The Poor Waste More Time On Digital Entertainment 515
New submitter polyphydont writes "Children of parents with low social status are less able to resist the temptations of technological entertainment, a fact that impedes their education and adds to the obstacles such children face in obtaining financial comfort later in life. As explained in the article, poor parents and their children often waste both their time and money on heavily marketed entertainment systems. Such families often accumulate PCs, gaming consoles and smart phones, but use them only for nonconstructive activities."
How DARE they! (Score:4, Insightful)
FTFA:
In the 1990s, the term “digital divide” emerged to describe technology’s haves and have-nots. It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families.
As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show
In other words, a bunch of do-gooders gave a bunch of computers to the noble savages who live in that neighborhood that they avoid on the way to work, assuming that these ignorant natives would use this wonderful new device to rise up out of the ghettos and become good middle-class liberals. Only the do-gooders were distressed to learn that instead of getting their degrees online and reading academic papers, their beneficiaries instead chose to use their new machines to watch nut-shot YouTube videos and play Farmville. So now they're seeking a way to force these foolish ingrates to use their computers the way the do-gooders know they're supposed to.
Who would have thought that giving a computer to someone who lives in a shithole neighborhood, with little in the way of safe local entertainment, would choose to use it for online entertainment, huh? We must educate them on the proper way to use a computer before they find Facebook and start messaging our daughters instead of using Kahn Academy courses to learn algebra!
Next you'll be telling me that the kids in the One Laptop Per Child program traded their laptops for food rather than using them to learn the Queen's English!
constructive activities? (Score:5, Insightful)
Such families often accumulate PCs, gaming consoles and smart phones, but use them only for nonconstructive activities.
Find me a constructive activity to do with gaming consoles and smart phones. Stack them up like blocks? Practice marksmanship? Learn circuit bending?
Waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor... (Score:5, Insightful)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
and again...
Being poor in America is definitely a weird thing...
Sporting goods and going out and doing things.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've observed that many affluent people spend great deals of cash on sporting goods, expensive hobbies, and out-of-home entertainment.
It's not like they're all buying computers and then using them for productivity.... it's just that a great deal of more productive, healthy, or useful activities are still much more expensive than cheap TVs, cheap computers, and cheap video games.
It's not like the rich people stare at the wall all day instead of playing video games.
Seriously - while the ghetto dad is playing with his $200 XBox, the rich dads are riding $2000 bikes with $3000 worth of shiny spandex.
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
In order to tell me that time was wasted, you have to tell me the opportunity cost of what (realistic, achieveable) activity could otherwise have been done.
Re:Waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's a waste apparently when poor people do it, because they're poor. For the rest of us, it's good old fashioned American technology-based entertainment.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:0, Insightful)
Libertarians think they're getting freedom by eliminating the government. They're just getting corporate slavery.
Nope. If I don't like the pay, I can quit my job and go work somewhere else. If (for some far-fetched reason) my boss shows up at my home at 3 AM and demands I give him money or he'll shoot me, I can shoot him in self defense.
With the government it's quite the opposite. I can't 'quit'. If I stop paying taxes, armed federal agents descend on my property and use force to take my money and posessions. I can still shoot them, but no one will call it 'self defense'...
I can defend myself against 'evil corporations' by refusing to participate. I can't defend against 'evil government' by refusing anything--I'll be dead.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
People have different degrees of impulse control. The ones with good control of their impulses tend to do better then the ones with poor control of their impulses.
On NPR they were talking about the Marshmallow test. Where kids were place in front of a plate with a Marshmallow on it. They were told you can eat that Marshmallow now, however if you wait for 15 minutes you can have two.
They tracked the children threw adulthood. The ones who waited to get two on the average achieved more then the ones who just took one right away.
When you spend money on the quick fix you are trading off time for the long term goal.
If this is a genetic trait, or a learned trait is up to interpretation, however it comes down to, if you grow up in a family who is poor because the parents lack impulse control, then either genetically or as a learned habit it will be passed to the next generation, who will then live in poverty.
It isn't about how hard they work, some work very hard, much harder then the rest of us, it isn't that their are stupid either, some of them are very intelligent. However if you cannot control your impulse to buy the quick fix, you will not be saving up for higher value things.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
Too lazy to get ahead (Score:2, Insightful)
And before you jump on the "too lazy" part of what I just said - if you're poor or down & out, and you're playing XBOX instead of going to the library to learn whatever, or you spend the money on an XBOX instead of something that would provide you with the knowledge to get ahead, then yes, you're lazy.
For most people, getting ahead takes hard work. It's a lot easier to seek out entertainment than the knowledge and skills required to get ahead. This article seems to be right in line with what most people would expect.
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
Most children just use their bikes to ride about on. One of my friends from school saved up to buy a really good racing bike, then spent all his time taking it apart and building better bits using his dad's workshop.
Now he builds racing bikes professionally, and you *cannot* afford one.
You get all kinds of geeks, everywhere.
Computers are a means to an end, not an end (Score:5, Insightful)
There is this idea that "computers", as an abstract concept, are a way to improve education. We see this all the time; most recently, states are pouring huge amounts of money into putting laptop computers into the hands of every student. It seems that people seldom ask why we're doing this. Why are we doing this? Well, it's self-evident that computers make education better, right? At least, that's the way we've been treating the issue. We don't have enough people asking in what ways, specifically, computers will improve education.
So this article is about the result of that way of thinking. Today, even the poorer kids have access to technology in their homes. And, obviously, they play video games with the technology instead of sitting in front of the computer and thinking great thoughts and composing essays and multimedia presentations in their spare time. But the article is full of people who express surprise at this. They are mystified that putting computers into kids' hands didn't magically make them into better students and deeper thinkers.
As has been said in this forum many times before, a computer is merely a tool. There is absolutely no reason why you should expect a student to suddenly become a great learner simply because you handed him a computer, any more than you would expect him to complete his education on his own if you handed him a pile of K-12 textbooks. Someone in charge has to stop and ask the right questions, if we want computers to really help in education. Someone has to stop and ask why and how we expect computers to help, and then implement a plan that actually makes that happen. Because right now, we're just funneling a lot of money into facebook machines for students.
Re:Not Really a Fact (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps people of a lower social status feel the need to escape more so than people who have an easier life? If you live in a crappy environment, are you surprised that you want to spend 10 hours a day pretending you're a valiant knight in Skyrim or being swept up in "Adventure Time" where anything can happen?
Other possible answers include that better off families are more likely to do other things that cost more money. Or that better off parents are more likely to have a day off to take the kids out somewhere (possibly somewhere educational, possibly not)..
It might even be that better schools in wealthier neighborhoods have more worthwhile extracurricular activities.
The thing about digital entertainment is that once you have the media, it costs no more money to spend another hour with it.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the worst argument you could have made. The market does a great job at setting prices that balance supply and demand, far better than any Central Planning Committee. Where you get problems is the stuff that's more complex than a number: contract terms. The market does a poor job of preventing businesses from cooking up ever-more-devious contract terms, that businesses then conspire to use uniformly - from your ISP agreement to Facebooks terms of use to the Win8 EULA, to every apartment complex's lease agreement, to "Whites only" diners, back in the day.
There's are plenty of flaws with thinking the market will sort everything out, but you picked the one example that's not actually a problem.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How DARE they! (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Libertarians think they're getting freedom by eliminating the government. They're just getting corporate slavery.
(1) Thomas Jefferson was a libertarian. He represents the ideal we strive for. (2) A libertarian or jeffersonian does not want to get rid of government. That's an anarchist. (3) Since corporations are a creation of government (via issuance of a license), if anarchists got rid of government, such that it did not exist, neither would corporations exist. (4) So basically your whole sig is flawed.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:4, Insightful)
Your mistake is to assume all libertarians think alike. AKA stereotyping. I'm libertarian but not opposed to the minimum wage. I do not want to see McDonalds workers earning a mere $2/hour.
Of course you will find some, like black economists Thomas Sowell or Walter E. Williams, who claim the minimum wage hurts the poor especially innercity blacks. I don't necessarily agree with them, but it's still worth hearing what they have to say by watching their youtube vids. They didn't earn their Ph.Ds by being dumb (as you imply all libertarians are).
Re:How DARE they! (Score:4, Insightful)
Citing modern day Somalia as an example of what happens under libertarian philosophy is like citing early 90's Bosnia as what happens under Democracy. Or Nazi Germany as an example of what happens when governments follow their own laws. The fact is that MOST of the time, outside of extreme circumstances, Democracy is good, governments obeying the law is good, and libertarianism is good.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
"So if you don't give any answers and instead just bitch about everyone ELSE'S answers, then you don't deserve derision?"
Not when the purpose of commenting is itself, to deride something worthy of derision.
And since when does "having an answer" make a fucking bit of difference? Newt Gingrich wants to KILL drug dealers.
That's fucking stupid. Does not forwarding a solution myself make it any less stupid? Nope.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:3, Insightful)
Even with government backing, the dollar has lost 97% of its value since 1920. We'd all be better-off to avoid government paper and store our wealth in something that can not be devalued through inlfating the supply. Namely: Land. Gold. Silver. BACK TO POINT: The guy was making the valid statement that a corporation can not force you to do anything. Comcast can not force me to pay $70/month for their TV, nor can they send armed police to toss me in jail (or worse: draft me to go die overseas in some war). No company has that power..... only government.
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't ever recall anyone asking for this information for any other reason than to use it to smear someone.
You don't need to know because it doesn't matter, you WANT to know because you think you can then go "AHA YOU SUPPORT TEAM BLUE YOU'RE A _____" or "I KNEW IT, YOU SUPPORT TEAM RED, YOU ARE A _______"
You want to know because it will allow you to avoid addressing the actual issues, and frankly, YOU and those like YOU are what's wrong with politics in this country.
It's entirely possible to address his position without knowing anything else about him.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How DARE they! (Score:2, Insightful)
Thomas Jefferson was a libertarian.
He also lived in the late-18th/early-19th century. Is that where you live?
A libertarian or jeffersonian does not want to get rid of government. That's an anarchist.
No you just want to shrink it down to where it's so ineffectual as to be non-existent in anything but name...and then not fund it.
Since corporations are a creation of government (via issuance of a license), if anarchists got rid of government, such that it did not exist, neither would corporations exist.
Well, in that case, when your utopia comes I'm sure all those super-powerful corporations with trillions in assets will just go home and hand over power to the people.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:4, Insightful)
Most children just use their bikes to ride about on. One of my friends from school saved up to buy a really good racing bike, then spent all his time taking it apart and building better bits using his dad's workshop.
Now he builds racing bikes professionally, and you *cannot* afford one.
You get all kinds of geeks, everywhere.
The dad's workshop part is a way higher barrier to entry than most people's romantic ideas about autodidacts allow.
Re:Sporting goods and going out and doing things.. (Score:5, Insightful)
A home theater to play it in is the uniform equivalent that rich kids play in.
Nethack, dungeonCrawl, NewGrounds, Wesnoth, game demos, and pirated games are the stick equivalent that poor kids play with.
Welcome to the digital era.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy was making the valid statement that a corporation can not force you to do anything.
I think 100,000 well-armed Pinkerton Detectives [about.com] would disagree. And by "disagree" I mean "bust you upside your head with a fucking baseball bat if you defied the company that hired them as its private army."
nor can they send armed police to toss me in jail
Who's going to stop them, the government that you got rid of because you don't like paying taxes?
No company has that power..... only government.
No, the only thing STOPPING the companies from having that power is government.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:3, Insightful)
No-one seems to understand that the Industrial Revolution was a TRANSITION from feudalism to freedom which brought the world out of poverty and CREATED wealth for everyone.
Also, note the end date of the libertarian policy. Quite a while before the invention of the social safety net. What happened in between, hmm? Now, what is happening now, with social safety nets in Europe? What is to stop it from happening here in the US?
Re:How DARE they! (Score:4, Insightful)
The Nolan chart is also way too simplistic to describe political ideologies though. It is quite obviously biased due to its "libertarian"/anarcho-capitalist origins. For instance, one axes is supposed to indicate "economic freedom", but it doesn't specify freedom for whom. Anarcho-capitalists would of course argue that it's freedom for everyone to do what they wish economically whereas socialists would argue (correctly, IMO) that only the wealthy are "free" to do as they wish, with the rest stuck in wage slavery in servitude to capitalists with little choice in the matter. To me, economic freedom is for everyone to take part in the ownership and control of the means of production. Economic freedom restricted to an elite is no freedom at all, just as freedom of speech restricted to a small group is no freedom at all.