This is really scary

If the parents could read they’d be very upset.

How do I bring something like this up at a PTA without sounding like a complete luddite.

Oof.

They gave all the kindergartners tablets this year. They didn't spend a lot of time on them, but it was a bit alarming, and that was before I saw this.

I mean, yeah, that's what we have been asking for since I was in school.

Bit of a morbid example, but when I had my senior year at my high school, we had a non threat that had the entire small town in shambles, but we still showed up in a 20% student body capacity. We had only about 3 teachers not show up, but we had between 1 and 15 kids per class.

We unironically got so much done that day, we were joking about more bomb threats to keep the teacher just focusing on our small class. It was personal, the lessons actually felt pleasant, and we never got around so quickly in the building.

We've always wanted more teacher time, not putting us in front of a screen

Its pretty messed up that companies like google and microsoft lobby/bribe their way to providing machines for "ed-tech", bought using tax money to basically enforce their monopoly. Tax dollars are fine when they're spent on corporate welfare apparently but not social welfare

There is an odd shift from parents after the 2010s who don’t seem to understand that parents were managing without strapping their kids to a portable brain rot machine.

For any parent out there, a good start is the “wait til 8th” program (I don’t remember the exact name. I don’t have kids but the people I know who do are doing this).

It’s basically a compact not to give your kid a smart phone until 8th grade and to limit tech use at home. If your school/grade doesn’t have a compact, you can start it.

If only kids could go back to playing outside but they can't because it is too dangerous. Or, if only they could spend more quality time with their parents but they can't because living is too expensive and both parents need to work full time. If only kids could get a better education and be more excited about reading and learning, but they can't because public school funding is horrible and teachers are abused and not paid enough.

If you look at expensive private schools, they've all pulled out the tech outside of specific computer time, and are focusing on better ratio of students to teachers. Many are doing outdoor programs and high energy burn activities because little boys typically don't respond as well to sitting in classrooms like girls generally tend to do better at. Also different methodologies to deal with attention problems that aren't a full blown ADD/ADHD diagnosis.

So if it's good for rich kids, it's good for the working class kids too.

The funny thing is that seeing this on a TikTok makes me wonder how much of it I'm going to retain. The thesis denies its own platform.

There's a running joke from the oughts that before Google came along, we just wondered all day about stupid trivia until we forgot about it. Now we can look things up, solve that curiosity impulse on the spot, and go about our day. I've pointed out that this destroys retention because the question doesn't have time to prioritize itself. A couple of times I've caught myself Googling the same bit of movie trivia five days later because not only didn't I remember the answer, I hadn't even internalized the question.

Fine when it's movie trivia, terrifying when it's, say, job training. Learning that from experience right now...

This is my generation. I like to think that I was able to escape the effects of technology, at least to some extent, but it is so disheartening to know that that is going to make no difference when it's one voice against many when it's our turn to enact change through voting or however else, when it's our turn to parent, and everything else that will eventually rely on us

It is getting harder every day to have any hope for the future, with bad news coming from every angle