Kids have learned to walk places on their own without maps or satnav or tracking for hundreds of thousands of years. I believe everyone would benefit from that continuing. We don't teach kids that the only way to do arithmetic is with a calculator... they learn first, then get a tool that can support what they already know. Why do we think we should do it differently here, and train this learned helplessness without a phone glued to your hand. I suspect a lot of this is projection of the parents' own discomfort with being away from their phone.
As I parent I am downvoting this because I am quite tired of others judging parents and their technology choices- particularly when it comes to restrictions.
Parenting is hard. Parenting when everything is changing so quickly is very difficult.
My 2c is that I'm not judging the parents, I'm judging the outputs I've seen of people raised on phones...and that's something that impacts everyone in our society. If you think you can do better, I guess go for it, but I haven't seen it
Parenting is also a strictly optional hard-mode that you choose to switch on knowing full well there's an 18 year cooldown before you can switch it off again.
Way I see it, most parents give their kids early access to phones just to keep them sedated and occupied. There is zero benefit for under 14yo to have unrestricted access to the smartphone or internet. It only benefits the parents.
It's so damn easy to hit "pause" on the kid by turning on the TV or handing over a phone, but the result is so apparent: demands for more phone or more TV.
If we accepted what this article states as true (big if, seems mostly hyperbolic) ... it also supposes that the only important thing about organic foods is what your body gets out of it. No consideration given to the land, the inputs, the workers, the surrounding environment. Not much logic to ImunoLogic.
This is very true. My parents were organic farmers back before there was any legal or official designation, and keeping synthetic pesticides out of the soil and watershed was a bigger motivation for them than fear of eating conventionally grown food.
I think as organic food became more mainstream it also became more about an individual's health and less about larger environmental and social concerns, but those concerns are at the heart of the original organic movement.
NYT is a cancer on American society. Worst tho, it's described as a "liberal" news source, but over the course of it's long history it's done just about all it can to stab "liberals" in the back. All thinking people should avoid NYT at all costs (which is free to do).
Why didn't you say they were mormons from the beginning? That all makes sense now. Truth, lies, and morality doesn't mean the same in that case. Read Under The Banner of Heaven by Krakauer.
WW3 is shaping up to be a theocratic holy war struggle between Christianity, Judaism, Islam ... and all of us secular folks have to suffer for their ignorance and intolerance.
Strangely enough (or maybe to be expected), I'd say that at least on the Christian and Jewish sides, it's led by people who have no sincere belief in the respective religions, but hijack it for their personal power. Reminds me of Germany in WWII where Christian symbolism with "Positive Christianity" was used until it was no longer useful then they went full pagan (gottgläubig and other movements) because the sincere Christians opposed them. This administration is as likely to quote Jesus with "love thy enemy" as Germany was in 1942.
Now ... what do we do about the rest of society. This problem isn't just a school problem, it is whole of society, escpecially senior citizens. They are more prone to the problems of phones, social media, and continuous disinformation ... and they vote.
Seniors are the most vulnerable people on the internet, the most likely to be fooled by disinformation, the most likely to vote, and are one of the biggest threats to civil society. Boomers are destroying what previous generations have built.
Here in Germany they also ignored the demographics, so our social insurance systems (retirement but also health) are heading towards a catastrophe, because there is no capital backing them. They are fundamentally relying on the next generation being bigger or at least equal. This has turned them essentially into Ponzi schemes. The taxpayer has to jump in, making the state less and less able to do anything at all. Of course they now collectively avoid responsibility and slowly milk the young - their own children - dry.
ChatGPT thinks, that in the US social security makes up about 30-40% of the retirement income of a typical American, while the German system makes up about 80-85% of a retired German. Home ownership rate in Germany is also way lower.
Germany is an outlier in that there is no capital backing for that generation whatsover. The problem has been known for 30 years, they just chose to ignore it.
Are they the most egoistic generation ever? The ones who decided to go on this path weren't the boomers but the generation before (as with some other things boomers are blamed for). A capital backed social insurance system is a "ponzi" scheme in different ways from a PAYG system it's really not some holy grail. The problem is just demographics
It's going to be interesting when the Millenials retire - IIRC, that generation was almost as large as the boomers. Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha that are going to be supporting them are a LOT smaller.
It's been this way for 100+ years (probably much longer) and people found a way to vote. It's easier than ever in most places today, with early voting, mail-in voting, whatever other options are available.
