<story><title>Dad takes son to Mongolia to get him off his phone</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50830944</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nugget</author><text>As soon as I finished this article I immediately thought of a thread from last week, &amp;quot;Focus has become more valuable than IQ&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=21906727&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=21906727&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Watching energetic young kids run around, I can see how tempting it is to give them an interactive device which consumes their attention and makes them easier to handle.  But phones seem designed to encourage the shortest possible attention spans and rabid multi-tasking, the opposite of deep focus.  So what do you do?  Is it as simple as banning phones, if you&amp;#x27;re willing to give them the needed attention?  What about friends&amp;#x27; phones and the Internet in general?  What if they fall in love with web programming at the age of 8?  You want them to be familiar with technology and ideally to be able to drift between multi-tasking and deep focus.  I haven&amp;#x27;t read much on how to achieve this from a practical parenting perspective, though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nstart</author><text>As much as I am wary of being negative towards children&amp;#x27;s behaviours that don&amp;#x27;t match my own, focus related criticism is something that I feel is really valid. I&amp;#x27;ve watched children below the age of 13 Snapchat and watched any number of children aged 2 and above using YouTube. The same behavior shows up where before a video has finished, the children are reaching out to tap to another one. I try not to judge but I do cringe when I see 2 year olds spending 1 minute on a baby rhymes video, then reaching forward, tapping to another one while the first still has 15 minutes to go, and then doing that again and again and again. The older children swiping without fully watching even a Snapchat video is equally bothersome for me. I&amp;#x27;m seeing swipes and taps happen in the range of 2 to 3 seconds.&lt;p&gt;This behaviour is not unique to children though. I watch adults at the hospital using Facebook and it&amp;#x27;s the same. It&amp;#x27;s almost like they just want to swipe rather than look at the content for real.&lt;p&gt;I have no idea what the long term effects of this behaviour are. Perhaps it&amp;#x27;s nothing and I&amp;#x27;m fretting over it needlessly. But I&amp;#x27;ve experienced it myself and it took behaviour similar to rehab to come out of it and be able to slowly enjoy content again. And it always feels easy to slip back into. It&amp;#x27;s terrifying.</text></comment>
<story><title>Dad takes son to Mongolia to get him off his phone</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50830944</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nugget</author><text>As soon as I finished this article I immediately thought of a thread from last week, &amp;quot;Focus has become more valuable than IQ&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=21906727&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=21906727&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Watching energetic young kids run around, I can see how tempting it is to give them an interactive device which consumes their attention and makes them easier to handle.  But phones seem designed to encourage the shortest possible attention spans and rabid multi-tasking, the opposite of deep focus.  So what do you do?  Is it as simple as banning phones, if you&amp;#x27;re willing to give them the needed attention?  What about friends&amp;#x27; phones and the Internet in general?  What if they fall in love with web programming at the age of 8?  You want them to be familiar with technology and ideally to be able to drift between multi-tasking and deep focus.  I haven&amp;#x27;t read much on how to achieve this from a practical parenting perspective, though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>buran77</author><text>Unfortunately this also applies to adults. My parents grew with little more than a radio and a handful of books yet today they&amp;#x27;re tied into their phones and tablets, constantly checking for FB updates or the latest (irrelevant) news.</text></comment>