Have Kids Been Made Mentally Ill by Cell Phones and Social Media?

I mean, the answer is "obviously yes," but let's pretend it's a more interesting question.

Pew survey: Nearly three quarters of teens say they feel happy and peaceful when they don't have their cell phones.

The survey comes as policymakers and children's advocates are growing increasingly concerned with teens' relationships with their phones and social media.
...
Despite the increasing concerns, most teens say smartphones make it easier be creative and pursue hobbies, while 45% said it helps them do well in school. Most teens said the benefits of having a smartphone outweigh the harms for people their age. Nearly all U.S. teens (95%) have access to a smartphone, according to Pew.
Majorities of teens say smartphones make it a little or a lot easier for people their age to pursue hobbies and interests (69%) and be creative (65%). Close to half (45%) say these devices have made it easier for youth to do well in school.

People I know who seem very phone-focused justify the omnipresence of the phone with the claim "I need to be plugged in all the time for work."

Which sounds to me like an addict attempting the justify the addiction.

About half of the parents said they spend too much time on their phone. Higher-income parents were more likely to say this than those in lower income buckets, and white parents were more likely to report spending too much time on their phone than Hispanic or Black parents.

AWFLs are addicted to their phones and social media? You don't say.

Schools are starting to ban cellphones during the school day. I have no idea why this rule isn't universal.

In Akron, Ohio, teens and tweens show up to school every day with their homework, their textbooks ... and a special magnetic pouch that renders their smartphones useless during the day.
The Akron schools are part of a growing movement across the US and Europe to ban phones in schools or require them to be locked up in pouches made by a startup named Yondr. School districts in at least 41 states have bought the pouches in recent years, a response to behavior issues as well as concerns about students' mental health and learning, which have ramped up since the pandemic.
"The results for us were just a game-changer," Patricia Shipe, president of the Akron Education Association, which represents teachers and other educators in the district, told me. Fights in the schools have decreased since the bags were introduced to all middle and high schools in 2022, and kids report engaging with their friends more.

More schools have been banning phones since the lockdown -- I assume the reason is the learning-loss experienced by students thanks to cowardly teachers. With kids now a half year to a year and a half behind where they should be, they certainly cannot be permitted any easy distractions from a phone.

There's also reason to believe that using cellphones in class is bad for learning. Studies on doctors, nurses, and others have shown that "multitasking during learning interferes with the long-term processing and retention of what you learn," said Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Some research suggests that curbing smartphone use in the classroom could help students stay focused on their lessons.

No shit, really? "Multitasking" -- dividing your singular focus of attention between several tasks near-simultaneously -- results in poor performance at those tasks?

Really?

I'm floored.

Jonathan Haidt is arguing that the combination of cell phones plus social media has destroyed what we knew as "childhood" for 100,000 years and resulted in anxious, perpetually frightened, and generally mentally-unhealthy children.

Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you've likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States--fairly stable in the 2000s--rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and beyond. By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.
The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to "The Nation's Report Card," scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s.
As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less, having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likely to live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens, and managers say they are harder to work with. Many of these trends began with earlier generations, but most of them accelerated with Gen Z.
Surveys show that members of Gen Z are shyer and more risk averse than previous generations, too, and risk aversion may make them less ambitious. In an interview last May, OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison noted that, for the first time since the 1970s, none of Silicon Valley's preeminent entrepreneurs are under 30. "Something has really gone wrong," Altman said. In a famously young industry, he was baffled by the sudden absence of great founders in their 20s.
Generations are not monolithic, of course. Many young people are flourishing. Taken as a whole, however, Gen Z is in poor mental health and is lagging behind previous generations on many important metrics. And if a generation is doing poorly----if it is more anxious and depressed and is starting families, careers, and important companies at a substantially lower rate than previous generations----then the sociological and economic consequences will be profound for the entire society.
What happened in the early 2010s that altered adolescent development and worsened mental health? Theories abound, but the fact that similar trends are found in many countries worldwide means that events and trends that are specific to the United States cannot be the main story.
I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online--particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction.
...

What is childhood----including adolescence----and how did it change when smartphones moved to the center of it? If we take a more holistic view of what childhood is and what young children, tweens, and teens need to do to mature into competent adults, the picture becomes much clearer. Smartphone-based life, it turns out, alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.

He thinks that kids were ready to become internet-based shut-ins due to the overprotective, over-sheltering helicopter parenting that began in the 1980s.

The very late 1980s, I assume. I don't remember hearing about this phenomenon until the later nineties.

Though he notes that this trend exploded into the rule by the 2010s.

The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There's an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world.
My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now.

The combination of panicked-parent overprotecting these snowflakes has turned them very averse to physical risk or any other kind of risk. They're snowflakes that melt in a sunbeam, in other words.

One crucial aspect of play is physical risk taking. Children and adolescents must take risks and fail--often--in environments in which failure is not very costly. This is how they extend their abilities, overcome their fears, learn to estimate risk, and learn to cooperate in order to take on larger challenges later. The ever-present possibility of getting hurt while running around, exploring, play-fighting, or getting into a real conflict with another group adds an element of thrill, and thrilling play appears to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional, and physical competence. The desire for risk and thrill increases in the teen years, when failure might carry more serious consequences. Children of all ages need to choose the risk they are ready for at a given moment. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults.

The irony here is that kids are avoiding playing and roughhousing, which involves minor risk of low consequences -- at worst, you'll need some stitches -- and opting instead to expose themselves to the jackals of the online world. Apart from such dangers as grooming, the fact is that mistakes made online are often not "low consequence." Long-lasting reputation destruction is a common result of any mistake. Or no mistake at all -- a lot of people just go online for the express purpose of destroying someone, or cheerleading someone who's being destroyed.

No wonder so many of them are basket-cases.

Human childhood and adolescence evolved outdoors, in a physical world full of dangers and opportunities....
And then we changed childhood.
...
In recent decades, seeing unchaperoned children outdoors has become so novel that when one is spotted in the wild, some adults feel it is their duty to call the police....
Eventually, tech companies got access to children 24/7. They developed exciting virtual activities, engineered for "engagement," that are nothing like the real-world experiences young brains evolved to expect.
...

It was not until the introduction of the iPhone (2007), the App Store (200, and high-speed internet (which reached 50 percent of American homes in 2007)--and the corresponding pivot to mobile made by many providers of social media, video games, and porn--that it became possible for adolescents to spend nearly every waking moment online. The extraordinary synergy among these innovations was what powered the second technological wave. In 2011, only 23 percent of teens had a smartphone. By 2015, that number had risen to 73 percent, and a quarter of teens said they were online "almost constantly."
...
[P]erhaps the most devastating cost of the new phone-based childhood was the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends (about two hours a day, on average, not counting time together at school) than did older people (who spent just 30 to 60 minutes with friends). Time with friends began decreasing for young people in the 2000s, but the drop accelerated in the 2010s, while it barely changed for older people. By 2019, young people's time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck.

There's another reason that kids now suffer from widespread mental illness: leftwing political propaganda. Even leftwing political propagandist Matthew Yglesias is pushing this as a contributor to youthful mental illness.

I want to talk about... a 2021 paper by Catherine Gimbrone, Lisa Bates, Seth Prins, and Katherine Keyes titled "The politics of depression: Diverging trends in internalizing symptoms among US adolescents by political beliefs." The CDC survey doesn't ask teens about their political beliefs, but Gimbrone et. al. find not only divergence by gender, but divergence by political ideology. Breaking things down by gender and ideology, they find that liberal girls have the highest increase in depressive affect and conservative boys have the least. But liberal boys are more depressed than conservative girls, suggesting an important independent role for political ideology.
I think the discussion around gender and the role of social media is an important one. But I also don't believe that liberal boys are experiencing more depression than conservative girls because they are disproportionately hung up on Instagram-induced body image issues -- I think there's also something specific to politics going on.
Some of it might be selection effect, with progressive politics becoming a more congenial home for people who are miserable. But I think some of it is poor behavior by adult progressives, many of whom now valorize depressive affect as a sign of political commitment. The thing about depression, though, is that it's bad. Separate from the Smith/Levitz project of arguing about recent political trends, I think we need some kind of society-level cognitive behavioral therapy to convince people that whatever it is they are worried about, depression is not the answer. Because it never is.

I think John Sexton has reported in the past that Matthew Yglesias has some personal intuition about this, because he was depressed, and knows the role that persistent negative rumination plays in depression.

And leftist politics are, of course, nothing but persistent negative rumination.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 03:00 PM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 1st

Posted by: GF at April 05, 2024 03:03 PM (tUCgX)

2 Bold strategy Cotton

Posted by: Kratwurst at April 05, 2024 03:04 PM (nIRE6)

3 Not just kids.

Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 03:04 PM (DRSnL)

4 Despite the increasing concerns, most teens say smartphones make it easier be creative and pursue hobbies, while 45% said it helps them do well in school. Most teens said the benefits of having a smartphone outweigh the harms for people their age. Nearly all U.S. teens (95%) have access to a smartphone, according to Pew.
++++
"Most addicts insist their addiction is not deleterious. Film at 11."

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:05 PM (HnUIn)

5 My husband is a volunteer first-responder in a community w a lot of vacationers. Last week, parents called 911 when a teen-age girl had a full-blown panic attack bc her parents took her phone away for the day.

Posted by: EveR at April 05, 2024 03:06 PM (MUpk6)

6 More schools have been banning phones since the lockdown -- I assume the reason is the learning-loss experienced by students thanks to cowardly teachers. With kids now a half year to a year and a half behind where they should be, they certainly cannot be permitted any easy distractions from a phone.
++++
I wouldn't bet on that being the reason. It might be a part of it. My guess is that it's to cut down on sexting and predation, because:
1. Only teachers get to do that
2. They don't the school to be inconveniently complicit in case liability shows up

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:06 PM (HnUIn)

7 I always find it a bit sad when I wander through the public spaces of the library in which I work (but do not work for) and see the students glued to their smartphones instead of talking to each other.

Granted, there are still students who are using their phones/tablets for both schoolwork and conversation, but a lot of them are just looking at a small screen instead of observing the world around them.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 05, 2024 03:06 PM (7fElN)

8 Yes

Posted by: Thomas Paine at April 05, 2024 03:06 PM (lTGtQ)

9 The weekend is here!

I put it down to social media, and pushing sexual deviance

Posted by: Skip at April 05, 2024 03:07 PM (fwDg9)

10 Our society as a whole has been screwing kids over for 30-40 years. It's just been getting worse and smartphones and social media put it into overdrive

Posted by: Formerly Virginian at April 05, 2024 03:07 PM (JMAcK)

11 The left tells you all men and all white people are evil, that the world will die in 12 years, and that any normal urge you have to procreate, create, or invent is bad.

I'm shocked that people that believe it end up depressed. Shocked I say.

Posted by: 18-1 at April 05, 2024 03:07 PM (ibTVg)

12 Interesting…. now let us analyze the internet in general…

Posted by: tubal at April 05, 2024 03:07 PM (PCK5/)

13 In a "Compete or Die" world, many, many of them are going to die.

Posted by: XTC at April 05, 2024 03:07 PM (UnA8+)

14 About half of the parents said they spend too much time on their phone. Higher-income parents were more likely to say this than those in lower income buckets, and white parents were more likely to report spending too much time on their phone than Hispanic or Black parents.
++++
There's a whole lot of likely perception bias in there. I wonder what the actual usage rates are. Are the rates approximately the same, but certain groups think it's "too much?" Are the groups who think it's "too much" actually using their devices more than groups who don't think it's "too much?" Is the opposite true?

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:08 PM (HnUIn)

15 Higher-income parents were more likely to say this than those in lower income buckets

Hey, I don't live in a bucket!

Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 03:08 PM (DRSnL)

16 Cell phones are the problem the same way guns are a problem. It's not the device, it's how it is put to use.

Social media is the problem.

Posted by: BeckoningChasm at April 05, 2024 03:08 PM (BxvY+)

17 Have a look at the private schools in and around Sunnyvale, CA. This is where all of the tech bigwigs send their kids. Two things are not on campus: cell phones and computers.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at April 05, 2024 03:08 PM (lTGtQ)

18 As an amusing point to consider - the same society that supposedly worships the precautionary principle and is focused on "protecting people" also ushered in their era of social media induced depression...

Posted by: 18-1 at April 05, 2024 03:09 PM (ibTVg)

19 And leftist politics are, of course, nothing but persistent negative rumination.

I mean, all of the left's articles of faith now are that everything is shit and (for a lot of Americans) it's your fault.

Conservatives correctly don't believe that garbage.

Posted by: Ian S. at April 05, 2024 03:09 PM (2ocoG)

20 Jonathan Haidt is arguing that the combination of cell phones plus social media has destroyed what we knew as "childhood" for 100,000 years and resulted in anxious, perpetually frightened, and generally mentally-unhealthy children.
++++
Social media is the poison.
Smart phones are the delivery vehicle and amplifier.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:09 PM (HnUIn)

21 When my wife was teaching elementary school (where phones were banned) it was the parents who pushed back on phone bans more than students.

"How am I supposed to contact my child?" Parents feel they should be able to text their kids at anytime. Kids would be on their phones texting not paying attention and then parents would come up to the school and rage if the phone was taken away.

Posted by: brak at April 05, 2024 03:09 PM (AR07F)

22 Excellent post with excellent cites. I would add one more factor I think figures into all this: the modern trend that makes being a victim fashionable.

Without that trend, I think most of these kids -- obviously victimized by tech that consumes them -- would put the fucking phone down and go out and actually live. But they don't. The shut-in, depressed, anxious, and mentally-ill results from excessive phone and social media use are all signs of victimhood, and thus tolerated if not encouraged.

How many parents complain about their kids not leaving the couch? Or living in the basement playing video games all day? Then in the next breath they brag about a new game system they bought for the kid . . . .

Posted by: Elric Blade at April 05, 2024 03:09 PM (iFTx/)

23 Hey, I don't live in a bucket!

Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 03:08 PM (DRSnL)

There was a young woman from Nantucket...

Posted by: 18-1 at April 05, 2024 03:09 PM (ibTVg)

24 I'm one of those fossils Buttsex despises. I still use a landline. We (actually, my wife) have a cell phone, but very rarely use it. I actually should use it more, when I'm running an errand, so I can reach her. But I forget, as I despise the %^&*ing thing. (My wife can no longer drive.)

Posted by: Eeyore at April 05, 2024 03:09 PM (1bNHn)

25 The survey comes as policymakers and children's advocates are growing increasingly concerned with teens' relationships with their phones and social media.
---------

Translation: Phones and social media are allowing kids to view and hear things that make them more conservative and less leftist.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:10 PM (4VBfN)

26 this is girls mostly

boys not as much

Posted by: BlackOrchid at April 05, 2024 03:10 PM (AcWfM)

27 What is childhood----including adolescence----and how did it change when smartphones moved to the center of it?
++++
The same question can be asked about society at large.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:10 PM (HnUIn)

28 Anecdote:

When my daughter was around 8, she met some other girls her age on a playground.

At one point, the other girls all huddled together at the top of the equipment and used their phones. When she asked what was this "snapchat" the other EIGHT YEAR OLDS were using, they asked "What are you, a retard?"

We explained to her that that app is one of the biggest reasons that she did not have a cell phone. (It's 5 years later and she still doesn't)

Our "betters" know how harmful these things are for kids. That's why the people who create such stuff make sure their children can't use it.

I wonder what the word is for people who knowingly harm children....

Posted by: Formerly Virginian at April 05, 2024 03:10 PM (JMAcK)

29 >>My husband is a volunteer first-responder in a community w a lot of vacationers. Last week, parents called 911 when a teen-age girl had a full-blown panic attack bc her parents took her phone away for the day.
Posted by: EveR at April 05, 2024 03:06 PM (MUpk6)
————-
So who is more dysfunctional, the parents or the teen-aged girl. My vote is the parents (sadly).

Posted by: Rufus T. Firefly at April 05, 2024 03:10 PM (o5xMZ)

30 I always find it a bit sad when I wander through the public spaces of the library in which I work (but do not work for) and see the students glued to their smartphones instead of talking to each other.

Granted, there are still students who are using their phones/tablets for both schoolwork and conversation, but a lot of them are just looking at a small screen instead of observing the world around them.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel

I have seen teenagers walking down the street like that. No notice of the kids within ten feet.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at April 05, 2024 03:10 PM (lTGtQ)

31 they find that liberal girls have the highest increase in depressive affect and conservative boys have the least.
______
Amazing! Who'da thunk it?

Posted by: Eeyore at April 05, 2024 03:11 PM (1bNHn)

32 Definitely the phones .Now they are constantly connected to the drumbeat of doom the left puts out non stop. We're dying because climate change, because Trump will start WW3, because PANDEMIC, because loss of access to women's healthcare, loss of access to gender healthcare, because pollution, because chemicals in plastic, because islands of garbage, because plastic straws

Posted by: steevy at April 05, 2024 03:11 PM (FQmDC)

33 But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world.
++++
It wasn't - and isn't - just *perceived* as "safe," it has been heavily *promoted* as actually beneficial.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:11 PM (HnUIn)

34 That's the number one reason I got out of teaching. The kids don't feel like they need to learn anything, since they carry around a device that can look up whatever they want, translate a language, do their math, etc.
They are one good EMP away from complete and total ignorance.

Posted by: gourmand du jour at April 05, 2024 03:12 PM (MeG8a)

35 "Majorities of teens say smartphones make it a little or a lot easier for people their age to pursue hobbies and interests (69%) and be creative (65%). Close to half (45%) say these devices have made it easier for youth to do well in school."

---
Lies! A minority do find and follow useful tutorial and DIY videos on YT, but the majority of it is distracted viewing that just kills time and accomplishes nothing.

Posted by: Chairman LMAO, Bird Law Expert at April 05, 2024 03:12 PM (snyZJ)

36 The cell-phone is the worst NAG-TOOL ever invented. Everyone's lives were better except the NAGS...

Posted by: Fisht at April 05, 2024 03:12 PM (BHEHK)

37 33 But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world.
++++
It wasn't - and isn't - just *perceived* as "safe," it has been heavily *promoted* as actually beneficial.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:11 PM (HnUIn)
________

Yes. By those with vested financial interests in promoting the virtual universe. Funny that!

Posted by: Elric Blade at April 05, 2024 03:12 PM (iFTx/)

38 29 So who is more dysfunctional, the parents or the teen-aged girl. My vote is the parents (sadly).
Posted by: Rufus T. Firefly at April 05, 2024 03:10 PM (o5xMZ)

Parents trying to be nice is a problem.

If your parents are ALWAYS mean to you, then you won't freak out when they lay down the law. It's just standard operating procedure. You know when the hand is coming to hit you. It's nothing new.

Posted by: XTC at April 05, 2024 03:13 PM (UnA8+)

39 Cellphones are electronic ritalin.

Posted by: Eromero at April 05, 2024 03:13 PM (o2ZRX)

40 When the underdeveloped minds o f children are met with "climate change will kill us all in X yrs" and constantly being barraged on social media with "you're not good enough", is there any wonder kids aren't alright

Posted by: Smell the Glove at April 05, 2024 03:13 PM (ixVYR)

41 Another anecdote:

At my daughter's very good, Hillsdale supported charter school, several sixth grade girls got suspended for making TikToks in the bathroom during school hours.

Even parents sending their children to a "good" school don't see the problem with giving children these devices that rewire their brains.

Posted by: Formerly Virginian at April 05, 2024 03:13 PM (JMAcK)

42 The irony here is that kids are avoiding playing and roughhousing, which involves minor risk of low consequences -- at worst, you'll need some stitches -- and opting instead to expose themselves to the jackals of the online world.
++++
This - or something like it - was inevitable. Girls don't roughhouse much, but boys do and roughhousing has been outrageously punished for a long time now in school. "Play" means, by definition, "play gently like a girl." If you play roughly like a boy, you get diagnosed with ADHD, put on drugs and punished.

It had to go somewhere, and social media was a convenient place for it. If it hadn't been for that, it would have been something else. The schools for a long time and increasingly society more generally has been making boy behavior taboo. That cannot happen without consequences.

And in the process, we've traded acute and usually minor physical injuries for chronic, severe mental illness.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:13 PM (HnUIn)

43 > Schools are starting to ban cellphones during the school day. I have no idea why this rule isn't universal.

My wife's school bans phones. It's a pain in the butt. The teachers who strictly enforce the rule are undercut by teachers who are more permissive. If everyone was strict about it, there would be fewer battles. A lot of teachers end up pretending they don't see it unless it becomes an issue.

Stage 1: Pretend you don't see it
Stage 2: Ask them to put it away
Stage 3: Tell them to put it away
Stage 4: This one's tricky. Admin often becomes "unavailable" if you ask them to confiscate a phone. If you take it yourself, you're responsible for it. If some little shit swipes it from your desk when you're not looking, you're on the hook for a new $1000 iPhone.

Posted by: bonhomme at April 05, 2024 03:14 PM (eyxn4)

44 They are one good EMP away from complete and total ignorance.

Posted by: gourmand du jour

The running joke at my workplace when AT&T had their outage a couple of weeks ago was that it was good the outage happened so early in the day. If it had been in the afternoon, most GenZ would not be able to navigate back home.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at April 05, 2024 03:14 PM (lTGtQ)

45 Well yes, they are basically outlawing masculinity. Men are the root of all problems don't you know, especially the loathsome white men.

Posted by: steevy at April 05, 2024 03:15 PM (FQmDC)

46 RE: Risk Adverse Kids

Grandkids are pretty risked adverse even though they are very limited to devices.

They are either appalled or disbelieve my stories of the injuries and stitches my siblings accrued as kids.

Posted by: Beartooth at April 05, 2024 03:15 PM (6HTcf)

47 40 When the underdeveloped minds o f children are met with "climate change will kill us all in X yrs" and constantly being barraged on social media with "you're not good enough", is there any wonder kids aren't alright
Posted by: Smell the Glove at April 05, 2024 03:13 PM (ixVYR)

They AREN'T good enough.

How many of today's kids can compete, like REALLY compete with the Chinese in math?

How many can outcompete our new Illegal Arrivals when it comes to physical stamina?

Posted by: XTC at April 05, 2024 03:15 PM (UnA8+)

48 14 About half of the parents said they spend too much time on their phone. Higher-income parents were more likely to say this than those in lower income buckets, and white parents were more likely to report spending too much time on their phone than Hispanic or Black parents.
++++
There's a whole lot of likely perception bias in there. I wonder what the actual usage rates are. Are the rates approximately the same, but certain groups think it's "too much?" Are the groups who think it's "too much" actually using their devices more than groups who don't think it's "too much?" Is the opposite true?
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:08 PM (HnUIn)
_________

I think the actual usage patterns are the opposite of what this polling is reporting

Posted by: Elric Blade at April 05, 2024 03:15 PM (iFTx/)

49 They are one good EMP away from complete and total ignorance.

Posted by: gourmand du jour
And being eaten by zombies.

Posted by: Eromero at April 05, 2024 03:15 PM (o2ZRX)

50 Kids have no way of judging what is or isn't bullshit (except for Dad jokes, naturally). I spent so much time deprogramming my kid between liberal asshat teachers who explained it was those dirty Irish that drank too much and neglected their kids that lead to prohibition (anti-Catholic bigotry) and crap like Tide-pod challenges. They believe what they are told, even if it makes no sense, because they have no sense.

It isn't just the 30 second attention span, it's also the garbage in garbage out situation. Add that to ADHD and adoption issues and you get my son, working nights in a hotel and cleaning his bong at 2:30 in the morning.

Posted by: tcn in AK, hail to the thief at April 05, 2024 03:16 PM (uqyzO)

51 "The politics of depression: Diverging trends in internalizing symptoms among US adolescents by political beliefs." The CDC survey doesn't ask teens about their political beliefs, but Gimbrone et. al. find not only divergence by gender, but divergence by political ideology. Breaking things down by gender and ideology, they find that liberal girls have the highest increase in depressive affect and conservative boys have the least. But liberal boys are more depressed than conservative girls, suggesting an important independent role for political ideology.
++++
That's just because the liberal boys and girls understand the oppression that surrounds them, while the conservative boys and girls (the latter of whom also have internalized misogyny) feel entitled to continue their foreparents' marauding and pillage. Of course they feel good - they have no guilt over their unearned and unentitled privilege.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:16 PM (HnUIn)

52 That's the number one reason I got out of teaching. The kids don't feel like they need to learn anything, since they carry around a device that can look up whatever they want, translate a language, do their math, etc.
They are one good EMP away from complete and total ignorance.
Posted by: gourmand du jour

My brother, who has a PhD in history, teaches history at a private school in Dallas. He's said that kids dispute things with him all the time that they just looked up five minutes previously on the internet because it contradicts something that he, a published historian, has taught them.

Posted by: Bulgaroctonus at April 05, 2024 03:16 PM (9yWhg)

53 What happened to all the "I love f**king love science, sexually" people in the media? DeGrasse Tyson hasn't jacked to science news as often as he has in the past.

Posted by: Chairman LMAO, Bird Law Expert at April 05, 2024 03:16 PM (snyZJ)

54 If your parents are ALWAYS mean to you, then you won't freak out when they lay down the law. It's just standard operating procedure. You know when the hand is coming to hit you. It's nothing new.
Posted by: XTC at April 05, 2024 03:13 PM (UnA8+)

But there's more to being a parent than "nice" or "mean". My mother was persistently abusive and tried to kill me once. I guess I got used to her being "mean".

That's why I'm the bundle of veritable psychological health that I am today.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:16 PM (4VBfN)

55 Well, yes, but also no.

Kids have no foundation but social media. No central guiding force. The fathers who are there are often not giving them a code or a Way to live.

So, like social media they are neurotic, desperate for attention and fundamentally empty.

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:17 PM (di6C2)

56 When my wife was teaching elementary school (where phones were banned) it was the parents who pushed back on phone bans more than students.

"How am I supposed to contact my child?" Parents feel they should be able to text their kids at anytime.

This too. WhAt if there's aN EmeRGencY?
If the kid has an emergency, the office can contact you. If you have an emergency, you can contact the office.

Posted by: bonhomme at April 05, 2024 03:17 PM (eyxn4)

57 42 And in the process, we've traded acute and usually minor physical injuries for chronic, severe mental illness.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:13 PM (HnUIn)

Every male high school freshman should get punched in the face when he walks through the door on his first day.

Posted by: XTC at April 05, 2024 03:17 PM (UnA8+)

58 And leftist politics are, of course, nothing but persistent negative rumination.
++++
And direct assignment of blame for the ills of the world to the victims of their ideology, and cultivation of guilt among them.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:17 PM (HnUIn)

59 My cousin's wife is an extreme helicopter parent (in her case partly stemming from her job as a social worker, but she's very much in that generational bracket). Smothers her two sons, doesn't let them out of her sight, freaks out if her husband tries to discipline them.

The kids are getting better, but they're noticeably immature and poorly balanced emotionally; the older one in particular has some huge anger issues.

Posted by: Dr. T at April 05, 2024 03:17 PM (g0Y4p)

60 46 RE: Risk Adverse Kids

Grandkids are pretty risked adverse even though they are very limited to devices.

They are either appalled or disbelieve my stories of the injuries and stitches my siblings accrued as kids.
Posted by: Beartooth at April 05, 2024 03:15 PM (6HTcf)

My son plays hockey, with all attendant broken bones, bashed heads, time in the sin bin. Risk aversion is not his issue, at all, but it hasn't helped his risk assessments, either.

Posted by: tcn in AK, hail to the thief at April 05, 2024 03:18 PM (uqyzO)

61 59 My cousin's wife is an extreme helicopter parent (in her case partly stemming from her job as a social worker, but she's very much in that generational bracket). Smothers her two sons, doesn't let them out of her sight, freaks out if her husband tries to discipline them.

The kids are getting better, but they're noticeably immature and poorly balanced emotionally; the older one in particular has some huge anger issues.
Posted by: Dr. T at April 05, 2024 03:17 PM (g0Y4p)
----
Sounds like my nephews.

Posted by: Chairman LMAO, Bird Law Expert at April 05, 2024 03:18 PM (snyZJ)

62 I think the actual usage patterns are the opposite of what this polling is reporting
Posted by: Elric Blade at April 05, 2024 03:15 PM (iFTx/)
++++
It might be. That's why I'd like to see the perception poll coupled with actual usage trends.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:18 PM (HnUIn)

63 Outlawing masculinity

Posted by: steevy at April 05, 2024 03:15 PM (FQmDC)

They are outlawing masculinity in men and femininity in women and encouraging the opposite. This is how you grow mental illness.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:18 PM (4VBfN)

64 What happened to all the "I love f**king love science, sexually" people in the media? DeGrasse Tyson hasn't jacked to science news as often as he has in the past.

Fauci replaced Tyson as the designated giver-of-commands for those people and they forgot to replace him when he retired.

Posted by: Ian S. at April 05, 2024 03:18 PM (2ocoG)

65 60 My son plays hockey, with all attendant broken bones, bashed heads, time in the sin bin. Risk aversion is not his issue, at all, but it hasn't helped his risk assessments, either.
Posted by: tcn in AK, hail to the thief at April 05, 2024 03:18 PM (uqyzO)

But at least he doesn't go crying and running off to someone bigger every time someone punches him in the face.

Posted by: XTC at April 05, 2024 03:19 PM (UnA8+)

66 There's only one way to cure depression.

Posted by: Pfizer at April 05, 2024 03:19 PM (Zz0t1)

67 I see no mention of kids in China.

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at April 05, 2024 03:19 PM (63Dwl)

68 Ironically, actual conservative kids are more likely to see how unfair and fucked up the world *really* is.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:19 PM (4VBfN)

69 It's clearly an addiction.

Like crack monkeys.

Posted by: eleven at April 05, 2024 03:20 PM (iziT8)

70 When my students entered the class, I had them put their phones on a long table which was adjacent to me. I said your phone is right there, in plain sight, I won't touch it, but you can't either while I'm teaching. Pick it up on your way out.
This got me so many complaints. What if my mom calls? etc. The Dean called me in to his office.
I resigned at the end of the semester.

Posted by: gourmand du jour at April 05, 2024 03:20 PM (MeG8a)

71 My brother, who has a PhD in history, teaches history at a private school in Dallas. He's said that kids dispute things with him all the time that they just looked up five minutes previously on the internet because it contradicts something that he, a published historian, has taught them.
Posted by: Bulgaroctonus at April 05, 2024 03:16 PM (9yWhg)

I haven't had that specific experience, but I know plenty of people in the biz who have. To be fair, college students have always been infamous for combining actual ignorance with assumed omniscience, but access to the World Wide Web has made it much worse.

Posted by: Dr. T at April 05, 2024 03:20 PM (g0Y4p)

72 I hate it when during a conversation people try to show me videos or pics on their cell phones of some shit. First of all, I don't want to touch that filthy thing, Second, put that thing away for a few minutes while we're talking.

Posted by: wth at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (v0R5T)

73 A third of my phone/ internet is time wasting, a third for “ important” stuff - that really is not, given a little thought, and the other third is for fairly useful activities.

Posted by: tubal at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (PCK5/)

74 Haidt and Lukianff also recommend CBT. It’s helpful for mentally healthy people as well and idoes not need to entail lots of time with a therapist

Posted by: Oglebay at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (7fVdQ)

75 Remember - when leftists tell you to look at something, they are planning something else.

And it's always.... for the chiddrins

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (4VBfN)

76 Related. The 7 Keys to Creating Useless Americans.

https://shorturl.at/kBTUW

1) Raise them to be fragile and afraid of everything:
2) Give your child a sense of entitlement:
3) Nurse a sense of victimhood:
4) Encourage mental illness:
5) Destroy the quality of education:
6) Convince them morals don’t matter:
7) Make them Unpatriotic:

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (FVME7)

77 We were free when the phones had wires.

The kids today will never know what it's like to do anything without their Digital Nanny.

I have decided that women are incapable of driving now without talking on their phone.
Look the next time you're on the road.
Count how many are not talking.

Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (yikga)

78 But there's more to being a parent than "nice" or "mean". My mother was persistently abusive and tried to kill me once. I guess I got used to her being "mean".

That's why I'm the bundle of veritable psychological health that I am today.
Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:16 PM (4VBfN)

My mom hit whomever was closest. She couldn't have cared less which one I was. Still doesn't. Nothing like a narcissist for a Mom, except maybe yours, who should have been institutionalized.

Posted by: tcn in AK, hail to the thief at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (uqyzO)

79 The weekend is here!

I put it down to social media, and pushing sexual deviance
Posted by: Skip at April 05, 2024 03:07 PM (fwDg9)

I thought the weekend was just a cyclic thing.

Posted by: G'rump928(c) at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (aD39U)

80 But there's more to being a parent than "nice" or "mean". My mother was persistently abusive and tried to kill me once. I guess I got used to her being "mean".

That's why I'm the bundle of veritable psychological health that I am today.
Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:16 PM (4VBfN)

A friend I work with once called me from another site and said she felt really weird after visiting her mom's for lunch. She said 'I think that bitch spiked the spaghetti.' She is a recovering drug abuser, so she immediately went to the clinic to get screened. Her mom had laced the spaghetti, which she knew my friend liked, with PCP.

I was fucking floored. This is why I told my parents "THANK YOU for being my parents." I never realized I grew up with Ozzie and Harriet, but I guess I did.

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (di6C2)

81 They are one good EMP away from complete and total ignorance.

Posted by: gourmand du jour

Can you imagine the fairy tales and fables that will be told in the future? Tales of magic, where people could be transported through the air, or could appear in front of other people and talk, even though they are thousands of miles apart? Of magic boxes that contained as much information as what used to be called a library?

These tales will be told around the fires in front of the caves that people live in - though there are also tales that people used to live in structures that were taller than trees, and had magic carts that would transport them great distances.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at April 05, 2024 03:22 PM (lTGtQ)

82 I have decided that women are incapable of driving now without talking on their phone.
Look the next time you're on the road.
Count how many are not talking.
Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (yikga)

In my case, I'm singing along with Foo Fighters or Dropkick Murphys.

Posted by: tcn in AK, hail to the thief at April 05, 2024 03:22 PM (uqyzO)

83 Schools are starting to ban cellphones during the school day.

-------------

* Hewitt Packard RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) calculators with alphanumeric displays of the late 70s (useful for cheating with classmates on tests) -- and soon thereafter all calculators -- have entered the chat *

Posted by: ShainS -- Blood-Bath-and-Beyond angel investor at April 05, 2024 03:22 PM (WJ5SF)

84 I hate it when during a conversation people try to show me videos or pics on their cell phones of some shit. First of all, I don't want to touch that filthy thing, Second, put that thing away for a few minutes while we're talking.
Posted by: wth at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (v0R5T)
++++
I've said it before, but some of my colleagues and I (not everyone - it depended on the specific groups) would implement a rule - sort of a game, sort of not - if we went out. The rule was "no cell phones." The game was "or you pay."

If someone looked at his phone, he paid for the next round, the appetizers, etc. Something like that.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:22 PM (HnUIn)

85 Outlawing masculinity

I've commented here before on how effeminiate Gen Z boys are to a large extent. "Gen Z looks like it closes the fridge door with their hip" is a joke I've seen more than once. We criticize masculinity, and celebrate homosexuality, and we have a generation of confused boys.

Posted by: brak at April 05, 2024 03:23 PM (AR07F)

86 Parents are the worst with this often demanding their kids always have access to their phones.

Posted by: banana Dream at April 05, 2024 03:23 PM (Y6IkP)

87 No. Clearly, their teachers have made them insane with their constant Marxist programming. The chronic use of high-THC marijuana adds a certain level of psychosis. But there would be no appetite for social media if they were not instructed by their Marxist programmers first.

Posted by: william ferrin at April 05, 2024 03:23 PM (1lxAZ)

88 a startup named Yondr.

------

I read this is Grindr, and thought well, it's the schools it makes sense

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at April 05, 2024 03:24 PM (0FoWg)

89 > And it's always.... for the chiddrins

Chirrens.

Posted by: bonhomme at April 05, 2024 03:24 PM (eyxn4)

90 I have decided that women are incapable of driving now without talking on their phone.

I pick my kids up from preschool I feel like I'm taking my life into my hands with psycho moms in their giant SUVs gunning for the pickup spaces. Smartphone in one hand, stanley mug in the other, steering with their knees or whatever.

Posted by: brak at April 05, 2024 03:24 PM (AR07F)

91 "The results for us were just a game-changer," Patricia Shipe, president of the Akron Education Association... told me

*********

"game-changer". Ack!!!

Drink!!!

If I continue this game I'll be in a coma by mid-afternoon

Posted by: Muldoon at April 05, 2024 03:24 PM (991eG)

92 I was fucking floored. This is why I told my parents "THANK YOU for being my parents." I never realized I grew up with Ozzie and Harriet, but I guess I did.
Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (di6C2)

Fuck me there's some fucked up people out there. Happy for you, sad for your friend. It's a small wonder that I don't despise women.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:25 PM (4VBfN)

93 The weekend is here!

==

followed by an Monday...

Posted by: runner at April 05, 2024 03:25 PM (V13WU)

94 No. Clearly, their teachers have made them insane with their constant Marxist programming. The chronic use of high-THC marijuana adds a certain level of psychosis. But there would be no appetite for social media if they were not instructed by their Marxist programmers first.
Posted by: william ferrin at April 05, 2024 03:23 PM (1lxAZ)
++++
If this were the case, there would be comparatively little social media use or addiction among adults. There is plenty. It's worse in kids because they've had it for much longer and normalized it much earlier in development, but it's a more general problem.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:25 PM (HnUIn)

95 It's clearly an addiction.

-
I can quit AOSHQ any time I want! I just don't want. That's all.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? at April 05, 2024 03:25 PM (FVME7)

96 My brother thinks he's some kind of know-it-all because he has some MSNBC app on his cell phone where he looks up Truth and stuff.

Posted by: wth at April 05, 2024 03:25 PM (v0R5T)

97 I've said it before, but some of my colleagues and I (not everyone - it depended on the specific groups) would implement a rule - sort of a game, sort of not - if we went out. The rule was "no cell phones." The game was "or you pay."

I took mine with me to church on Easter Sunday, in case of emergency, but I turned it off and kept it in the pocket of my suit jacket the whole time.

Posted by: Bulgaroctonus at April 05, 2024 03:25 PM (9yWhg)

98 But at least he doesn't go crying and running off to someone bigger every time someone punches him in the face.
Posted by: XTC at April 05, 2024 03:19 PM (UnA8+)

As I recall, my Dad countered that in us with the phrase, "I'll give you something to cry about."

Love and tenderness, all around.

Posted by: tcn in AK, hail to the thief at April 05, 2024 03:25 PM (uqyzO)

99 Yes they have been and add in the cocktail of drugs we are giving kids today and it has become deadly. Multiple gender benders shooting up schools and churches while they were on the drugs prescribed to them is just the start.

Posted by: Mister Scott (Formerly GWS) at April 05, 2024 03:26 PM (QNSds)

100 Smart phones are a portal to a whole other universe, and are designed to be as addictive as possible. I think it was Zuckerberg that spoke of the use of likes or other feedback as an addictive enticement to constantly check one's status, check for more likes.

And certainly Google and the central planners intend to control content and searches to the extent they control every mind, or a majority of them. And there is the enforcement of the community, who will get one fired or arrested for using a wrong pronoun, or saying men can't have babies, or being a climate denier.

Posted by: illiniwek at April 05, 2024 03:26 PM (Cus5s)

101 If selling images of my genitals is wrong, I don't want to be right.

It's not masturbation or sinful if I'm just doing it for the pump.

Just for the pump, like a bodybuilder. Amirite?

I would never waste my seed on those that were unworthy.

Posted by: Dr. Bone at April 05, 2024 03:26 PM (WtvCN)

102 Posted by: tcn in AK, hail to the thief at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (uqyzO

She's definitely a few eggs short of a chicken. And a sadistic narcissist.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:27 PM (4VBfN)

103 Also, I hate map apps. If I get lost, I pull off and look at a good old-fashioned road atlas.

Posted by: Bulgaroctonus at April 05, 2024 03:27 PM (9yWhg)

104 I haven't had that specific experience, but I know plenty of people in the biz who have. To be fair, college students have always been infamous for combining actual ignorance with assumed omniscience, but access to the World Wide Web has made it much worse.
Posted by: Dr. T at April 05, 2024 03:20 PM (g0Y4p)

One of my favorite people all time was Professor Ann Carmichael. MD-PhD. She taught History of Epidemics and a course titled 'Black Death.' Wonderful, tiny woman. She had a class on sources and research and told us that you always have to be careful of ANYTHING that you read because it is always filtered through the writer's bias. First hand accounts are THE MOST UNRELIABLE because the people are discussing events they themselves took part in, so they are not just protecting their version of events, but themselves as well. You HAVE to cross sources and somewhere in the middle is what actually happened.

These days, everyone single sources everything and they might as well be getting their info from Cliff Clavin. Actually worse- at least Cliff wanted to be accurate.

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:27 PM (di6C2)

105 Fuck me there's some fucked up people out there. Happy for you, sad for your friend. It's a small wonder that I don't despise women.
Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:25 PM (4VBfN)

For the record, my mom may have smacked us with the wooden spoon upside the head, but it took my dad to beat me raw with bruises that lasted a week.

Equal opportunity love right there.

Posted by: tcn in AK, hail to the thief at April 05, 2024 03:27 PM (uqyzO)

106 The rule was "no cell phones." The game was "or you pay."

If someone looked at his phone, he paid for the next round, the appetizers, etc. Something like that.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:22 PM (HnUIn)
.......

First guy to look at his phone gets the ugly chick.

Posted by: wth at April 05, 2024 03:28 PM (v0R5T)

107 Multi tasking is just half assing by another name.

Posted by: InZona at April 05, 2024 03:28 PM (P/us6)

108 Outlawing masculinity

-
Outlaw masculinity. I could use me some of that.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? at April 05, 2024 03:28 PM (FVME7)

109 Not just the kids feel happy and peaceful sans cell phone.

Posted by: irongrampa at April 05, 2024 03:28 PM (KATBx)

110 The combination of panicked-parent overprotecting these snowflakes has turned them very averse to physical risk or any other kind of risk.
---
Why do you think their parents go so crazy over any limits on abortion?

They don't care about their kid "ruining their lives with a baby," as Obama said, they care that the baby will ruin the perfect life plan they demand their child follow.

Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 05, 2024 03:28 PM (yikga)

111 A friend I work with once called me from another site and said she felt really weird after visiting her mom's for lunch. She said 'I think that bitch spiked the spaghetti.' She is a recovering drug abuser, so she immediately went to the clinic to get screened. Her mom had laced the spaghetti, which she knew my friend liked, with PCP.

I was fucking floored. This is why I told my parents "THANK YOU for being my parents." I never realized I grew up with Ozzie and Harriet, but I guess I did.
Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (di6C2)

Isn't that, um, criminal?

Why aren't more people charged for that sort of thing? It's not okay to spike other people's food and drink with drugs without their consent, even if "opens their mind, man."

Posted by: Dr. T at April 05, 2024 03:29 PM (g0Y4p)

112 FJB was flapping his gums at the Francis Scott Key Bridge. I am pretty sure I heard him say, East Palestine, fuck off, your the wrong kind of American.

Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:29 PM (k1/QX)

113 Our school banned cellphones during class this year. All it took was a few years of tracking discipline issues, including fights, threats and shit-stirring. I mentioned before that when the idea was floated, the surprising thing was how popular girls were ENTHUSIASTIC about the ban. FOMO was a big factor.

Turns out that the ones who miss cellphones most are kids who cheat on tests and drama queens living vicariously through their kids.

Here's a follow-up video of a young man who tried using a pocket notebook. His discovery of "organic thinking" made me laugh and feel melancholic at the same time.

https://tinyurl.com/ymkpphv9

Posted by: NaughtyPine at April 05, 2024 03:29 PM (fxCK2)

114 https://mustreadalaska.com/
alaska-life-hack-mcneil-river-bear-watching-raffle/

Take out the spaces. Nice opportunity.

Posted by: tcn in AK, hail to the thief at April 05, 2024 03:29 PM (uqyzO)

115 Are you not supposed to put PCP in the sketti?

Posted by: eleven at April 05, 2024 03:29 PM (iziT8)

116 Interesting essay, ace. Thank you.

Posted by: nurse ratched at April 05, 2024 03:30 PM (ikoqu)

117 103 Also, I hate map apps. If I get lost, I pull off and look at a good old-fashioned road atlas.
Posted by: Bulgaroctonus at April 05, 2024 03:27 PM (9yWhg)

An Atlas allows me to see the bigger picture. For whatever reason, it allows me to fix where I am and where I am going much better in my head.

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:30 PM (di6C2)

118 The combination of panicked-parent overprotecting these snowflakes has turned them very averse to physical risk or any other kind of risk. They're snowflakes that melt in a sunbeam, in other words.

--------------

See "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Posted by: ShainS -- Blood-Bath-and-Beyond angel investor at April 05, 2024 03:30 PM (WJ5SF)

119 First of all, I don't want to touch that filthy thing, Second, put that thing away for a few minutes while we're talking.
Posted by: wth at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (v0R5T)
++++
I've said it before, but some of my colleagues and I (not everyone - it depended on the specific groups) would implement a rule - sort of a game, sort of not - if we went out. The rule was "no cell phones." The game was "or you pay."

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:22 PM (HnUIn)
______

This would not work with ladies. Or at least ladies under the age of 25. They have not experienced anything until they have recorded it or at least told their friends about it.

The unbelievable irony is that if you are on a date with an under-25 year old, and she is NOT taking pics of the food and whatever, then you are probably not getting another date. Counterintuitive, I know.

But: If she's not taking pics and contemporaneously telling her friends about what is happening on the date, then that means it's not worthy of mentioning. Hence she is bored and not likely to see you again.

Posted by: Elric Blade at April 05, 2024 03:30 PM (iFTx/)

120 For the record, my mom may have smacked us with the wooden spoon upside the head, but it took my dad to beat me raw with bruises that lasted a week.

Equal opportunity love right there.
Posted by: tcn in AK, hail to the thief at April 05, 2024 03:27 PM (uqyzO)

Meanwhile I have a relative that doesn't want her daughter to ever be scared of either her or hubby so they are "gentle parenting" and all they're doing is accidentally raising a terror that dispenses abuse to them - and especially her - 24 hours a day like an endless gumball machine.

There's gotta be some kind of happy medium!!

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:31 PM (4VBfN)

121 One of the appeals of the internet is being able to say whatever one wants( with a very few limitations) and being able to assume any role you want to play. There’s very little accountability for behavior. This is probably not a healthy thing for lots of people.

Posted by: tubal at April 05, 2024 03:31 PM (PCK5/)

122 These tales will be told around the fires in front of the caves that people live in - though there are also tales that people used to live in structures that were taller than trees, and had magic carts that would transport them great distances.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at April 05, 2024 03:22 PM (lTGtQ)

It's been written: Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban.

Posted by: I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper at April 05, 2024 03:31 PM (PiwSw)

123 I stopped watching both local and national news on a regular basis because it was a non-stop feed of horrible things that I couldn't do anything about. I immediately noticed that my mood and outlook improved markedly. I have a few low-key breaking news sources that tell me if something that interests me is going on, everything else gets ignored.

Posted by: Citizen Cake at April 05, 2024 03:31 PM (CwhoI)

124 Multi tasking is just half assing by another name.
Posted by: InZona at April 05, 2024 03:28 PM (P/us6)

Her Grace the Empress called it Multi-Shirking.

Posted by: G'rump928(c) at April 05, 2024 03:32 PM (aD39U)

125 Yeah, "multitasking" does sound like bullshit now that I think about it.

Posted by: eleven at April 05, 2024 03:32 PM (iziT8)

126 Isn't that, um, criminal?

Why aren't more people charged for that sort of thing? It's not okay to spike other people's food and drink with drugs without their consent, even if "opens their mind, man."
Posted by: Dr. T at April 05, 2024 03:29 PM (g0Y4p)

Because her mom is a drug addict just from what my friend has said. My guess is she (my friend) does not want to send her to jail. My guess is her mom was trying to gain leverage over my friend or get her addicted again. My friend has fought like hell for ten years to be completely clean and as fucked up as it sounds, I think she sees that as separation from her daughter.

People are really fucked up.

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:32 PM (di6C2)

127 We're complete Luddites when it comes to our daughter and technology, but she's got ADHD and is doing well in school. So, success, I guess.

Posted by: pookysgirl is not letting her kids be raised by Big Tech at April 05, 2024 03:33 PM (dtlDP)

128 Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you've likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States--fairly stable in the 2000s--rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

Yeah, that "something" is social media. Chris Williamson has a great podcast with a female Gen-Z-er, Freya India (writer and journalist focused on female mental health and modern culture) who studied this effect of social media on Gen-Z girls and women. I was floored by the types of destructive social media sites she talked about that typical girls/women are using.

Why Are Gen Z Girls Suffering So Much? - Freya India

YouTube: https://bit.ly/4aI0d2v

Posted by: Clyde Shelton at April 05, 2024 03:33 PM (UKWFA)

129 Everyone does one thing, then stops, does another thing, then stops…

Posted by: tubal at April 05, 2024 03:33 PM (PCK5/)

130 Druggies often want other people to be druggies. Strange virus.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:33 PM (4VBfN)

131 These days, everyone single sources everything and they might as well be getting their info from Cliff Clavin. Actually worse- at least Cliff wanted to be accurate.
Posted by: Aetius451AD

This. Type any topic into a search engine, and the first site to come up will usually be Wikipedia. And then every other site below it will use the same verbiage as the Wikipedia article does.

And then, when you do find an original article, every offbeat or unfamiliar thing that gets mentioned has a hyperlink to its Wikipedia page.

So, it's very difficult to get anything other than the Wikipedia source.

Now, I find Wikipedia useful for non-controversial topics, but come on.

Posted by: Bulgaroctonus at April 05, 2024 03:33 PM (9yWhg)

132 Questionnaires about teenagers' feelings, emotions and actual practices form the basis of the entire field of Adolescent Medicine, despite being notoriously inaccurate, and filled with outright lies by the respondents. It's a bullshit specialty.

e.g.
Question: How many times a week do you have sex?
Answer from 15 year old virgin boy: 10-20

Teens either underreport or overreport, depending on how questions are phrased, the subject, or the questioner's perceived role (i.e. confidant or authority figure).

Posted by: Muldoon at April 05, 2024 03:34 PM (991eG)

133 @104 "Who are three people who have never been in my kitchen" . Accurate, but not correct

Posted by: Smell the Glove at April 05, 2024 03:35 PM (ixVYR)

134 Smart phones are a portal to a whole other universe, and are designed to be as addictive as possible. I think it was Zuckerberg that spoke of the use of likes or other feedback as an addictive enticement to constantly check one's status, check for more likes.

And certainly Google and the central planners intend to control content and searches to the extent they control every mind, or a majority of them. And there is the enforcement of the community, who will get one fired or arrested for using a wrong pronoun, or saying men can't have babies, or being a climate denier.
Posted by: illiniwek at April 05, 2024

***
There was a creepy Next Generation episode in which a virtual game became all the rage aboard the Enterprise, then addictive, and it began to take over the crew's minds. I know, I know, a "Wesley is the hero" episode (and I htink it had Ashley Judd in it too), but looking back, it was strangely prophetic.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at April 05, 2024 03:36 PM (J2vNu)

135 I always have five or six tasks going in the yard simultaneously when I am working, and it's not because I lack attention. It is to spread the pain around.

Posted by: G'rump928(c) at April 05, 2024 03:36 PM (aD39U)

136 An Atlas allows me to see the bigger picture. For whatever reason, it allows me to fix where I am and where I am going much better in my head.
Posted by: Aetius451AD

Agreed.

Posted by: Bulgaroctonus at April 05, 2024 03:36 PM (9yWhg)

137 Druggies often want other people to be druggies. Strange virus.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:33 PM (4VBfN)

Misery loves company.

Posted by: Famous Sayings at April 05, 2024 03:36 PM (Zz0t1)

138 Yeah,, the whole cell phone thing is well, flirtin' with disaster

LETS DANCE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOhGgRgRsmo

Posted by: Jimmy Carter at April 05, 2024 03:36 PM (X4yCj)

139 What haven't kids been made "mentally ill" by, but sure, let's blame Tik Tok.

Posted by: BurtTC at April 05, 2024 03:37 PM (dGCAG)

140 This got me so many complaints. What if my mom calls? etc. The Dean called me in to his office.
I resigned at the end of the semester.
--
For what?
It could be an emergency, they'll whine.
And how in the f can you do anything about it? You're a minimum of 30 to an hour away. There's literally nothing you can do.
If it's a real emergency, 911 will be there before you.
100% of everything else can safely wait.

So many similar fights with the ex over that; why didn't you answer your phone, it could have been an emergency.

Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 05, 2024 03:37 PM (yikga)

141
The kids parents aren't any different. They're on their phones every spare moment. They see their parents on their phones and learn that is normal.

Posted by: Frank Barone at April 05, 2024 03:37 PM (+oR7L)

142 I still buy books to read so I guess I am behind the times.

Posted by: tubal at April 05, 2024 03:38 PM (PCK5/)

143 Question: How many times a week do you have sex?
Answer from 15 year old virgin boy: 10-20

And that boy's name was McLovin.

Posted by: Narrator at April 05, 2024 03:38 PM (Zz0t1)

144 115 Are you not supposed to put PCP in the sketti?
Posted by: eleven at April 05, 2024 03:29 PM (iziT

Heh. She calls it that too.

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:38 PM (di6C2)

145 This was a long-standing battle between my daughter and her father and me. We refused to buy her a smart phone when she first wanted one as a tween. She had a flip phone so that she could reach us and vice versa. We also refused to buy her a smart phone. She raised the money and bought one herself when she was about 15. However, she still wasn't allowed on social media until age 18. And hoooo boy! Did she hate that.

But then she turned 18 just before the scamdemic hit. She and I spent a lot of time together in those 3 lockdown months. And at the end of that time she actually thanked me for forbidding social media.

She actually said, "These people are CRAZY, Momma!"

Posted by: Lady Who Always Has a Burning Question at April 05, 2024 03:38 PM (JCLJi)

146 For me it was easy to quit social media because I remember a world without it.

There are adults now who have never known anything but a life of social media.

Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 05, 2024 03:38 PM (yikga)

147 The kids parents aren't any different. They're on their phones every spare moment. They see their parents on their phones and learn that is normal.

this right here.

I tell my wife how important it is to not be on it all the time, but....well it's tough

Posted by: brak at April 05, 2024 03:39 PM (AR07F)

148 >>>There was a creepy Next Generation episode in which a virtual game became all the rage aboard the Enterprise, then addictive, and it began to take over the crew's minds. I know, I know, a "Wesley is the hero" episode (and I htink it had Ashley Judd in it too), but looking back, it was strangely prophetic.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at April 05, 2024 03:36 PM (J2vNu)

I remember Ashley's Judds just barely pushed that episode into the likeability range offsetting the rank wesleyness of it all.

Posted by: banana Dream at April 05, 2024 03:39 PM (Y6IkP)

149 Does the HQ count as ocial media?

Posted by: tubal at April 05, 2024 03:39 PM (PCK5/)

150 I may use my phone to refresh my mental research files when building a Bf 109G-6/AS of II./JG27, but it won't build it for me.

So marginally useful.

Posted by: Anna Puma at April 05, 2024 03:40 PM (wDA3Q)

151 "gentle parenting"

-
I don't pretend to have any answers but I raised my daughters with only a single spanking consisting of a single swat and then not for punishment but rather in a situation that demanded immediate compliance and they turned out pretty good. Also, I didn't shower with them.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? at April 05, 2024 03:40 PM (FVME7)

152 Ninja porch pirate in Scramento.

https://shorturl.at/dfhsA

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? at April 05, 2024 03:41 PM (FVME7)

153 73 A third of my phone/ internet is time wasting, a third for “ important” stuff - that really is not, given a little thought, and the other third is for fairly useful activities.
Posted by: tubal

-----------

wonder what category the HQ falls on?

Posted by: Gentlemen, this is junta manifest at April 05, 2024 03:41 PM (t11Fv)

154 80 A friend I work with once called me from another site and said she felt really weird after visiting her mom's for lunch. She said 'I think that bitch spiked the spaghetti.' She is a recovering drug abuser, so she immediately went to the clinic to get screened. Her mom had laced the spaghetti, which she knew my friend liked, with PCP

++++

As a mom, I can’t even imagine thinking about this let alone doing it! Just wow.

Posted by: Piper at April 05, 2024 03:42 PM (2UJ+q)

155 What I have observed about the impact of the intertubes is it has essentially rewired our collective thinking so we need constant endorphin jolts. This should be, and is, devastating to young brains that are becoming fully wired at the expense of empirical spatial understanding, the calmness to explore subjects at depth, and meaningful human interactions. Over the last decades we have swapped out a life of acquiring meaningful knowledge for one of meaningless noise. We are becoming stupider by the day it seems. Reflection is passe while reaction is everything.

Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:42 PM (k1/QX)

156 Does the HQ count as ocial media?
Posted by: tubal at April 05, 2024 03:39 PM (PCK5/)

No, in order for something to be considered social media, the software platform must have been created sometime after the year 1997.

Posted by: BurtTC at April 05, 2024 03:42 PM (dGCAG)

157 146 For me it was easy to quit social media because I remember a world without it.

There are adults now who have never known anything but a life of social media.
Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 05, 2024 03:38 PM (yikga)

I never started. I started a Linkedin about 8 years ago when a friend and I were looking at starting a business. Have not checked it for about 7 years.

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:42 PM (di6C2)

158 My kid got his first iPhone when he went off to college

Posted by: nckate at April 05, 2024 03:42 PM (nUPKW)

159 Social media never had much appeal to me. You mean I get to hear what you idiots think about every stupid thing you see all the time and see pictures of what you had for lunch?

Pass.

Posted by: sniffybigtoe at April 05, 2024 03:42 PM (JTwsP)

160 Anybody remember Ashley doing that cheerleader scene in her undies?

Posted by: eleven at April 05, 2024 03:43 PM (iziT8)

161 I have decided that women are incapable of driving now without talking on their phone.

I pick my kids up from preschool I feel like I'm taking my life into my hands with psycho moms in their giant SUVs gunning for the pickup spaces. Smartphone in one hand, stanley mug in the other, steering with their knees or whatever.
Posted by: brak at April 05, 2024

***
They sit at lights that have turned green, nobody in front of them. Looking at the damn phone or its connection in the instrument panel, I'm betting. I give 'em a tap of the horn, and usually they move off.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at April 05, 2024 03:43 PM (J2vNu)

162 Virus taking over your mind?

Better call Hero Protagonist.

Posted by: Anna Puma at April 05, 2024 03:43 PM (wDA3Q)

163 Wasted a good part of my 70s youth playing air-sea battle on an Atari 2600.

Posted by: Biff Pocoroba at April 05, 2024 03:43 PM (Dm8we)

164 I assume the reason is the learning-loss experienced by students

I’m more cynical. Before the lockdown, schools also often banned cell phones. Cell phones allow students to contact their parents when the schools were doing nutty things. They allow students to film schools doing nutty things.

I’m not a huge fan of kids with smart phones. But this is less about smart phones than about power. With cell phones, there are authority figures in the student’s life other than the school authorities. I remember one case where a student, during lunch, was talking with his mother who was stationed in Iraq. The school saw this and punished him for it—and refused to talk to the parent.

Banning cell phones was meant to isolate students from the sanity of the outside world and to make sure that what happens in school stays in school. I doubt that reason has changed.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at April 05, 2024 03:43 PM (EXyHK)

165 Question: How many times a week do you have sex?
......

You mean with somebody else?

Posted by: wth at April 05, 2024 03:43 PM (v0R5T)

166 Can you imagine Shop Class in this day and age of constant distraction and short attention span?

Johnny would cut off his thumb, no one would notice for 10 minutes and then only to livestream it.

Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 05, 2024 03:43 PM (yikga)

167 As a mom, I can’t even imagine thinking about this let alone doing it! Just wow.
Posted by: Piper at April 05, 2024 03:42 PM (2UJ+q)

That's what I said- and I'm not even a Mom!

When she told me about the pcp, I said 'XXX do you realize how fucking insane this is?!'

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:44 PM (di6C2)

168
"game-changer". Ack!!!

Drink!!!

If I continue this game I'll be in a coma by mid-afternoon
Posted by: Muldoon

That's a no-brainer!

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at April 05, 2024 03:44 PM (63Dwl)

169 Occasionally as kids the girls did the crazy stuff we boys did, but don't think sports like football were mixed. At least not very often.

Posted by: Skip at April 05, 2024 03:44 PM (fwDg9)

170 Hi, horde. I just read all of that, and now I'm going to put this phone down and go do some physical world stuff. Maybe I'll talk to my spouse or some such, take the dogs for a walk.

Probably get sucked back in around cafe time.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at April 05, 2024 03:44 PM (OX9vb)

171 This was a long-standing battle between my daughter and her father and me. We refused to buy her a smart phone when she first wanted one as a tween. She had a flip phone so that she could reach us and vice versa. We also refused to buy her a smart phone. She raised the money and bought one herself when she was about 15. However, she still wasn't allowed on social media until age 18. And hoooo boy! Did she hate that.

But then she turned 18 just before the scamdemic hit. She and I spent a lot of time together in those 3 lockdown months. And at the end of that time she actually thanked me for forbidding social media.

My sister and brother in law refused to allow their son to have any social media. It was probably good for him, but it completely killed his social life. All of his friends communicated via Instagram. They never did voice calls and someone had to remember to text him if they wanted to go do something or if plans changed.

It's stupid, but that's how it was.

Posted by: bonhomme at April 05, 2024 03:44 PM (eyxn4)

172 It was just a little PCP, relax.

Posted by: DOYLE at April 05, 2024 03:45 PM (Z8Yh2)

173 Atari 2600?

Not Colecovision?

Posted by: Anna Puma at April 05, 2024 03:45 PM (wDA3Q)

174 >>>I still buy books to read so I guess I am behind the times.

Posted by: tubal

>Sir or madam, you shall remove yourself from the premises and the thread for your provocative words and harmful demeanor.

Save your fascism for the book thread where you'll be welcomed as part of the pimp squirrel's tribe.

Posted by: Dr. Bone at April 05, 2024 03:46 PM (WtvCN)

175 My brothers and me were absolute fuckin' savages as kids. Dirty, feral children who would frequently harm ourselves and each other grievously.

That's probably not the best way to roll, but being a huge pussy ain't good either.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at April 05, 2024 03:46 PM (0FoWg)

176 I hate it when during a conversation people try to show me videos or pics on their cell phones of some shit. First of all, I don't want to touch that filthy thing, Second, put that thing away for a few minutes while we're talking.
Posted by: wth at April 05, 2024 03:21 PM (v0R5T)
---
So, I guess you aren't interested in seeing the cat video I recorded last night...

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 05, 2024 03:46 PM (7fElN)

177 148 >>>There was a creepy Next Generation episode in which a virtual game became all the rage aboard the Enterprise, then addictive, and it began to take over the crew's minds. I know, I know, a "Wesley is the hero" episode (and I htink it had Ashley Judd in it too), but looking back, it was strangely prophetic.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at April 05, 2024 03:36 PM (J2vNu)

I remember Ashley's Judds just barely pushed that episode into the likeability range offsetting the rank wesleyness of it all.

Posted by: banana Dream at April 05, 2024 03:39 PM (Y6IkP)

Hadn't seen a picture of Ashley Judd in a while so I googled her. Found a "selfie" of her and Wynona and boy damn howdy, they have NOT aged well.

Posted by: Tex Lovera at April 05, 2024 03:46 PM (wtvvX)

178 I wouldn't doubt the omni-present "Smart" phone is making people crazy. A constant diet of "reeee!!!" can't be good for your mental health.

Even at work, the 20-30-somethings can't unplug. I see them on the phone all the time. Me I go in, toss my phone in a locker, and work. If Mrs. Cop needs me, she can call my office. I go home, check calls and toss my phone in the nightstand.

Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (pJWtt)

179 For me it was easy to quit social media because I remember a world without it.

Same here.

Posted by: Notorious BFD at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (V8he0)

180 What is your definition of 'cat' nyah?

Posted by: Anna Puma at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (wDA3Q)

181 I use social media for my business. That is it. I don’t use it personally. But it’s truly important for me to have a presence on instagram for advertising, for funny and engaging things, technique tips, upcoming events, etc. I would never have the following on a personal account that I do on my business account. I also don’t have the time, it’s a lot of work to create those reels that look in the moment and not scripted!

Posted by: Piper at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (2UJ+q)

182 Kyle Rittenhouse is a total loser. Even his former handler is dishing in him...adding how Rittenhouse also had applied to join the Marines but couldn’t even pass the basic aptitude test..."he squandered a full scholarship to study any subject at any university in the country to become a divisive douchebag and antagonize black Americans on college campuses,” he wrote.

If they don't get him off the street he's likely to murder again. He loves to murder and craves attention. He has a lot in common with George Zimmerman.

He'll definitely commit another crime. In his feeble brain, that's what gave him adulation the last time.

Does Wisconsin still allow any pissant to walk down the street during a PROTEST with a rifle dangling at ready? Loser should have just let Gaige Grosskreutz shoot him! Fucking creepy MAGAT had it coming, he had already murdered 2 peaceful protestors.

Posted by: Intercepted DU Transmissions brought by the Intrepid AoS Liaison at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (JCZqz)

183 One of the appeals of the internet is being able to say whatever one wants

-
Not "B L A Z E R."

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (FVME7)

184 I had roughly 10 days of fun and laughs on Twitter during the AttackWatch thing, realized it was legitimately addictive, and immediately stopped using it for pretty much anything but promoting blog posts.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (4VBfN)

185 173 Atari 2600?

Not Colecovision?
Posted by: Anna Puma

________

No, but my brother had an Intellivision. Strangest controller ever.

Posted by: Biff Pocoroba at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (Dm8we)

186 Looks like every one of the 99 cent stores are closing.

Best economy ever, and no inflation.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at April 05, 2024 03:48 PM (lTGtQ)

187 It needs to always be noted that JFK and LBJ both passed major legislation closing mental institutions with the express and stated goal of having the insane people walking around local communities.

Parents were doing little more than responding to the situation.

Posted by: Moron Robbie at April 05, 2024 03:48 PM (6Gcwb)

188 Schools are starting to ban cellphones during the school day. I have no idea why this rule isn't universal.

It will be. When enough parents encourage their kids to film woke teachers turning class-time into indoctrination sessions.

Posted by: weft cut-loop at April 05, 2024 03:48 PM (IG4Id)

189 ... But: If she's not taking pics and contemporaneously telling her friends about what is happening on the date, then that means it's not worthy of mentioning. Hence she is bored and not likely to see you again.
Posted by: Elric Blade at April 05, 2024 03:30 PM (iFTx/)
++++
Then what's the benefit of dating her? What is the man getting in exchange? Why bother if you're not getting her attention and engagement? If I'm on a date and I'm second to her cell phone, she might want to go out on another date with me, but what would make me want to go out on another date with her?

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:48 PM (HnUIn)

190 Hadn't seen a picture of Ashley Judd in a while so I googled her. Found a "selfie" of her and Wynona and boy damn howdy, they have NOT aged well.
Posted by: Tex Lovera at April 05, 2024 03:46 PM (wtvvX)

To be fair, in those days, she was cute as hell.

Plus, I was a star trek fan, so it was kind of a twofer. (Even for that pale shadow that was TNG.)

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:48 PM (di6C2)

191 The devouring mother.

Posted by: Dworkin Barimen at April 05, 2024 03:48 PM (jQILT)

192 It was just a little PCP, relax.
Posted by: DOYLE at April 05, 2024 03:45 PM (Z8Yh2)

Did someone call me?

Posted by: Midget Doctor at April 05, 2024 03:48 PM (dGCAG)

193 Not Colecovision?
Posted by: Anna Puma at April 05, 2024 03:45 PM (wDA3Q)

=====

Colecovision was the bomb.

Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 03:48 PM (DRSnL)

194 My kids are allowed to get cells in 9th grade, and must get cells when they get their driving permit.

Posted by: Nova Local at April 05, 2024 03:49 PM (exHjb)

195 Does Wisconsin still allow any pissant to walk down the street during a PROTEST with a rifle dangling at ready? Loser should have just let Gaige Grosskreutz shoot him! Fucking creepy MAGAT had it coming, he had already murdered 2 peaceful protestors.
Posted by: Intercepted DU Transmissions brought by the Intrepid AoS Liaison at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (JCZqz)

Man, these people are really dumb and insane

Posted by: Hatari somewhere on Ventura Highway at April 05, 2024 03:49 PM (NtVYv)

196 My mother sent me, and later my brother, off to school from the time I was seven, walking the four blocks to my grammar school. We were supposed to call home if we stopped at a friend's house, but we had a certain freedom. When I turned twelve and was riding the bus to junior high, Mom lightened up on restrictions (though I was still supposed to call if I'd be late for dinner). I roamed all over the downtown area, stores, the library, orthodontist appointments, etc. Loved it.

Mom, a nurse, slept days and worked nights. If she'd been a helicopter parent, I'd never have been able to go anywhere except school and home.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at April 05, 2024 03:49 PM (J2vNu)

197 You can of course say blazer if you have the BlazerPass™

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:49 PM (4VBfN)

198 ... I think we need some kind of society-level cognitive behavioral therapy to convince people that whatever it is they are worried about, depression is not the answer. Because it never is.

---------------

Depression is often the result of sadness (loss & hopelessness), anxiety (fear & worry), and/or anger (powerlessness & resentment).

The Left's century-old plan of emasculation and infantilization -- including their sub-cult of "Safetyism" -- on steroids with their capture of education and Big Tech, have robbed at least three generations of children of their innocence, rationality, pirituality, and so much more. *spit*

Posted by: ShainS -- Blood-Bath-and-Beyond angel investor at April 05, 2024 03:49 PM (FbNQo)

199 O'er the ramparts we watched
And the stupid boat was still there

Posted by: BourbonChicken at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (cf/0E)

200 My sister and brother in law refused to allow their son to have any social media. It was probably good for him, but it completely killed his social life. All of his friends communicated via Instagram. They never did voice calls and someone had to remember to text him if they wanted to go do something or if plans changed.

It's stupid, but that's how it was.
Posted by: bonhomme at April 05, 2024 03:44 PM (eyxn4)
+++++
I've missed out on many things because of that. "Hey, why didn't you come to X?"
"I didn't know about X."
"We posted it on Facebook!"

It is what it is. Does that part of not using social media suck? Yes, it does.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (HnUIn)

201 The beauty of books is I can go back and forth easily until I sort out what I am trying to sort out and I can scribble notes to myself to my heart's content in them. This makes reading a full on contact sport of sorts as it should be.

I own two Kindles and I never use them - in fact I despise them; my plan for them is to give to my arch enemies.

Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (k1/QX)

202 Ashley Judd, TNG

https://tinyurl.com/2bkr48wk

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (di6C2)

203 Not Colecovision?
Posted by: Anna Puma at April 05, 2024

=====
Colecovision was the bomb.
Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024

***
And then there's CologuardVision!

Posted by: Your Friendly Neighborhood Proctologist at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (J2vNu)

204 But then she turned 18 just before the scamdemic hit. She and I spent a lot of time together in those 3 lockdown months.
Posted by: Lady Who Always Has a Burning Question at April 05, 2024 03:38 PM (JCLJi)

3 lockdown months??!!!!! Hoo-boy, try more like 2 and a half years. That's why I'm no longer InCali.

Posted by: InZona at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (P/us6)

205 My ticket out: Bodycams for students. It will appeal to many except the kids.

Posted by: DOYLE at April 05, 2024 03:51 PM (Z8Yh2)

206
When you’re a teen there will always be parties, events, whatever you miss out on. Hard for a self-conscious teen with the adolescent logic to not feel left out. And when you heard about that cool party on Monday morning it’s one thing, but when you have friends posting pictures and video real-time having fun without you - and maybe intentionally excluded ( kids can be mean) it’s tough.

You are now always aware of everything you are not part of as kids live on social media, always projecting they are having a blast.

Posted by: Lizzy at April 05, 2024 03:51 PM (Hkcdp)

207 My mother sent me, and later my brother, off to school from the time I was seven, walking the four blocks to my grammar school. We were supposed to call home if we stopped at a friend's house, but we had a certain freedom. When I turned twelve and was riding the bus to junior high, Mom lightened up on restrictions (though I was still supposed to call if I'd be late for dinner). I roamed all over the downtown area, stores, the library, orthodontist appointments, etc. Loved it.

Mom, a nurse, slept days and worked nights. If she'd been a helicopter parent, I'd never have been able to go anywhere except school and home.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at April 05, 2024 03:49 PM (J2vNu)
----
Those were the good old days...

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 05, 2024 03:51 PM (7fElN)

208 I've missed out on many things because of that. "Hey, why didn't you come to X?"
"I didn't know about X."
"We posted it on Facebook!"

It is what it is. Does that part of not using social media suck? Yes, it does.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (HnUIn)

Yeah, I've been there since leaving Facebook 5 years ago...I just figure if it was important enough or mattered enough, eventually I'd know. And this has worked so far.

Posted by: Nova Local at April 05, 2024 03:51 PM (exHjb)

209 The real benefit of the Kindle is it doesn’t hurt that much when you drop it on your face while reading in bed.

Posted by: sniffybigtoe at April 05, 2024 03:52 PM (JTwsP)

210 Best economy ever, and no inflation

-

Want to have some fun?

Go to an inflation calculator. One of those "what was a dollar worth" type sites. See what the result is for different years. The 30s, the 50s, awe look at the nostalgia.

Now type in a dollar in 2020 and what it's worth compared to 2024.

I'm not going to spoil it for you, but even my massively liberal acquaintance said "oh that's complete BS"

Posted by: Moron Robbie at April 05, 2024 03:52 PM (6Gcwb)

211 The real benefit of the Kindle is it doesn’t hurt that much when you drop it on your face while reading in bed.
Posted by: sniffybigtoe

For the Win!

Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:52 PM (k1/QX)

212 I own two Kindles and I never use them - in fact I despise them; my plan for them is to give to my arch enemies.
Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (k1/QX)

=====

I have a Kindle. One of the things I like about it is I can look up a definition of a word I don't know or translate a phrase.

Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 03:52 PM (DRSnL)

213 >>> I own two Kindles and I never use them - in fact I despise them; my plan for them is to give to my arch enemies.
Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (k1/QX)

I like the paper whites because I can make the font really big for my crappy eyes.

Posted by: banana Dream at April 05, 2024 03:52 PM (Y6IkP)

214 To be fair, in those days, she was cute as hell.

Plus, I was a star trek fan, so it was kind of a twofer. (Even for that pale shadow that was TNG.)

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 03:48 PM (di6C2)

Oh, absolutely agree.

Posted by: Tex Lovera at April 05, 2024 03:52 PM (wtvvX)

215 Which sounds to me like an addict attempting the justify the addiction.
=====
When are today's Quick Hits, Ace??

WHEN?!!?!!

I can't wait until SIX FREAKING THIRTY!!!!!

AND A FREAKING CAFE!!!!!!

Posted by: andycanuck (vtyCZ) at April 05, 2024 03:53 PM (vtyCZ)

216 That's why I'm no longer InCali.
Posted by: InZona at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (P/us6)

I never made this connection.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:53 PM (4VBfN)

217 If they don't get him off the street he's likely to murder again.

--------

I'm sold. WI should pass a law forbidding Kyle Rittenhouse from ever entering another structure. Maximum street time.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at April 05, 2024 03:53 PM (0FoWg)

218 I'm addicted to andycanuck. And Lizzy.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:53 PM (4VBfN)

219 My ticket out: Bodycams for students. It will appeal to many except the kids.
Posted by: DOYLE at April 05, 2024 03:51 PM (Z8Yh2)

Why didn't I think of that.

Posted by: Dan Schneider at April 05, 2024 03:53 PM (dGCAG)

220 When are today's Quick Hits, Ace??

WHEN?!!?!!

I can't wait until SIX FREAKING THIRTY!!!!!

AND A FREAKING CAFE!!!!!!
Posted by: andycanuck (vtyCZ) at April 05, 2024 03:53 PM (vtyCZ)
---
Just for fun, I think I'll postpone the Sunday Morning Book Thread until 9:05 Eastern...I want to watch the freakout.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 05, 2024 03:54 PM (7fElN)

221 I never made this connection.
Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:53 PM (4VBfN)

=====

Silly.

Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 03:54 PM (DRSnL)

222 Shocking that girls are both more liberal and more depressed.

Leftism is grievance and victimhood focused.

Posted by: Lizzy at April 05, 2024 03:54 PM (Hkcdp)

223 Colecovision was the bomb.
Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024

***
And then there's CologuardVision!
Posted by: Your Friendly Neighborhood Proctologist at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (J2vNu)

a bomb of another type

Posted by: Hatari somewhere on Ventura Highway at April 05, 2024 03:54 PM (NtVYv)

224 I have a Kindle. One of the things I like about it is I can look up a definition of a word I don't know or translate a phrase.
Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 03:52 PM (DRSnL)

At one time, I was reading a Kindle so much, I poked the page on an actual paper book.

Posted by: I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper at April 05, 2024 03:55 PM (PiwSw)

225 Does Wisconsin still allow any pissant to walk down the street during a PROTEST with a rifle dangling at ready? Loser should have just let Gaige Grosskreutz shoot him! Fucking creepy MAGAT had it coming, he had already murdered 2 peaceful protestors.
Posted by: Intercepted DU Transmissions brought by the Intrepid AoS Liaison at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (JCZqz)

Man, these people are really dumb and insane
Posted by: Hatari somewhere on Ventura Highway at April 05, 2024 03:49 PM (NtVYv)

In some ways, I pity these Lefties. They are in an insulated bubble in which they are lied to all day, every day. They don't have God in their lives, so they are materialists utterly terrified of death.

Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at April 05, 2024 03:55 PM (pJWtt)

226 Ashley Judd, TNG

https://tinyurl.com/2bkr48wk
Posted by: Aetius451AD
.......

Cute. Is she the one with the puffy scamper?

Posted by: wth at April 05, 2024 03:55 PM (v0R5T)

227 I own two Kindles and I never use them - in fact I despise them; my plan for them is to give to my arch enemies.
Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (k1/QX)

=====

I have a Kindle. One of the things I like about it is I can look up a definition of a word I don't know or translate a phrase.
Posted by: Jordan61

I use my phone or PC for that and then scribble the definition in my book. I even have a notebook full of words and definitions discovered by reading.

Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:55 PM (k1/QX)

228
>>If they don't get him off the street he's likely to murder again. He loves to murder and craves attention. He has a lot in common with George Zimmerman.

Posted by: Intercepted DU Transmissions

----------------

Well, yes. he does.

Posted by: Gentlemen, this is junta manifest at April 05, 2024 03:55 PM (t11Fv)

229 I'm addicted to andycanuck. And Lizzy.

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:53 PM (4VBfN)

Hide your bunnies.

Posted by: Dan Gallagher at April 05, 2024 03:55 PM (Zz0t1)

230 Would frequent trips to a webpage's comments section be considered 'addicted' and 'mentally ill'?

Asking for a friend.

(starts obsessively pushing 'F5')

Posted by: Puddleglum, cheer up for the worst is yet to come at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (sAmhv)

231 How many kids are traumatized by the anthropogenic global warming hysteria?

Posted by: mr tmz at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (rJ48h)

232 Then what's the benefit of dating her? What is the man getting in exchange? Why bother if you're not getting her attention and engagement? If I'm on a date and I'm second to her cell phone, she might want to go out on another date with me, but what would make me want to go out on another date with her?

-

Women are beginning to make men question this entire thing overall. Unless there's a religious component, what is one single advantage to a man in getting married these days when women give their sex away for free?

What does a man get from the state approved contract other than risk?

Posted by: Moron Robbie at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (6Gcwb)

233 PS - Ace, I don't think it's just kids who have been made more mentally ill by social media and phones...and I include both genders...

Posted by: Nova Local at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (exHjb)

234 I own two Kindles and I never use them - in fact I despise them; my plan for them is to give to my arch enemies.
Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (k1/QX)

I like the paper whites because I can make the font really big for my crappy eyes.
Posted by: banana Dream

I got nothing for that. That is a win.

Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (k1/QX)

235 Looks like every one of the 99 cent stores are closing.

Best economy ever, and no inflation.
Posted by: Thomas Paine

Combination of Bidenomics and Gavinomics.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (FVME7)

236 PS - Ace, I don't think it's just kids who have been made more mentally ill by social media and phones...and I include both genders...
Posted by: Nova Local

Which two genders?

Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:57 PM (k1/QX)

237 I would add one more factor I think figures into all this: the modern trend that makes being a victim fashionable.

Posted by: Elric Blade at April 05, 2024 03:09 PM

In the Chris Williamson podcast discussion with Freya India, she talks about how Gen-Z girls are proud of being on anti-depressants and other drugs. And there's now a trend for them to brag about what prescription drugs they are on by putting them in their social media bios and even their dating site bios. And they use phrases like "[X drug] is for hot girls" "[Y drug] is for sexy girls", etc.

Why Are Gen Z Girls Suffering So Much? - Freya India

YouTube: https://bit.ly/4aI0d2v

Posted by: Clyde Shelton at April 05, 2024 03:57 PM (UKWFA)

238 This got me so many complaints. What if my mom calls? etc. The Dean called me in to his office.
I resigned at the end of the semester.
--
For what?
It could be an emergency, they'll whine.
And how in the f can you do anything about it? You're a minimum of 30 to an hour away. There's literally nothing you can do.
If it's a real emergency, 911 will be there before you.
100% of everything else can safely wait.
Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 05, 2024 03:37 PM

This was the complaint of parents (my friends and acquaintances) in an upper-class district. One of their kids had been bullied repeatedly via phone, yet they couldn't comprehend that limiting access would be a big deterrent. AND they wouldn't need multiple check-ins to see if he were feeling anxious or threatened.

Posted by: NaughtyPine at April 05, 2024 03:57 PM (fxCK2)

239 Silly.
Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 03:54 PM (DRSnL)

Listen you

Posted by: ... at April 05, 2024 03:57 PM (4VBfN)

240 Rittenhouse shot 3 antifa pedophiles, right?

And Kyle is the one they want off the streets?!?

Posted by: Lizzy at April 05, 2024 03:58 PM (Hkcdp)

241 Cooling off out thar.

And WINDY !

Posted by: JT at April 05, 2024 03:58 PM (T4tVD)

242 I use my phone or PC for that and then scribble the definition in my book. I even have a notebook full of words and definitions discovered by reading.
Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:55 PM (k1/QX)

=====

I mostly read in bed and don't have a PC handy. My phone is usually on my nightstand, but I keep it out of reach so I'll actually get my ass out of bed in the morning instead of hitting snooze 10 times.

Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 03:58 PM (DRSnL)

243 Anybody remember Ashley doing that cheerleader scene in her undies?
Posted by: eleven at April 05, 2024 03:43 PM (iziT

Dario Franchitti was a lucky man. For a while, anyway.

Posted by: spindrift at April 05, 2024 03:58 PM (OguvZ)

244 "I didn't know about X."
"We posted it on Facebook!"

Yeah, there are a couple of conventions I have to follow Facebook for. One of them claims to be open to alternative means of getting information out, and occasionally even sets up a mailing list/MeWe account/whatever, which the organizers use for one or two days and then ignore.

I missed getting a hotel room at LibertyCon because of that; and could easily have missed signing up for events at the North Texas RPG Convention had I not started watching it on Facebook regularly.

Every once in a while I also browse through my Facebook feed when I go to look at con info. There is far more stuff in my feed from groups I haven’t signed up for and from advertisements than from friends and groups I have signed up for. When it does show me something from a friend it often turns out to be some post from a week or two ago that everyone else has moved on from.

Without going directly to a person or group’s profile, Facebook is even more worthless nowadays than it’s ever been.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at April 05, 2024 03:58 PM (EXyHK)

245 One of the appeals of the internet is being able to say whatever one wants

-
Not "B L A Z E R."
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? at April 05, 2024 03:47 PM (FVME7)

It was quite the accomplishment to get banned AT THE CODE LEVEL. To literally have code in Minx 0.8beta to keep you from posting.

Posted by: G'rump928(c) at April 05, 2024 03:58 PM (aD39U)

246 I use the Amazon cloud reader site a lot. Bring it up on the computer, big fonts.

Posted by: Martini Farmer at April 05, 2024 03:58 PM (Q4IgG)

247 Women are beginning to make men question this entire thing overall. Unless there's a religious component, what is one single advantage to a man in getting married these days when women give their sex away for free?

What does a man get from the state approved contract other than risk?
Posted by: Moron Robbie at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (6Gcwb)
++++
The same answer: the possibility of sex. Whether dating or marriage.

Young women are more promiscuous than ever, but the majority of men are invisible to them, and the more online they are the worse it is. If you're a top man - say 8-10 on the "10" scale - you can get it from any and all and keep a harem. If you're below a 7, forget about it. You're largely invisible and any opportunity is an opportunity you *must* take.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 03:59 PM (HnUIn)

248 Women are beginning to make men question this entire thing overall. Unless there's a religious component, what is one single advantage to a man in getting married these days when women give their sex away for free?

What does a man get from the state approved contract other than risk?
Posted by: Moron Robbie at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (6Gcwb)

I see you haven't noticed young people are having way less sex than prior decades. More women are not giving it for free. More men just don't care enough to "pay." We've dropped from 50% a few decades ago, and 39% 5 years ago ago to JUST 30% of teens now reporting EVER having sex.

Posted by: Nova Local at April 05, 2024 03:59 PM (exHjb)

249 I use my phone or PC for that and then scribble the definition in my book. I even have a notebook full of words and definitions discovered by reading.
Posted by: lost in space

---
Me used to do same. (sorry, me keyboard lost letter between h and j th s morn. so hard to type.)

Me st ll have notebook from 30 years ago. past 10 years though me use computer and words are on bookmark. that system sucks and me th nk ng that me change back and copy all bookmarks onto notebook aga n.

Posted by: Gentlemen, this is junta manifest at April 05, 2024 03:59 PM (t11Fv)

250 hiya

Posted by: JT at April 05, 2024 03:59 PM (T4tVD)

251 Thankfully I am old enough that I remember when Facebook was TheFacebook.com and it was restricted to those with a .edu email address, which I had since I was in college at the time.

It was a novelty and a new way for some people to get laid, but it kinda just got old for me. I'm not a person who lives his life for other people so I never understood posting a personal highlight reel online for the rest of the world to see, as if my life is somehow THAT interesting.

At some point around 2010 or so I was like "why am I posting on here? This isn't a good use of my time and I don't care what all these other jokers are posting, either." So I just stopped using it. Never started with any of the more insidious dopamine-hit socials like Twitter or God forbid, TikTok.

TikTok is blocked on my home firewall. That shit will not enter my home.

Posted by: ballistic at April 05, 2024 03:59 PM (oqH4h)

252 It's odd to realize how much farther and faster we've gone in the Dead Internet just over the last couple of years

Posted by: Moron Robbie at April 05, 2024 03:59 PM (6Gcwb)

253 Well, yes. he does.
Posted by: Gentlemen, this is junta manifest at April 05, 2024 03:55 PM (t11Fv)

Indeed.

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 04:00 PM (di6C2)

254 I use my phone or PC for that and then scribble the definition in my book. I even have a notebook full of words and definitions discovered by reading.
Posted by: lost in space

---
Me used to do same. (sorry, me keyboard lost letter between h and j th s morn. so hard to type.)

Me st ll have notebook from 30 years ago. past 10 years though me use computer and words are on bookmark. that system sucks and me th nk ng that me change back and copy all bookmarks onto notebook aga n.
Posted by: Gentlemen, this is junta manifest

I nominate this comment for the Comment of the Week Award.

Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 04:00 PM (k1/QX)

255 Best thing about my Kindle is I no longer trip over a stack of books in the dark when I go to pee.

Posted by: wth at April 05, 2024 04:00 PM (v0R5T)

256 Hide your bunnies.
Posted by: Dan Gallagher
--------
LOL

Posted by: andycanuck (vtyCZ) at April 05, 2024 04:00 PM (vtyCZ)

257 PS - Ace, I don't think it's just kids who have been made more mentally ill by social media and phones...and I include both genders...
Posted by: Nova Local at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (exHjb)

=====

Exactly! See me @ #3.

Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 04:01 PM (DRSnL)

258 I mostly read in bed and don't have a PC handy. My phone is usually on my nightstand, but I keep it out of reach so I'll actually get my ass out of bed in the morning instead of hitting snooze 10 times.
Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024

***
Just as in the landline days, my phone stays in the kitchen, plugged in and charged to 100%, where it belongs. When I have to get up, I turn on the bedside light, or reach for the LED flashlight I keep there.

Posted by: Your Friendly Neighborhood Proctologist at April 05, 2024 04:01 PM (J2vNu)

259 Thankfully I am old enough that I remember when Facebook was TheFacebook.com and it was restricted to those with a .edu email address, which I had since I was in college at the time. ....
Posted by: ballistic at April 05, 2024 03:59 PM (oqH4h)
++++
I strongly suspect that you are one year older than me.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 04:01 PM (HnUIn)

260 How many kids are traumatized by the anthropogenic global warming hysteria?
Posted by: mr tmz

I grew up in the shadow of the Cuban missle crisis. I was convinced we'd soon all end as radioactive ash. If I'd known my fears were exaggerated, I'd have led a different life. Probably better and happier.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? at April 05, 2024 04:01 PM (FVME7)

261 Women are beginning to make men question this entire thing overall. Unless there's a religious component, what is one single advantage to a man in getting married these days when women give their sex away for free?

What does a man get from the state approved contract other than risk?
Posted by: Moron Robbie at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (6Gcwb)

While there's always exceptions, children generally do much better in a nuclear family. No stable father-figure in the home tends to equal a troubled childhood that leads to a troubled adulthood. Sex between married couples has a unitive aspect besides procreation.

Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer at April 05, 2024 04:02 PM (pJWtt)

262 >>> This was the complaint of parents (my friends and acquaintances) in an upper-class district. One of their kids had been bullied repeatedly via phone, yet they couldn't comprehend that limiting access would be a big deterrent. AND they wouldn't need multiple check-ins to see if he were feeling anxious or threatened.
Posted by: NaughtyPine at April 05, 2024 03:57 PM (fxCK2)

The thing that bothers me the most about it all is that modern civilization, the same one that invented cell phones, got on without any issue while not having cell phones. I didn't have one for most of my life, didn't get one until the later 00's, and I feel like newer generations would be horrified of that. It just seems so ridiculous.

Posted by: banana Dream at April 05, 2024 04:02 PM (Y6IkP)

263 In the Chris Williamson podcast discussion with Freya India, she talks about how Gen-Z girls are proud of being on anti-depressants and other drugs.

When I was in HS, kids bragged about how little sleep they had the night before. I've no idea why. They weren't doing it to brag they were studying. They weren't doing it to brag they were out partying. It was weird.

"I only got four hours sleep last night!"
"Damn, I got five and I'm dead tired."

Posted by: bonhomme at April 05, 2024 04:02 PM (eyxn4)

264 I remember playing the first doom on the lan connection between dorm rooms. About '96 they put three computers in one of the rooms they converted to a 'lab' and we all found porn in about 45 seconds.

Posted by: Aetius451AD at April 05, 2024 04:03 PM (di6C2)

265 NOOD gainzzz

Posted by: Jordan61 at April 05, 2024 04:03 PM (DRSnL)

266 231 How many kids are traumatized by the anthropogenic global warming hysteria?
--------
It was a long time ago but I recall conservative Aussie newspaper editor, Tim Blair, reporting on a young girl there killing herself over CAGW because she knew it was too late already to save the planet and we were all as good as dead.

Posted by: andycanuck (vtyCZ) at April 05, 2024 04:04 PM (vtyCZ)

267 I did used to use Facebook, when I was in college. My freshman year, it was restricted to a few big schools, and mine was one of them. My sophomore year, it opened to anyone with a ".EDU" address. I transferred that year, but by then it didn't matter.

It was wild watching what happened. The student union bulletin board died. Asking for phone numbers died. Being told about a party ended. Everything moved to Facebook, wholesale, virtually overnight.

It was no longer, "which dorm are you in" or "what's your phone number," it was "add me on Facebook." Want to find out about a party? Better be on Facebook.

It was extremely fast. It spread like wildfire and displaced everything over about an 8-week period during the first semester of my sophomore year. My freshman year it was less like that because Facebook was *really* new, but it had more or less gotten there by the end of the spring semester.

Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!) at April 05, 2024 04:04 PM (HnUIn)

268 I've commented here before on how effeminiate Gen Z boys are to a large extent. "Gen Z looks like it closes the fridge door with their hip" is a joke I've seen more than once. We criticize masculinity, and celebrate homosexuality, and we have a generation of confused boys.

Posted by: brak at April 05, 2024 03:23 PM

That started all the way back in the 1990s I think when American culture pushed the idea that any boy or young man who was being masculine or too active should be diagnosed as having ADD or ADHD and drugged into submission. Eventually that morphed into the "toxic masculinity" movement. Then there was the Pound Me Too movement declaring all men as sexual predators and rapists.

American culture has been working to destroy men and masculinity for the past 30-40 years. And now with Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha growing up knowing nothing other than "men = bad", we are seeing the consequences.

Posted by: Clyde Shelton at April 05, 2024 04:05 PM (UKWFA)

269 I grew up in the shadow of the Cuban missle crisis. I was convinced we'd soon all end as radioactive ash. If I'd known my fears were exaggerated, I'd have led a different life. Probably better and happier.
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? at April 05, 2024

***
I was in grammar school then, and remember literally nothing from that October. Mom told me years later she had stockpiled some water and food under the table in the kitchen, which always had a tablecloth draped over it so what was under there was not immediately visible. But I never watched network "news" then, any more than I do now. So I wasn't nervous at all. (In my defense, I was nine.)

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at April 05, 2024 04:05 PM (J2vNu)

270 see you haven't noticed young people are having way less sex than prior decades. More women are not giving it for free. More men just don't care enough to "pay." We've dropped from 50% a few decades ago, and 39% 5 years ago ago to JUST 30% of teens now reporting EVER having sex.
Posted by: Nova Local

-

Paretto (sp?) at work.

Same percentage of chicks are giving it out, but only the top 20% of guys are the objects of their affection. Average local guys are competing with hunks all around the area, state, and nation.

Posted by: Moron Robbie at April 05, 2024 04:07 PM (6Gcwb)

271 What’s interesting is that Gen Z has a lot of effeminate, confused boys, but it also has some truly based kids who are not afraid of rebelling against all that woke crap. The lift, they eat well, they read Greek philosophy and appreciate human beauty (both genders). Some are even embracing traditional religion. Will not be blackpilled.

They’re not conservative but they sure a H$ll aren’t Lefties.

Posted by: Lizzy at April 05, 2024 04:08 PM (Hkcdp)

272 The people who grew up making cardboard robots and then went on to political science degrees are now plotting replacing the fossil fuel modern world with energy sources based on the same cardboard robot understanding of how things actually work. We need common sense carboard laws.

Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 04:08 PM (k1/QX)

273 234 I own two Kindles and I never use them - in fact I despise them; my plan for them is to give to my arch enemies.
Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:50 PM (k1/QX)

I like the paper whites because I can make the font really big for my crappy eyes.
Posted by: banana Dream

I got nothing for that. That is a win.

Posted by: lost in space at April 05, 2024 03:56 PM (k1/QX)

I you have a Kindle, Amazon has a free Kindle program for PCs and Macs. I use it to read many Kindle history books, so I can expand the maps by taking a screenshot and opening them in a photo viewer.

Posted by: Gref at April 05, 2024 04:09 PM (5fDan)

274 While there's always exceptions, children generally do much better in a nuclear family. No stable father-figure in the home tends to equal a troubled childhood that leads to a troubled adulthood. Sex between married couples has a unitive aspect besides procreation.
Posted by: Retired Buckeye Cop is now an engineer

-

Sort of makes my point in a way.

If 50%+ of marriages have been ending in divorce, the daughters have learned that "leave and take half of his stuff" is a perfectly acceptable method of existing.

The guy has no incentive unless there's a religious element.

Posted by: Moron Robbie - If this is how Georgia hires attorneys, imagine how they manage elections at April 05, 2024 04:10 PM (6TLQp)

275 My brother, who has a PhD in history, teaches history at a private school in Dallas. He's said that kids dispute things with him all the time that they just looked up five minutes previously on the internet because it contradicts something that he, a published historian, has taught them.

---

Activists have been putting up fake history for a while now. But there is also some fake history in our old text books too. Look at how amazing the democrats are represented in the text books, FDR in particular. Without the internet you wouldn't now that democrats ARE the Confederates, ARE the KKK, FDR interned Japanese Americans, George Wallace is a democrat

Posted by: Lemmiwinks at April 05, 2024 04:14 PM (2kdiJ)

276 Activists have been putting up fake history for a while now. But there is also some fake history in our old text books too. Look at how amazing the democrats are represented in the text books, FDR in particular. Without the internet you wouldn't now that democrats ARE the Confederates, ARE the KKK, FDR interned Japanese Americans, George Wallace is a democrat
Posted by: Lemmiwinks

Parties flipped!

Not sure when because there is a direct D party line from KKK Byrd to Obama.

Posted by: Itinerant Alley Butcher at April 05, 2024 04:35 PM (cOq4q)

277 Participation trophies didn't begin until mid Millennials. Even early Millennials - the ones that had Motorola Razors - were fairly well adjusted. This all really started around 2000.

Posted by: Little Larry Sellers at April 05, 2024 04:52 PM (zdYK9)

278 The real benefit of the Kindle is it doesn’t hurt that much when you drop it on your face while reading in bed.
Posted by: sniffybigtoe at April 05, 2024 03:52 PM (JTwsP)

And you can get 50 books for a buck and keep them all with you. Old pubic domain stuff is great.

Posted by: Oldcat at April 05, 2024 05:04 PM (eoQWY)

279 Activists have been putting up fake history for a while now. But there is also some fake history in our old text books too. Look at how amazing the democrats are represented in the text books, FDR in particular. Without the internet you wouldn't now that democrats ARE the Confederates, ARE the KKK, FDR interned Japanese Americans, George Wallace is a democrat
Posted by: Lemmiwinks

Parties flipped!

Not sure when because there is a direct D party line from KKK Byrd to Obama.
Posted by: Itinerant Alley Butcher at April 05, 2024 04:35 PM (cOq4q)

you missed out on Woodrow Wilson who blocked blacks from US Government Civil Service jobs.

Posted by: Oldcat at April 05, 2024 05:05 PM (eoQWY)

280 I’m tired of people (especially childless people) telling me I’m a helicopter parent because I don’t want my kid kidnapped from the streets (made unsafe by the policies of both sides).

This is not the world the Boomers grew up in. Especially with this mass invasion of illegals from nations where the men like very young girls.

Screw you all with your “helicopter parenting” slur. The reality is Greatest Generation AND Baby Boomer parents were being negligent parents letting their kids leave the house in the morning and come back at dusk. Neither of them wanted their kids in their hair, just like the parents now who let devices raise their kids. Y'all just tell yourselves pretty lies that since those kids got vitamin D while being ignored, they were better off.

Not to mention the fact that all these kids who were supposedly raised the “right way” made the sh*thole world were living in now.

Take the rose colored glasses off, rip that log out of your eye, repent and kneel before Lord Jesus Christ. This nation will continue to rot, deservedly so, if you fools follow Trump to compromise on child sacrifice. There is no compromise with evil.

Posted by: Marge1977 at April 05, 2024 06:17 PM (PGVsH)

281 The left, 1980s, to kids: “you will all die in a nuclear holocaust”
The left, 1990s to present, to kids: “you will all die of global change/climate warming”

Same as it ever was.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at April 05, 2024 09:47 PM (QCSQH)

282 They are one good EMP away from complete and total ignorance.

“If an EMP happens, we, and all people our age, will take over the world without firing a shot” - me, in a group text to my friends.

We are all in our 40s. I guess that makes us Gen X. (I hate such labels.). But people our age remember the world before computers. Hence my comments.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at April 05, 2024 09:53 PM (QCSQH)

283 I was in grammar school then, and remember literally nothing from that October. Mom told me years later she had stockpiled some water and food under the table in the kitchen, which always had a tablecloth draped over it so what was under there was not immediately visible. But I never watched network "news" then, any more than I do now. So I wasn't nervous at all. (In my defense, I was nine.)
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at April 05, 2024 04:05 PM (J2vNu)

When I was nine, before a NEO inspection at the quarters my family was living at in Germany, I read the NEO papers. We were to be sent to New York and were to be given x amount of dollars to live on for the time being while war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was being waged. I remember thinking: how much of New York could we see before it all goes nuclear?

The more things change…

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at April 05, 2024 10:11 PM (QCSQH)

284 >>>the role that persistent negative rumination plays in depression

Nicely put.

Posted by: m at April 06, 2024 10:39 AM (o3SCB)

285 The actual road:

https://tinyurl.com/Intothenever

Posted by: banana Dream at April 08, 2024 10:59 AM (Y6IkP)

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