More on Jonathan Haidt, following up on Tuesday’s post.
As was pointed out to me in the comments, I was wrong in claiming that Haidt’s solutions had a lot to do with government intervention. I’m not even sure where I got that idea, considering I’d listened to most of Haidt’s past podcast discussions of the subject matter of social media and child development. I had listened to Haidt and heard what he said. Maybe I just got carried away with the Reason magazine reflexes.
Haidt’s proposed solutions have had more to do with parents doing better at their jobs and protecting their charges from overusing the technology. At most he’s calling for social media companies to be made responsible for monitoring the age restrictions of users signing up for accounts.
At any rate, the Atlantic had an interview between Hanna Rosin and her son, with a clip of an interview she had done previously with Haidt.
From her son, we learn the parents had tried sending him to digital-free camp once, and the parents felt like the experience was positive. But from his perspective, it had been more negative or neutral. He had complained a lot about it at the time. If anything, that merely shows that a fundamental part of the human experience is belly-aching and complaining about everything under the sun. Social media and smartphones are merely layered on top of human nature without really changing it. Teen unhappiness remains a constant for unhappy teens.
Anyhoo. I was off the mark in saying Haidt had big-government solutions for the supposed problem. His proposed solutions mainly have to do with parents doing more to restrain their offspring from spending all their time on digital devices. And I don’t see anything wrong with an appeal for better, or at least more conscientious, parenting.
CynthiaW
My web browser had a story about the relative speed of roadrunners and coyotes! I learned coyotes are much faster than roadrunners.
BB1lrhrC?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=d399df207420488086b1f829636c7fe4&ei=11tpacing the Myth: The True Speeds of Coyotes and Roadrunners Revealed (msn.com)
So was the WB roadrunner nuclear powered? Was Wiley slow due to anvil injuries, or just, well, slow?
We’re on our last day in Seville, going next to Granada for a day and then on to Madrid. A couple more photos, at the risk of boring anyone with vacation photos:
The many colorful, narrow streets and alleys fascinate me, probably because it’s so different than I’m used to: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_vsNSIwb14zhyMvtKW2otWKimBQ38Nu/view?usp=drivesdk
The Plaza de Espana. Gorgeous architecture surrounded by a beautiful park. https://drive.google.com/file/d/11ELHvmqI0MNfDUNQDcdFvKI4E0C2CVeb/view?usp=drivesdk