You should read what Socrates has to say about book addicts.
We need to burn more of them to raise awareness of just how pernicious the written word is.
We need to burn more of them to raise awareness of just how pernicious the written word is.
This mirrors the critique to phones: used primarily to passively watch “paintings” instead of interacting. The viewer’s knowledge and critical thinking is improving only seemingly at best.
I wonder if there is some sort of solipsistic voice within us that recognizes when too much exposure or connectivity to other people becomes overwhelming in a way that we lose ourselves in it. I grew up and remember the times before everyone had easy access to the Internet in their homes, let alone on a high-powered terminal that now fits in our pockets. Those of us of a certain age remember a shift in social interaction that rivaled the previous generations telling mine we consumed too much tv (the 24/7 news cycle was a terrible idea for my generation, in retrospect).
On the one hand, kids don't need their smartphones in schools because mine did just fine without them. On the other hand, the smartphones can be used for a force of good, provided those "paintings" they are looking at are enriching their learning and growth in some way, setting them up to ask better questions when engaged in the Socratic dialogue.
But how do we guide usage toward that aim? That is the real question we should be asking.
Other examples: cars vs horses, household appliances will make people lazy vs household robots will make peopl lazy, or SNL has really gone downhill (people have been saying that for decades, and it is indeed subjective but the generation who says it now thought it was peak in their youth, when the old people of their time were saying it sucked).
There may be some merit of truth and some valid criticisms in all of it. As other commenters have pointed out, books were a one-sided conversation, so Socrates was right in that sense, but sometimes it's necessary to have this one-sided conversation in order to have a fruitful multi-party conversation. And I think it's important for that to be understood -- some things are good for some things in some roles.
It's becoming very difficult to function in modern society without a smartphone. Smartphones have given us luxuries we couldn't even fathom in the 90s. Today I sent a spontaneous birthday gift to a friend in another state using Doordash. Twenty years ago that may not have even been possible.
I think it's important to understand the role of smartphones in our society and lives. It shouldn't replace real-life social interaction. It shouldn't be where we spend half our days looking at. We shouldn't believe the news that comes from our social feeds at face value (that transcends smartphones but you get my drift). But using it as a tool to get stuff done, that's invaluable.
We all know that attention span is _required_ to get anything done academically, so directly correlated to intelligence, or at least the ability to get anything done at all. We all know that children are building their brains, and that significant experiences in childhood impact the view and life of the person far into adulthood. Ergo, do you really thing that being unable to read a single paragraph about Socrates for the future of... the world?
I simply cannot understand the pushback to such a simple and effective policy. Sure, the researchers probably have a bias. All schools aren't being made to do this, many schools implementing this are _choosing_ to, because _they_ interact with our children academically and know that the grade school generation is gonna eat rocks on any college level task because they can't stop looking at their phones, something which is easy to observe many children are _physically incapable of doing_.
Sure, maybe it's a really good time for impossibly motivated and unsocial children, i was one of them, and i can tell you that even having not grown up with it, i (almost 30) am having a hell of a time balancing needing to have snapchat to stay in contact with friends i moved away from, and getting trapped in the continuous feed the app seems to insert into more and more places. About using reddit as a scholarly resource for any question google won't help with and getting trapped in their endless feed. I know it's bad, and I'm a fully grown adult member of society, and i didn't grow up with it. And i'll tell you, i'd trade this phone shit for a book addiction in a microsecond.
What you're advocating for is a future where average attention span continuously decreases. Why do you want that? Why are you against the idea that phone might be fucking bad for us, and especially so for children? What experiences have you had with phone addiction in yourself and loved ones that gives you credibility in this topic? Genuinely asking
Big deal they are staying up late. Let them sleep in on the weekend to make up the difference.