is a highly traumatic process, since the clash of the old segmented visual culture and the new integral electronic culture creates a crisis of identity, a vacuum of the self, which generates tremendous violence — violence that is simply an identity quest, private or corporate, social or commercial.

...

It is not an easy period in which to live, especially for the television-conditioned young who, unlike their literate elders, cannot take refuge in the zombie trance of Narcissus narcosis that numbs the state of psychic shock induced by the impact of the new media. From Tokyo to Paris to Columbia, youth mindlessly acts out its identity quest in the theater of the streets, searching not for goals but for roles, striving for an identity that eludes them.

PLAYBOY: Why do you think they aren't finding it within the educational system?

McLUHAN: Because education, which should be helping youth to understand and adapt to their revolutionary new environments, is instead being used merely as an instrument of cultural aggression, imposing upon retribalized youth the obsolescent visual values of the dying literate age. Our entire educational system is reactionary, oriented to past values and past technologies, and will likely continue so until the old generation relinquishes power. The generation gap is actually a chasm, separating not two age groups but two vastly divergent cultures. I can understand the ferment in our schools, because our educational system is totally rearview mirror. It's a dying and outdated system founded on literate values and fragmented and classified data totally unsuited to the needs of the first television generation.

he has a lot to say on this topic... some of it is pretty out there, but some of it seems amazingly prescient for a guy who was writing about trends in 1969. 

[Doktor Howl]

Obviously blocked at work, but I'm going to go read the whole thing when I get home.  Thanks, Cram!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

During the daytime, my daughter hangs out with her friends IRL.  In the evenings, they all get on their computers and watch bad movies together, laughing theirs asses off in the channel they're using.

My son does basically the same thing.  And given the nature of this sort of thing, the groups slowly expand, so there's always a dozen or more people watching the really bad movie of the night.  All it takes is logging in.

So they're never alone, unless they choose to be alone.

We've discussed how kids are so much more civilized over the last generation or two, and perhaps this has something to do with it?  Each generation has more and more communications capability, to the point where every night is a bad movie party, even with friends that live hundreds of thousands of miles away?

I think you may very well be on to something... our kids are vastly more connected than we are, to the point where our generation, the Last of the Rugged Individualists, writes opinion articles about Kids These Days and their Horrible Internet Addiction.

What's most interesting about it, to me, is that not only are kids more socially connected, but they care more about what happens to other people. They have a stronger sense of compassion and social justice. They are very concerned about issues like fairness and oppression. They may be too young to yet have the complexity of intellect and experience to put it all together into a cohesive values package that directs their behavior, but they have a better start on it than most of our generation did... and our generation has a better handle on these things, as you mentioned, than the deeply dysfunctional generation before us.

When people talk disparagingly about internet addiction, in a sense what they're putting down is the natural human desire to socialize and be part of a community. The desire of kids to connect online is fundamentally no different from the desire of all people from time immemorial to gather around a fire, drinking, telling stories, and laughing. This is fundamental to the human experience.

I've noticed that my children don't give a crap about toys, or stuff, anymore, other than stuff that helps them connect with other kids. Stuff that puts them online. Their rooms are, bizarrely, nearly empty, and when I ask them what they want for their birthdays they have no idea, other than a laptop or maybe a tablet. Recently they've started asking for kitchenware, so they'll be equipped to throw dinner parties when they move out.

What's wrong with these kids? Don't they want to shut themselves up in their rooms, with their things, and disconnect from their communities, like Good Americans?

And what will it mean for our future that they don't?

Thing is, my daughter goes out IRL more now, because of the connections she has made with her friends and their friends.  I have a house full of teenagers on a regular basis.  And they're all very nice and polite, and they DO STUFF (they're really involved in stage makeup, etc), because they talked about it and then arranged it on channel while watching a zombie flick.

I think this is great, obviously.  These kids are ten times more socialized¹ than I ever was in my whole life, let alone at age 17. 

Best part is, their parties don't involve alcohol or anything.  Just Really Bad Movies.

One of their friends is from the CDO district, and couldn't manage a computer that was fast enough to manage this activity.  The crowd found a messed up laptop, diagnosed it with the help of one of the UK tards, and repaired it for cheap, got the kid online.

I can't say enough about this.

yep, same with mine; they have insanely thriving social lives, and aren't locked into just the kids from school. They know kids from all over the Metro area, and on any given day of the week they have meetups in parks, often pot-luck (which also inspires them to cook more, which is great). And they exchange technology wherever it's possible or necessary to allow one of their friends to maintain participation with the group. It's pretty incredible, as social phenomena go.

[Doktor Howl]

During the daytime, my daughter hangs out with her friends IRL.  In the evenings, they all get on their computers and watch bad movies together, laughing theirs asses off in the channel they're using.

My son does basically the same thing.  And given the nature of this sort of thing, the groups slowly expand, so there's always a dozen or more people watching the really bad movie of the night.  All it takes is logging in.

So they're never alone, unless they choose to be alone.

We've discussed how kids are so much more civilized over the last generation or two, and perhaps this has something to do with it?  Each generation has more and more communications capability, to the point where every night is a bad movie party, even with friends that live hundreds of thousands of miles away?

I think you may very well be on to something... our kids are vastly more connected than we are, to the point where our generation, the Last of the Rugged Individualists, writes opinion articles about Kids These Days and their Horrible Internet Addiction.

What's most interesting about it, to me, is that not only are kids more socially connected, but they care more about what happens to other people. They have a stronger sense of compassion and social justice. They are very concerned about issues like fairness and oppression. They may be too young to yet have the complexity of intellect and experience to put it all together into a cohesive values package that directs their behavior, but they have a better start on it than most of our generation did... and our generation has a better handle on these things, as you mentioned, than the deeply dysfunctional generation before us.

When people talk disparagingly about internet addiction, in a sense what they're putting down is the natural human desire to socialize and be part of a community. The desire of kids to connect online is fundamentally no different from the desire of all people from time immemorial to gather around a fire, drinking, telling stories, and laughing. This is fundamental to the human experience.

I've noticed that my children don't give a crap about toys, or stuff, anymore, other than stuff that helps them connect with other kids. Stuff that puts them online. Their rooms are, bizarrely, nearly empty, and when I ask them what they want for their birthdays they have no idea, other than a laptop or maybe a tablet. Recently they've started asking for kitchenware, so they'll be equipped to throw dinner parties when they move out.

What's wrong with these kids? Don't they want to shut themselves up in their rooms, with their things, and disconnect from their communities, like Good Americans?

And what will it mean for our future that they don't?

Thing is, my daughter goes out IRL more now, because of the connections she has made with her friends and their friends.  I have a house full of teenagers on a regular basis.  And they're all very nice and polite, and they DO STUFF (they're really involved in stage makeup, etc), because they talked about it and then arranged it on channel while watching a zombie flick.

I think this is great, obviously.  These kids are ten times more socialized¹ than I ever was in my whole life, let alone at age 17. 

Best part is, their parties don't involve alcohol or anything.  Just Really Bad Movies.

One of their friends is from the CDO district, and couldn't manage a computer that was fast enough to manage this activity.  The crowd found a messed up laptop, diagnosed it with the help of one of the UK tards, and repaired it for cheap, got the kid online.

I can't say enough about this.

yep, same with mine; they have insanely thriving social lives, and aren't locked into just the kids from school. They know kids from all over the Metro area, and on any given day of the week they have meetups in parks, often pot-luck (which also inspires them to cook more, which is great). And they exchange technology wherever it's possible or necessary to allow one of their friends to maintain participation with the group. It's pretty incredible, as social phenomena go.

Which sort of leaves me with nothing to bitch about...
...
...

DAMN KIDS!
\