I spent much of my teenage years playing video games, building/overclocking computers, flashing roms on my phones, and devouring wikipedia. my parents were concerned that I was spending too much time online but I'm glad they didn't try to intervene. I was learning tons and by the time I got to college pretty much everything in the CS degree was trivially easy for me (except some of the formal math stuff).
on the flip side, I am quite certain that most of my peers spent their hours primarily on youtube, facebook, and aim. they seemed to take pride in how little they understood the workings of their entertainment devices.
today I hear a lot of parents talking about how they are putting off getting a family computer/tablet for as long as possible and how they intend to severely limit screen time once they finally get one. it makes me sad to think that these children will miss out on all the great learning experiences I had with my computers, but I'm not sure the parents are necessarily wrong, especially with the current buzz around social media and mental health.
I get it, and what I was responding to was the "no benefit" comment. I carry research articles and books on my phone that I can read with any spare moment. It's amazing actually, and I don't see the point of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
> on the flip side, I am quite certain that most of my peers spent their hours primarily on youtube, facebook, and aim. they seemed to take pride in how little they understood the workings of their entertainment devices.
People, kids especially, love wasting time. All that changes is how they do the time wasting.
I spent every waking hour tinkering with my C64, and made a career from that.
But a C64 is a very different beast from a ipad or even a rpi. I think the percentage of owners back then tinkered with them as well as just loading up games was much higher.
I haven't heard of a single kid in my son's classes who has tried programming. The thing is just a TV/mobile game console.
Thank god they haven't hit facebook yet, at least the ones I know.
I guess nothing has changed much haha. I was a teenager in the late 90s and early 00s; none of that existed. The only kids using computers then were interested in games, hacking on them, or using them for some productivity task.
How many people are interested in how cars work vs just use them to get around? Computing is just ubiquitous now but people who really care about how they work are still a small minority.
on the flip side, I am quite certain that most of my peers spent their hours primarily on youtube, facebook, and aim. they seemed to take pride in how little they understood the workings of their entertainment devices.
today I hear a lot of parents talking about how they are putting off getting a family computer/tablet for as long as possible and how they intend to severely limit screen time once they finally get one. it makes me sad to think that these children will miss out on all the great learning experiences I had with my computers, but I'm not sure the parents are necessarily wrong, especially with the current buzz around social media and mental health.