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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • So the argument boils down to it being due to bad parents rather than evil technology, yes?

    That’s not the main arguments being used to ban these devices and advocate for more radical plans. Removing access to these doesn’t make someone a good parent. Kids turn to other methods.

    And to an earlier point in another comment: guess which cohort has explosive growth in smoking at the moment? Not people our age. Teens and young adults of legal age. Gen Z, in particular, is a huge market for that industry now. Cigars and pipes in particular. Vapes are counted separately but are wildly popular.

    Banning the sale of highly regulated goods where the state is the official and only legal seller of said good in many states is one thing. We are talking about the internet here, though. And cell phones. And computers. And tablets. May as well put TVs and connected devices on the list, and definitely console platforms.


  • That’s the real problem, kids being able to spend unlimited time unsupervised because they have horrible absent parents. Parents shouldnt let their kids have unrestricted time like that. That is one reason why kids suffer in school not because of phones; because their parents aren’t involved to guide them in making good choices and forcing good habits.

    So we take away the phones as the luddites demand. What fills the gap? Definitely not independent learning. Most definitely not suddenly mindful and present parents.

    There is a lot of fear mongering and blaming, but no actual effort to fix it. Banning or removing doesn’t fix it. There is a reason that, when absent parents for latchkey kids were huge problems, they didn’t simply decree gangs illegal and pat themselves on the back. Communities offered alternatives. But no alternative is being offered here. All the woes are shifted onto the unholy smartphone and internet.

    Ya know why predators can find success online? Because shit parents don’t parent. A better use of resources would be forcing the parents to sacrifice their phones contingent on spending time with their kids, right?


  • No, you don’t get. Or didn’t live it. Or are being purposely obtuse.

    None of those qualifiers were attached to those things at the time the applicable fear mongering luddites were vilifying them. What we have right now are 21st century Tipper Gores. People engaging in moral public freakouts over tangentially related things which affirm a much larger fear of the whole (technology in this case). You see it also with how people violently and emotionally react to “AI.”

    Remember when D&D would turn you into a Satanist who’d go on to sexually abused children, maybe even engage in ritualist murder? Remember when similar was said for merely listening to even the radio edits of Marilyn Manson?

    People pearl clutch over hypotheticals. Parents who engage with their kids and set healthy boundaries which are enforced don’t often run into these problems. Hell, the arguments people make about tech right now could also apply as reasons not to let them play outside. Never know where a predator is lurking. I mean, we actually do: in your church and in your house. The two most statistically likely places for children to be preyed upon.

    But let’s blame the internet. Apple makes it trivial to lock things down and monitor it all. No kid is able to outsmsrt those restrictions because adults can’t either.

    No, what’s happening is yet another hype cycle. The entire reason all these schools are banning devices this year is due to a marketing effort from Haidt’s publisher. They put copies of his book into the hands of higher ranking faculty with purchasing authority for their districts. And they talk with each other. What a brilliant way to weaponize ignorance and make a buck doing so.

    And it magically doesn’t make bad parents into even mediocre ones. Who or what will they blame next? Definitely not the person looking back at them in the mirror every morning.



  • glockenspiel@programming.devtoMemes@lemmy.mlWhich will you choose?
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    2 months ago

    my experience is such that people don’t get these sweeping bans for having opinions. They get them for acting like sociopathic aggressive individuals.

    And based on what I’m seeing when I check folks’ profiles reiterating the same story… Yep it checks out more often than not. There’s no discourse on the internet when it consists of calling people slurs in a weird barrage of insults. Those are the people who get banned here or there.


  • I have family that are similar. I wouldn’t classify them as racist, but they straddle that line with opinions. I’ve never seen or heard them classify an entire group of people or act discriminatory in person. It is more along the lines of “everyone is equal and nobody should get special treatment” regarding things like affirmative action or the more extreme DEI practices of some companies.

    My experience is such that these people can be reached if we keep the lines of communication open rather than do the easy thing of cutting them off. I’ve been able to use their own logic and verbiage (especially verbiage) against them but one can’t go in guns blazing. To change minds, it must feel like their idea. Turn the heat up slowly and introduce doubt and ideas.

    My big take away, with people like I described above, is that they are reacting to the more extreme people who would feel right at home in the racist far right if things were just a tad different. Cultural warriors and grievance politics leaders are cancerous regardless of which side of the spectrum they occupy because their goal remains the same: divide the normal people and turn us against each other.

    And judging by what happens in my extended family and how it is breaking down on political lines… it is sadly working.




  • It’s easy for people to cherrypick with groups.

    There are tons of antisemitic leftists. I’ve had to heavily curate my social media because of them, and I’m lucky because that’s all I’ve had to do (eg, I’m not being chased across college campuses or doxxed for belonging to a synagogue or have people waiting outside of my door to hound me immediately).

    But there are tons of leftists who aren’t as well.

    Leftism has become co-opted as way for people to virtue signal and rationalize things they want to believe. The right is definitely seizing on this strife. But historically, there’s nobody the left likes to fight more than other leftists.

    And the meme at the top about immigrants… that isn’t new. The USSR was famous for establishing ethnostates and it carries over to modern day. Sure, you could immigrate. But it isn’t like workers held hands and ignored the differences. The pressure was there, but perhaps not the wage pressure. Out groups were still blamed for things like shortages and service degradation, just like today. Nor a defense of anti immigration, but people seem to think the problem exists in uneducated or unenlightened people close to be leftwing. Nope, it’s our cohort. We are watching it in real time right now.




  • Gen Z is just as gullible. Technically, more gullible than Boomers because Gen Z fall for scams at the highest rate as a cohort.

    This opinion piece may be correct. I think it is more their personal politics informs their religion, and no main stream religions available in their areas cater to that in the US. Even finding things like Buddhist temples, that aren’t really just some ethnic traditions that necessarily keep peopleout,are hard to find. A lot of churches are ideologically just as awful as we remember. Mosques even worse. Reform Jewish temples are open minded and progressive but Gen Z has a huge problem with Jews in general.

    I really think we are going to see a big problem with the cohort as they age. Not just religiously. Teachers have been warning for years that Gen Z as a group have severe deficiencies with critical thinking and reading comprehension. Normally, I think these divides are too rough to be useful. However, there definitely seems to be something there.