I'm wasting my life and I'm hurting inside...

[lulahbelle]

Ah Steve Wilson stop expressing me better than I can plz...

Sentimental by Porcupine Tree
I never want to be old
And I don't want dependants
It's no fun to be told
That you can't blame your parents anymore

I'm finding it hard
To hang from a star
I don't want to be...
Never want to be old

Sullen and bored the kids stay
And in this way wish away each day
Stoned

Comments

so sorry for the tl:dr

[lulahbelle]

Thing is I think that the argument that having access to everything is making makes children lazy, incurious and bored tends towards being simplistic and cliche.

I mean when you think about it it's not at all unique historically and is always used traditionally by people who are scared of the technology involved. I mean people said similar about the tv...now Wilson is saying it about newer technology.

I'm like lol Wilson, tired argument dood.

Also I think such opinions are not really appreciating the other side of technology. For example that the access to information etc might well be be increasing the breadth of children's curiosity rather than decreasing it.

I mean studies have found we are all individually different in levels of curiosity regardless of our environment and so children are no different. They aren't all these mindless brainless beings that he thinks they are and if they were then they would likely have been without the new technology. They would just have spent every hour they were sent watching tv instead. I mean it's human difference and nature, not new at all and probably not down to technology at all.

I mean I only ever used my computer when I was a kid to learn things I didn't know and couldn't know about the world because of my social circumstance for instance, I never played games etc because they didn't interest me. Other children spent all day everyday indoors on Sonic the Hedgehog.

So what he is observing might well be individual differences in personality rather than technology per se. And I mean tbh I know a lot of young people (young, poor people too) and they don't seem overally the way Wilson characterises them...

I mean things are complex, far more than his theory thinks.