
Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction - jseliger
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html?hp
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wazoox
_> Sean’s favorite medium is video games; he plays for four hours after school
and twice that on weekends._

I don't get it. My son would certainly do the same if given the choice, but he
is allowed to play 2 hours a day on week-end, and 0 minutes the rest of the
week. He's not supposed to be in command. And he hasn't got a mobile phone,
either, because he simply doesn't need it. This is good parenting 101, setting
limits.

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tomjen3
To an extend yes, but how old is your son? At some point children needs to be
handed more responsibility (and it will _always_ be before you think they are
ready for it), because while they will make mistakes it is better that they
make these mistakes while you are there to help them clean up the mess and the
mess isn't too big.

But more importantly than that one day they will be old enough that you can no
longer set the limits for what they should do, which they will not be able to
handle unless they have had their freedom handed to them gradually.

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wazoox
_> To an extend yes, but how old is your son?_

13\. He's getting responsible enough; we don't need to tell him what's
reasonable and what isn't, so the rules are now subject to interpretation,
which wasn't the case at 9 :)

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RK
_Allison Miller sends and receives 27,000 texts a month, carrying on multiple
text conversations at a time._

Assuming that means she sends 27k/2 = 13,500 SMS per month, and she sleeps 8
hours a day, that means in a 30 day month (480 waking hours), she's sending 1
message every other minute while awake. 13,500/480 ~= 28.1 per hour.

I guess that counts as distraction.

~~~
derefr
Or, some minutes she sends more, and some fewer. I can imagine two people
fitting an exchange like the following into a single minute:

    
    
        -> "hey"
        <- "what"
        -> "movie?"
        <- "sure"
        <- "when"
        -> "8"
        <- "ok"

~~~
RK
_Or, some minutes she sends more, and some fewer._

Yes, this is the beauty of statistics.

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ScottBurson
Sweet! There's a video in case I don't want to take the time to read a whole
article about shortened attention spans.

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iwr
Reading is 2-3 times faster than listening.

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count
Assuming you can read well.

~~~
iwr
We can assume literacy on these boards :)

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muhfuhkuh
What I find odd is that most of the kids profiled have really good grades. I
mean, Vishal's friend has straight A's (even though he wishes to do better on
SATs) and yet he's on facebook all the time? And, Allison the texter has only
3 B's on her report card?

And, the main character study, Vishal, won't finish his Summer take-home book,
but he'll slave away for two hours perfecting a few seconds of his demo reel
for college? That's not being lazy or digitally distracted; to me, it's
academic arbitrage. And, he's still making A's and B's. What's more, if that
article is at all correct, Vishal was taking AP courses _in his junior year_.
In my day (yes, back when we trudged up hill in 10 feet of snow to and from
school) AP was only for seniors.

These kids are way ahead of the game. I'd venture a guess and say they aren't
really representative of most kids. Take this article out of silicon valley
and put it smack dab in the middle of the US fruited plains to see how
digitally distracted the mainstream youth has become and if it really does a
detriment.

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pgebhard
I agree. I don't see how one could claim Vishal is unable to focus on a task
at hand when he is able to devote hours to perfecting his filmmaking.

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lachyg
The NYTimes content signup wall for international viewers is really starting
to annoy me.

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Locke1689
It doesn't bug me at all. I've been logged in with the same cookies for months
now and haven't seen it since the very beginning.

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RobPfeifer
This article seems like bull shit. I mean, have you been to Woodside?

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albertsun
No. Have you? Why don't you share?

