Digital Dementia
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Richard Andrew x64 wrote:
True. And their development did begin to suffer.
So it was a step down from what? Listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio? Playing marbles (which is actually a lot like playing a video game)? When exactly was the golden era when kids were smarter because of a lack of technology?
Richard Andrew x64 wrote:
What percentage of kids do you think are doing this?
Probably a lot more than you think (and judging by the quality, maybe too many). It's considered "cool" these days, it's very popular.
StatementTerminator wrote:
When exactly was the golden era when kids were smarter because of a lack of technology?
Listening to the Long Ranger on the radio at least required one to use one's imagination. The point is the trend. The trend is toward kids using less and less of their brains and building fewer and fewer skills all the time.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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StatementTerminator wrote:
When exactly was the golden era when kids were smarter because of a lack of technology?
Listening to the Long Ranger on the radio at least required one to use one's imagination. The point is the trend. The trend is toward kids using less and less of their brains and building fewer and fewer skills all the time.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
I can see your point, but I think that you misunderstand video games. From what I've seen as a life-long gamer, it's turning the trend of passive, brainless entertainment around. If you don't play them, then you can't understand how much skill and thought are actually involved, it only looks like a mindless waste of time if you're watching from the outside and don't understand what's going on.
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Daily Mail wrote:
They say that teenagers have become so reliant on digital technology they are no longer able to remember everyday details such as their phone numbers.
Of course they won't memorize phone numbers! Why should they if their smart phones and computers are much more capable and reliable at performing that job for them? There's plenty of other stuff to remember, why waste valuable resources on stuff that modern devices can handle? Tomorrows news: "Cars cause degrade in chinese farmers' physical fitness" (because they drive to town rather than walk 10km every day in order to sell their stuff) And the day after: "Ticket machines degrade commuters' conversational skills" :doh:
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'Digital dementia' on the rise as young people increasingly rely on technology instead of their brain [^] I must confess there is some truth to this as far as I am concerned. I find myself having trouble with simple arithmetic that I normally used to be able to do in my head. Has anyone else noticed a decrease in their mental abilities due to relying on technology?
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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'Digital dementia' on the rise as young people increasingly rely on technology instead of their brain [^] I must confess there is some truth to this as far as I am concerned. I find myself having trouble with simple arithmetic that I normally used to be able to do in my head. Has anyone else noticed a decrease in their mental abilities due to relying on technology?
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
I've made it a point over the years to not use technology for that very reason. I use the contact list in my phone to store numbers, but I'll look them up and then dial manually to help me memorize the number. I'll do math problems in my head just for practice, or do an estimate in my head to double check what came up on the calculator in case I make an entry error. Stuff like that. Steve
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I can see your point, but I think that you misunderstand video games. From what I've seen as a life-long gamer, it's turning the trend of passive, brainless entertainment around. If you don't play them, then you can't understand how much skill and thought are actually involved, it only looks like a mindless waste of time if you're watching from the outside and don't understand what's going on.
But what kind of job is playing a game all day going to get a child in the future? Over playing a game to where it is an obsession will not get that child a good career, unless he wants to be a game tester.
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But what kind of job is playing a game all day going to get a child in the future? Over playing a game to where it is an obsession will not get that child a good career, unless he wants to be a game tester.
I guess that depends on what kind of job the kid wants and what kind of education and training he/she gets. Not everything a kid does has to be directly related to a career path. But you never know, games are a big part of what led me into computer programming. It's entertainment, not job training. It can develop skills that are useful for all sorts of things, and at least it involves working out the brain a little. I read an article a while back about surgeons who played video games to sharpen their manual dexterity, and they were really serious about it too, so you never know what's going to be useful. [EDIT] I found a link to the article I mentioned: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070220012341.htm[^ That's not so odd when you consider that robotic surgery is very much like a video game. The way that military drones are flown is literally the same as a video game, aside from the fact that it's real (which is a bit disturbing). The army has been using video games to teach small unit tactics. Flight simulators used for training pilots on the ground are video games, and popular on a commercial level too. So video games really can be useful training tools, in some ways.
