A bit of a digression, but when is it appropriate to introduce kids to a computer at all. Isn't 2 years old too young? There are ways to entertain creativity and abstract thinking at that age that involve more physical activity. It does seem like they will spend the rest of the time attached to monitors regardless of what profession they choose. I always wanted to delay that as much as possible.
Although, I am an avid terminal user and former emacs fanboy, I don't understand the appeal of a command line in this case. It seems, that it is rather a shortcoming of UI that you have to switch to cli to achieve a maximum productivity in development work. There is Logo, there is Scratch, there are some other nice apps for iPads + guided access to teach kids about underlying of computing. CLI seems like a very opinionated way of doing things, rather than exposing underlying structure.
"Screen time use may have detrimental effects on children’s health and development [5–15]. Studies of young children report associations between screen time and cognitive development outcomes, such as short-term memory skills, academic achievement in reading and math, and language development [5, 11, 14]. High levels of screen time in early childhood also appear to negatively impact academic and social outcomes in the long-term [9]. Furthermore, while evidence for an association between screen time and BMI among preschool children was inconclusive [16], several studies have reported positive associations later in childhood [3, 6, 17, 18]. "
There is more research if one is willing to look. Obviously context matters and screen time of HN parent teaching kid how to code and explore is different than screen time of a child that is given an ipad and left alone.
But
You are probably familiar with how child brain develops. And screen provide tiny amount and much much less complex information than the real world no matter how complicated software you run.
Interacting with 3d objects, reacting to micro expressions and complex emotions of people gives much richer environment for brain to find patterns in and learn. You can give 6 year old kid who never had screen access a computer and it will figure it out faster than you think it could. But if the same 6-10 year old never played any sports or had interactions with other children - that's going to take a while, possibly even never fully getting there.
Of course balance is always the answer but it's worth noting that difference.
My kids have grown up with screens, amidst all the screen time fear porn, and seem to be doing fine. My oldest is 10, he does well in school and likes to read paper books and does karate and dabbles with sports. And plays a metric ton of video games.
Maybe there will be all sorts of terrible long term effects that won’t manifest for years. But my kids are clearly doing much better than I did in every measurable way.
I grew up a neurotic mess in a broken home. My examples of fatherhood were 80s sitcoms. I’m just making it all up as I go along. Not going to fret about screens until I see a problem.
> And screen provide tiny amount and much much less complex information than the real world no matter how complicated software you run.
That may be true in general, but I think what matters is that a screen provides much larger, richer and more complex information and experience than just about any other individual object in the physical world. Nothing in nature (with the possible exception of faces) comes within an order of magnitude to the "experience density" of a smartphone running even relatively trivial software like a picture gallery or a scrollable list of songs. I wouldn't discount the impact of this on a brain of a 1-3 y.o. It's a superstimulus.
> That may be true in general, but I think what matters is that a screen provides much larger, richer and more complex information and experience than just about any other individual object in the physical world
Children pay attention to very small details. When they are looking at a plant with a spiderweb, they are looking at individual leaves, how the web connects to the plant, the spider, its movement, anything in the web, the colors, how it reacts to the wind, not to mention the 3d-ness of it all. Then they touch things and see how they react, training their fingers, hands, arms and rest of the body to make the exact movement they want, coordinating it with what the eyes see and what the skin feels.
A photo gallery in a smartphone is extremely dull in comparison, and that's why they can learn to use it immediately.
> Children pay attention to very small details. (...)
They do. All your examples are correct, for the first few encounters. Then they bucket these things as "leaves", "spiderwebs", etc. and stop caring. Complex does not mean interesting (see also my parallel reply here: [0]).
> A photo gallery in a smartphone is extremely dull in comparison
No, it isn't. Not only the photos in the gallery are likely to be complex, with each showing a slice of the real world, they're also likely to be varied - each one may show a completely different situation, scene, context. And they're unpredictable, surprising.
The one constant of the natural world is that what you see now is roughly the same as what you saw a second ago, or a minute ago. There's only so much of the world around you, it's persistent, and except in emergency situations, stable. Kids learn to tune it out very quickly[1]. Meanwhile, smartphones are those magic rectangles filled with varied, unpredictable, immediate reactions to input.
> and that's why they can learn to use it immediately.
Kids are smart and much more persistent than adults at figuring things out, meanwhile UX designers are assuming users are drooling idiots and designing interfaces that are more trivial than those on Fischer Price toys. It's a perfect storm, so no surprise little kids figure smartphones out very quickly.
> There's only so much of the world around you, it's persistent, and except in emergency situations, stable. Kids learn to tune it out very quickly
Kids know very little about the world, so everything is new, amazing and umpredictable. Some rock or stairs to jump from, throwing a paper plane a thousand times, playing the sand building something for hours.
With pictures, at least when they are young, they usually want to see the same ones over and over again, and mostly of people they know, but I guess there are kids that like a bit more variety.
> A photo gallery in a smartphone is extremely dull in comparison, and that's why they can learn to use it immediately.
I think the reason they can learn to use it immediately is that it's super-simple to learn - tap and swipe, and not very many of those gestures at that. Phone interfaces now are designed to be used by /anyone/ - and that means keeping them simple enough that it can be learned quickly by a child.
Nothing in nature (with the possible exception of faces) comes within an order of magnitude to the "experience density"
I got one of the first digital cameras of anyone that I knew. It was early enough that people were kind of shocked to see it.
One of the things that I noticed very early on is that JPG files that were generated from pictures outside were significantly larger than JPG files that were generated from pictures inside. At the time I took this to mean that the outdoor pictures were much less compressible because the level of detail in the natural world is much larger than anything indoors. It's a world of subtle details that we literally evolved to sense.
I just don't think looking at pictures on a screen can compare to the experience of physically going to places.
Physical world may be a fractal of complexity, and nature doubly so, but one of the thing a human brain is good at - and arguably one of its most important function - is filtering all that out.
This is the reason I chose to write "experience density" and not "complexity" in my previous comment. A tree may be infinitely complex, and the first tree you see is profoundly interesting. But the tenth tree you see is just a tree. Soon after, you don't even notice them anymore, except in situations when you have a reason to care, or you see a tree that is very different from all the trees you usually see.
You're correct on the JPG size difference between indoor and outdoor shots. But just because something is too complex to compress well, doesn't mean it's interesting.
I understand what you are seeing and can see your point.
I think it brings up another point though. Does interesting have intrinsic value?
I believe the 20th century was a time period where the western world had to learn to live in a world with infinite sugar, fat and salt. Our nature is to gorge on these naturally rare resources when we find them.
I believe the 21st century will force humans to live in a world of infinite information. Again, our nature is to gorge ourselves on things we find interesting. Is watching YouTube videos you’re interested in any better than eating sugar? Time will tell but my initial reaction is that it is just as unhealthy.
For example, I love history. YouTube will happily feed me an infinite array of little factoids about history. I’ve seen so many that I will then see the same one come up on my feed again and think, “ooh that sounds interesting” and then I remember watching it previously and can’t remember a single thing about it. Was it really that interesting then? Or was I just wasting time mindlessly binge watching videos?
Nah, I don't think "interesting" has intrinsic value. The kind of "interesting" / "surprising" quality that I claim smartphones deliver better than anything in natural world, is a kind of cognitive equivalent to sugar. For the most of the history of our species, sugar was a good proxy for "nutritious", and in the same way, sensory input being interesting/surprising was a good proxy for "important for survival". Today, both sugar and interesting experiences are superstimuli - they tend to be found in most abundance in things of little value.
"Screen time use may have detrimental effects on children’s health and development" to me associates with having witnessed (too many times) parents hand their child a tablet with some simple game or a video in order to free themselves for a conversation or another activity, rather than a parent teaching their kid programming. I wonder whether it's not the 'screen' itself, but the type of activity normally accompanying it. (And the sacrificed of other required complex activities, like you mentioned)
Just like it's really challenging to bring a second language to the level of the mother tongue, and even then one mostly dreams in the native language (citation needed), I wonder if learning programming from young age will open one to a more "fluent" understanding.
I don't think it's controversial to suggest that the world of "computers" today doesn't look much like the 80s and 90s. Back then, the most child-friendly computing device one could hope to be exposed to was probably a speak-and-spell (or a fiendishly difficult NES cartridge). If the kids back then -- now tech workers -- wanted to mess around with a computer, it was more effortful to engage with and presented even greater challenge once one was actually comfortable with it.
I had the advantage of a few family members already involved with computers, but I remember learning about colour depth with some ridiculous dinosaur game, about bootdisks so I could play Commander Keen, and how not to install X-Wing (don't ask). The act of using the computer was inextricable from learning about how it worked, and that knowledge could be immediately reemployed in more interesting use. I know a west-coast-style guy who works in a brewery and lives for Ultimate Frisbee, but he also understands scripting better than any non-tech person I know because in his youth he was seriously into Diablo 2 and its bot scene.
Contrast this to the modern iPad. No edges to cut yourself on, no seams to pry up, no tacit understanding gained, and the big draw being the meta-TV of YouTube...
And, importantly, none of those early experiences you had were psychologically engineered to manipulate you into spending as much time on the screen as possible.
This is such a massively important point. Back when I was growing up (Apple ][ / 8086 PC) the software was basically written by one or two people.
Not entire teams of people scheming addictive manipulation with slot-machine payout rates tuned to precise dopamine chemistries and social networking pressures using models that have been tuned and proven to be frighteningly effective over two decades of experimentation.
I played a machine zone game, thankfully only lost about 60 bucks on that crap between me and my GF, and by then I became wise to what they were doing, and shocked on all the levels of manipulation they were using for what is essentially a nag game that strongly rewards bullying for those people that pay to win.
The history of these games goes back at least to the mid2000s (anyone remember Civony/Evony and "Come Play My Lord" Ads? Those are basically the same game as Machine Zone). They've been honing the various mechanisms (false advertising about what the game entails, grooming whale players, addictive gameplay) using mechanics from civilization, tamagochi, and whatever else works.
Children's mobile games show a shocking amount of manipulative mechanics for the "free with ads" tier which for 90% of people (you know, the ones that aren't rich) will be what they use.
Then again, this is the world they will be living in, so exposure to the manipulation may be good for them in limited doses, but "adult supervision" is more needed than ever.
Indeed, they were something better! They induced my spending as much time on the screen as possible, because the machine would do anything I could figure out how to tell it to do. Something as rule-laden and consequential (or so it seemed to single-digit-aged me) as the physical world itself, except I was allowed to do pretty much anything because no one understood what I was doing!
Modernity presents the superstimuli parent is referring to but removes all the interesting paths into the machine, the better to shear us. If the gameplay was reading O'Reilly books and the lootboxes were full of code snippets, it'd be one thing, but that's not what's happening.
Who are you talking about when you say “ an entire economy that sprung out of people who were exposed to computers at an early age”? I genuinely have no idea what economy you’re referring to. Certainly not software development, as the original computer programmers (the people that built the things that later inspired children when exposed to computers in the home) were exposed well before computers were small enough to be in the home. Do you mean influencers? Streamers? Neither of those are considered generally to be positive for the social development of children.
I’m assuming they’re referring to the people who grew up in the 80s and maybe even pre-internet 90s that then participated in the tech scene over the past 15 years. I also don’t they’re talking about kids now but rather then.
I don’t know if that’s true either. Exposure to computing in the 80s or pre-internet 90s as a child would be a small minority of households enjoying the existing tooling, manuals, guides, games, and interfaces built by innovators before their time. It makes no sense to argue an economy was built on these households in particular, especially when tech is so much more diverse than whatever minority of families were able to afford spending a ton of money on in-home computing devices in a set of time.
Why is it dubious? Dropping out of school and social awkwardness are not uncommon stereotypes among computer enthusiasts. Having these properties doesn’t necessarily correlate with negative economic outcomes…
There is [1] - a study where MRI was used to measure the myelination in young children's brains, comparing high screen time and low screen time kids. It was a small study and relied on self-reporting by parents, but there's a physically measurable affect.
> when is it appropriate to introduce kids to a computer at all.
A question that I've been struggling with since my first was born a decade and a half ago.
I've decided on this: The computer is a tool. As soon as they could use a hammer, or a computer, or a match safely - and demonstrate that they know - then they could use them. My two daughters never got the hammer, my son got it at 5. And he knows why we call it the "thumb seeker".
The "computer" tool I allow for _creating_ content at about 3 to 5, I don't remember exactly. They were all able to create content (or write in VIM, yes, VIM) by 5 I think. And they were able to stop when I tell them to... So I generally didn't have to tell them to.
The "computer" tool I allow for _consuming_ content started at about 8 or 9 I think for the girls, when they demonstrated - and continue to demonstrate - that they can occupy themselves without the computer and that they can stop when asked. The stopping when asked was already reinforced in them from the _creation_ of content. My son, unfortunately, is allowed by his mother to consume far too much content and he has not developed the limits that his older sisters have. And I'm having a very hard time getting him away from it, especially as she encourages it!
But sometimes I can persuade him with the hammer, some new nails, and some nice scraps of planks! He's already built a cage for the rabbit (with his father's help of course).
> They were all able to create content (or write in VIM, yes, VIM) by 5 I think.
Wow. I spy a future life of them writing high-karma answers in vim.stackexchange.com. Much like playing a musical instrument, I feel that the only way to really master that tool is to starting using it insanely young. It might cause a hell of a shock when they go to school and get indoctrinated^H taught painfully and slowly how to edit "a document" using Microsoft Word, however...
Side story: my dad was a professional pilot, and if you replace "vim" with "IFR flight and approach planning", you get something of a similar ancedote with my life. He had an early flight simulation tool or two on a Macintosh LC, with a throttle quadrant, rudder, and yoke he built himself. I have many happy memories of trying to practice, e.g. carrier landings in an F/16 simulator, as a really quite small child. For my sixth birthday he took me up in a Piper Cherokee with a friend who was also a flight instructor, and I held straight and level flight and the long final. The colleague of his, sitting next to me, couldn't believe what the hell he was looking at. A lot of these things are just learnt fine motor skills and if you have a compliant and, above all, interested child, they pick them up very quickly. (My classmates didn't believe me – I had to wait until the photos he took on a film SLR were developed!)
I don't think there's a bad time to introduce kids to a computer, that seems harmless.
What is bad is when the computer/tablet/phone becomes a pacifier that parents park their kids in front of. Better to give them actual toys that they will grow out of, rather than a screen that they won't.
> Better to give them actual toys that they will grow out of, rather than a screen that they won't.
I know this is true, but why is it true? We have a 4 month old, she gets very nearly zero screen time, but on the rare occasion I have her on my lap for a few minutes during a meeting, playing a game, or video chatting with overseas family/friends, she is enamored and, yes, pacified. What precisely is the harm in that vs "a toy they will grow out of?"
I will also add I had what I have long considered it a privilege that I had been introduced to computers at a very young age, as well as the internet (for better or (probably mostly?) worse).
I have a 2 year old who gets very little screen time. When he does get some, his facial expression looks like that of someone on drugs. He stops paying attention to anything else, he barely answers to anything, he only reacts to complain if an ad interrupts the video, or to move his head or complain if you're between him and the screen.
Intuitively, that doesn't look healthy to me, I don't need to look at data to know that. Especially because it's not a reaction that he has to anything else (no other thing, even things he likes a lot, sucks his attention that much... breastfeeding gets close but even when breastfeeding he's less of a zombie than in front of a screen, he does play with things using his hand, foot, etc.) so it doesn't feel normal. And I find it very sad to see kids who spend hours a day in that state instead of interacting with the world, playing, etc.
At 4 months old it's not so obvious because they interact less in general and don't have a lot of obvious states beyond "crying" and "not crying", but check his reactions to the screen when she gets a little older and you will see.
So relaxed (or very activated)? Generally what people think of when they say "like they're on drugs" are just normal states that they disapprove of because it suits the narrative. In this case, the narrative is "screen time is bad". That means it is suitable to condemn it by making a parallel with something destructive, to make it feel like it has some association (which it neither physically nor mentally has been proven to have).
OTOH I noticed that kids < 10yrs tend to get overexcited or even slightly aggressive after watching TV. They're more likely to quarrel, if you have two or more.
Obviously this might also depend on what they're watching, but if it's a TV show and they get denied watching another episode it does resemble a drug addict not getting their next fix somehow. ;-)
We have some casual acquaintance we visited two or three times. Their then-4yo was constantly on an iPad on YouTube Kids, switching videos every 20 seconds. Just watching him was infuriating. You had rather innocent or mundane videos of e.g. model trains driving around, but before you could start to pay attention to any details or any kind of narrative, he'd switch to a video of kids in a swimming pool full of orbeez, then something Sesame-street-like. And they just let him keep doing that since he'd throw a tantrum if they take away the iPad. They have to let him watch that stuff at the table, otherwise he wouldn't eat. Fast forward to last year, he got into elementary school and was absolutely unable to pay attention to anything. Teachers made him see doctors, he's on medication now, but that was half a year ago so no idea how things are going today.
Now I'm sure someone will pull the "are we sure we got cause and effect right here?" card, but even if that kid had some kind of predisposition, nobody can tell me that just putting up with the kid's tantrums when he was still four (or whatever age he started at, this was just when I first saw this) and taking away the iPad, going outside more would not have significantly improved the outcome here.
The problems you described seem to me like they have nothing to do with screen time and everything to do with consistent, attentive parenting. We definitely agree that that is crucial.
Sure, it's not as simple as having one isolated reason, but would you expect the same outcome if you replaced the iPad by books and leave everything else the same? I'm having a hard time imagining this. Yes, it's multiple factors coming together, but nothing beats the destructive impact of too much TV/smartphone/tablet on little kids, except maybe severe abuse or actual drugs.
No it means that literally nothing else makes the kid behave this specific way. It's a catatonic state where the kids senses are clearly overwhelmed, they do not move at all(!!) and their responsiveness degrades to near zero. After screen time the otherwise normal kid starts to behave erratically, seems like they have the need to compensate with more movement for the monitoneless time.
If you try to talk about what they saw it becomes clear that they failed to process what they saw and multiple days and multiple hours of talking would be needed to wade through something as simple as half hour of David Attenborough animal documentary.
Wether enough scientific fact has been gathered to understand the inner workings and circumstances are irrevelant, the cognitive weight of TV exist as a matter of fact.
Now there are of course difference between TV and monitor and screen time. What causes the problems are TV like stuff - passive, movie-ish information. Drawing lines in paint or typing buttons to see them appear on notepad is definetly another thing - the information flow and actions there are controlled by the kid and there is another huge difference if the parent is there explaining. Not the monitor itself is the problem, but the absolutely overwhelming quantities of raw information which designed specifically to catch and hold an adults attention. Kids simply have no means to absorb or escape it.
On my experience kids over 4-6 years starts to absorb some of the information and kids over 8 can sit through a disney movie with sufferable consequences.
Wait, this does not match my experience at all. I don't allow my daughter to watch youtube or have a tablet, but she plays the nintendo switch.
She describes everything, she learns stuff, and even tell me about the game afterwards by herself (she is 3).
The major problem is that she does not realize when she is bored or tired. To be fair, that's a problem with many activities, but boredom with toys is way more evident (she would just step away), while with videogames she would just get incredibly demanding (I can't do this, I can't do that, this is scary, changes level, even though it's stuff she has already done).
She also chooses and replays the same levels to discover more (and she does!)
To further illustrate that point, would you say that someone who is deeply concentrated while reading a book or solving a puzzle looks like they're on drugs?
If the kid throws massive temper tamtrum when I want it to put off the book/puzzle and go eat dinner with family, absolutely yes. If the kid refuses to engage with others, mistreats siblings or other relatives when the activity ends, yes.
If the kid reads/solves and then behaves normally, then it is different.
If your child throws any kind of tantrum when you tell them to do something, regardless of activity, that is an indicator something isn't right in the core of how they were raised: Tantrums are bad behaviour and should never happen. That's entirely separate from what they are doing at the time, good behaviour (towards you) should be entirely independent of the environment.
Tantrums are a normal part of development. Too many might be a behavioral problem, but it is flatly not true and flies in the face of all childhood development studies to say they should never happen.
I have observed, as many other parents have as well, that if the kids spend too much time in front of the screen (> 20 minutes, give or take), they become resistant, moodier, and worse behaved. This is not true if we're playing a board game or having reading time. So, I think a bit of moderation is important.
Incidentally, since having kids, I've also noticed that I am short-tempered if I spend too much time in front of the screen, a good reminder to take a walk a few times during the day.
Our 3.5 YO doesn’t really have any device time (though she likes playing with a calculator, and typing on an neo alphasmart), and she absolutely loves reading. But we recently introduced nature documentaries (blue planet, planet earth). And yup! She throws little tantrums at the end. We’re all super engaged as we watch them together, and I think they’re a good supplement to her kid encyclopedias and stuff. The tantrum are less severe if I preface the viewing with, “when this is done, we’re going to turn it off and do x.” It helps to prepare her for what to expect, rather than be surprised by “no more!”
1.) Different activities and situations cause different behaviors.
2.) What you said is purely ridiculous. The "tamptrums should never happen" is wishful thinking. It is a goal to produce adult that don't throws tamptrums.
3.) Kids behavior is in fact heavily dependent on environment. Half of classroom management and child raising is literally all about that.
4.) Even many adults rage when gaming and after. Evan adults are irritable and annoyed after gaming.
Agreed, plus the personality matters. Some kids are more agrressive or tantrum prone than others, given the same environment. You can attempt to control it, but it's impossible to control and correct 100%. Kids have personalities!
> Tantrums are bad behaviour and should never happen
This is not true and is extremely unrealistic thinking.
Also: some traits of your children's personality form very young, regardless of your style of parenting. Your influence is strong of course, but some things are just due to the way your kid is wired. You can set an example, and be firm about bad behavior, but some shit is going to happen anyway, tantrums included, depending on the personality of your children.
That's unrealistic. Plenty adults would be annoyed by having to do a chore that interrupts what they are doing.
Yeah changing the diaper comes with a groan every time.
And to hell who said you get used to the smell. Second kid and I still breathe with my mouth during the diaper change.
I would not worry too much about this. I see this behaviour in my kid but also her mother and mothers mother. It's something that runs in the family. And her family didn't have TV or other media the last 50 years and they still all have the zombie trait.
Our family however grew up with TV from early age and we do not have the zombie trait.
> Screens are extremely addictive to kids. (Adults too, I suppose, but that's their own responsibility.)
No, wrong. What can be addictive is the content displayed by the screen and the eventual interaction that the kid have with this content.
Put a kid in front of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viOkh9al0xM (`This is the Train Driver's/engineers/operator/conductors view from the Bergen Line and the Famous Flåm Railway in Norway in Northern Europe.`), and start a 30s countdown: the kid will have left the screen before, guaranteed.
Wrong. My 2-year old loves videos of trains, both from this perspective and showing the trains themselves. She can last longer than 30 seconds, and is thrilled by them way longer than me (the videos are pretty, but I find trains boring).
The screen itself is addictive. Content can vary, but as long as it's not just a block color without sound or movement, many kids will find themselves glued to it.
> Wrong. My 2-year old loves videos of trains, both from this perspective and showing the trains themselves. She can last longer than 30 seconds, and is thrilled by them way longer than me (the videos are pretty, but I find trains boring).
My two 8/10y old boys won't. Great, there's two data point now, we can plot a trend!
> The screen itself is addictive.
Is a switched off screen addictive too?
If your answer is along 'of course not, I just said that content can vary, use your brain, fill in the gaps geez', then that was exactly my point to the GP: no, screen are not systematically addictive per-se, the addiction lies in the viewer's behavior when consuming a specific content.
You were generalizing, I showed you an instance were what you said didn't hold; and I know more cases. You bet that train videos were boring to kids and I proved you wrong in the general case.
> Is a switched off screen addictive too?
This question is absurd. A switched off screen is, for all intents and purposes, not a screen.
My argument is that my kid and many others are instantly attracted to screens as long as they show motion and sound, and that it doesn't have to be a children's cartoon or song.
Switched on screens remain powerful attractors for many children.
you: wrong, mine is, the screen itself is addictive.
me: no, screen are not systematically addictive per-se, the addiction lies in the viewer's behavior when consuming a specific content, or are switched off screens intrinsically addictive?
you: this is absurd, a switch off screen is not a screen, let me rephrase for you: switched on screens remain powerful attractors for many children
Next round is where we agree that, actually, its the content showed on a switched on screen that can or cannot trigger attraction for a child: yours is ok with trains, mines are not.
But I'll stop here, that was fun, but I've got some other things to handle.
Agreed, probably what kids find attractive varies from kid to kid.
I'm not saying it's negative. I usually bond with my daughter over things we watch together. It can be sometimes hard to unglue her from the screen, but I have some tactics that sometimes work (we don't watch TV or screens over dinner, so if she's hungry she has to turn it off. I can also convince her to turn it off if I go play with her, something that I also enjoy!).
Similar! We used to watch tv at lunch, but almost never now.
We do however one thing. She is allowed to get off the table when she wants, but if she does we take away her plate because she is done. We are a bit "elastic" on this because sometimes she gets down to grab something and goes back, or her brother is really distracting. However if she goes to the tv the plate is gone immediately (there is an informatory call before she reaches the tv "i see you are done with the food. Are you full?").
That has been working well. When she actually gets up she is done with food.
It is also a great signal to figure out when she is constipated. She would almost skip 1 or 2 meals, then eat a lot once she is done.
Yup. Just give them a tablet without any games and network connection, load it up with text, music or some (foreign) language phrasebook that you'd want them to learn. They'll get bored very quickly, but if they don't they learn something new. It's a win either way.
Yes, it will become exactly the same as any other educational toy. They play a bit and then stop.
And even if you put games there, games are not created equals. Some games make them happy, engaged and they stop playing them fairly easy. Other games makes them grumpy, angry and they will act out when you want them to end.
Not true in my experience. My 2-year old is addicted to the screen itself.
It can be videos of cartoons of course, but also videos of trains, trucks, animals, sometimes she finds a programming-related conference I'm watching interesting (less interesting than a cartoon, but interesting enough to pay attention).
I would argue that it is all about selection of what the kid watches/plays. The tablet playing documentary about history of taxes is 100% guaranteed to bore the kid.
My daughter (3 years old) plays on the Nintendo switch. I never even considered tablet games, as a parent I raise the bar for harder things so she learns. The games she play are Kirby Star Allies and Yoshi's crafted world.
She is not in trance like other parents described, she actually describes to me everything she does (which turns frustrating when you are focused). She also shuts the game down "after 1 level", when asked. Or immediately if necessary (we don't want to use that card, we want to respect her time).
I think there is a big difference in the type of videogame. She has the best hand-eye coordination of her class (games are played with a controller) and she developed concepts like "background vs foreground", as well as aiming and an enormous amount of other things.
That being said, after a certain amount of time, she will get unsettled. If she doesn't move away by herself, you have to remind her. What I think I see is "unrecognized boredom". She doesn't realize that yet, although she is getting better (I saw her pause and go do something else more than once lately).
Finally, I play videogames with her. That has been amazing so far, I'm glad we did.
All of this to say: toys gets boring way faster, but it's also easier to detect boredom.
Creative toys do help, that's basically why duplo/wooden train/magnets are the top 3.
I play with her and we have to buy new toys mainly because I get bored to play always with them (keep in mind that we talk about many, many sessions). Given that, yeah, I can see her getting bored faster. Videogames have way more content and variation.
Do remember that paper, glue and colors are very cheap and can create a lot of stuff though!
It is rather absurd to worry about impact of "screen". There is no difference between your baby being exposed to tablet and to TV playing in the background or any other device.
It does matter what the screen does and what plays on it. If you use it to chat with family or play youtube videos targeted at adults (like crafts or lectures), the kid will get bored quite quickly. If you put there teletubbies or kiddy game, the kid will watch for long.
If you pack tablet with only drawing software and selected kiddy games, you will have good experience. If you put there games addictive to kids or games that stresses them, you will have bad experience. If you put there too difficult games, the kid will have no use for it.
It really depends a lot on which software/games/activities you choose and how you setup house rules. And at this age, you have all the control.
Again, this is not my experience at all. The screen (interactive or just the TV) is a powerful attractor of my 2-year old and she will be glued to it almost regardless of the actual content.
I do agree a tablet and the TV are similar in this regard.
I wonder if it's because she hasn't seen the screen as often?
We grew with mine with a screen always on (work from home). We watch animes during lunch or as background when doing boring work. We play videogames, so more exposure.
Point is, unless there is relevant content, she won't look at the screen (3 years old).
We skip all the videos for kids (we do have occasional movies), but those videos with songs made me want to smash the screen, she just turns braindead.
I wonder if all it's needed is a parent observing behavior and evolution of behavior to determine each activity's health based on a kid-by-kid basis, rather than generalizing.
i made the mistake of giving my son a laptop at an early age so he could play some puzzle games while I work on my own laptop. Later on, his mother as part of pta of a private school handed out iphones as prizes to his class.
Now, we seldom have any conversations as he his immersed in his own world.
Handed out iphones as prizes??? That sounds crazy.
Also, you can change this behavior. It is crucial that you build a positive relationship with him and pull him out from the screen and into your life. Not sure how old your son is, but try setting aside a day or half a day where you both leave your phones and spend the time talking or doing an activity together.
As a parent, the pacification thing is very useful sometimes! Toys don't pacify as reliably and if you are in a situation where you need or want to pay attention to other adults undisturbed but your child is there, then I totally understand the usage of screens in that way. Obviously you can try and arrange your life to avoid such situations but they do crop up. Work meetings with an ill child at home spring to mind!
On the other hand, I did find that the more time you give your child playing with toys uninterrupted, the more their attention span for that improves.
Whilst I would generally agree, in the days of simultaneously juggling working and childcare, devices like tablets can be a game changer. When configured correctly with educational apps and sensible time restrictions, it is great to see my toddler learn things for himself.
The world has changed both with our roles are parents and the environment which we exist in. My 2 year old would quite happily be able to order food via an unavoidable touch screen interface at a fast food restaurant!
> Isn't 2 years old too young? There are ways to entertain creativity and abstract thinking at that age that involve more physical activity.
Perhaps, though I’m not sure if there is a specific or well-defined reasonable minimum age. I was typing code blocks from the Commodore 64 user manual into the machine itself while learning to read — literally while still young enough to enjoy the The Very Hungry Caterpillar picture book — and yet this did not exclude the desire to also play with the various physical toys my parents got me.
I'm not sure there's a "too young" or "too old". To children computers are basically magic anyway.
Our child used to see me and his mother working/playing and was always interested. We'd launch OpenOffice, maximize the window, select a huge font, and let him mash the keys from the age of 2+.
He'd amuse himself making characters appear, and we let him do this whenever he asked to "work on the puter". When he was three/four he'd start typing his name, our names, and the few words he knew how to spell. At some point he started using backspace/delete appropriately, and he seems to have learned that the mouse can be used to move the typing-point once the screen is full.
I've no specific plans to force more on him, but when he gets to five I might explain a bit more what is happening, or show him some simple online flash-like games. (Obviously not flash these days ..)
Ten minutes of typing/playing though? After a few hours outdoors every day isn't gonna do any harm though.
I was three years old when I "discovered" mspaint. I apparently taught myself English by looking at the operating system dialogues. And in the next couple of years came across some Visual Basic code and managed to set up Visual Studio after grabbing a pirated copy. Used that for years and never upgraded because couldn't get anything else to work.
I don't know how I jumped the gap between reading text and writing code.
I have very distinct memories from an early age of trying having to need to compare two numbers, no problem. And then comparing three, no problem. Comparing four, no problem either. Soon realizing one can compare any number of numbers but there was an issue comparing (and ultimately sorting) an arbitrary number of numbers. Which lead me to come up with my own silly bubblesort. During that time I remember pondering about concepts like code generation using code etc.
Just sharing some memories I can remember. My point is, probably never too early to introduce your children to computing. As long as they have an intellectual attitude towards it.
FWIW, I learned to read in order to load the Thomas The Tank Engine game from the CD drive via MS-DOS - and I went and spent most of my time on music and literature until I got into my tech in my late twenties.
I think it's fine providing they're getting all the other fun creative IRL stuff too :)
Upvoted for: It does seem like they will spend the rest of the time attached to monitors regardless of what profession they choose. I always wanted to delay that as much as possible.
Yes. Yes, do delay that as much as possible. This is a good thing. Strive to keep your kids off the screen. While acknowledging that screens now own the world.
Speaking personally, I let my son use my old iTablet starting at 3.5 years. I gave him his own tablet a few months before his recent 6th birthday. Good decision? Bad decision? We shall see when his generation assumes the Mantle of Control.
Regardless, I do not judge parents for their decisions with respect to this. It is a brave new world, and we are pioneers.
as long as the kids make haptic primary experiences and get a feeling of physical reality of the world, visual depth (screens may show 3d images but never are to the eye) and social contact with present people, it may be fine. Those people e.g. can be aware what's happening behind the screen – a person inside cannot. And it cannot help a hand either.
But I find the first contact to a computer through a shell awesome. Text is what constitutes a usable computer, zeroes and ones don't yet.
No matter what age, maybe after primary school may be fully sufficient.
I don't think it makes sense to introduce them to computing till they know how to read. Otherwise they are just using an ipad, which brings almost nothing to brain development, and that explains why very young children can immediately master the UI.
Try to do that with a computer. The UI of a computer is nowhere refined as a tablet. Even game consoles have UIs that presume reading. The switch has that super complex setup-controller-screen every time you boot it.
Also, the child gets bored fast if nothing happens, which is obviously ok, peaked what could learn.
If the world they live in is dominated by computers, maybe it is a good thing they get exposed to it from the beginning to get maximum proficiency. It might give them an advantage in life by making them more adapted to their world.
We have two boys, 5 years old and 4 years old. We witnessed nearly immediate, negative changes in mood and behavior, with long-term aftershocks (on the range of days) whenever we would let them play games on an iPad. There is a similar effect from watching TV (or treating the iPad as just a TV), but it takes much longer to set in, so a typical session doesn't seem to have as strong of an effect. On the other hand, I let my 5-year-old play Nintendo 2DS games and it doesn't seem to have more of an effect than TV. So there is something unique about the interactive tablet that makes it particularly bad.
The behavior looks a lot like stimulant withdrawal. There's an extreme irritability, tiredness, and seeking and pleading behavior. They look exactly like I do when I get crazy notions of quitting caffeine.
I think it's the combination of interactivity and direct interface. Having objects respond to your touch feels like magic. It's sort of like the delight of going to a petting zoo that never has to get turned off. And the critters on the screen don't just sit there when you yell "move, pony, move!" They actually move at your command, diligently and flawlessly.
When we consider that regular toddler misbehavior and temper tantrums stem from their inability to communicate effectively to be able to express their feelings and desires and have agency in the world, the sudden appearance of an object like the iPad, providing them perfect agency, must feel like an amazing power trip. The path to addiction seems pretty clear.
I think where standard video games don't have quite the same effect is the hand-eye coordination aspect. There's a disconnect between the input modality and the action on the screen. There is a metaphor that has to be learned. There are precise timings that have to be muscle-memorized to keep Mario from falling down a whole. It's difficult and that's why the game is fun, mastering the difficulty is rewarding. But it also slows the child down and keeps them from mainlining the dopamine hit.
So my wife and I have a basic rule of thumb: if we ourselves wouldn't sit down to consume a particular piece of media--be it because it's too boring or simplistic or patronizing for our adult tastes--that's a pretty good signal that it's probably designed to be addictive to toddlers. We then don't let the kids have it. They get to have Friday Night Movie (which we would do ourselves) and Saturday Morning Cartoons (which is just Netflix, because we don't have broadcast TV). During the week, we play card games like Uno, or do arts and crafts, for entertainment. As long as we're doing that, they don't even bring TV, video games, iPads, etc. up.
Which is why it pisses me off so much that our kindergarten gave the kids Google Chrome Tablets with educational "games" for "homework". The first 3 months, the kids' homework was basic stuff like "draw a picture of your favorite thing" or "practice reading for 10 minutes". But this month, the entire schedule is "do this one app on the tablet". And in less than a week, we're already seeing the impact. Our oldest doesn't want to do anything but use his school-provided tablet. AAARGH! It makes me so angry I could just do something really stupid, like running for school board.
Interesting,I use the same metric roughly: if it's boring for me, it shouldn't be used by my daughter. However with console games it's kinda different. I played yoshi's world with her, but I'm a gamer, so long term the game turns too easy (this is also valid for most of Nintendo games, i've been playing those for ages). However for my daughter the game is hard. Some parts even too hard.
All of this to say, you should account for the "experience factor". If the game is too easy for you with 0 experience, that's a bad signal, however if it's too easy because you have experience, the experience factor must be excluded. A stupid example could be making paper planes. I get bored fast nowdays, but that's because I built and colored millions of them as kids.
My daughter struggles to fold the paper properly though, so that activity can't count as "boring".
Same goes for movies. If I would rewatch the movie, she can watch it too. Beauty of this is that I can pleasantly sit close to her when she watches it and I don't want to pull my eyeballs off.
Well, I don’t know. I don’t want to pass on my preferences and likings to my kids. I’d like them to figure out things from a clean slate without my opinionated views on top of it, good or bad.
On the other hand, children have to learn things from somewhere or someone. If not me, maybe someone else e.g. a teacher at school. They probably won’t learn things unless we expose several different things to them.
So it’s a conflict between the desire of having the kid learn things which I believe are good or give them the space and time to figure things out and arrive on a conclusion on their own. Maybe CLI, GUI with mouse or touch screens are all not the ideal interfaces at all, maybe the kid will imagine something else altogether, who knows. Why limit their perspective into a box?
> Maybe CLI, GUI with mouse or touch screens are all not the ideal interfaces at all, maybe the kid will imagine something else altogether, who knows. Why limit their perspective into a box?
Being exposed to old/existing ideas doesn’t stop people from coming up with new or improved ideas - quite the contrary, it serves as a potential inspiration upon which one can create a better product. That’s not putting perspectives in a box, that’s just how innovation works - you build off of and improve other people’s work in an incremental fashion.
I think contrary to what some people think, limited tools spark creativity to extract the maximum out of them. I remember when I learned DOS in a computer class, I absolutely loved creating simple scripts to do some task. Then they introduced us to Windows and basically the entire class groaned and moaned - some people actually complained to the teacher that using the mouse was "cumbersome" :)
And on the other hand, limited tools spark the creativity to create something better. I've been learning kicad recently and it is damn hard to resist the urge to start a project to make a better tool..
"Well, I don’t know. I don’t want to pass on my preferences and likings to my kids. I’d like them to figure out things from a clean slate without my opinionated views on top of it, good or bad."
Actually I really would like my preferences to pass to my kids :) I have this view in my head of mountainbiking across the alps, as a family, cabin to cabin. Man that would make me happy.
Sure, if they don't like it, I'm the one out of luck. I already notice that my 9 y/o doesn't really like mtb-ing with me, he does with his mother. So somehow I may already be to pushy. It's confronting.
Also, I love computers (and almost every aspect about them), my wife thinks they take you out of the real life and envisions our kids as (sports) teachers or something in agriculture. Ah well, we'll see, let's give them lot's of love and some enthusiasm for certain subjects here an there and see what they choose...
> Maybe CLI, GUI with mouse or touch screens are all not the ideal interfaces at all, maybe the kid will imagine something else altogether, who knows. Why limit their perspective into a box?
Typical constructivist approach. As if a 2yo who can't speak, read or write will beat dozens of highly specialized researchers with access to funding on revolutionizing the field...
This is no more a preference than literacy. Kids need to know how to deal with computers and information, and your kids are lucky if you know how to code. Schools will take a bit longer before they figure out how this new literacy is almost as important as reading, writing, and math, but they get there soon.
There's not a single day that goes by without me thinking what could have happened if I learned more about computers from an earlier age. Please give your kids the opportunity that many (myself including) never had, otherwise they might end up growing up with quite a lot of regret.
If I got a computer and internet at younger age, I am not sure I would have finished school successfully.
Seems to me that the actual problem is internet, especially social networks, not just computer alone. Before internet, I could spend hours playing a computer game... but then the game was finished, and I turned off the computer and did something else.
Social networks and Youtube, they provide an endless stream of content; you are never finished with them. Even worse, social networks create the false sense of urgency... there is a huge difference between commenting on a new topic versus on a topic that is a few days old.
So my rules are roughly: computer - yes; youtube and social networks - no.
Agreed, there's a huge difference in learning computing as a consumer, or a producer. I think the best way is to teach kids to be a prosumer and learn producing software after consuming it.
A great example of this are games that are (relatively) easy to hack. Stuff like Minecraft or Roblox comes to mind.
Is it possible to play those games without ever having to make any of the levels or worlds? Yes, but the games heavily encourage you to actually make your own.
I believe it's not an either/or. Your opiniated views will percolate through everything you do and say, and your kids love and imitate you - at first. They will consume and absorb a good dose of your opinions and you can't avoid it. That's how I feel as a young parent.
What we can do is offer them a diversity of experiences and give them some space to choose their own path, but they need our opiniated views to make some of their own - eventually.
> Well, I don’t know. I don’t want to pass on my preferences and likings to my kids. I’d like them to figure out things from a clean slate without my opinionated views on top of it, good or bad.
I wouldn’t worry about that. Kids are wilfully independent individuals and while they will enjoy somethings simply because it is “mummy/daddy time” they will let you know when there is something they don’t like.
Here's an out of domain example that may help. I grew up with 60s music on the radio in my house because that's what my parents liked to listen to ("classic rock" according to the stations at the time). They never really forced me to listen with them, it was just playing in the house, and I enjoyed it. I started to find my own music tastes as I was exposed to more music and friends and eventually a car with a radio, and my tastes developed from there. But, at this very moment, I've got the SiriusXM 60s station on because it's a comforting way to start my day, and I'll eventually move it to the 90s, and then who knows as the day moves on. Maybe some Daft Punk when I really get coding.
Expose your kids to the things you like, but never limit them from exploring on their own. Yeah they'll take on your preferences for a bit because you like them, but as long as you're not limiting their choices, they'll find their own preferences.
I've thought long and hard about how to kind of insulate my kids from GUIs as they grow up. I'd love for them to view computers mostly as tools for organizing information and learning. I don't want them to see it as a means for entertainment—that will come for sure, but I'd like to delay that as long as possible. Better to let kids learn to play in the dirt outside than get stuck inside, IMO.
As a 5 year old, I remember getting into the BIOS and changing each and every setting to see what effect it had. For sure, I caused my parents a good deal of headache breaking the computer :)
I also played video games a lot, but basically didn't feel there was a distinction between tools or entertainment. It was all fun to me. And I played in the dirt at least as much as I played video games, though we did have a huge garden. I'm not sure, but maybe the games created these days are way more addicting that the old DOS games I played as a kid. I loved them, but not as much as going outside.
I tried some gw-basic and acquired very basic skills in DOS, but not speaking English and having no books or a teacher, I reached a plateau somehow and lost interest.
It took 20 years or so and then I got interested in programming again.
I think there's a natural curiosity in learning things as a kid (and still as an adult, just less so). But then, at some point, we need to overcome some obstacles and often need guidance, help and encouragement. At least that's how I experienced it.
In my experience learning things there is always a point where it is not fun' anymore and I need something 'external' to get me through, though nowadays I can make that push myself. The rewards after that point are very much worth it.
I've thought about this with my daughter since she will wonder what I am doing on my computer. I have to make the screen 'professional' looking so much so that it won't appeal to a child as a game, but more of a functional tool. I mainly use macos so I am constrained, but I was thinking of a TUI like screen or tmux. I've only a few more months until she is aware enough to start wondering.
This is really strange to me. Why does it have to look "professional" to avoid curiosity from the child, and what does a professional look entail vs video games if you're not literally playing video games? And what is the harm of it appealing to the child?
I think it was more that to make it appealing it would need to resemble what the parent was doing. I definitely do have a strong nostalgia for AutoCAD and related computer wizardry because of observing my father, and while I might have started with computer games, a non-trivial portion of my interest was that the game I played was a flight sim - and my father worked in aviation so I have photos as a toddler in pilot's seat :)
I feel like this is one of those things where they'll either gravitate towards it or not. Most of my early introductions to computing devices were just playing video games which wasn't exactly educational.
I'm sure if we start talking about it, there will be a bunch of people of a certain age that will wax lyrical about putting mouse drivers in the high memory area, testing changes to autoexec.bat to see what works, using EMM386, and a bunch of other stuff I have forgotten.
Just getting to the stage of playing games used to be a lot more educational than it is now, and I think there is something to that. If I had kids I would definitely try to recreate that experience for them somehow.
I didn't have to do any of that, I put the cartridge in the slot or clicked the icon on the desktop. Or I did but it came later when I was already really into games and wanted to putz with emulators or whatever.
Figuring out to how to load mouse, sound card and CD-ROM drivers while still having at least 605kB free base memory for launching SimCity was definitely a generational experience.
I'd agree with the top rated comment in the OG thread that the children are just enjoying spending time with dad. I recall my love of computing was sparked by my father, but it was mostly self-study. As echoed here love of any subject seems to require the child to gravitate to it personally.
Though the children should be what, 15-16 and 12-13 by now, it would be interesting to hear their perspective.
The inventors of the mouse, and Seymour Papert (logo, turtle) would applaud.
As a child, I used a light pen on a very early PDP machine, in the 60s and it was interesting how intuitive "point and click" can be (it had a cathode display, and a strobe line, and you could select points with a light sensitive pen, and the click was just mapped to some serial I/O. The pen read the x/y strobe timer, and knew where you were on the screen by when the light hit and its exterior knowledge of the screen refresh)
I really like the command line approach to 'start a program' and 'tell the computer what to do' and sometimes i teach my daughter to 'pipe' one program's output into another's input
She knows a bit of python (here is the log https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids) and wants to talk about programming for her school report and I thought it will be great to print some small programs (is_prime or something similar) to give to the kids to type on their own, but it is practially impossible to give code to another person so they can type it, unless I make a webpage where they have to do it.
Just imagine how much is needed to setup python3 on mac or windows, go to security settings to run unsigned programs, deal with paths, or install brew or whatever, there is no chance anyone can do that unsupervised.
We are now working on making commodore like experience computer for her with pizero2 and good mechanical keyboard and 7" display, with mini linux that just inits into an editor. F2 saves the code, F3 loads from the file, F5 runs the code, it has direct access to /dev/fb0 and it just draws on the screen on top of the editor.
She enjoyed making the 6x3 font, pixel by pixel so much..
I think modern platforms take, or are on the way to take, absolutely all agency from the user. From phones to game consoles to macbooks to cars, everything is just "get this approved app from the cloud" which gets disabled if you do something wrong or you dont want to update.
You can teach kids at any age almost anything and they do not bother if it is kind of interesting, but from what I have noted something that kids 2-5 year need half a day to learn, kids at 8-11 years need only 5 minutes or so. And they forget it if left at that, at the same pace. The key point is to choose the right moment when kids have interest and can learn it relatively fast, and make sure to repeat it somehow in non-boring ways. And all that I get usually wrong.
I will have to deal with this question soon. I am, at this point, really unsure about how to handle it.
I do not want to artificially limit my kid to technologies that are no longer really relevant, but I do agree that safeguarding attention is THE skill of the next century, simply because it will be scarce.
Like many here, my thinking is mainly driven by my own experiences:
I started quite early and even though it's not my field of study, I now have this innate "talent" to code and figure out technical problems. I struggle much less to learn tech things. I think it's like starting to play Piano early. I want my kid to learn this and have the confidence in their technical ability as I do. I always felt this gave me a leg up, although it may of course be illusory. In any case, it came through coding early.
However, even back then, I wanted to use the computer for fun. I didn't "try" to be productive. There was no internet, I had barely any books and only a lot of dev software, and no games. So I had to learn to make games myself. And lacking any tutorials or information, I needed to trial and error everything. Would I have done the same today? Or would I have just consumed if Steam or GOG is freely available. Or, even when coding, stackexchange is just a click away. Would I be similarly positive about early computing if I had those things? Who knows?
Obviously, hacking into a bare shell or IDE without any outside info is not how people use computers nowadays. Furthermore, the above reads like a parent trying to recreate his own life in the life of a child. The world is different, surely.
Gah, I don't know.
I suppose the consume vs. create dichtonomy mentioned elsewhere in this thread might be a useful rule.
The consume create dichotomy has worked for us. It’s interesting to see their reaction when I say ‘sure, you can use the iPad/computer, but no shows’
Sometimes it is whining and they go play outside or with toys because they don’t have the desire to use the screen for non-consumption, other times they play some games that have educational qualities or make digital art. Note: the TV is only for family movie night.
Mine are 8 and 10 and it's hard. They are playing a lot of Minecraft at the moment, and I feel that has really got them into the time of mindset that you describe as a child, making things incredible things out of redstone, more than the programming I have done with them. They do watch lots of videos about minecraft but it is those video that have inspired them to build things and try them.
In terms of programming, Scratch is the de facto way of introducing programming these days. It has its pros and cons, but has a lot going for it. Microbits are fun too.
Times are different though, and it is hard often to separate time spent creating vs time spent consuming.
> Obviously, hacking into a bare shell or IDE without any outside info is not how people use computers nowadays. Furthermore, the above reads like a parent trying to recreate his own life in the life of a child. The world is different, surely.
different for sure, most people use computers as spectators, computers happen to them; of course they can enjoy it, just as you can enjoy music without making music.
But sometimes I feel musicians appreciate music in a different way, same as woodworkers appreciate a nice table in a different way.
Reminds me of 'What I can not create, I do not understand' (Feynman's last board), but not entirely in the way he meant it.
My young granddaughter has been working with an Apple //e 8 bit computer. For her, it is about right. Command line, but simpler in her case, running programs...
She loves numbers and will use calculators and apps. Reading will take a bit more, but she is getting there.
Showing the young people basics like this is high value. They will have context and perspective similar to what we have.
I have an old Apple ][ as well and my kids like playing around on it from time to time. The best thing about it is you can’t break it. If something goes wrong they just turn it off and turn it back on. I’m also not worried they are going to delete all my iCloud photos or wipe my work drive or see something inappropriate on the internet.
I think their environment has a part to play in it
My 6 year old had been using scratch at school but seeing me using Arch and programming in Java made him want to use the terminal and write words to code. He said that scratch was a "toy" and he wanted to do "real" computer work
This is rather apropos for me as I'm wondering how to introduce my son to computers once he turns 3. I do think that older computers had an advantage in that they forced a certain level of comprehension. I also do not want to get my son used to phones or tablets because I feel that they tend to be more consumption devices than promoting creation. And I also feel that it's good to have a clear separation between computer time and non-computer time. I often see people using a tablet or phone as digital pacifier and it doesn't seem like a good long term parenting technique to me.
So I'm hesitating between giving him something running linux like the author or setting up a mister with Atari ST and just having him use it as if it were an old computer. Linux is more modern and more complex whereas Atari ST has a rich software library, the interface and system that is relatively easy to understand.
I'm really confused by these comments about pre-school aged children and I would suggest that the author if the article is in the extreme minority if he is able to spend any time at all at a command prompt with a two year old. I'll assume good faith and an extremely unusually gifted child, but if you've spent time with two year olds the anecdote stretches credibility.
Don't get me wrong, I remember the magic feeling of cd and ls ing around a drive to find and run programs on DOS after being taught by my dad, but I certainly wasn't 3 and there was a tangible benefit - I was becoming self-sufficient. (Even then, the closest it offered to entertainment was a selection of carefully curated educational "games".)
Putting snobbery about modern technology like touchscreens to one side - what's the point of a text based interface if you can't even read comfortably? I suspect that the HN demographic will tend towards children with higher educational achievement than average, but this is where most kids are:
> From ages 3-4, most preschoolers become able to:
>
> - Understand that print carries a message
> - Make attempts to read and write
> - Identify some letters and make some letter-sound matches
> - Use known letters (or their best attempt to write the letters) to represent written language especially for meaningful words like their names or phrases such as "I love you"
Helping Your Child Become A Reader. U.S. Department of Education (2000)
Yes, that's why I'm leaning more toward the Atari ST than linux. It has a gui, is not too complex to understand, has educational games, tools, nice small painting applications.
Anecdotally, I started at 3 years old with a Thomson MO5 which I guess is pretty much the equivalent of a Sinclair or a BBC. It didn't have a mouse but had a pen. I could boot into my games directly and I know I only really got into doing logo and then basic around 5 years old (which I guess corresponds to the age when I started to be able to read).
This is actually not a bad idea. I started my son (now 4) last year on a Macintosh Plus playing around mostly in kidpix and MacWrite. Now he asks if he can “work” on the old computer in my office while I work.
Think about it: a 5 year old? Who could write anything at that age? You can't even hold a pencil properly at 5 year old, so using a keyboard and bash? Please...
I dare you to put a 5 year old in front of a CLI only computer and have them not ignoring it because it does nothing.
I was doing BASIC on an Amstrad CPC at 5. Sure it was just simple GOTO 10 stuff (print hello, border 10, print alex, border 5, goto 10 etc...), but I also knew how to run games (how else would I play harrier attack?).
My mum in particular was very attentive to teaching me reading and writing and I did cursive from a young age, I got in trouble at age 7 because I wasn't doing the curriculum-endorsed print in class (the teacher picked me up by the hair and shook me), but yeah I was definitely doing basic computer stuff by 5 and definitely knew how to pick up a pencil.
I always say I started programming at 10 because it sounds more believable and that's when I was making simple text adventure games but yeah. Welcome to the mid 80s where having a CLI was the only way to compute at home, where parenting was a great deal more laissez flair but also more punitive (the whole debate about "smacking" was still in the future then).
Kids have varying abilities and are receptive to different things at different ages depending on personality / ability. Mozart was playing piano concerts at 5 but the vast majority of kids wouldn't be able to do that no matter the environment. Some kids are calm and open to teaching and coaching very early and some are not. People who have experienced precocious abilities for themselves or their own children often assume that this is universal (or just a matter of great parenting) but I don't think it is.
I was personally writing simple BASIC code by the age of five, it doesn’t take much to flip a switch and type in a few characters to start the editor. Don’t underestimate the learning capability of a child.
This reminds me of my boy. He had a linux box and used it for minecraft at an early age. He memorized java -jar pretty quickly. Eight years later at 14 he's deep into retro gaming and emulators and to be honest half the stuff he's looking at looks way out of my league. Most of his free time is spent compiling and fixing old games, mostly for himself. I was blown away when he showed me his own doom levels/game. He's on GitHub and has already contributed to several projects.
This is interesting to me because it explores the true intuitiveness of UI paradigms. What is intuitive to someone who is already familiar with common computer UIs is not necessarily intuitive to children, or to people who have never used a computer system.
A keypad with single-purpose keys is very intuitive, IMO. Something like this:
One button for each application. One button for each operation. I have this crazy idea to obtain a large custom array of keys, and to map as many things as possible to single-key-presses.
As an aside, this is the kind of headline I'd expect to see on a HN-themed version of The Onion.
Anyone in here have kids that have zero interest in computers? My kids had no interest and as I get ready to start my second round of hanging out with little ones as my kids have kids, I wonder if I just need to do things differently.
Do not worry. The only task you as a parent have is to give your kids room and opportunities to let them find their own desired profession.
As a parent you should never say or hope they LL do the same as you.
Most of us, I think. I tried to introduce my daughter to programming two years ago (she was 7) using a very simple language I created specifically for the task (a mix between BASIC and Pascal) with no success. And that's not a bad thing. There's a lot of awesome interests out there for our children outside of computers.
Also, I think the main issue today is that "modern times" offers a radical range of enterteinment we didn't have in our times. If I was born today instead of 1980 I think I'd stuck with my early child dream: being a cartoonist.
>offers a radical range of enterteinment we didn't have in our times.
I think this is the answer, while I was growing up and learning PASCAL and BASIC (Thank you dad) it was the only way to have access/play with "a computer".
Nowadays there are much more shinier and prettier and lets face it more fun computers in our(theirs) immediate environment that does a lot more than "readline a; print a;"
My son had zero interest in command lines or programming until he got into Minecraft and Roblox. For the former, best mods are available for Java edition. Through that desire, he at least learned command prompt, basic directory navigation, and java -jar.
For the latter, he wants to build a game, so we're learning some LUA together. Going through that process (we're very early in) has been great, since he also has ADHD and doing this work is helping with focus.
I think people's tastes and interests just run a lot of different ways. Computers in the late 80s and 90s were a LOT more boring than today and I personally found them fascinating despite this. If your kids have no interest in computers it doesn't mean you did a bad job it just means that their interests differ from yours.
"Jacob informed me that he wanted his computer to look “just like yours."
This is it. What the kid wants is to mimic what he sees his parent is doing, and I believe the parent is projecting his own desires and inclinations onto the little one.
I do not think there is anything specifically wrong with this though, because that's what learning is about (too screen time as a kid could be an issue regarding myopia and so on, though). But stating that at 3 years the "kid wants" something as specific as running a Linux destop by himself is wrong.
I had access to computers when I was young, but mostly sans gaming. In fact, once I wiped a work computer of my dad's somehow. Eventually I got SimCity 2000 on our old Mac and that was incredible. These old computers were tools to experiment and have fun with, rather than the entertainment devices we have today.
I'm going to get flak for this but I'll say it anyway: tiling window managers are awful and broken, everybody who uses them on Linux knows it and either doesn't want to admit it or knows it and doesn't care. I get why they are appealing to programmers, it's alluring to think that you can use a desktop without ever taking your hands off the keyboard, and it's fun to write little scripts to control things. But honestly, everything that can be done with a tiling window manager can be done better with other tools. Yes, they are that broken. They get used because they're a fun little tool for programmers to play with and break and waste time, and not because they have any practical purpose. There are plenty of better computing skills to teach children than this.
And before someone accuses me of being a KDE fanboy or GNOME fanboy or something, I used tiling window managers for many years. I've spent countless hours playing around with them and hacking on them. It was a frustrating experience the whole way through and when I look back at the whole thing there was really nothing positive about it. I'm completely serious here, I don't think I would have made this comment back when the article was written but that's all I can say after 9 years of messing around with it. I suppose they are great if you want to introduce your child early on to the classic experience of Linux where everything is controlled entirely through arcane and badly document config files and keyboard shortcuts, and lots of things just randomly don't work. If you are a person who works on these things or wants to teach them to children, in my opinion your time would be better spent elsewhere.
I don't understand how you can objectively qualify a tiling manager as "broken".
1st of all, tiling managers are a matter of personal preference, no wether it's "broken".
2nd of all, I've used i3 plenty, and the amount of power it gives me when I'm working is immense. I no longer need to alt+tab 7 times to get to the terminal for the monitoring servers, I always know they're on screen 4. I need my web browser ? I know it's in screen 2. Heck, I can pin apps, and even screens to specific monitors. When I'm working on an incident, my throughput is basically multiplied by 3 as a result of how streamlined my work environment is.
That is simply not possible with other environment where the mouse is the main device. Yes you have virtual desktops, but try having 15 open terminals without having them pinned in some form. Just a simple swipe to the corner and your GPU will heat-up from the 3D acceleration required to show all the windows :D
All-in-all, I genuinely believe that tiling wms are an amazing godsend, but for my use case. And I cannot emphasize this enough. It's a personal preference. Yes it's a bit of a pain to set up (although I literally used a two-part youtube video to set up i3, and never touched it again, not even need the Arch wiki), but if you don't have to tinker in your configuration are you really running linux :D
> I don't understand how you can objectively qualify a tiling manager as "broken".
1st of all, tiling managers are a matter of personal preference, no wether it's "broken".
People in IT love to declare their subjective experience as objective scientific fact. I don’t know if it’s because they’re taught that the industry is a science (albeit computer science) or if it’s just their inability to disable their analytical part of the brain but you see the same bullshit posts all the time from programming language debates, $SHELL preferences, desktop environments, operating systems, etc. IT engineers arguing other mundane preferences are as old as vi and emacs.
I am not talking about this as a preference, I think they are actually a fundamentally flawed design. This is my experience from using it for a long period of time and talking to hundreds of people about this and reading probably in the thousands of github issues and comments where the various bugs pop up. Is there some other better way you know of to identify issues like this? If so I would like to know. Otherwise it is somewhat specious to say that I don't know what I'm talking about. How long to I have to deal with bugs in this stuff before my opinions don't get handwaved away as bullshit?
1. There is no single design for “tiling window manager”. Some uses lists, trees, manual tiling… All can be inadequate.
2. The “tiling” part is no longer the only feature, most have floating modes, automation interfaces, …
3. Bugs happen everywhere.
For 1, all of them are inadequate in the same way, because tiling is just not adequate for most use cases. Most desktop apps are not designed for tiling, and the few that work well with it, also work just fine with another system.
For 2, if you have to use all those other features, I think that defeats the purpose of it. I can't count the number of configurations I've seen that float the majority of windows. What is the point? I ask people about this and they know it's bad but they just keep on going with it, it's like nobody wants to actually admit it's a problem. I'm sorry if I'm getting worked up about this but it's really frustrating to keep having this same type of conversation over and over again where nobody actually wants to fix any problems.
For 3, See above, there are specific bugs here that don't need to exist and could actually be fixed, quite easily I might add, but are purposefully being ignored because people expect it to be that way as part of the design. To me, that's pretty inefficient, and if it can be improved, I'm going to keep calling it out because I think people deserve the help. Maybe that's my character flaw, I don't know.
I have already done that for quite a long time, that doesn't fix the problem, that just makes it so there is yet another half-assed and broken WM to add to the pile. Or should I say, graveyard, because so many of them have come and gone over the years...
Sorry to be blunt but that is another myth that I see going around in open source communities, that the way to fix anything and everything is to just sit down and write more code and try to close as many github issues as possible however you can. It's not. That only gets you so far and in a lot of cases it can make things worse.
You’re the one who said there are bugs to be fixed. I’m literally just reacting to your own statements. If you think it’s a myth then don’t introduce it as a cornerstone of your own rant to begin with.
Ok I see what you're saying. Sorry for the misunderstanding: the bugs here can't realistically be fixed. They keep popping up over and over again and they will for as long as the design stays flawed. It is the design that needs to be "bug fixed" if that makes sense. I am not talking about any myths in relation to that, although there are several others I could name after reading various github comments...
What kind of bugs (or fundamental flaws) I'm wondering? I used i3 for over a year (before switching to Mac due to work) and it worked great. I was annoyed at confirmation dialogues taking up half a screen but that's the only issue I remember ever having.
I have not done that, in fact I intentionally used the phrase "in my opinion" in my original comment so I wouldn't get this type of response. But I guess I didn't use it enough times.
Please do not undo charitable interpretations. I intentionally put the phrase "I think" in that comment so it was clear that it was my opinion. I don't know how to make it any clearer than that, it is a thought that I had. It is not some kind of universal truth. What else do you need from me?
Edit: If you'll notice I also used the phrase "my opinions" farther down in that post...
You seem a nice guy and this is clearly a passionate topic for you, I just don’t understand why you’d fail to consider that tiling WMs might work for other people despite their short comings for you personally.
Maybe those people have different workflows and needs to yourself. Maybe they enjoy the mental model of tiling so much that these showstopper issues you describe don’t even amount to minor annoyances for others. Or maybe you’re looking at this from too much of a purist perspective and missing the benefits of a tiling-first but ultimately still dynamic WM.
If there is one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that things which seem like insane choices to me are often quite reasonable for other people.
Well I said this earlier but this is not specifically about my personal experience with shortcomings, although that was an influence. I have heard many of the same issues coming from large numbers of other people, and I think there is a reluctance to really own up to it because of some kind of fascination with this "romantic" idea of how a keyboard interface is supposed to be. It's like, people get that idea in their head that's what they want and they can't let it go, and then it becomes a game of sunk cost fallacy. Of course that is not new or even all that uncommon in open source but I think it's irresponsible to not point it out when I personally see it.
"a tiling-first but ultimately still dynamic WM"
In my opinion, these are all bad hacks that are made worse by being tiling first. In some ways I would actually consider these worse than a pure tiling window manager, because they tend to not focus on any particular way of doing things and so it becomes a pastiche of concepts that are not really compatible.
I am telling you this as someone who had that personal preference for at least 10 years. They are broken and they don't work, the uses cases you use them for can be done better with anything else. I'll go through them for you, keep in mind I am not doing this to challenge you. I am doing this because I have had all exactly the same thoughts as you in the past, and my thoughts all changed when I decided to look at the problem in a different way. In my experience, all that staring at terminals all day messes with one's head, it makes it very hard to see other solutions that could exist outside a very terminal-centric viewpoint.
"I no longer need to alt+tab 7 times to get to the terminal for the monitoring servers, I always know they're on screen 4. need my web browser ? I know it's in screen 2"
Binding an application to a workspace or a key can be done with pretty much any window manager. But you don't want to do that because "screen 4" is abstract and doesn't actually mean anything. You are putting this through an extra level of abstraction for no real reason, it would be better and less confusing just to have some way to identify the correct app.
"Yes you have virtual desktops, but try having 15 open terminals without having them pinned in some form."
This is not actually a good feature of the desktop, this is all a workaround because of the other horribleness of various linux terminal programs that don't offer a good way to distinguish between windows. Also, you can upgrade your GPU you know? It is worth it in general if you want a faster and less laggy display.
"And I cannot emphasize this enough. It's a personal preference."
Respectfully, please stop emphasizing this, it doesn't add anything to the discussion. It is the equivalent of saying "well that's just your opinion". Of course it is our opinions and preferences, but we are here to discuss them. Right?
"if you don't have to tinker in your configuration are you really running linux"
This I think is part of the major problem. The Linux community seems to intentionally gravitate towards things that need more tinkering just for the sake of doing so, and actively resist efforts to reduce the amount of tinkering that needs to happen.
When tiling window managers don't work for you, that is totally fine, but I wouldn't say that they are broken and awful. They all have different trade offs, the same as all the Desktop Environments.
I tried a couple tiling window managers many years ago and none was usable in the way I thought how it should work. But instead of investing time to make it work the way I want it, I just switched to the next one and tried that. I think at that time I tried 5 or 6 window managers a day.
The one that worked for me at the end was one written by Sean Pringle called Musca. It used relative movement from each window and it made so much more sense than all others. Sadly he dropped it a bit later for another project but herbstluftwm is its successor and it worked for me.
My config hasn't actually changed for the last 10 years.
There are so many great tools out there we can use for what we want to do. Choose the one you like and works for you.
Thats why peoples desks or their work places all look differently. A smith woulnd't talk to a smelter about his setup being awful, because he does a different job.
I don't understand your analogy. If a smelter is using something in a bad or inefficient way and a smith is capable of explaining it to them, then that would be beneficial to do so. People do not have to do exactly the same job in the exact same way in order to discuss how a specific tool works.
Like you, I went through a period where I tried pretty much every tiling window manager I could find. And I can say with confidence: they are all broken and awful, in part because the very concept of tiling doesn't really work. The design is flawed. It's like you are making a comparison between every jigsaw on the shelf and picking out the best one but are missing that you could get a miter saw and that would work even better for your use case. Does that explain it?
Is musca the one where you divided the screen first, and later could fill specific applications into those areas? I found that pretty cool at the tkme!
It could probably work much better with wayland though, because programs often refused to remain in their little borders.
You comment may have been useful if you would have said how and why they are awful and broken. For now it is just a rant without any supporting arguments.
I found Amethyst on macOS to be extremely useful in bridging the gap between how modern UIs/window management wants to work, and tiling window managers.
I'm curious what makes you see them as broken, and whether that's specific to the deeply integrated X-compatible ones?
In my opinion, all that stuff on MacOS (Amethyst, Rectangle, Spectacle, etc) is also broken in the same way. Apple's window manager has a built in fullscreen tiling mode that could actually be way better but is currently missing things. I think there are some paid window managers there but I haven't tried them, maybe those are better? I don't know.
You can read some of my other comments, but with MacOS it's the same kind of problems, part of it is that the apps don't play nice with it and they can't really be made to do so without breaking things.
Also (2012)