Is this era, where parents create an entire world for their children, unprecedented in history? I know that parents have sheltered their children to varying degrees throughout history but now it seems way more extreme than it's ever been before.
What is going on here? Are we totally rejecting the society we've built for ourselves? Where do we go from here?
This seems like an upper class issue, and the upper classes (especially aristocracy) have always carefully sheltered their children from the real world. Most parents, myself included, do not have the time to contemplate such questions. They are too busy improvising their way through raising a child.
In my case, definitely yes.
Not related to the analog/digital only, but I come from a "macho-ghetto-gansta-hood" culture. This is embedded in my community and, more or less, my city.
I will not only shield my children against it, but I will fight to the fullest extent to prevent them from even getting in touch and thinking this is attractive.
I've left my city because of it, not because I am superior or special, but because I know how pervasive and deep-entrenched and poisonous this kind of culture can be.
It will affect the way that you speak, the way that you dress, and the way that other people see you, and not only does it have this perpetual victim mindset, but more importantly, you do not know that you've become socially handicapped due to this.
Does any liberal palatable idea exist for keeping such a culture out?
I'm only saying that places like these exist—smaller, walkable, pleasant, safe cities designed for families and communities. These are just a few that I have found in my life.
And, keeping it real, it's reserved for people with money—if there would be good jobs there, too many people would come, and the large population problems would emerge.
It is sad.
Writing this reminds me of the short story by Ursula K. Le Guin—The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
Looks around at, everything.
Yup!
https://theconversation.com/how-the-buddha-became-a-christia...
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2025/03/24/liter...
There are some folks who seem to only let kids watch old movies and old shows on DVD.
Also most kids are in school in person which may help mitigate the brain rot.
Whether it's irresponsible to let kids play the same games as their friends is of course up to individual parents. I think it's possible to both be exposed to these types of traps and learn how to avoid them. They can't gamble without access to money from parents anyway.
Fortnite is another excellent example of introducing gambling to minors with their sales of loot boxes, which the FTC has fined for $245M. Recently one of my children asked to play Genshin Impact because their classmates were all hooked on the game. I was firm in saying that I did not want my children to play gacha games which were designed to fool players into gambling on loot boxes and paying to win. Instead I tried to get them to switch to another game without these poisonous mechanics.
I’ve always been hesitant to be too forceful in getting children off these bad game platforms because I didn’t want to be labeled as the bad parent who took away their fun and in turn causing issues for my children at school. But I think my new strategy is just to buy their friends games to play that I feel are more constructive such as Minecraft instead of playing freemium mobile games.
I just hope more parents become aware of the negative and addictive aspects that these games pose to children. I strongly believe that one day we will look back at this industry and it will be compared to the tobacco industry and the harm it caused.
that is my solution. i allow my kids to play games, but i am not spending a single cent on them. their accounts never even get the ability to spend money, and so the kids can waste their time, but they can't gamble because they don't have access to money. i know my son tried to earn some robux, but he didn't get far and he focused on games that were playable without. eventually the kids lost interest...
same goes for genshin impact. we even played that together for a while. my oldest made it to level 48 out of 50 by just grinding. money was never an issue because he knew that i'd be firm on that, so he never asked. (i just asked him about that and he found that the benefits from spending money wouldn't really have been worth it. they didn't make the game much easier, so why bother?)
My view is that freemium games tend to be engineered to hook people into playing for long periods of time. They use strategies similar to how casinos hook gamblers with behavioral conditioning giving intermittent rewards for long play time; basically timed dopamine hits.
So going back to your question regarding not spending money, even though they’re not spending money now they are being conditioned to find such behaviors in games as a norm and one day when they have a source of income themselves those dopamine hits are just a few dollars away.
But my kids are strong willed and they won’t fall for these tricks, you may say. That may be so but the fact that they’re participating in these game platforms is drawing in other children who may not have the same mental fortitude.
I guess my long winded rant is just to say that we shouldn’t be promoting these casino-like games. We should be promoting games that foster creativity and a sense of achievement without pay to win shortcuts and gambling for rewards.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean here, but people born in rural areas in the early 1900s were extremely sheltered from an intellectual perspective.
With travel being so much more difficult and no TV, things as simple as seeing a picture of New York were mind-blowing.
Right but that was not deliberate. People lived in rural areas and that’s where their kids grew up. They weren’t trying to engineer a rural lifestyle for their kids in order to produce some particular desired outcome.
I doubt anyone but the upper class deliberately chose any particular lifestyle back then. Today I think a lot more people are getting in on this trend.
Low-trust society, man... It sucks.
I mean my youngest got into Roblox for a bit (talking weeks). Yeah fine with that, with one eye open. One day someone stole all her shit and her friend was an asshole on the same day. Sat down and talked about virtual items and grinding games and life generally. She never touched it again!
Internet decimated subcultures now we're stuck in a weird reflection loop with the internet and real life.