Übercomplicated

I genuinely think there should be a legal limit to when children are allowed independent access to JavaScript & Internet enabled technology. I would suggest twelve years.

Having it be law would remove probably the biggest reason children are drawn to technology initially today: social pressure and anxiety.

I didn’t grow up with anything like this (and I’m pretty young… or I was at some point) and thank fucking God I didn’t. I barely read today as it is, instead wasting time with screens and YouTube and shit like that; I’m happy I had the opportunity to consume hours and hours of time with reading as a child. Not just reading: I learned basically every knot that exists (I still have my copy of Ashley’s Book of Knots), learned an absurd amount of physics (with textbooks! for fun! I wouldn’t, couldn’t, do that today), learned to program and use Minix (ok, that was highschool, so a little later), and even got into Marxism.

These are all opportunities I don’t think I could replicate today, because I don’t get bored in the same way today. Now, if I’m bored, I automatically look at my phone (…lemmy…), or open YouTube, or do something else equally stupid. I didn’t have that option when I was young. We didn’t even own a TV. I was forced to do interesting things, and I’m really happy I was, because I’d be an exceedingly illiterate boring moron if I hadn’t read those novels and learned how the universe worked and understood why capitalism sucks.

Maybe I’m yelling at clouds and people will become interesting through other means, but it really frightens me how much dumber I’ve become. I don’t want to imagine how much harder it will be for masses of gen Z and Alpha.

Ok, I feel like I got a little off topic there. Rant over…