Fox News Contributor believes suffrage was a mistake.

[ladyfreckles]

Originally Posted by PhilsFan

The kids aren't spoiled by their parents, for the most part. They're spoiled by the rhetoric of those who advertise the existence of an "American Dream."

I think they're more spoiled by the information overload and mass availability of media.

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by ladyfreckles

information overload

I think this is one of the greatest achievements of our time. Practically everything you could ever want to know is about 2 minutes away. If I ever find myself thinking or saying 'I don't know', 99 times out of 100, I'm looking it up later that day. We're the only generation in history to be able to say that

[deep]

the quality of the information is very suspect

we live in a time when one is able to quickly find the facts they desire to validate their views

[ladyfreckles]

Originally Posted by Jive Turkey

I think this is one of the greatest achievements of our time. Practically everything you could ever want to know is about 2 minutes away. If I ever find myself thinking or saying 'I don't know', 99 times out of 100, I'm looking it up later that day. We're the only generation in history to be able to say that

Kids shouldn't have unrestricted access to information/the internet. A lot of them nowadays do. I see six-year-olds with their own laptops and the parents don't even try to monitor the history.

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by ladyfreckles

Kids shouldn't have unrestricted access to information

I get what you're saying, just this part I don't agree with

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by deep

the quality of the information is very suspect

As long as you're not a lazy researcher, it's not difficult to find quality information

[ladyfreckles]

Originally Posted by Jive Turkey

I get what you're saying, just this part I don't agree with

Children should not have unrestricted access to information. This can end badly in so many ways. Keep in mind when I say children I mean <12. It goes into a larger gray area then. Imagine a 6-year-old on 2005-esque 4chan. If kids have access to information, the parents need to be there going through it with them. I stand by this because there are a lot of things and ideas that can be put into the heads of children (who are still developing their skills in logic) that are really unhealthy if a parent isn't there to explain it. I don't believe any elementary school student has the right to go unwatched throughout the internet.

[Jive Turkey]

We're probably just arguing semantics then. When I say information, I'm talking about quality information, not the garbage on 4chan. With all the crap they could be spending their time taking in, if a kid would rather spend the time learning and exploring, what could be better? I wish I had access to all this when I was younger; My young brain cells could've been storing something useful instead of Mortal Kombat finishing moves (though I must say, they were useful at the time)

[cobl04]

I'm with you man. Luckily being younger than you whenever I've wanted to know something about the universe, all I've had to do us google it.

[ladyfreckles]

Originally Posted by Jive Turkey

We're probably just arguing semantics then. When I say information, I'm talking about quality information, not the garbage on 4chan. With all the crap they could be spending their time taking in, if a kid would rather spend the time learning and exploring, what could be better? I wish I had access to all this when I was younger; My young brain cells could've been storing something useful instead of Mortal Kombat finishing moves (though I must say, they were useful at the time)

It's very easy for kids to end up places on the internet that are less than stellar (even if the intentions are innocent). I remember being seven and going on a video game fan website and ending up stumbling on some fan site full of hand drawn porn. Yeah. I remember back when the old format for forums was still in use and nothing was censored, porn bots could be anywhere, and people would constantly post rather obscene things ("You should just kill yourself!" along with other stuff).

If a kid wants to go on the internet and learn about space and NASA, be my guest, but I'll be monitoring their every move until they've earned the right to privacy.

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by ladyfreckles

ending up stumbling on some fan site full of hand drawn porn.

link?

[ladyfreckles]

Originally Posted by Jive Turkey

link?

It's been well over ten years. I highly doubt the site is still even up (and I don't remember what it was called).

However, seek and ye shall find. Sites similar to this are all over the internet.

[cobl04]

Originally Posted by ladyfreckles

I remember being seven and going on a video game fan website and ending up stumbling on some fan site full of hand drawn porn.

Have you been using goggles again jt?

people would constantly post rather obscene things ("You should just kill yourself!" along with other stuff).

You can find this stuff in the comments section on many YouTube videos.

[ladyfreckles]

Originally Posted by cobl04

You can find this stuff in the comments section on many YouTube videos.

Yeah, which is why it's important that the information be restricted in some way. This can be in a way where the parent is going through all of it with the child so that they have room to skim and explain things, or through blocking sites that are common for this. Personally with youtube, I don't see why any parent wouldn't sit down and watch the videos with their kids. There are some fantastic youtube channels on there dedicated to education and things like that.

I run a youtube channel where I occasionally (in this case I haven't in months) make videos on technology. I have 1500 subscribers. I've seen everything in my comments section from verbal abuse to downright pornographic commentary (which is odd considering most of my videos are from the shoulders up and don't show my body at all).

[indra]

How old of kids are we talking about here?

[anitram]

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Nando Parado. For those of you who watched the movie Alive or are familiar with the story of the plane crash in the Andes in the 70s with the rugby team onboard, he was the de facto leader, and one of the two men who hiked out of the Andes with no shoes, no equipment, no water, no food aside from bits of meat of the dead (they had turned to cannibalism as they were stuck on that mountain for something like two and a half months). Anyway, an absolutely incredible man and incredibly accomplished, he also lost his mother and sister in the crash and was motivated by his desire to see his father again.

Interestingly during the Q&A, somebody asked him if there was anything that worried him about the younger generation. And he said that he loves technology - he became a race car driver afterwards, he flies planes, he now only travels first class, he has his iPhone, etc. But that he was quite concerned about the information overload and about the almost instant availability of information where children are concerned. He said he thought that after thousands of years, this was the first generation that would really not understand the concept or importance of human instinct, because they haven't had occasion to. And that he sees a marked difference between kids in the developing world and those in the West. He's not necessarily talking about survival skills (much less needed today where there are very few truly wild places left), but just relying on and trusting your own inborn instinct rather than looking something up on an iPhone. It was an interesting talk - I hadn't really thought about it much before.

[Liesje]

Working in IT at a college and having a dozen or so student workers as part of my team, what I see these days are kids that have no ability to troubleshoot or even formulate questions. They have all the tools they need and more in order to solve problems and fix what is broken but are incapable of thinking through the process and want full-timers to spoon-feed them every step of the way. They expect to be trained to follow some step-by-step instructions for every issue they might encounter. It's a big problem for us right now and we've been trying to brainstorm how we're going to address this issue because everything is taking forever to get done (full time staff interrupted every minute by student workers who want someone else to just tell them what to do). Even five, six years ago we did a lot more with a lot less. I'm not sure what this has to do with women since I'm the only woman on my team (and I believe I've been the only woman since the mid-90s or before) and we have only two female student workers that are done working this week (so far I've only seen about six new guys coming through and being introduced as the new hires), but it is what it is. We struggle with helicopter parents being that we support a college and now we're struggling to NOT become a helicopter employer/manager.

[ladyfreckles]

Originally Posted by indra

How old of kids are we talking about here?

<12. That's when they become adolescents and the rules start to change.

Originally Posted by anitram

Interestingly during the Q&A, somebody asked him if there was anything that worried him about the younger generation. And he said that he loves technology - he became a race car driver afterwards, he flies planes, he now only travels first class, he has his iPhone, etc. But that he was quite concerned about the information overload and about the almost instant availability of information where children are concerned. He said he thought that after thousands of years, this was the first generation that would really not understand the concept or importance of human instinct, because they haven't had occasion to. And that he sees a marked difference between kids in the developing world and those in the West. He's not necessarily talking about survival skills (much less needed today where there are very few truly wild places left), but just relying on and trusting your own inborn instinct rather than looking something up on an iPhone. It was an interesting talk - I hadn't really thought about it much before.

I know plenty of people that do great in college and sound really smart on forums but when I met them in person I quickly realized that they know next to nothing without a Google search telling them their information. There was a study done recently (might try looking it up) where scientists found that the abundance of information available to us is actually changing the way we think and altering our ability to retain information. We learn and forget very quickly. There are people who don't know how to do anything without looking it up online first. It's getting really bad.

Originally Posted by Liesje

Working in IT at a college and having a dozen or so student workers as part of my team, what I see these days are kids that have no ability to troubleshoot or even formulate questions. They have all the tools they need and more in order to solve problems and fix what is broken but are incapable of thinking through the process and want full-timers to spoon-feed them every step of the way. They expect to be trained to follow some step-by-step instructions for every issue they might encounter. It's a big problem for us right now and we've been trying to brainstorm how we're going to address this issue because everything is taking forever to get done (full time staff interrupted every minute by student workers who want someone else to just tell them what to do). Even five, six years ago we did a lot more with a lot less. I'm not sure what this has to do with women since I'm the only woman on my team (and I believe I've been the only woman since the mid-90s or before) and we have only two female student workers that are done working this week (so far I've only seen about six new guys coming through and being introduced as the new hires), but it is what it is. We struggle with helicopter parents being that we support a college and now we're struggling to NOT become a helicopter employer/manager.

I'm part of the generation where this started happening. I think the whole helicopter parenting thing began picking up steam. Older parents raised their kids differently than the younger parents did (I'm not saying older parents are better, just that it was two different generations of parents raising kids at the same time). In the age bracket of 2.5 years above and below me it seems to be a mix of kids that are able to think things through and a mix of kids that are completely incapable of this.

There's a lot more to it than just helicopter parenting, though. I think towards the late 90s-early 00s schools began following a much more rigid and inflexible guideline for learning. Pressure for perfection/doing things EXACTLY as the teacher asked resulted in a lot of people being unable to plan things on their own. There was no creativity applied in education. Pat can go more into detail with this, because he's almost 26 and he has a brother that's currently a senior in high school and two brothers around my age, but he's seen things change just with his siblings alone.

There's a big fear my generation experiences with letting adults down and not doing everything per the code. This came when education made following things by-the-book a priority over inspiring creative logic. I remember working my first retail job and being so terrified that I'd do anything wrong that I would constantly ask the manager for help. It really, really got on his nerves. It wasn't that I didn't know how to think it was that I was worried that my way of thinking was inherently wrong because that's what I'd been taught my entire life by a terrible school system.

Parents are not only doing everything for their kids, but they're also refusing to let their teenagers make adult decisions. Teens going into adulthood right now have never spent the time developing a sense of individuality or critical thinking skills. It's both the "we must control every aspect of our child's life" and the "everything must be done to a specific standard" mentality that is ruining the next generation's ability to think. It's really terrible.

[moiph]

Originally Posted by ladyfreckles

There was no creativity applied in education. Pat can go more into detail with this, because he's almost 26 and he has a brother that's currently a senior in high school and two brothers around my age, but he's seen things change just with his siblings alone.

I have been asked to expand on this so I shall! When I went through elementary school there were a lot of creative science projects where everybody got to pick what they wanted to do, research it, and make it work. At the science fairs everyone would have something different (ok maybe there were multiple volcanos but most people had unique stuff). By the time the first of my brothers hit 5th grade they were beginning to limit what was and wasn't allowed to be done in the science fair because they thought some projects were too dangerous for kids and a select few kids needed more help with making these projects than others. The next one hit fifth grade I think a year later, and there were even more regulations. Our youngest brother is farther apart in years than the rest of us (8 years younger than me). By the time he was in 5th grade there was only one thing that was allowed at the science fair: a volcano. It was sent home with a list of instructions and ingredients and all the students had to do were follow the directions. Instead of science fairs being a fun day where you got to be creative and unique with science, it was a day to see who could follow instructions the best. With my brothers I watched each generation become more about FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS and less about actually THINKING. My mom noticed it too and she was very frustrated and fought the school system a lot on it. In only eight years the same exact elementary school went from being a fun, creative school to an inflexible place where every student had to do the same project or write the same essay and it was a contest to see who could do the same thing the "best". It put no value on skill or creativity (except maybe in art classes).

I'm not sure what brought these changes about but it was definitely a gradual and subtle change that over time became more and more obvious. I feel really bad for kids these days because they have no opportunity to think for themselves. Again this is with the same set of parents who as far as I know didn't do anything different with my brothers than they did with me. It was the school system that changed and I think the parents adjusted with it.

[ladyfreckles]

Everyone is a winner, it must be fair for every student. Let no child fall behind by simplifying science!