08-06-2017, 08:03 AM
(08-04-2017, 02:45 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I can understand letting a child have a 'dumb phone' (the sort that can do nothing more than transmit voice) for reasons of personal safety. Get in trouble, call 911? See a crime, dial 911... call parents if you are going to be late getting home or are stuck in a strange place). Parents can use the smart phone to figure out where the A&P on Sturgis Road in Kalamazoo, Michigan is. (There is no such location -- I use fictional locations) One can get into big trouble because a smart phone gives one inappropriate confidence.
Children are not hurt by being behind the times on technology. Your great-grandparents may have lived without radio (let alone television, high-fidelity, video recording, computers, and smart phones). That was the least of their problems.
Good or bad, kids, and some are as young as 10 to 12, are getting Smartphones and living inside them like older generations lived inside social space in the real world. What they're doing is a modern version of bonding with their peers. What's different is the addictive nature of the devices and their inherent artificiality.
I expect an emerging generation of young adults with exaggerated expectations and underdeveloped people skills, which can't be good. Will they be able to respond effectively when the crises of their times arrive, or will they be pushed aside by even young cohorts who managed to avoid the pitfalls of these electronic pacifiers?
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
