Modern Luddites: On Being a Digital Minimalist Family in a Tech-Saturated World

I know this isn’t directly related to the article, but for what it’s worth Luddites weren’t anti technology at all[0] in fact they were quite adept at using technology. It was a labor movement that fought for worker rights in the face of new technologies.

[0]: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-l...

I can't really agree with the author's outlook on a completely tech free childhood. As with most things, you need to strike a balance.

I'm reminded of stories in China where parents do similar things for gaming, then once college starts the kids swing in excess to the opposite. Some even die of a heart attack. It's much better if kids find their own limits under a safe environment with parents than alone where there is no one to stop them when things go to far. Plus there's going to be a huge social cost in being excluded from group chats or socializing through common interests.

On the flipside, of course that dosen't mean letting kids go online virtually unsupervised all day, but it's the same issue of parents taking the simple, "easy" route of parenting rather than a more nuanced approach.

> Looking ahead, I believe children will thrive if we teach them the life skills that set them apart from machines. I do not buy the argument that kids need to be exposed to tech from a young age in order to be professionally successful. The technology they use is designed to be intuitive (we all learned to use it later in life), and it won’t be the same in a decade. What matters more is teaching them how to be human—how to have conversations, make eye contact, be attentive and alert, be thoughtful and considerate, feel their emotions keenly, be insatiably curious about the real world. Training for that takes years and starts from birth. There is no time to lose.

Okay but this doesn’t mean anything. It’s fine and meaningful if it just means interacting with each other instead of everyone staring at their own tablets or the same TV.

But sometimes people get this idea that if they just remove something civilizational, they’ll get back to being human. But that’s never how it works. Either the mere exposure to it has tainted you forever or it was never that simple to begin with.

The problem with moving to another country in order to get away from your problems (or whatever) is the constant of you. To simplify a lot: your own habitual thoughts. There’s no modern veneer which is obfuscating the real you. The real you is already there. And that takes more than a vipassana retreat/keto diet/tech diet to unravel.

I really appreciate their approach to 'free range' children but most kids with cell phones are not doing it just because they asked for one. It's because mom & pop want their kid to be able to communicate their every movement and be tracked by a mapping app.

To really get a handle on this we need to figure out what is going on with helicopter parents, a phenomenon that predates cell phones by decades.

My only problem with this is the good content on the internet like good YouTube videos explaining to you how the world and things work.

If i could have a good filter which really can control my internet usage without giving away my privacy that would be awesome.

But no first of, everything goes through chrome and i do not trust random addons, i can also circumvent it too easily. Then even services like YouTube introduced there shorts. Do i watch them? Sometimes. Do i want to watch them? no

Can i deactivate them? no..

I will continue paying for YouTube premium! But pls give me a personal pseudo budget and not some ass weak timer i can just click away...

One downside of having an unusual childhood -- even if it is by most metrics a good childhood -- is that it might make it much harder for the kids to relate to other kids as they get older.

> “Conformity is overrated,” I tell them jokingly, but that is small consolation when you are the only kid going into tenth grade without a smartphone. My oldest son wants a phone badly because everyone else has one, but that’s not a compelling enough reason to buy him one.

It's easy for parents to completely misjudge how the child will be affected by being the only one in their class who has to live by different rules. In some ways, this feels more like a sociological experiment the parent is interested in doing, when really, the parent should be setting up the children for success in adulthood.

> For instance, my son cannot participate in any classroom activity that involves a QR code, a fact I’ve had to point out to his teachers. Sometimes it’s hard for my kids to find information about group projects or extracurricular activities when social media is used to communicate with students, as opposed to updating a website or sending an email.

Come on.

> But great tools don’t automatically make great toys, and I want my kids to learn the difference.

Quote of the century. I couldn't agree more.

As someone who makes a living from tech, I want it less and less in my life in my spare time. That doesn't mean it's not important, useful and gives us boundless opportunities.

> By the end of it, I hope my sons have a rich repository of childhood memories that will someday make them smile, laugh, and possibly even cringe.

Playing video games on the TV during the afternoons in our summer holidays are some of my favourite memories. As an introvert and nerd, it gave me time to decompress and practice some skills, while it gave my parents some time to nap and have kid-free time after a morning of playing on the beach in the sun.

Video games were also one of the things I could bond over and practice some comptetition with my dad and much-older sibling.

Balance is key.

I do like the author trying to find some balance, but how does this not poorly prepare your kids to live in the world with their peers?

I am a parent, youngest now 13. Could I do it all again, would absolutely have this approach.

Note she’s not anti-tech but pro childhood & the time & space & innocence you need to develop yourself.

The device access my kiddos had was not an enrichment. I see that now. I like her compromise of tech in the common area but no individual social accounts until 18.

Everyone I know in the neighbourhood is reading or read the "The Anxious Generation". It looks like the tide is turning and there is very strong anti-tech sentiment everywhere. And now that we have smartwatches with GPS/LTE connectivity, kids don't need cellphones to be in touch with their parents.

Well... Some have said that I'm a modern Luddite because I do not use a macrobug aka smartphone except for Google Maps navigation, very limited on the go phone usage, very rare personal feeds (tt-RSS on my home server). Actually I'm an architect (sysadmin who design and implement infra, I do not choose the title anyway) and I've built a new home, all electric with p.v. and integrated as much as possible anything via Home Assistant but for some being desktop-centric means being Luddite.

I tend to say that some are Luddite because even if they perfectly can they refuse to operate autonomously from their desktops, they choose not to care their digital life, they choose to stick with deprecated solutions, who cost them more money and trouble than choosing the current tech.

Long story short: I think we should describe a bit more the meaning of Luddite, because as a mere tag seems to be a bit too much versatile...

I wish we had better agreement on a society on the terminology we use to describe types of technology.

Even among HN readers on this thread, there seems to be a lot of conflating "technology" with the spyware and attention kidnapping products of surveillance capitalism.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s with plenty of technology for the era; sure, we had a lot less of it than the rich kids did, but that was mostly just jealousy that my friends could play "better" games than I could. Technology was a thing you used when you sat down and intended to use it. It wasn't a thing that told you that you were missing out every second you weren't using it, and it wasn't a thing that gatekept access to conversations with people you knew or even basic commercial needs like transportation or food delivery.

The problem isn't tech, it's carrying around dozens of corporations in your pocket.

Time to update his old xkcd

https://xkcd.com/1299/

s/I/My children

s/TV/phone

s/1950/2010

s/2000/2020

The author talks about all the benefits of a "screen free" childhood and I remember my own fondly (although as an older millennial it was rapidly interrupted as technology spread). What I always wonder though, is if this kind of upbringing is so positive for kids, why are so many boomers so self-centered and spiteful? Surely, they should be happy, beautiful and kind?

Thus was Ned Ludd finally laid to rest, his name taken up by helicopter parents who chose to battle against screen time instead of autism-inducing vaccines or power lines.

Saying "tech is bad" or "screens are bad" sound very narrow-minded to me. Sure, there are issues in this "Tech-Saturated World" but I don't think avoiding Tech as much as possible is the answer.

I prefer a digital balance over digital minimalism.