Teens turned their rooms into tech-free zones. This was the result

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1lelqg0jy3o

by xyzzy3000 • 10 months ago

52 32 10 months ago

bbc.co.uk

philipallstar2• 10 months ago

Teenagers finally experience parenting, even if it's only from themselves.

exe34• 10 months ago

they'll rebel against anything!

codyb• 10 months ago

I do enjoy how Eliza's big plan is to go sit on the stairs, and in her family's regular spots on the couch! Very funny and relatable

Insanity4• 10 months ago

I know the world of technology is a different place now. But I _loved_ the fact that I had a computer in my room as a teenager in the early 2000s. It definitely contributed to me ending up in the career path where I am now, I enjoyed 'hacking' on the computer. And unlike the teenagers in the article, having the computer in my room gave me a sense of 'peace' in my room rather than vice versa.

'parenting' is not simply taking tech away from their children but rather about teaching a healthy relationship with technology, just as you would with food, sports, etc.

captnasia• 10 months ago

The difference is when you were a teenager you didn't have algorithmic feeds keeping you glued to the screen like today's youth are.

jajko• 10 months ago

Depending on the technology and individual, there is very little 'healthy' technology for teens. I don't say 0, far from it, but given whats usually available its really a minimal set.

Also there is very little of 'technological skill' to learn, clicking around could be understood by little kids, rest is just usage. Sure, hackers and generally brilliant folks may actually thrive, but they are rare and far apart in general population.

There is endless stream of highly addictive technology, and those kids have absolutely 0 defenses against it. Alcoholics also never notice when they crossed the threshold of a proper addiction, its quiet and sneaky business as usual till you hit the wall hard in some way.

What a great way to prepare for adult life, entering it with some heavy but peer-accepted psychological addiction or two. What could go wrong, raising a strong balanced individual right. Pride for any parent.

glitchc• 10 months ago

The very same, but those days are long gone. Nowadays, I find myself steering my kids away from a career in tech. It's such a dismal place to be.

bombcar• 10 months ago

There's something similar in many areas; reading the "car culture" of the 30s and 40s let alone the 50s and 60s is substantially different than what we have today.

BeetleB3• 10 months ago

Did you have broadband or dialup?

There's a big difference between being offline and being online.

philipallstar2• 10 months ago

I know the world of technology is a different place now. But I _loved_ the fact that I had a computer in my room as a teenager in the early 2000s.

I think it's slightly less the world of technology, and more survivorship bias (and self bias, if that's a term?) You doing well, and well enough to be on a site like this, isn't evidence of very much when applied to a population. In general I'd say better ways to do things are totally to allow technology, but have it in public areas of the house, rather than in kids' rooms.

'parenting' is not simply taking tech away from their children

Indeed; no one is saying that.

hk1337• 10 months ago

On one hand, and perhaps more importantly, this sounds like a great idea.

On the other hand, 5 days seems like a short amount of time for any effective results? I would think, at minimum, 3 weeks to align with the adage of 3 weeks to develop a habit.

ProllyInfamous6• 10 months ago

I have a room in my house that only has an old tube amplifier and a typewriter (and a litterbox). All very low tech... it just works:

the amp still sings | the typer still writes | the litter still clumps

----

The best method for keeping my tech/writing/life simple has been to establish multiple workstations ("desks") that each have their own machine & purpose (e.g. tax machine, browsing / youtube, technical writing machine, multiple typewriters [one for correspondences, another for brainstorming]). An extra laptop (or two) is helpful for general purpose multitasking, anywhere.

In 950sqft, I have six separate desks, with three primary workstations. If you haven't ever composed on a typewriter... it's worth exploring (no distractions other than emptiness-induced tech addiction syndrome).

----

One of my favorite Tom Hanks -isms is that he gifts dozens of typewriters, annually, to various authors... and if he ever see his gifts sitting unused as art/museum pieces (i.e. not being used to type) he will dismantle the famous Tom Hanks typewriter exhibit and force the recipients to actually set them up for ready-use upon desks (or re-gift the machine) [American Typewriter (2016)].

BeetleB3• 10 months ago

The best method for keeping my tech/writing/life simple has been to establish multiple workstations ("desks") that each have their own machine & purpose

A few years ago I had an important realization. Up to that time, half of my time with computers was pre-Internet (or at least pre-broadband). And virtually all my memorable experiences with computers was from the pre-broadband era.

I spoke to a similarly aged tech friend, and he said it was the same with him.

I sat and thought of why that may be. There are several reasons, but I'll highlight one here: Browsers as an interface really degrade the computing experience. The fact that everything we do online is via the browser means everything is competing with each other. Reading the news? That other tab with Youtube open beckons. Or the one with some social network feed.

In the old days, we had separate programs. The equivalent would be a separate SW for Facebook. A separate one for HN. A separate one for BBC.

And if you go far back enough, you did not have multitasking, so you could do only one thing at a time, and it had your full focus.

When people read a physical newspaper, they would do not suddenly get the urge to drop it and watch TV, or check some feed, or whatever. Everything was in its place, and you could dedicate yourself to it.

Today, you could argue that phones/tablets create a similar experience - everything is its own app. For me, though, the form factor just sucks compared to a proper desktop machine.

My hope is WOOB (https://woob.tech/). Have not yet given it a try.

Edit: Oh, and the fact that it could take well over a minute to load a piece of SW made one less likely to whimsically switch between apps. If you're doing one thing, and you know it will take, say, 2 minutes to Alt-Tab to another application, you are usually going to do it only if it's fairly important.

ProllyInfamous6• 10 months ago

Some of my favorite early-tech, non-browser memories was the 90s WaReZ Hotline scene — you manually pointed your desktop application to a host and then participated in each community's trust/forum/reputation system.

I stopped streaming services years ago, and mostly just rip DVDs from the public library.

I've only spent about a third of my life "pre-internet," but it was my favorite years (even as an early internet adopter / user [e.g. eBay PowerSeller in early 2000s])... and not just because of childhood recollections — it was literally Simpler Times™.

sunrunner• 10 months ago

Oh, and the fact that it could take well over a minute to load a piece of SW made one less likely to whimsically switch between apps.

The key point here I think is that there's a cost and some kind of friction to making the change.

It's easy to think that reducing friction is always a good thing, and for people in positions in companies trying to maximise user clicks on the Call to Action that does make sense, but for one's own personal attention and focus some kind of friction can actually be a good thing as it can imply and even reinforce deliberate action, which I believe is what's sorely missing from environments that promote multitasking.

RickS• 10 months ago

Very interesting. How long have you had this multi desk setup for, and how has it evolved? I've tried similar things over time and found a huge amount of variation in the results.

The worst are sort of "negative equilibrium" situations, where the station feels good enough to keep indefinitely, but is actually unproductive. I ran my main desk in the living room for a couple years, and it was only when I moved back into my studio full time that I realized how valuable it is to have gently lit walls on both sides of my peripheral vision, preventing attention hijacking from things going on around me. My ADHD greatly benefits from a room that acts like a horse blinder.

I've had many other "stations" but they tend to be transient, getting lots of attention initially, and then falling into disuse and accumulating crap that gets set on them like any other table.

I've ended up with one main workstation where I do everything, and a few other low-use high-specificity stations tied to specific hardware (an iMac that runs a CNC machine, a flow hood for mycology work). These are idle 98% of the time but it feels great to be able to sit down and immediately resume those things without having to rebuild the container so to speak.

The biggest ADHD-related gotcha is "out of sight out of mind". If a station isn't in a place I see or walk past regularly, I forget that it exists.

This does make me want a typewriter. Is there one you recommend for a couple hundred or less?

ProllyInfamous6• 10 months ago

How long have you had this multi desk setup for, and how has it evolved?

Since 2018, the first time I ever had my own multibedroom rental. After I had established my second desk, I was hooked.

I have since moved, and the new location was a smaller half-renovated location... so I spent Summer 2024 building an "office" / shed (120sqft no-permit legal; after reading Michale Pollan's A Place of My Own), which has its own two desks, on opposite walls (12ft apart). No internet available in my shed (by design). In the main house, I split the larger bedroom in half, which created three separate work areas (plus hundreds sqft of storage / shelves). The smallest desk is dedicated entirely to laminating (internet memes, mostly) =P

Both my typewriters are on custom-built stand-up desks (barstools work, but normal chair-height is too low). My tax and music-streaming computers are also stand-ups. Main browser (this computer) is a seated 48" AORUS, which admittedly has four work-stations on a single display (counter-intuitive to multistation, but never use any connected machine simultaneously).

falling into disuse and accumulating crap that gets set on them

The secret here is to create even more horizontal spaces, without any technology atop, for the simple purpose of setting all your crap. Having a box / closet labelled "Box(es) for unique one-off items that I cannot seem to throw away because I know I'll eventually need it" — is also helpful. So is throwing anything away after its sits within, unused, for over (e.g.) a year.

typewriters / machines?

My oldest desked computers:

two 2006 Core2Duo (x86): a 20" iMac running MacOS Snow Leopard (taxes only, USB printer, offline); the other is an online Win7 Pro machine that is solid, used for anything with a login (e.g. government paperwork, e-file, direct stock purchases)

My favorite computers are all modern Apple Silicon (M2/M3/M4) — I held-out with a MacPro5,1 for over a decade of daily-driving... until the M2Pro Mini came out early 2023.

But my favorite composing machine is a Smith Corona Super12 Coronet (it's a bulletproof typewriter). Aside from using a proprietary ink cartridge (readily available online, even Amazon), and not traditional ribbons, you just can't go wrong with an electric-strike typebar.

The G.O.A.Typewriter is generally considered to be IBM's Selectric II — and I'll agree, but only if you own two and can service them both full-time (i.e. don't depend on them to always work). This is the only typewriter that can "keep up" with 100+ wpm [theoretically 220+ wpm is possible] because there are no individual typebars to clash/interfere/sieze [just a typeball]. Mine sits unrepaired, after its commonest deathknell: broken drive belt, requiring full dissassembly.

My daily correspondence typewriter is a thick&wide-platen Smith Corona Secretariat, which can handle paperweights up to 65 lb (without creasing; typical platen can handle up to 45 lb), up to 12" wide. This machine requires no power, and minimal maintenance — you can take it out of the attic, after years of dust/rust/siezing... "force" each typebar a few times, and then be typing in no time [obviously you need an undried ribbon].

----

One of my favorite gifts is helping intellectuals get offline (if you can't tell, typewriters can play a big part in reconnecting with your world). A recent convert is a judge that has always commented about my typewritten communications (for years, a casual relationship)... now uses a Selectric II professionally (just a brilliant machine, if you can maintain it; interchangable fonts, 10/12 spacing, re-write™). It's a distinguishing correspondence composer, if you can work without red-squigglies/AI (and afford maintenance).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric

https://typewriterdatabase.com/1973-smith-corona-coronet-sup...

https://typewriterdatabase.com/1958-smith-corona-secretarial...

Also, if you haven't (and are type-curious): watch California Typewriter (2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWfgpL1X_oE ...RIP California Typewriter =(

tartoran• 10 months ago

I'd consider analog electronics as tech free in a sense. They do serve a purpose but don't in your way.

ProllyInfamous6• 10 months ago

The Selectrics (1960s technology) feature a Whiffle-Tree, an early digital-to-analogue converter =D

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/RTtKaqIpOJc

Just ¡look at that Selectric working perfectly!

opan• 10 months ago

Is anyone making modern non-qwerty typewriters (I've heard some existed in Dvorak, but I'd want Workman), maybe also split/spaced apart and with thumb keys for stuff like backspace and space? My computer keyboard is just too good to use the typewriters of old. Maybe it would be better to have some sort of middle man hardware that could take the USB keyboard signals and move the mechanical parts in response, so you could plug in any keyboard.

ProllyInfamous6• 10 months ago

Modern?.. not to my knowledge; Dvorak could be DIY'd somewhat easily by manually moving typebars (characters are exchangeble, albeit with a lot effort, on most typewriters). Dvorak typeballs do exist for IBM Selectrics (just relabel the keys... or touch type).

An easier solution to your last question could involve the 1970-era Selectric II, which already has a built-in DAC (and OEM add-ons to e.g. turn your typewriter into a Telex printer)... which could easily interface with a USB keyboard (instead of the typewriter's onboard keys).

Maybe it would be better to have some sort of middle man hardware

Part of a reason to avoid this would be that this "friction" disuades the simplicity of just using a typewriter on any whim. If yours is not an electric model, you don't even need to turn anything `ON`.

Cytobit• 10 months ago

I'm interested in the whole low-tech concept, but the litter box is going too far. I draw the line at indoor plumbing.

pjc50• 10 months ago

Henry has mastered the art of the local newspaper photo, gesturing to an empty space where the tech used to be, but I can't help noticing that his room seems to be in the middle of an unfinished decorating job.

nasretdinov• 10 months ago

For me, a 37-year old teenager, the best thing I've ever done to improve my sleep was setting "downtime" (in iOS screen time settings) from 21:00 to 07:00, and ask my partner to set a screen time password that I don't know so I can't cheat. Works wonders! It creates just enough friction that I don't want to reach to my phone or a computer (which is in another room), and still allows for handling emergencies since messages and phone calls still go through.

Teens turned their rooms into tech-free zones. This was the result

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