I recently skimmed Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. In case you are not familiar with him, this guy sucks up to Jordan “Benis” Peterson, is a “public intellectual”, and part of the “intellectual dark web”, whatever that is. It also happens that he is a secular Jew but I am not sure if this has anything to do with anything.
Haidt makes the claim that excessive smartphone usage is really bad for women but also bad for boys, yet not nearly to the same degree. Thus, we need to do something, Marge Simpson style. As he does not have a quantitative background, he is prone to using numbers and charts in order to bolster his claims, not quite realizing that all his numbers are at best pseudo-scientific. The entire book could probably be condensed into an article, which is ironic, considering that it started as an article.
I do not want to bash Jonathan Haidt too much, but I do want to point out one example of him being either incredibly deceitful or hopelessly naive. In his data, he noticed that certain trends, such as children spending less time outside, already began in the 1990s, when hardly any children had access to the Internet. He muses that something must have happened then but he cannot quite put his finger on it. His main explanation is that there was a “breakdown of solidarity among parents”, meaning that you could no longer trust other adults, and parents, in the neighborhood to watch out for your children.
Well, why might there have been a sudden and inexplicable breakdown of solidarity? I wonder if it could be tied to an increase in all this wonderful “diversity” we have been hearing so much about. From one of the most hypocritical countries in the world, Sweden, we know that the indigenous population packs up and moves if more than a trace amount of diversity appears in the neighborhood, leading to staggering rates of segregation.
Obviously, people trust people who look like them. The same is true for all the people our hostile elites let into our countries so eagerly. These people also flock to where their coethnics already live, leading to some Canadian cities being essentially Indian enclaves or Turks crowding out Germans from entire districts in Berlin, Germany. Race is not just “skin deep”. Instead, people are a bit weary if there are people moving into the neighborhood who have customs quite unlike the locals, for instance parking their cars on the sidewalk or dumping their trash bags on a street corner.
To me, it is not a mystery that people in the West started to feel less comfortable about letting their kids play outside without adult supervision in the 1990s. Instead, it is puzzling to me why a hyper-educated secular Jew like Jonathan Haidt not even mentions this hypothesis in order to ridicule it, which used to be a standard approach of the left when dealing with common-sense objections. They used to speak of “simplistic explanations for complex problems”, insinuating that people who made such statements just were not smart enough to dream up a nonsensical explanation that is seemingly plausible. Well, Haidt cannot do that either so he just speaks of a “mystery”. Sometimes, it really helps to just open your eyes and take in all the marvels of modernity. This will teach you a lot about society and even observations that puzzle leading public intellectuals will suddenly be trivial to explain.
There is also an interesting counter-hypothesis to Haidt’s claims about the addictiveness of smartphones and social media: what if people spend more time online because they feel less safe in the real world? Thus, even if we did not have smartphones and social media, kids would most likely prefer to spend time in the safety of their homes. Maybe someone who sees nothing but his gated community and works at a university with extensive campus security perceives the world a bit differently. Anyone else who is familiar with the typical larger Western city, however, is surely not very enthusiastic about sending their kids outside to play. Instead of playing soccer with the neighborhood kids, chances are much higher that children would get robbed, beaten up, or, in the case of girls, get sexually harassed if not raped by gangs of immigrant youths. This is the reality. Jonathan Haidt is seemingly not aware that it exists.
“what if people spend more time online because they feel less safe in the real world?”
*Raises hand* Yup, yup! That was definitely me when I was a kid! In the past, my overbearing mom has blamed video games and the computer for me not turning out exactly the way she wanted me to.
She’s not entirely wrong, but she is so far away from the full picture that its not even funny. I am myself am an advocate of not introducing smartphones, the internet, video games (except maybe Edutainment), etc. to children too soon, but I’ve also stated that I believe all of this has to be upheld by the foundation of optimal homeschooling or raised in a country with the ideal educational system. without that in place, everything either falls apart or runs on very shaky waters. (at best)
If you took away the internet and video games from little me, I would have just turned into an even worse recluse but with none of the knowledge and insight I accumulated from all my years in the internet. Heck, maybe I would have hated my life so much that without the video games and the computer to pacify me, I might well have turned into a stereotypical rebellious teenager and began hanging out with the wrong crowd outside of school.
A lot of my classmates joined fraternities BECAUSE they wanted protection from being bullied, alongside status/macho props (which is an ironic because this resulted in them having to get INTO fights/gang brawls as per orders of the fraternity. whenever I fought, I did so only in defense of myself and my status, and not because I was ordered to for the benefit of some gang.)
The virtual world was definitely a cope for young me, but it was probably the one thing that pacified me enough to avoid getting mixed up in all that shit. My dad for years was glad that I didn’t grow up as a rebellious troublemaking teen.
“A lot of my classmates joined fraternities BECAUSE they wanted protection from being bullied”
And once again, why I’m such a big advocate of learning how to fight. Don’t get me wrong, MMA certainly isn’t going to let you defeat an entire gang by yourself. But youngsters who know how to fight and have enough physical fitness to reliably beat feet when need be, will feel much less need to surrender themselves for the protection of a gang/fraternity. Especially if they make good friends in their MMA class.
I was fortunate to have grown as a naturally big guy (for my country’s standards), so even though I had no training and certainly wasn’t skilled at fighting in hindsight, I had enough “firepower” and “street smarts” to protect myself. I never put myself in a position to be ganged up on without consequence.
Interestingly, the very last fight I ever got into was against the most feared bully of my high school, who might well have been a leader of the fraternity of our high school. When he started bullying me, I concocted a plan on how to deal with him, which involved attacking him (He probably would have flattened me in a fair fight despite me having a size advantage, so I didn’t fight fair.) inside the school in the presence of school authorities, both to put a time limit in the fight (lessen the chances of either of us getting seriously injured) AND prevent his friends/fraternity from getting involved.
I not only managed to beat him, and did so in a spectacular manner (I was prepared for a very harsh tussle even with a preemptive advantage on my part, but I won without a scratch.), but everything worked out in my favor. His reputation as a major troublemaker, as I predicted, very much worked against him when our teachers dealt with us. It also gave him and his frat boys a face-saving exit, they can just say they didn’t go after me in revenge because they are scared of getting expelled instead of admitting they are afraid of me after what I did. I got a lot of applause from my classmates, and even teachers, for what I did.
So ironically in the end, I ended up graduating high school with more “Street Cred” because of what I pulled more than a lot of my classmates who joined and fought for their fraternity for that purpose.
What I did was risky, but to this day, I am very much proud of it, and I feel if there is any alternative universe out there where I didn’t muster up the courage to do what I did, I’d be a complete emotional wreck/cripple. maybe even victimized/bullied during my own high school graduation.
I am familiar with Haidt, I have read the article, but not the book, so I am not a 100% sure if this data about kids stopping going outside in the 90s is US specific or includes Europe too.
I am going to defend Haidt here, his saying he does not know is what a good scientist should say in absence of solid data to back up his guesses. He may not be confident in the reasons why childrearing practices changed in the late 80s and early 90s, although other people have written about it.
The fact that kids stopped going out in the 90s has little to do with diversity and more with percieved crime trends. And I say percieved, because at least in the US crime has had several upswings and downswings during the 20th century, and these do not correlate with changes in childrearing practices as far as we can tell.
The widespread popularization of TV news from the late 1970s onwards started making its effect felt in the 1980s and early 1990s. Even though crime stats objectively started going down after the end of the 1980s crack wars and streets became safer, parents still became more paranoid. I think the trend started with the moral panic of the satanic daycare sexual abuse in the 1980s, which was widely televised.
Child abduction and murders were and are still incredible rare, but TV news made it look as if it were ubiquitous. IIRC 1980s was also when the missing children pics started appearing on the milk cartons, giving you a daily reminder with every breakfast. All this happened long before the forced diversity and the exponential increase of mass migration.
This is not to say that crime wise western societies have not gone to shit in recent years, but I dont see that as being the cause of the phenomenon Haidt describes. It may very well be a factor now. Also, wrinting from South America, we have a slightly different perspective down here. Crime has been much higher here for much longer without the diversity.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s.
We played outdoors all day long with the neighbourhood kids. There were us younger groups and then the older brothers who looked after us and let us astray in equal measure. The fathers worked and the mothers and grandmothers of the neighbourhood acted as CCTV cameras at their front doors and in the front gardens and doing their “ power walks” during the day. Watching out for what the kids were doing. It was like they had a rotating system of neighbourhood watch going on.
They were the guardians of a sort that comm’ed with each other , admonishing the children when naughty and course correcting behaviour as necessary. So things didn’t get too wild in the neighbourhood,
The biggest problem now is the mothers are all working as well as the fathers imo. And as one family kept their kids indoors at some point , that trend followed to the other families along with the uptake of working mums . No kids play on the street these days. There are no guardians available. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs tbh. Kids should be outside exploring and learning life lessons. Hence why newer generations are clueless and have high anxiety about everything.
I think the main fear is of paedophiles / rings preying on kids outdoors now. Because of the internet and SM enabling them to target kids and seduce them much more effectively.
I’m my mind there could be “paid guardians” employed and paid for by govt funding. To watch over children and let them out to play in the neighbourhood streets safely again.
That could be a solution. Like the “ guardian angels” of New York. But on a bigger scale with background checks and some certification or something a simple ‘working with childrens check ‘ (police check) and an interview would suffice. they would link in with the grandparents of the neighbourhoods. To keep an eye on everything.
And of course – take the fucking smart phones off kids. Because they shouldn’t have access to that shit below 16 years of age IMO! 🙅🏻♂️
Fuck that shit. They don’t need them. Teach them how to socialise IRL effectively and teach them some actual street-smarts and to use their brains.
That thing with the paedophiles is nonsense as well, the stranger danger trope is highly misleading. Women act like there is a pedo behind every bush ready to snatch unsupervised kids, but the sad truth is that child sexual abuse almost never involves strangers. Abusers are typically known to the child, they are their carers, family members, neighbors, etc…
And yes, smartphones and social media should be +18 at least
And of course ban and shut down all the “free – porn” websites. That’s a disgrace kids can access that filth. But that goes without saying really… it’s crazy the world we live in now for kids. And I don’t hear any politician saying anything about that or taking a big stand against it.
Did Kamala have a policy for that? If she had maybe she’da got in the presidency..
I don’t recall Trump mentioning it.
He’s more focused on “ protecting womens health” and outlawing abortions hey…
Cos that’s what America needs .. more mouths to feed. 🙄
“The entire book could probably be condensed into an article, which is ironic, considering that it started as an article.”
Side note: I get the sense that a lot of informal types of books that get sold could be condensed to like 25 pages, but then no one would buy it because the value proposition appears lower.
“Side note: I get the sense that a lot of informal types of books that get sold could be condensed to like 25 pages, but then no one would buy it because the value proposition appears lower.”
That’s the problem with the “More is Always Better” mindset that most uninformed people seem to have. Unnecessarily long school hours, 9-5 (or more) working hours, fluff in video games (the stupid fetch quests in FF7: Remake for example), fluff in books as you’ve mentioned, etc.
In fact, I remember back in elementary and high school when we often had essays where we had to talk about whatever subject in 500 or 1000+ words. Just why? shouldn’t it be the other way around? Why are we instead being trained to be as longwinded as possible about making our point instead of being efficient about it? Having gone through this shit is probably why I’m so good at rambling. (sorry guys!!)
@Cheeky
“Cos that’s what America needs .. more mouths to feed. ”
I concur. I wish the government would address all those more pressing issues I’ve described above first before this. All they’re going to do is force those unfortunate babies into enduring the shit stained system and raised by shit parents. Being swallowed would have been an act of mercy in comparison.
Yeah, the filler content in games argument was what persuaded me to try out shmups. I got really good quickly at a game called Drainus that I could no death clear on arcade normal mode. It requires you to two loop the game, with the second loop ramping up the difficulty obviously, though it has Gradius-style powerups that carry over to your next playthrough. The hardest difficulty takes away your ability to exploit shields and is pretty brutal.
Congratulations on not only getting a 1CC but a 1LC! Drainus looks pretty good, but I have not played it myself. If you like horizontal shooters, check out Natsuki Chronicles on Steam. I like it a lot. This game gets discounted heavily during sales events. A better game is probably Deathsmiles, which is also on Steam. My favorite horizontal shmup is Progear, though, which is only available via emulation.