Everywhere I go now I see young parents glued to their phones and ignoring their children. Or worse, they gave their toddlers tablets and it’s a family of zombies.
It’s a hard balance, being parents right now. I’m going to make an assumption and guess you mean you see them in public, yeah? The thing is (I say this as a parent of currently 9 and 7 year olds), our society — at least, my society in the US — still feels a bit like it expects children to be “seen and not heard” while in public. If even seen, to be honest. I don’t see it as much here on Lemmy but I saw anti-kid posts on Reddit all the time. I don’t mean childfree; I mean they constantly complained about other people’s kids. Yes, sometimes that can be due to a lack of structured parenting, but kids are also just little socially-inept, impulse-driven creatures who are still figuring the world out. The urge to hand them a magical little device that will occupy them and keep them “seen and not heard” while you are out somewhere is perilously strong.
All that being said: just last week I was sitting to the side at my son’s martial arts class, and next to me was a mom on her phone who had a young girl, maybe 3 or 4, next to her. The girl was squirmy but quiet. I could not help noticing that the mom barely looked up from her phone the whole time. I felt really bad for the girl.
Yea it’s the same for us, the complaints from people when they see a kid in public on a tablet are weird to me cause I know as kids we always had stuff like toys we brought into restaurants (or we went to restaurants with like coloring maps and stuff).
Parents have been desperately trying to find things to occupy kids while they’re in public so they don’t disturb the people around them for years and now that smart phones/ipads are universal it seems like there’s finally something that will just keep the kids quiet for awhile without a lot of effort.
I think it’s important to pay attention how much you/your kids are spending on “screen time” but it feels really disingenuous to say stuff like the current generation is cooked because of ipads.
Yea it’s the same for us, the complaints from people when they see a kid in public on a tablet are weird to me cause I know as kids we always had stuff like toys we brought into restaurants (or we went to restaurants with like coloring maps and stuff).
I can understand if they’re blasting the audio out from the tablet and disrupting everyone else but if they’re not I don’t get what’s the fuss.
There’s a huge difference between kids playing with toys or coloring books and watching tiktok on their iPads. Not even remotely the same, and it’s concerning that so many perents don’t seem to understand that.
And the previous generations had TV. Interestingly enough boomers I’ve known are the ones who still had TVs on almost constantly post 2010 when more and more people are giving up watching broadcast TV.
Yes! This is my dad to a T. Meanwhile, my husband and I (oldish millennials) “cut the cord” fairly early on but more importantly, we actually have the TV off occasionally. That only happens in my parents’ house if my dad isn’t home. When I was a kid, he’d be working in the garage — where he had a TV — but we weren’t allowed to change the channel in the living room because he’d go back and forth and didn’t want to miss anything.
You can always tell a Milford man.
I recently saw a young woman stopped in the middle of a subway entrance, poking at her phone, while in the pram in front of her, a two year old was also entranced by its own phone. It was completely surreal.
Pre-smartphones, my parents were always yelling at my brothers and I to stop texting at the dinner table.
Post-smartphones, it’s now vice-versa and unless we remind them to put their phones on silent beforehand, their phones inevitably erupt in alarms at full volume reminding them to call Marianne back or whatever
For real. My parents will cut off mid conversation to stare at their phone over something they just saw on fb or whatever, and I have to get their attention to resume the conversation we were already having. I don’t think me chastising them for it would go over well, but damn.
Oh, and they still reprimand for having a phone in the “wrong” place (according to them). 🙄
Anybody else start noticing how many of their parents have ADHD or other diagnosises but their parents were the ones to not get them on all those meds since they’re over prescribing and just trying to make money?
Pepper ridge farm remembers.
MSM and bootstraps went a long way in ruining so many fallible and gullible people in that generation over pride.
Hilariously true for me as well. My mom leaves her phone on the counter when we come for dinner but will get up immediately when she gets a notification and then spend 5 minutes writing a 2-sentence text at the table
As someone who tries to stay off their phone in social situations I’d stay that yes, this applies to people the age of my parents aswell but not exclusively. Almost everyone is like this. A ton of people seem to think they can keep up a conversation while doing stuff on their phones. I’ve yet to meet anyone who actually can.
If I’m having a conversation with someone and they start looking at their phone while I’m talking, I just stop talking and stare at them. More than a few times I’ve been told “keep going I’m listening” I don’t, I just let them finish and only start talking again when the set the phone down.
It’s very passive aggressive but it does make the other person feel a bit uncomfortable.
Yeah I often do the same thing. I also don’t start talking to anyone whose on their phone already. The way I see it is that a person staring at their phone could aswell be in a different room.
If you want to have a little fun, start speaking nonsense. Since they’re only half-listening, they deserve no more than your half-talking.
I like to get it out to check something we’re talking about, like “I would like to see X live again” -> “maybe there’s a concert soon?” but otherwise it stays in my pocket
Same. Except it’s usually more, like, verify an obscure fact or something.
That as well
I can’t even keep up a conversation if there’s a squirrel outside the window…
90% of the time when I see someone swerving in traffic because they’re blatantly staring at their phone, it’s somebody 50+ years old
Funny it is always young people when I see it happen. We can confirmation bias together.
Funny it is always confirmation bias when I see it happen
Everything is confirmation bias, except when it isn’t!
You may slap me.
It’s everyone where I am, even those with newer vehicles with CarPlay and Android Auto. I mean, if you’re texting just learn to dictate your responses. It’s really not that difficult once you’ve done it for a week or so. It’s a lot more natural and you’re not being a visually distracted driver.
Nothing and I mean nothing will immediately suck the momentum out of anything like having your parents involved in it.
And since Facebook is now full of older adults (Karenbook as I like to call it) and its tilting conservative, its never been more unexciting to me.
Tilting conservative? I was under the impression that it fell off the deep end years ago. Idk I quit using it but that was definitely the impression I had.
I don’t see what’s so enticing about social media. I recently made an Instagram account but even then haven’t touched it all (10 minutes maybe every other day). For me it’s just a whole bunch of messaging to a friend
And yet here you are.
You could certainly make the argument that reddit / Lemmy and anything similar is social media, but the anonymity means you aren’t seeing or competing with people you know.
Idk, maybe I’m just coping, but I’ve never felt the need to do anything performative for the masses of internet strangers - unlike some friends of mine who studiously document anything fun we do for the ever important task of impressing people on Instagram.
Whenever the negative effects of social media come up, it tends to be about people comparing their “boring” lives with the carefully crafted veneer of other people’s lives they see on social media. That doesn’t happen (as much) when you don’t use your identity and you don’t know anybody else on the platform.
I’m with you. Even YouTube is classified as social media (which I guess it gets closer to with shorts and comments and everything). I definitely think that, this, and Facebook are categorically different, even if they’re all “social media”
I know, a bit unrelated, but where and how are these surveys done? I see such survey results all the time, but someone has to fill them.
I wouldn’t mind taking such, perhaps.
Here is the survey methodology.
Pew is pretty legit, tends to use best practices, and typically publishes their methods.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/03/11/methodology-teens-and-parents-survey/
I’m in the UK but I got a letter in the post asking me to join the IPSOS surveys done here. It’s just randomly selected households I think. I get emails every few weeks asking me to complete a questionnaire online. Most of the questions are politics based which I don’t have much interest in, but you get paid in points that you can turn into Amazon vouchers or whatever. It’s a nice bit of pocket money when you’re strapped for cash.
I tried to read this, but I got distracted by Candy Crush or whatever millennials are playing now, Royal Match maybe?
Balatro
I thought that was just on steam? I at least couldn’t find it on Android.
I’ve been playing it on my Switch without Joycons attached, so it’s basically a phone lol
I’m not distracted, you’re distracted, what?
Who do you think you are? I am!
