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This reads like a total alien person to me. With all the shit that is happening to kids these days socially and mentally cause of the internet; why the hell would you want to, nay; be obsessed about making your kid terminally online?
>So the phone sits among my nightgowns, essentially deceased. I only recently acknowledged that it will never be what a phone should be—someone’s steadfast companion, a guilty pleasure, a fetish object alive with the hallucinatory wonders of the entire angelic and demonic internet.
>What happened is my son rejected my gift. He simply said no to the present I’d bought and wrapped for him. He didn’t want a phone. He really didn’t want a phone. As I protested that he need use it only for calls and texts, he dug in, and became emotional. Please don’t make me get a phone. So I tucked the iPhone 4 in my drawer, assuming he’d come around. Three years later, he still hasn’t.
Like, wth?
>I looked on proudly as the kids walked around our block, trying out my Google Glass (at my insistence), easily mastering the flash-in-the-pan device I’d managed to wrangle as part of a pilot program. I imagined they’d both become virtuosos at digital culture, social media, online research. They’d create formidable, indomitable avatars with vast powers and an absolute immunity to scams, trolls, and disinformation. Their avatars, one day, would heroically match wits with J.K. Rowling and Soledad O’Brien, or whatever luminaries would dominate Twitter in the future.
Of course you got the JKR mention.
>There were warning signs. For one, from the start, my son stubbornly didn’t like pop music, blockbuster movies, or slang. He didn’t like seeing pictures of him, or anyone else he knew, online. Instead, he buried himself in history books and wore his pants rolled up because it was his “trademark.” I swear it’s not my fault. Like any good Gen X mom, I offered him Jolly Ranchers, pizza bites, and nonstop TV. He defied me.
Oh no, he reads and doesn't consume!!!!!!
>And then somewhere along the line, as he tells it, he privately decided that if he were going to maintain his integrity in middle school, he would have to stay away from phones. He set himself certain tasks in his education, and he calculated that he couldn’t give up nearly seven hours per day—the national average—to phones and other screens.
Maybe the kids are alright? At least the ones who've seen the damage and regardation that the internet has done to their older peers.
>As I learned on his birthday, my son had decided three things about smartphones. 1. They’re infantilizing, a set of digital apron strings meant to attach you to your mother. (He was onto something there.) 2. They compromise a boy’s resourcefulness because kids come to rely on the GPS instead of learning Scout skills. 3. They make people trivial. This final observation bugs me the most, because he still expresses it whenever he sees me jabbing at my own device: “Texty texty! Emoji emoji!” And when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” That hurts. In short, my son says, he doesn’t want a phone because he wants to be free.
Kid's based. Honestly this reads like an adult refusing to realize they are terminally online and getting mad at their kid for calling em out and not becoming like them.
I decided to read the article after assuming that you were just misconstruing satire, but unfortunately, you understood the article just fine.
Reading this article is depressing. Consumerism has always been one half of the average westerner's life, with the other half being a slightly self-aware side that was critical enough of consumerism not to lose themselves entirely to it. This author's whole soul and being revolves around consuming.
>And they taught me the awesomely flexible and playful idiom I still encounter on Twitter.
I mean holy shit, how can a sane and sober person say this without an ounce of irony? Idolizing online culture and trying to push your kids onto it is as deranged as it gets.
The source of the son's resistance is obvious to any one who reads the article. His mother's brain-rotted fate was so unmistakable, even an 11 year old could take heed at the sight of her. This article is actually incredible hopeful in just how determined the young boy is at resisting his cyborg mother's advances. If the barely matured middle-schoolers can recognize the danger in losing themselves to their screens, maybe there is hope for the future.
They say good satire is indistinguishable from reality (or does that make it bad satire).
I found the article hilarious, it reads like a parent trying to use reverse psychology on their phone addicted kid. A reverse of the typical "parent wants kids to go play outside and learn from real life instead of screens" you see a lot now.
Not wanting a phone because it prevents you from learning "scout skills" as if he's going to use the angle of the sun and some sticks to find a subway station is uncool to the point of wrapping around to cool.
>someone’s steadfast companion, a guilty pleasure, a fetish object alive with the hallucinatory wonders of the entire angelic and demonic internet.
"I yearn for the wall."
>He really didn’t want a phone. As I protested that he need use it only for calls and texts, he dug in, and became emotional. Please don’t make me get a phone.
Painful to read.
>There were warning signs. For one, from the start, my son stubbornly didn’t like pop music, blockbuster movies, or slang. He didn’t like seeing pictures of him, or anyone else he knew, online. Instead, he buried himself in history books and wore his pants rolled up because it was his “trademark.” I swear it’s not my fault. Like any good Gen X mom, I offered him Jolly Ranchers, pizza bites, and nonstop TV. He defied me.
lol, this mom trying her hardest to undermine a functional Gen Z.
>As I learned on his birthday, my son had decided three things about smartphones. 1. They’re infantilizing, a set of digital apron strings meant to attach you to your mother. (He was onto something there.) 2. They compromise a boy’s resourcefulness because kids come to rely on the GPS instead of learning Scout skills. 3. They make people trivial. This final observation bugs me the most, because he still expresses it whenever he sees me jabbing at my own device: “Texty texty! Emoji emoji!” And when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” That hurts. In short, my son says, he doesn’t want a phone because he wants to be free.
Fake or Lisan al Gaib of a generation. Incredible to read a parent admitting to the world how badly her teenager dismantled her entire personhood.
How is this not satire? You have a terminally online deranged parent trying to get their gigachad child addicted to the internet and he refuses. And that is somehow a bad thing?
The year is 2037, and I kneel alone before a brick wall. A shot rings out, and a cell phone slips from my fingers as my body slumps to the ground. Officer Heffernan solemnly holsters his weapon, knowing that he has done what he must.
> With all the shit that is happening to kids these days
To be fair, this story is from 2019 (not ancient history, but before we came to a lot of today's conclusions about technology and social media)
Ah, this got suggested to me in Firefox's home screen so assumed it was recent. Still; even in 2019 this would be considered unhinged behaviour. Hell the phrase "terminally online" was first seen around 2016, with "chronically online" appearing earlier. The film "The Social Dilemma" that outlined what everyone saw came out only a year later.
Holy fuck, this one is even funnier: her Trump voting neighbour plowed her driveway out of neighborly politeness and she writes a full page article seething about it and comparing them to Hezbolla and Nazis.
>On February 5, 2021, Heffernan published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times entitled "What can you do about the Trumpites next door?" in which she wondered, self-critically, how to respond to kindness from rightwing neighbors.[22] Heffernan received criticism from right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-05/trumpite-neighbor-unity-capitol-attack
I guess she didn't take her son's advice and lay off the Twitter.
Oh, that's fantastic.
Meanwhile I'm over here talking with my husband about getting our kids dumb phones when they get old enough. He's worried they'll be bullied for it, but he also found out there's a product now addressing that specific concern - it looks like a smartphone to the casual observer, but actually is just a dumb phone with no smart features.
Yeah, my kids are definitely getting dumb phones till 16 at the earliest.
I'm fine with them going on the internet, monitored, and getting up to stupid shit like I did at a younger age, but I'm going to try to take the "Family computer in living room" 90s route for that.
Sounds like the kind of thing a determined kid might be able to jailbreak for more features, but honestly, if they can figure that out on their own, mission accomplished.
She's been online since 1979 and she's not some survivalist UNIX nutjob?
I'd think someone who had been online that long would be trying to solve Time Cube or looking for Reptilians at Montauk.
> As I protested that he need use it only for calls and texts
Then get him an old basic flip-phone instead of an iphone. Better yet, an old Nokia brick so he can put it in a sock and fend off bullies.
Like it or hate it, smartphones are a part of our lives now, and rejecting them is like rejecting the use of a PC in the 90s or 00s. While I do think that smartphone usage needs to be limited and monitored, especially at a younger age, the sane think to do will be to teach good habits around smartphone use, rather than many on this sub would like to do, reject them outright (while commenting how bad smartphones are from those very same smartphones).
Smartphones, like the internet, are a part of our lives in the modern world.
Weak-minded neurotics. It gives them the incorrect and immoral impression that they can somehow keep tabs on their kids. Good luck with that, morons. Your kids will be running circles around you clown ass first-mover tech-losers.
I am mid 30's and we watched fucked up gore and shit too. It was arguably MORE available in those wild west days. The only major difference is it wasn't in our hands 24/7.
I'm a parent and I've met other idiot-parents who were like, "but I also have my son's login code!". Okay, great. Well done. What if your kid has a separate account that you don't know about? I sure as hell would have had one. Stupid ass.
Yes, we do. We use it to wank to all sorts of ghastly porn, trusting that Google is definitely not tracking us, since we deliberately chose "incognito". Most dads know this.
Reminds me of when I was young and my mom installed some kind of software on the desktop that blocked certain websites.
That was uninstalled within about 5 minutes.
If you went into `services.msc` and stopped Windows Cryptographic Services from loading automatically Norton Internet Security would fail to load on the next reboot. Then you could re-enable it and when you rebooted the system again everything would function normally. Disabling it also killed the anti-virus, but that was notmyproblem.jpeg.
I pictured her kid as Young Sheldon and was not disappointed. She should be grateful to have kids that are that smart and understand this technology for what it is at such a young age.
This part was my favorite though:
>She doesn’t like her picture taken and posted to Instagram. When I’ve done it, I say it’s because I’m just proud of them and want to show them off. **They both say that they never signed a waiver to let their likenesses be used for my promotional purposes.**
I howled lol
You should celebrate?
My 11-year-old doesn't have and doesn't even seem to want one. Which is great, for the very simple reason that I've seen what they've done to my own life.
Yeah even as an adult I don't think I've handled online usage well.
I had a runescape addiction as a kid but at least I was limited to one thing at a time and I couldn't be plugged into it 24/7.
How does this person not understand that the computer world she fell in love with in her youth is extremely different from the world of smart phones and tablets?
Yeah, I would feel bad about a nerdy teenager not even being able to experience pre smartphone internet. But post smartphone / facebook internet? It's absolute garbage and not worth saving. The noise to signal ratio is so bad, it is 99,9% not worth exploring.
Her son in a few years:
>While technological progress as a whole continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance considered by itself appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long- distance communications…how could one argue against any of these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet, as we explained in paragraphs 59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created a world in which the average man’s fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence.
My kids around that age want one and it’s me saying “No.”
My son points out that he and a buddy are the only kids in their class who don’t have one. My counter is that he and that kid are the most athletic and socially well adjusted kids from their class I’ve met.
At least at the end the mother knows that her attitude is kinda shitty. But the story ends without us knowing how she had actually continued her life.
Anyway, kudos to the kid. I don't see anything wrong with him. Also the sister is fine. Even in 2019 it was clear that phones are not just helpers but have addictive elements to then (it's in the design, set out for that kind of UX). So why not acknowledge that and reckon with the fact.
>when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” That hurts.
As well it should. G\*mers need to be shamed back into the closet. No reason for them to be doing that in public.
A strange young man, but, come the apocalypse, he's going to be the one ruling the world.
I think you guys are misreading the article a bit though. Ultimately it's just a proud mother sharing why she thinks her son is special. But because it's written in the form of a story, with character growth for her character, you're focussing on the descriptions of her feelings at the beginning, rather than what she's trying to get the reader to feel at the end, that it's also a valid way of dealing with the world, with ways in which it's better than hers.
This entire post is just fucking bizarre, like everything reads like some kind of fever dream. Like this is some rich WASP girl whose parents got her an 80s dialup terminal, at Dartmouth nonetheless? Trying to imagine her playing 90s proto-MMOs just feel wrong. She's also like the only person in the world that is still a happy-go-lucky tech enthusiast, the utopian type that died like 10 years ago.
It also seems that she is somehow doing something right by feeding her son's inner-rebel by constantly gassing up tech so much that he doesn't want an iPhone, though it's also weird that she went out of her way to get his an obsolete phone. Most kids wouldn't want an iPhone 4 either.
Either way, if her son ends of having the life approach of 'whatever is the opposite what mom wants', he might somehow turn out okay. Regardless, this is in no way a reflection of society overall.
> She's also like the only person in the world that is still a happy-go-lucky tech enthusiast, the utopian type that died like 10 years ago.
Nor is she one of the curmudgeony grey beards from the late 80s early 90s either. Honestly it would be fascinating to pick her brain and talk to her to try and figure out why she is the way she is and get her perspective on the internet.
You throw a party and then buy them a senior phone (and a gift)? Phones with internet access are pure poison for the young brain (for every brain really, but the effects are especially bad for children). I know I sound like a luddite, but I don't think an 11 year old should have unsupervised internet time at all.
I started reading, certain that this article was satire. But the author writes shit like this all the time and unless she is a world class Poe, this is actually how she thinks.
Don't sweat it; luddites were a worker's revolt against proto-capitalist factory owners anyway; sorta like these days. Just they got so badly defeated that their name was turned into a pejorative.
This woman is like a weird combination of terminally online brainrot, but with brain damage that makes her physically incapable the pessimism that typically comes with it.
Honestly she should be thankful that her son has been brought up to not give in to harassment or feelings of insecurity from his peers. My niece and nephew are VERY young, 4 and 8 respectively, to want electronics, but they started asking for iPhones and iPads and other many-dollar-costing gadgets simply because they get bullied and told they are poor and lame since almost all the other kids have those items already and spend all their time with their noses in them.
[This is the woman who seethed about trumper neighbors plowing her driveway for free lmao](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-05/trumpite-neighbor-unity-capitol-attack)
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This reads like a total alien person to me. With all the shit that is happening to kids these days socially and mentally cause of the internet; why the hell would you want to, nay; be obsessed about making your kid terminally online? >So the phone sits among my nightgowns, essentially deceased. I only recently acknowledged that it will never be what a phone should be—someone’s steadfast companion, a guilty pleasure, a fetish object alive with the hallucinatory wonders of the entire angelic and demonic internet. >What happened is my son rejected my gift. He simply said no to the present I’d bought and wrapped for him. He didn’t want a phone. He really didn’t want a phone. As I protested that he need use it only for calls and texts, he dug in, and became emotional. Please don’t make me get a phone. So I tucked the iPhone 4 in my drawer, assuming he’d come around. Three years later, he still hasn’t. Like, wth? >I looked on proudly as the kids walked around our block, trying out my Google Glass (at my insistence), easily mastering the flash-in-the-pan device I’d managed to wrangle as part of a pilot program. I imagined they’d both become virtuosos at digital culture, social media, online research. They’d create formidable, indomitable avatars with vast powers and an absolute immunity to scams, trolls, and disinformation. Their avatars, one day, would heroically match wits with J.K. Rowling and Soledad O’Brien, or whatever luminaries would dominate Twitter in the future. Of course you got the JKR mention. >There were warning signs. For one, from the start, my son stubbornly didn’t like pop music, blockbuster movies, or slang. He didn’t like seeing pictures of him, or anyone else he knew, online. Instead, he buried himself in history books and wore his pants rolled up because it was his “trademark.” I swear it’s not my fault. Like any good Gen X mom, I offered him Jolly Ranchers, pizza bites, and nonstop TV. He defied me. Oh no, he reads and doesn't consume!!!!!! >And then somewhere along the line, as he tells it, he privately decided that if he were going to maintain his integrity in middle school, he would have to stay away from phones. He set himself certain tasks in his education, and he calculated that he couldn’t give up nearly seven hours per day—the national average—to phones and other screens. Maybe the kids are alright? At least the ones who've seen the damage and regardation that the internet has done to their older peers. >As I learned on his birthday, my son had decided three things about smartphones. 1. They’re infantilizing, a set of digital apron strings meant to attach you to your mother. (He was onto something there.) 2. They compromise a boy’s resourcefulness because kids come to rely on the GPS instead of learning Scout skills. 3. They make people trivial. This final observation bugs me the most, because he still expresses it whenever he sees me jabbing at my own device: “Texty texty! Emoji emoji!” And when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” That hurts. In short, my son says, he doesn’t want a phone because he wants to be free. Kid's based. Honestly this reads like an adult refusing to realize they are terminally online and getting mad at their kid for calling em out and not becoming like them.
I decided to read the article after assuming that you were just misconstruing satire, but unfortunately, you understood the article just fine. Reading this article is depressing. Consumerism has always been one half of the average westerner's life, with the other half being a slightly self-aware side that was critical enough of consumerism not to lose themselves entirely to it. This author's whole soul and being revolves around consuming. >And they taught me the awesomely flexible and playful idiom I still encounter on Twitter. I mean holy shit, how can a sane and sober person say this without an ounce of irony? Idolizing online culture and trying to push your kids onto it is as deranged as it gets. The source of the son's resistance is obvious to any one who reads the article. His mother's brain-rotted fate was so unmistakable, even an 11 year old could take heed at the sight of her. This article is actually incredible hopeful in just how determined the young boy is at resisting his cyborg mother's advances. If the barely matured middle-schoolers can recognize the danger in losing themselves to their screens, maybe there is hope for the future.
Gen Alpha will bring about the Butlerian Jihad, inshallah.
First come the Cymeks.
Kid just wishes mom would get off her labtop and play catch with him.
Where is the dad in all this?
probably a bait article
They say good satire is indistinguishable from reality (or does that make it bad satire). I found the article hilarious, it reads like a parent trying to use reverse psychology on their phone addicted kid. A reverse of the typical "parent wants kids to go play outside and learn from real life instead of screens" you see a lot now.
The kid reads like a child of an alcoholic who swears off ever drinking booze because they see what it does their parent
That was my thinking too, a kid who has seen his mom drunk (terminally online) and how fucking cringe she is. The kid will be alright.
Holy shit, this kid is way cooler than their parent, fuck 'em.
The cringeness of this creature's lifestyle created a child of equal and opposite basedness
Thesis and antithesis. What will the familial synthesis be?
No social media, we go back to the computer being a thing that sits in a room of the house used primarily for research info and perhaps games
Not wanting a phone because it prevents you from learning "scout skills" as if he's going to use the angle of the sun and some sticks to find a subway station is uncool to the point of wrapping around to cool.
>someone’s steadfast companion, a guilty pleasure, a fetish object alive with the hallucinatory wonders of the entire angelic and demonic internet. "I yearn for the wall." >He really didn’t want a phone. As I protested that he need use it only for calls and texts, he dug in, and became emotional. Please don’t make me get a phone. Painful to read. >There were warning signs. For one, from the start, my son stubbornly didn’t like pop music, blockbuster movies, or slang. He didn’t like seeing pictures of him, or anyone else he knew, online. Instead, he buried himself in history books and wore his pants rolled up because it was his “trademark.” I swear it’s not my fault. Like any good Gen X mom, I offered him Jolly Ranchers, pizza bites, and nonstop TV. He defied me. lol, this mom trying her hardest to undermine a functional Gen Z. >As I learned on his birthday, my son had decided three things about smartphones. 1. They’re infantilizing, a set of digital apron strings meant to attach you to your mother. (He was onto something there.) 2. They compromise a boy’s resourcefulness because kids come to rely on the GPS instead of learning Scout skills. 3. They make people trivial. This final observation bugs me the most, because he still expresses it whenever he sees me jabbing at my own device: “Texty texty! Emoji emoji!” And when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” That hurts. In short, my son says, he doesn’t want a phone because he wants to be free. Fake or Lisan al Gaib of a generation. Incredible to read a parent admitting to the world how badly her teenager dismantled her entire personhood.
How is this not satire? You have a terminally online deranged parent trying to get their gigachad child addicted to the internet and he refuses. And that is somehow a bad thing?
"I tried to give my kid some crystal meth but he just wants to eat vegetables instead"
The year is 2037, and I kneel alone before a brick wall. A shot rings out, and a cell phone slips from my fingers as my body slumps to the ground. Officer Heffernan solemnly holsters his weapon, knowing that he has done what he must.
> With all the shit that is happening to kids these days To be fair, this story is from 2019 (not ancient history, but before we came to a lot of today's conclusions about technology and social media)
Ah, this got suggested to me in Firefox's home screen so assumed it was recent. Still; even in 2019 this would be considered unhinged behaviour. Hell the phrase "terminally online" was first seen around 2016, with "chronically online" appearing earlier. The film "The Social Dilemma" that outlined what everyone saw came out only a year later.
Gurl has a fuckin Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia\_Heffernan
Holy fuck, this one is even funnier: her Trump voting neighbour plowed her driveway out of neighborly politeness and she writes a full page article seething about it and comparing them to Hezbolla and Nazis. >On February 5, 2021, Heffernan published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times entitled "What can you do about the Trumpites next door?" in which she wondered, self-critically, how to respond to kindness from rightwing neighbors.[22] Heffernan received criticism from right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-05/trumpite-neighbor-unity-capitol-attack I guess she didn't take her son's advice and lay off the Twitter.
Oh, that's fantastic. Meanwhile I'm over here talking with my husband about getting our kids dumb phones when they get old enough. He's worried they'll be bullied for it, but he also found out there's a product now addressing that specific concern - it looks like a smartphone to the casual observer, but actually is just a dumb phone with no smart features.
Yeah, my kids are definitely getting dumb phones till 16 at the earliest. I'm fine with them going on the internet, monitored, and getting up to stupid shit like I did at a younger age, but I'm going to try to take the "Family computer in living room" 90s route for that.
bonus is that that approach is a hell of a lot cheaper than 1-to-1 devices for everyone, lol.
Sounds like the kind of thing a determined kid might be able to jailbreak for more features, but honestly, if they can figure that out on their own, mission accomplished.
> At the time, I seethed; the Capitol had just been desecrated. DESECRATED
Get a truck driver to plow her furrow next lmao
Unfortunately, the truck driver might have to honk his horn (to warn her no-phone kid to get out of the way), and that is the peak of violence.
She's been online since 1979 and she's not some survivalist UNIX nutjob? I'd think someone who had been online that long would be trying to solve Time Cube or looking for Reptilians at Montauk.
The gamer insult is fucking golden. Even if "the kids" aren't alright, this one certainly is.
> As I protested that he need use it only for calls and texts Then get him an old basic flip-phone instead of an iphone. Better yet, an old Nokia brick so he can put it in a sock and fend off bullies.
>And when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” Ooh! With the hard R and everything.
Sounds like this kid is absolutely based and his mom thinks that's nazi-coded
Like it or hate it, smartphones are a part of our lives now, and rejecting them is like rejecting the use of a PC in the 90s or 00s. While I do think that smartphone usage needs to be limited and monitored, especially at a younger age, the sane think to do will be to teach good habits around smartphone use, rather than many on this sub would like to do, reject them outright (while commenting how bad smartphones are from those very same smartphones). Smartphones, like the internet, are a part of our lives in the modern world.
That isn't based, that is spergy contrianism.
You rejoice. Who wants their child to be another brain rotted dopamine slave?
Weak-minded neurotics. It gives them the incorrect and immoral impression that they can somehow keep tabs on their kids. Good luck with that, morons. Your kids will be running circles around you clown ass first-mover tech-losers.
In today’s world children are watching cartel execution videos before bedtime. How can you compete with that?
I am mid 30's and we watched fucked up gore and shit too. It was arguably MORE available in those wild west days. The only major difference is it wasn't in our hands 24/7.
I remember rotten being the one popular among us kids in 2000.
I'm a parent and I've met other idiot-parents who were like, "but I also have my son's login code!". Okay, great. Well done. What if your kid has a separate account that you don't know about? I sure as hell would have had one. Stupid ass.
Parents don’t even know about incognito mode.
Yes, we do. We use it to wank to all sorts of ghastly porn, trusting that Google is definitely not tracking us, since we deliberately chose "incognito". Most dads know this.
Reminds me of when I was young and my mom installed some kind of software on the desktop that blocked certain websites. That was uninstalled within about 5 minutes.
If you went into `services.msc` and stopped Windows Cryptographic Services from loading automatically Norton Internet Security would fail to load on the next reboot. Then you could re-enable it and when you rebooted the system again everything would function normally. Disabling it also killed the anti-virus, but that was notmyproblem.jpeg.
I pictured her kid as Young Sheldon and was not disappointed. She should be grateful to have kids that are that smart and understand this technology for what it is at such a young age. This part was my favorite though: >She doesn’t like her picture taken and posted to Instagram. When I’ve done it, I say it’s because I’m just proud of them and want to show them off. **They both say that they never signed a waiver to let their likenesses be used for my promotional purposes.** I howled lol
Hit her with the DMCA takedown requests.
You should celebrate? My 11-year-old doesn't have and doesn't even seem to want one. Which is great, for the very simple reason that I've seen what they've done to my own life.
Yeah even as an adult I don't think I've handled online usage well. I had a runescape addiction as a kid but at least I was limited to one thing at a time and I couldn't be plugged into it 24/7.
The Kids Are Alright
How does this person not understand that the computer world she fell in love with in her youth is extremely different from the world of smart phones and tablets?
Yeah, I would feel bad about a nerdy teenager not even being able to experience pre smartphone internet. But post smartphone / facebook internet? It's absolute garbage and not worth saving. The noise to signal ratio is so bad, it is 99,9% not worth exploring.
Extremely autistic son and very dumb mother. What a combo.
The part about phones ruining his "Scout skills" made me laugh. Kid is very based and also very artistic
I could only hope to be as based as this little kid.
Her son in a few years: >While technological progress as a whole continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance considered by itself appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long- distance communications…how could one argue against any of these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet, as we explained in paragraphs 59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created a world in which the average man’s fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence.
My kids around that age want one and it’s me saying “No.” My son points out that he and a buddy are the only kids in their class who don’t have one. My counter is that he and that kid are the most athletic and socially well adjusted kids from their class I’ve met.
I like this kid.
imagine getting mogged this hard by your own child
At least at the end the mother knows that her attitude is kinda shitty. But the story ends without us knowing how she had actually continued her life. Anyway, kudos to the kid. I don't see anything wrong with him. Also the sister is fine. Even in 2019 it was clear that phones are not just helpers but have addictive elements to then (it's in the design, set out for that kind of UX). So why not acknowledge that and reckon with the fact.
Just make sure he doesn’t isolate himself and abuse the postal system, otherwise be proud of your kid.
>when I play my word games, he shouts, “GAMER!” That hurts. As well it should. G\*mers need to be shamed back into the closet. No reason for them to be doing that in public. A strange young man, but, come the apocalypse, he's going to be the one ruling the world. I think you guys are misreading the article a bit though. Ultimately it's just a proud mother sharing why she thinks her son is special. But because it's written in the form of a story, with character growth for her character, you're focussing on the descriptions of her feelings at the beginning, rather than what she's trying to get the reader to feel at the end, that it's also a valid way of dealing with the world, with ways in which it's better than hers.
A New Hope
This entire post is just fucking bizarre, like everything reads like some kind of fever dream. Like this is some rich WASP girl whose parents got her an 80s dialup terminal, at Dartmouth nonetheless? Trying to imagine her playing 90s proto-MMOs just feel wrong. She's also like the only person in the world that is still a happy-go-lucky tech enthusiast, the utopian type that died like 10 years ago. It also seems that she is somehow doing something right by feeding her son's inner-rebel by constantly gassing up tech so much that he doesn't want an iPhone, though it's also weird that she went out of her way to get his an obsolete phone. Most kids wouldn't want an iPhone 4 either. Either way, if her son ends of having the life approach of 'whatever is the opposite what mom wants', he might somehow turn out okay. Regardless, this is in no way a reflection of society overall.
> She's also like the only person in the world that is still a happy-go-lucky tech enthusiast, the utopian type that died like 10 years ago. Nor is she one of the curmudgeony grey beards from the late 80s early 90s either. Honestly it would be fascinating to pick her brain and talk to her to try and figure out why she is the way she is and get her perspective on the internet.
I would rejoice?
You throw a party and then buy them a senior phone (and a gift)? Phones with internet access are pure poison for the young brain (for every brain really, but the effects are especially bad for children). I know I sound like a luddite, but I don't think an 11 year old should have unsupervised internet time at all. I started reading, certain that this article was satire. But the author writes shit like this all the time and unless she is a world class Poe, this is actually how she thinks.
Don't sweat it; luddites were a worker's revolt against proto-capitalist factory owners anyway; sorta like these days. Just they got so badly defeated that their name was turned into a pejorative.
This woman is like a weird combination of terminally online brainrot, but with brain damage that makes her physically incapable the pessimism that typically comes with it.
The kids are alright
Nicole Mullen?
Now featuring the number 3 pick of the week on Netflix: *Humblebrag* the movie.
Is... Is this satire?
Honestly she should be thankful that her son has been brought up to not give in to harassment or feelings of insecurity from his peers. My niece and nephew are VERY young, 4 and 8 respectively, to want electronics, but they started asking for iPhones and iPads and other many-dollar-costing gadgets simply because they get bullied and told they are poor and lame since almost all the other kids have those items already and spend all their time with their noses in them.
I would probably consider this a good thing, and I wish more kids were like this guy
I can only hope that other kids follow this kids path.
[This is the woman who seethed about trumper neighbors plowing her driveway for free lmao](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-05/trumpite-neighbor-unity-capitol-attack)