Raising Kids to Have an Analog Childhood in a Digital World

https://www.joshuakennon.com/raising-kids-to-have-an-analogue-childhood-in-a-digital-world/

by walterbell • 1 year ago

135 76 1 year ago

jajko• 1 year ago

Hmm, where we live (western Switzerland), this is the default among basically all parents we know. Locals, immigrants, doesn't matter. Not every single thing in same way as article, but cca same ideas and approach. Simply reasonable.

Any digital screen is simply too intense stimulus for those little minds and leads to passivity. Human mind is wired internally to create habits -> addictions naturally. And most stuff in those screens is highly addictive, even without going into the topic of brain and soul cancer that all social platforms are in one way or another (and many here are even proud of contributing, then folks wonder how trump can happen repeatedly... the trail in US is long but ie reality shows are one of the stepping stones - stuff mostly marginal here). Also time spent on screen is the time spent alone, no social interaction. Not the best idea for developing mind.

Its true that our circles are mostly university-educated folks but not only. Expecting different behavior in families of say car mechanics or prison guard on average. We know one local farmer family and they do same as we do.

dzhiurgis• 1 year ago

Same here in NZ, although I think our peers are biased. Ranging from home-schooled home-birthers with 0 screen time to hybrid schoolers with perhaps 1 hour per week screen time (for toddler age).

My kids get more screen time (TV) now in school and daycare as we do not own at home lol.

kuahyeow2• 1 year ago

OP does not ban digital screens despite the title. They even play video games !

It's more the en-shittification of the Internet, and other media.

jxjnskkzxxhx2• 1 year ago

They allow the things that they themselves had when they were kids. They just have a fond memory of the past. Just look at the way they style their houses.

kurthr• 1 year ago

I guess it's nice if you want to have that much control over your kid's time.

I wouldn't worry about Tiktok till they're 10 anyway, but by then highschool or homeschool will be the big question. Teaching them to be in control of their own environment and emotions is one thing, but "there's a time and place for everything. It's called college". Maybe building an informational immune system when they're younger will help, or not.

gizajob2• 1 year ago

What’s listed below is too much – ok we’re being analogue and curating more naturalistic play, but restricting play like this is getting a bit draconian. Kids occasionally need to hit each other. Many great artists sometimes have to “destroy” books to get them into a different form where they can be inspired by them. Musicians smash and otherwise derange their instruments. Asking gross questions, even as a way of challenging rules and boundaries, isn’t going to kill anyone. Basquiat, for example, drew on the walls of a small cupboard in his home, a practice that stretched out onto the walls of the city streets, and then onto canvases that now sell for $150,000,000.

————

The playroom itself, in contrast, has only a couple of rules:

If the playroom gets too messy to the point it is a tripping hazard, everything stops and they have to clean it up (which really only occurs a few times a week since they are pretty good about managing the space). They cannot destroy or harm their books, they must show them respect, They cannot mark on the walls or furniture, They cannot run in the house or jump off of furniture or towers they build, They cannot hit each other, and They cannot speak harshly to one another, which includes requiring them to say, “Thank you,” “Please”, etc. Throughout your life, your family should be the one rock you depend upon and that you know will always have your back if times get tough. We support each other, we don’t fight or say things in frustration. They cannot talk about gross topics at the dinner table. They have to wait until they are finished eating and allowed to get up, then it’s fair game, again. That way, they are being considerate of other people.

P.S. for portfolio sizes between $500,000 and £10,000,000 how is there better advice than “invest in an S&P500 ETF”?

P.P.S. What’s wrong with the emotion of frustration? It’s as valid as any other emotion even if you don’t like the way it might manifest.

techpineapple• 1 year ago

I think of myself as relatively laid back, but these rules don’t seem that bad to me, maybe it depends on age? I probably wouldn’t let my <10 year old destroy a book, certainly not from poor impulse control, but I’d probably let me teen due so, particularly for an art project. And hitting people? It may not be totally abnormal to experience a little aggression, but I don’t really think it’s a parents place to let it go either.

hnlmorg5• 1 year ago

I don’t think any of those rules were unreasonable. In fact I’d say they were pretty common in England.

I can’t think of anyone who would be ok with kids drawing on the walls.

And saying “please” and “thank you” is just common decency. If you can’t show your own family that level of respect then how are you going to treat anyone else?

That all said, I don’t agree with the core premise of the article about limiting digital content purely because it’s digital. You can have “analogue” play with kids and still allow them to consume TV, play games on a tablet, etc.

It’s about getting the balance right. Kids need exposure to digital content to learn self control for starters. And they need to understand what content is safe and what is not. If parents are banning digital content wholesale then kids will learn these lessons the hard way in adulthood.

And in my experience, most kids want a balance of analogue and digital play anyway. Younger kids want to spend time riding bikes, plays sports and/or board/card games with their parents. They want experiences with their parents.

So you can have the best of both worlds here.

wingworks2• 1 year ago

Re your investing question, I'm not OP, but gone pretty deep into retirement investing. If you belief is that the US will continue to outperform other countries then S&P500 (VOO) is your best option. If however you're not sure the US will outperform other countries, then VT (world) is the best option. It'll automatically rebalance as countries have larger/smaller GDP etc. Thus VT is the safer option.

And then there is the question if you'll sleep well being 100% stocks (be it VOO or VT), if you don't then you may need to have a split of stocks and bonds. Bonds will usually "smooth" out the ride, but at the cost of returns. But if you sell your 100% shares when stocks tank, which they will (like now), then you won't get the best return from being 100% shares. (aka, you can't time the market).

Also, there are a bunch of things you can do to maximize your tax efficiency when investing for retirement. Depending on the country your in.

I didn't look into what exactly joshuakennon company does, but appears to be active investing in value companies. But statistically speaking, most companies trying to beat the index (active investing) under perform it long term (and usually charge high fees for the pleasure). Maybe these guys are the exception, nobody will know, till it's too late.

Thus passive/index investing is the safest long term bet. (e.g. VT or VOO being the lowest cost ETFs for those types of investments)

Edit, checked there disclosure PDFs, sounds like you're paying a pretty high on-going fee for financial advice, and for them to buy VOO for you, for example. They seem to offer Passive investments, but also the fee is well above say Vanguard. They're also not very forthcoming with how well there "value investing" does, compared to others offering the same or an index. Kinda a red flag.

If you want investment advice, see an adviser who charges a flat fee for your meetings with them, this is fine, but don't go with anyone (like these guys) who charge a % portfolio fee, every year. They will be the ones getting rich, not you.

gizajob2• 1 year ago

Yeah kinda my point…

Animats• 1 year ago

The house looks like it was staged for sale, not a place anyone lives.

If you want grounded kids, and can afford it, get them into horses and ponies. The kids I see around barns all have smartphones, but don't use them for timepass.

teg4n_• 1 year ago

even the design of the website looks like it should for a funeral home

walterbell• 1 year ago

global asset management firm that specializes in helping affluent and high net worth individuals, families, and institutions invest their capital around the world.

walrus01• 1 year ago

The design of the house screams to me one of two possible things:

a) "We are new money people who paid some interior designer to trawl through a bunch of "high end" furniture stores and buy what we think looks like classy, expensive, European style furniture and home decorations"

b) "We bought all this stuff we think looks high-class on credit in an attempt to look impressive, but in reality we are living in a massive pile of debt. As of right now we're doing OK keeping our heads above water".

Or some combination of the two.

Both of which match with the weird "wealth management" style/presentation of the website.

Now this is just my personal bias showing as someone who has architects in the family, and having seen a lot, but people who've come into money and want to buy a bunch of furniture/house decorations to look "high class" will often go a few possible very predictable ways, following some well known tropes.

One you've got the "dark oak, heavy wood, victorian/edwardian era looking furniture" motif for cabinets, dining tables, chairs, etc. This will often by seen with weird heavy-framed oil paintings of random things that an American might think would be hanging on the wall in an English country manor house.

Anoher possibility you've got is the bright white minimalist glass luxury approach, here's a google image search for "all white glass minimalist luxury living room":

https://www.google.com/search?q=all+white+glass+minimalist+l...

A third possibility, and this is more regionally dependent, is you get people who hire an interior designer to make their space look like a luxury/rich peoples' ranch or fly-in fishing lodge. Basically same idea as the main house living room set for the TV show Yellowstone. This will commonly be seen in US western states and vacation-home destinations like Whistler.

https://www.google.com/search?num=10&client=firefox-b-d&sca_...

There are also Texan and midwest specific derivatives of the "yellow stone tv show living room set" design approach, which will be seen throughout TX and the midwest.

ohgr2• 1 year ago

The house looks fucking awful. I mean my place basically is an IKEA show room and it looks more like a home.

giantg2• 1 year ago

That depends. The rich kids with horses are very much on their phones and filling their Insta with pictures. They're usually boarded at full care barns and don't have to do the work. I can see it usually working as you describe for the middle class kids.

pimlottc• 1 year ago

Anyway, the first step was to remove all of the gray and near-gray walls.
The main living room is painted in Benjamin Moore Bradstreet Beige HC-48

I'm not sure that going from gray to beige is that much of an improvement :P

mhb• 1 year ago

Horses? That is a very peculiar activity on which to focus, no? Kids playing any sport or painting or any of a zillion other things also aren't on phones while doing them.

lurking_swe• 1 year ago

depends on what they meant. If they meant owning a pony / horse, that is a BIG time commitment for a live animal and i can certainly see how that guarantees reduced screen time. If they meant taking weekly lessons, then idk what they mean lol. For that kind of activity you just show up and ride the horse, no caretaking needed. Similar to play sport in a facility.

Sport or painting is something you can easily change their mind about on a whim, especially at a young age.

chongli3• 1 year ago

Question for parents:

Is this era, where parents create an entire world for their children, unprecedented in history? I know that parents have sheltered their children to varying degrees throughout history but now it seems way more extreme than it's ever been before.

What is going on here? Are we totally rejecting the society we've built for ourselves? Where do we go from here?

lqet• 1 year ago

I know that parents have sheltered their children to varying degrees throughout history but now it seems way more extreme than it's ever been before.

This seems like an upper class issue, and the upper classes (especially aristocracy) have always carefully sheltered their children from the real world. Most parents, myself included, do not have the time to contemplate such questions. They are too busy improvising their way through raising a child.

ohgr2• 1 year ago

Not really doing that with my kids. It’s important to nudge them in the right direction but that’s about it. Any absolutist things are not helpful as they build resentment and resistance. Constructive discussions and teaching them to reflect is important.

I mean my youngest got into Roblox for a bit (talking weeks). Yeah fine with that, with one eye open. One day someone stole all her shit and her friend was an asshole on the same day. Sat down and talked about virtual items and grinding games and life generally. She never touched it again!

kortilla2• 1 year ago

Is this era, where parents create an entire world for their children, unprecedented in history?

I’m not sure exactly what you mean here, but people born in rural areas in the early 1900s were extremely sheltered from an intellectual perspective.

With travel being so much more difficult and no TV, things as simple as seeing a picture of New York were mind-blowing.

chongli3• 1 year ago

I’m not sure exactly what you mean here, but people born in rural areas in the early 1900s were extremely sheltered from an intellectual perspective.

Right but that was not deliberate. People lived in rural areas and that’s where their kids grew up. They weren’t trying to engineer a rural lifestyle for their kids in order to produce some particular desired outcome.

MarcelOlsz• 1 year ago

What is going on here? Are we totally rejecting the society we've built for ourselves? Where do we go from here?

Internet decimated subcultures now we're stuck in a weird reflection loop with the internet and real life.

ewzimm3• 1 year ago

When you shelter your children from the world to an extreme degree, you end up getting one of the most popular stories in both Europe and Asia for the last 2500 years:

https://theconversation.com/how-the-buddha-became-a-christia...

theGnuMe2• 1 year ago

I'm hoping my kids become digital buddhas. :) More seriously I hope they learn that online is not better than IRL. But that means giving them IRL experiences in addition to roblox. yet here I am posting on Hacker News... I did have the neighbors over though for dinner the other day. I think a good thing parents can do is have dinner parties. Show kids how to be social.

timewizard• 1 year ago

Or an axe murderer. Hard to predict which one you'll have.

basisword• 1 year ago

We don’t let our children smoke or use other addictive substances. 99% of tech, particularly on the content consumption side (which is largely what kids will use it for) is built to be highly addictive often in negative ways. Kids have obviously loved TV for decades but it didn’t have addictive feedback loops feeding them personalised content.

Carrok• 1 year ago

Are we totally rejecting the society we've built for ourselves?

Looks around at, everything.

Yup!

scotty79• 1 year ago

I think that's just what parents who have more money than it's good for them do. It's fine though. If you can build sheltered world for your kid you are rich enough so that your kid won't have to care about the world either if it has bare minimum iq. And if not, who cares, there's plenty of kids always.

eikenberry• 1 year ago

These are simply tiger parents with some fashionable, lightweight Luddite-ism. Tiger parenting is popular among upper-middle class society. I.E. this is an aspect of society, not a rejection of it.

Ericson2314• 1 year ago

In theory getting rid of addictions shouldn't require giving up on "it takes a village", but yes these people seem to real have a family-as-fortress mentality, along with proclamations of their own superiority.

Low-trust society, man... It sucks.

braza• 1 year ago

I know that parents have sheltered their children to varying degrees throughout history but now it seems way more extreme than it's ever been before.

In my case, definitely yes.

Not related to the analog/digital only, but I come from a "macho-ghetto-gansta-hood" culture. This is embedded in my community and, more or less, my city.

I will not only shield my children against it, but I will fight to the fullest extent to prevent them from even getting in touch and thinking this is attractive.

I've left my city because of it, not because I am superior or special, but because I know how pervasive and deep-entrenched and poisonous this kind of culture can be.

It will affect the way that you speak, the way that you dress, and the way that other people see you, and not only does it have this perpetual victim mindset, but more importantly, you do not know that you've become socially handicapped due to this.

ZeroTalent2• 1 year ago

I have left my country because of this.

KaiserPro2• 1 year ago

I mean thats great, but it sounds an awful lot like someone boasting about owning a race horse.

Sure stopping your kids having access to youtube and tiktok is a good thing, a great thing even. A soul mirror is a dangerous thing for an impressionable mind.

But it feels like none of this post is actually about protecting kids, its more about showing off how cultured the author is. Which is fun when seeing a mishmash of french/english 18th century furniture with incorrectly hung paintings.

Look social media is corrosive. There is a reason why the skill of an editor makes or breaks a media company. There is no editor in social media, only you. But to mix up anti-social media with a half baked aesthetic is just bollocks.

The irony is, the aesthetic is an analogue, its an analogue of an english/french town house. As remembered by someone who goes "what image does this project" rather than "do I like it"

The artwork on the walls is not going to make up for being raised by a succession of nannies, or going to a school surrounded by exceptionally rich and emotionally damaged kids.

If you want to raise your kids in an "analogue world" You need to be there. Otherwise you're just outsourcing your kids world view to zuckerberg et al.

wingworks2• 1 year ago

I grew up without TV, computer, Playstation etc in a fairly rural area. It was great most of the time, till I had to go to school. I spent most of my time at home or around the farm, and my 2 other siblings. Very rare to see others outside our fam. And if anyone did visit I would hide from them, not knowing how to interact with them. I never learnt how to socialize, and was very shy as a kid (and still am to a degree). I was even afraid to enter shops, and would only go into ones I had been to before with parents, if I had to. Wasn't till my early 20s that I built up enough courage to enter new stores without intense fear.

I started off at a school which I was bullied allot, never learnt anything, eventually was pulled and put into a traditional state school where I did much better (but far behind other kids). Though still bullied a bit, but teachers there actually cared, most bullying didn't last.

But once I got to High School (and to a degree primary) having such a different upbringing to all the other kids made it very hard to make any friends. Or have anything to in-common to talk about. It also made parts of learning in school harder, because teachers would talk about xyz pop culture that 99% of kids knew about (e.g. popular movies), and I was just like.. what, I've never seen that.

The last 1-2 years of school once I was allowed a computer I had no self control, and binge watched SOO much tv/movies, in an attempt to catch up to kids my age, and have something to talk about. It would take many years to get it mostly under control.

I think for my kinda upbringing to work, you need to live somewhere where everyone is doing it too, otherwise it's a painful upbringing for the kids, which effects them for life, in a bad way in my case.

Maybe there is a middle ground to take here that would work better, idk.

em-bee2• 1 year ago

this is interesting because on the surface i ad a similar upbringing but a very different outcome. now this was a decade or two earlier. internet didn't exist yet, but we had no TV, no car, and i didn't have a single friend until i entered university. i was also bullied (mildly).

but that's where the similarity ends. i was proud of how we lived. i didn't want to be friends with kids who had nothing in common with me. i deliberately distanced myself.

i got access to computers in highschool and spent a lot of time there. i got access to the internet at university and i got a TV.

somewhere in between i learned that i didn't like to waste time with mindless TV watching and i developed a discipline to study the TV guide to decide ahead of time what i wanted to watch. and i still do that. now everything is online, but i deliberately pick what and how much i want to watch. most of the time. i wish i could say what it was that gave me the feeling of not wanting to waste my time. but i have no clue.

anyway, to your key point:

or if you raise your kids in such a way that they don't want to have friends (in my case it wasn't deliberate, just circumstances), it's less painful, but it also affects them for life in an equally bad way.

i think a middle ground would be to teach the kids mindful watching of TV/youtube, playing games, etc. it takes discipline to be a good role model though.

mixmastamyk6• 1 year ago

The first part of this sounds like a psychological problem to be honest, not a lack of electronics.

I had access to all of them as a teen, yet it didn't help me make friends.

soupfordummies• 1 year ago

Yeah it really went took a hard left turn into interior design about halfway through, LOL

kuahyeow2• 1 year ago

I think you need to read the OP again. Not just the pictures at the end.

jibbers• 1 year ago

A “soul mirror” is an interesting idea. Do you mean the modern smartphone is a mirror of ones soul because you just see what you want to see, you see what your soul is interested in?

KaiserPro2• 1 year ago

I'm going to go with what your soul yearns for. Obviously this isn't a perfect analogy, because it implies mystic, Machiavellian, or omnipotent beings.

Its more like "the mirror of erised" from harry potter, perhaps better is the mirror from "The Snow Queen":

which had this peculiarity, that everything good and beautiful that was reflected in it shrank… but that whatever was worthless or ugly became prominent.

But I would say its not the smartphone thats the problem, its specifically "broadcast" social media thats the problem. That is services were thirdparties, who you don't know personally, can produce content for your consumption. Those services are driven by pure engagement, rather than any other metric.

Anything that just constantly A/B tests what you engage with the most, and blindly optimises for whichever category you click on, is going to be bad for you, unless you have been given the tools and education to manage those categories. Even then, it might not be possible.

I still think kids need 1:1 and group chats, within reason, and with time limits so that they actually got to sleep, and stay asleep at night. So I'd say kids should probably still have smartphones, just not social media.

casey2• 1 year ago

Having all the neoluddit posts on a tech site, especially one that involve children is very disconcerting.

Please don't ruin your child's life based on things you read on the internet. Just go with the flow.

mangodrunk• 1 year ago

Why is it disconcerting and why do you think it’ll ruin a child’s life?

jhelphenstine• 1 year ago

I couldn’t disagree more - the compass bearing for parents ought never be “go with the flow”; that’s akin to “don’t decide, slide”. In both, I hear advocacy for abdicating the highest of responsibilities.

edgarvaldes• 1 year ago

My attempts to limit my children's screen time all fail when I stage activities for them. But I soon as I try to use my watercolours, my musical instruments or any other passtime of my own, my kids drop the devices and try to do the same activity with me. Its tiresome and charming at the same time.

gerdesj2• 1 year ago

"my kids drop the devices and try to do the same activity with me. Its tiresome and charming at the same time."

Are you having a laugh? It appears that you have discovered how to describe useful parenting in mildly broken English, with a final flourish designed to set the reader's teeth on edge.

In other words: that is how you deal with the little darlings!

rodrigodlu• 1 year ago

I have the same feeling as Edgar

The issue is that is that I need to continuously fight a platform like Roblox that is made for addiction.

If I take this completely away from my kid, the exclusion from others kids groups gets real.

Some other parents are trying to do more flashy events that makes things worse, since the expectations are higher, while everything still needs to be taken care of by the parents themselves, or paying higher and higher prices to someone preparing these activities like a ultraprocessed food.

I told the other parents to build some stable group with a stable activity, like a band or physical RPG meetings. The other parents want me to build everything alone basically.

The worse is that instead helping building something, they want to provide feedback only after the fact, that appears to be positive, while the answer to "ok, so help me next time" gets unanswered.

They all have weirder and weirder schedules as well, like start these activities during the lunch time or at night, when there's no way the kids will absorb something useful, find they are growing something. The weird schedules are being attributed to work demands, but I don't know, every meeting we have the attention of these other parents are more on taking pictures than engaging with the activity itself.

So basically doing flashy activities to post on Instagram is the norm. While outside these flashy scenes the kids are basically on shitty gacha like games.

At the end isolating my kid from time to time, even at expense of being considered weirdo by my community, is a desperate measure to make learning skills that are not perception manipulation on social networks, a good bet to teach how to survive the real world (the one that requires a rooftop and food on your table).

I recently read the Society of Spectacle books and it never made so much sense. Perception instead substance is all time high around me.

protocolture• 1 year ago

The issue isnt are these things desirable

They cannot destroy or harm their books, they must show them respect, They cannot mark on the walls or furniture, They cannot run in the house or jump off of furniture or towers they build,

This sounds great.

The issue is, to what length will you go to prevent these things.

I feel like parents who have all these rules just got wildly different children.

piyuv• 1 year ago

Granted I haven’t finished the article yet, but seems like the author and their SO are on their high horses and built a house of cards. The collapse will be magnificent, around the time the kids start school. Sure, be rich enough and you can postpone it by homeschooling or extra special rich kid schools; but sooner or later real world will catch up. Peers with TikTok accounts asking your kids “yo have you seen it? Check it out: skibidi toilet”

I’ve read more controlled introductions to real world for kids before and I think that is a better approach. “Tablet bad, analogue good” is just too reductionist.

mixmastamyk6• 1 year ago

Delaying is still better than submitting early.

Yeul• 1 year ago

I know home schooling is a really big thing in America but it always gave me creepy child abuse vibes.

jxjnskkzxxhx2• 1 year ago

Meh. It seems to me that these people just allow their kids what they themselves had. It's not a principled decision, it's just nostalgia. Example. No tablets, great. But they can have a game boy. What's the difference? The difference is the parents had game boys growing up so they have good memories. Then they rationalize this as "only has two buttons so requires patience". Surely you can find games on a tablet that only have two buttons and require patience...? No, the actual explanation is nostalgia, with an a posteriori rationalisation.

mixmastamyk6• 1 year ago

The differences is bigger than you realize. Gameboy did not engage in surveillance, nor engagement algorithms.

Solo games can be a bit addictive, but they do have a considerably lower attention limit than social media or multiplayer FOMO.

nedt• 1 year ago

The kids have either not yet or have recently started school. Of course the shouldn’t have TikTok or anything similar. On the tablet give them something for their age. But remind me in five years of this story and how it went. Pretty sure by then they will be as digital as the average kid.

Raising Kids to Have an Analog Childhood in a Digital World

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