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!
Re: (Score:2)
After they get sick of the entertainment, maybe they'll wander off to an educational or news site and learn something. Besides I'd say games are pretty educational: They teach problem solving.
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: (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
False Dilemma [wikipedia.org]. Learn a new concept.
Re: (Score:2)
False Dilemma [wikipedia.org]. Learn a new concept.
Quite familiar with it. I didn't ask about his *affiliation*, I asked for his *stance*. I rarely encounter people who have a stance that doesn't closely match an affiliation, and was genuinely curious what his stance is. Granted, stance is a bit of a loaded word, since you can have as many as there are topics to consider. But most people have at least a few guiding principles.
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: (Score:2)
Moderate or pragmatist? No party affiliation for these poor souls in the U.S. but no ALL Americans have gone off the deep end...
Political agnosticism (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is political agnosticism a stance as you define "stance"? Is, for example, the claimed political neutrality of Jehovah's Witnesses [wikipedia.org] a stance?
Given that the point of his thread was political, I'm going to call that a "no".
Re: (Score:3)
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
A system in which everyone is in charge usually has some method of ensuring that everyone has power within the system. In a democracy it would be voting. In socialism it would collectivization of ownership.
True anarchism would have no protections and thus relies upon ad-hoc pressures to protect the weak, if it's expected at all that the weak would be protected. (Whether the weak are protected is pretty much the difference between an optimist talking about anarchism and a pessimist talking about anarchism
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.
Re: (Score:3)
There is a difference between paying someone to do something and pointing a gun at them and telling them to do something.
*snip*
B. mercenaries with training and equipment from rifles to nuclear submarines complete with nuclear deterrent are available for hire.
... available for hire to anyone who has the economic power to do so.
So, you're refuting Hatta's statement that economic power is equivalent to political power, but saying that economic power is equivalent to military power? That's fine then, that won't ever turn out bad for the people who want to vote with their wallets and boycott the Big Bad Company.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Informative)
You've confused libertarians with anarchists. They're not the same thing.
I've heard a lot of ignorant people say that the libertarian utoptia is in Somalia. Again, this is someone that has confused anarchy with libertarianism.
The basic premise is that that the government should exist to stop people from using force on each other. It can use force to stop force.
So non-consensual violence of any kind would be met with police, judges, and prisons. However, any situation where all relevant parties are consenting to the action would be permitted.
I'm not a die hard libertarian myself. I'm somewhat jaded by the weaknesses of all philosophies. That said, if you're going to level a criticism at least know what you're talking about.
Are libertarians often utopians? Many are... and they tend to not understand that force is required even by the definition of their own philosophy. But corporate slavery is a meaningless charge. What are you implying? Slavery is a form of force and under no libertarian system would slavery of any kind be permitted. If you mean the corporations would be powerful and be able to dictate terms then that is true but no one would be forced to accept those contracts. Most corporate monopolies tend to be government sponsored and under a libertarian system the corporations couldn't form such ties. Ultimately, the corporations could collude to trap people but that's probably not in the interest of all corporations. So long as there are a few that don't have it in their interest to do that there will be some corporations that will make a lot of money offering a better deal.
It's extremely complicated of course and I won't claim any of these systems are perfect. The really wild eyed utopians will tell you their system is the best and no system can ever be better. That's silly. But to deride the whole philosophy especially on false terms is unfair.
Re: (Score:3)
Serfdom requires force. Landed nobility oppressed the peasants into that position. If you resisted, you were killed.
Serfdom is not possible under a libertarian system because force would not be allowed.
As to a walmart town, if the whole town's economy was buying things from shops that were later taken over by walmart then the town never had an economy in the first place.
If all you have is end point retail then how are you buying things?
Lets say we removed walmart and we went to nothing but small mom and pop
Re: (Score:3)
This is only true for people who are hopelessly specialized, and literally depend on a social safety net to garantee sertain basic services just to stay alive.
Eg, the doctor relies on a whole host of other government services to ensure that the car he drives won't gas him with carbon monoxide, or that his house doesn't contain cyanide. His specialist skill as a doctor comes with some hoops he might find trite; (recognition from a state medical board, stringent legal fees and practices to avoid malpractice l
Re:How DARE they! (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.
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
Well, not really. It depends where you live. I grew up in rural Scotland, where most people have at least somewhere to work on machinery. When the nearest garage is 30 miles away, you can either spend a lot of time looking at a broken machine or learn to fix it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The irony is, what is a BBS if not a social network of sorts, that you can play door games on, and chat with your friends?
(Granted, very few people are setting up their own social networks...)
Diaspora: your own social network (Score:3)
Granted, very few people are setting up their own social networks
For one thing, people set up their own web forums all the time. For another, that could change if development of Diaspora gains momentum. Do you think that's gonna happen?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (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 l
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. The "invisible hand of the free market" doesn't reach out to correct markets, it reaches out to touch you in the butthole.
Re: (Score:3)
Are there really any libertarians anywhere who would get rid of public police and fire departments? I've never met one, nor even seen a discussion about such a thing except as a thought experiment or SF story.
Mainstream libertarian thought is that that government has a narrow and specific role: maintian social order, national defense, contract enforcement, fraud prevention, and those few infrastructure efforts where a Central Planning Committee really does a better job (fire departments, roads, funding ope
Re:How DARE they! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
The "invisible hand" that they cherish so much only works in certain market conditions.
Which is why we have been trying for decades to create those market conditions.
Conditions that any self respecting corporation will seek to prevent as soon as they gain enough power.
From the libertarian viewpoint, these groups are fairly easy to defeat. Take away their assets and they're no longer a self respecting corporation. These businesses have hard assets that are hard to hide or move. They cause this sort of trouble, then break or take their assets (libertarians allow for such force in response to coercion). All these "company towns" require extensive collusion with state and local (sometimes federal)
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: (Score:3)
Your mistake is to assume all libertarians think alike. AKA stereotyping. I'm libertarian but not opposed to the minimum wage.
It's not unreasonable to expect people who call themselves "libertarians" to actually hold libertarian principles—which primarily means the Non-Aggression Principle, which is incompatible with threatening coercion against anyone who chooses to enter into a voluntary agreement to provide or purchase labor below your arbitrary price floor.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Further, your notions of the industrialists of that era are tainted by the writings of feel-good fools like Dickens and Sinclair. The truth of the matter is that the price of kerosene fell by 90% between the time Standard Oil was formed and when it was broken up. It was a free market "monopoly", and like all free market monopolies, it was forced to provide the best goods at
Re:How DARE they! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention that this era was noted for the first war of American capitalist imperialism, the Spanish American War, which makes both Vietnam and Gulf War II look like a purely defensive war in comparison. All of the known evidence suggests that the battleship Maine was destroyed by a magazine explosion internal to the ship, not an attack by the Spanish. However, the ensuing war ended with the US occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, and set forward momentum for US intervention into the affairs of other nations around the globe.
This era was also known for the beginnings of Socialist and Communist movements. May Day is celebrated world wide except in the US, even though the event is meant to observe the massacre of American factory workers on strike in Chicago during this same era of economic growth [of a wealthy minority] and a universal middle class [which came later after progressive reforms].
Re: (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
Re: (Score:2)
You can leave your country just like you can leave your job. Both are painful, and you may not actually have lots of other available options.
Re: (Score:2)
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: (Score:3)
Can you please stop rewriting history in all of your posts? The historical parallel you stir are so stupid and wrong it is painful to read.
Somalia was a imperial kingdom, before intervention from european powers and the ensuing destabilization. Meanwhile your personal eden of invisible hand jerking in the us was supposedly responsible for a period of prosperity and growth, in europe, heavy handed centralized planning and rampant socialism lead to... unrivaled prosperity and growth, and the emergence of a st
Re: (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
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:4, Interesting)
You can refuse to an extent. My cell is work provided, wife's is a prepaid flip phone. We paid off all debts several years ago including mortgage. We bank at a hayseed bank. We don't buy new gadgets but go the craig's list, refurb route. Our phone/internet is a co-op. We got rid of cable. The little over the air we watch, we dvr and skip the ads. All browsers run adblockers.
However, I'd say we are far from "Amish" or "caveman".
Not Really a Fact (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I didn't see anywhere in the article where they called that a fact. Conversely, the article seems to explain it to be a correlation and, if this concerned me, I would be more worried about the overall growing trend regardless of social status. From the article:
A study published in 2010 by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that children and teenagers whose parents do not have a college degree spent 90 minutes more per day exposed to media than children from higher socioeconomic families. In 1999, the difference was just 16 minutes.
The study found that children of parents who do not have a college degree spend 11.5 hours each day exposed to media from a variety of sources, including television, computer and other gadgets. That is an increase of 4 hours and 40 minutes per day since 1999.
Children of more educated parents, generally understood as a proxy for higher socioeconomic status, also largely use their devices for entertainment. In families in which a parent has a college education or an advanced degree, Kaiser found, children use 10 hours of multimedia a day, a 3.5-hour jump since 1999. (Kaiser double counts time spent multitasking. If a child spends an hour simultaneously watching TV and surfing the Internet, the researchers counted two hours.)
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?
As explained in the article, poor parents and their children often waste both their time and money on heavily marketed entertainment systems.
The funny thing is that if you look it as dollar spent per hour enjoyed, it's not a waste of money. It's actually much more affordable than taking your kid on a field trip or sailing or even to the movies. Hell, football pads and gear probably cost more than a Wii with games. I agree that the kids should spend more time visiting the library but as someone who grew up underneath the poverty line, I feel like this interpretation of this study was pretty shallow. I mean, if you're concerned about poor people spending money on video games, why aren't you demanding we outlaw the lottery and gambling? Numbers-wise it's not rich people who enjoy those stupid, expensive habits.
Re: (Score:2)
That's really hard to evaluate. $60 for that AAA game which gets a total of 5-10 hours of play is far more expensive than the $7-15 admission for an afternoon at a museum, or $120 for an annual pass to the zoo.
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.
No kidding (Score:5, Interesting)
I got to do a lot of cool things as a kid but looking back at them the reason it was possible was my family had a reasonable bit of money. It wasn't all that cheap. Even simple things like a day at the museum that is like $50 for two kids and an adult, never mind food or any extras. That is amusing and educational, but for one day max, and realistically you probably don't stay all day. Well $50 will nearly get you a video game (most are $60 these days). Less used or on sale on Steam or something. That can entertain you for days on end.
So if a family doesn't have much money, it isn't hard to see why they'd choose games over museum visits, even if they understand it would be better educationally.
Hell I am setting up our labs (at a university) for a summer program for high school and middle school students right now. Cool summer engineering academy thing. Looks like it would be pretty fun and educational for geek type kids. However, it costs money. I don't know the details, that isn't my area, but only people who can pay, probably a fair bit (couple hundred is my guess) can get in.
Re: (Score:3)
Iff there's something reasonably productive you could be doing.
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?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
my son uses his smarthphone to slack off but also to check wikipedia when he encounter a concept he does not know. I do not see smartphone as just a distraction.
Though to be honest I believe it makes more harm than good.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Practice problem solving in a simulated world.
Re: (Score:2)
Find me a constructive activity to do with gaming consoles
This guy did:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_hotz [wikipedia.org]
Of course, if inner-city black children were doing that sort of thing, they would probably be arrested and charged with a variety of crimes.
Waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
For many of the rest of us, providing these goods and services for poor people to "waste" their resources on is how we make a comparatively good living.
Re: (Score:2)
It's wasteful when it is something you don't like.
It's spending when it is on you.
Re: (Score:2)
So the majority use it for... (Score:2)
..and the lottery (Score:3)
Don't forget the lottery!
It's the math tax, you know.
What a load of shit. (Score:2)
This is nothing more than thinly veiled lifestyle snobbery. Why is it even on /.?
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...
Re: (Score:3)
I think I know what you're implying. It's a very common refrain to claim that the US doesn't really have much poverty based on metrics like TV ownership. But, the cost of luxury tech items in relation to salaries is far different today. Fifty years ago, owning a TV was like buying a used car. Hell, I can get the big screen I bought 5 years ago at 1/4 the price and much higher quality (damn it!). Never mind the depreciation of buying these items used. Same with a PC.
No, you can't compare poverty in sub
Re: (Score:2)
And 50 years ago, just about anyone who really wanted a TV could buy one - saving up for it exactly the same way they saved up for the used car. Except they didn't really want the TV that badly, and they needed the car. So they saved up for the used car instead. Because 50 years ago, they did save their money. They weren't pissing away their money on unnecessary stuff that might only cost a small fraction of their income, but adds up.
Re: (Score:3)
BULLSHIT! They just could not get easy loans. People have not changed that much. Many folks wasted their money at the bar, or on gambling or onions for their belts.
Your post is classic it was better $WHENEVER bullshit. The reality is a TV cost as much as a car and their cars all sucked. So they had to keep buying them over and over. Since at the time consumer credit was in its infancy they were forced to save money for another car to get to work.
Re: (Score:3)
No, you can't compare poverty in sub-Saharan Africa to poverty in the worst of Detroit's slums, but it's poverty nonetheless.
Absolute vs. relative poverty.
Generally when we consider the 3rd world we're talking about absolute poverty - a line below which we feel no human should have to live.
Generally when people in the first (and to a slightly lesser extent, second) world talk about our own countries we're talking about relative poverty - a position so far from our social norm that we feel no fellow citizen should have to live in.
This isn't only a "looking out for your own" type thing, it reflects how our mind works. You'll find p
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Being poor in America is definitely a weird thing...
Only because as a society we've decided that abject poverty is not acceptable. You hear lots of talk about government anti-poverty programs "failing" when in fact they are successes precisely because being poor in America rarely means the same thing it does in any 3rd world country when less than 100 years ago there was practically no difference.
Re: (Score:3)
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: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.
A possible explanation (Score:2)
Media consumption and the use of free time (Score:4, Interesting)
No surprise there (Score:3)
They make poor decisions (such as spending $110 a month for unlimited cellphone service) and thus continue to be poor. While those who make smarter decisions, like investing the $110 in a business, and climb up the income ladder to middle class.
*
*I used the example based on someone I know. Doesn't even know how to use the internet, but still "had" to have a $110/month plan. Meanwhile the credit cards go unpaid.
Liberal Judo (Score:2)
He didn't say all poor people were stupid. He said they were not making as many smart choices, trapping them where they were.
There is a vast difference between your statement and what he actually said; as per the typical liberal stance there can be no grey areas so you flamed him without thinking.
Not a smart choice, and the collective choices like these that you and people that think like you have made over the years are finally catching up to you.
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, gettin
Re: (Score:2)
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.
That's why I spend all of my free time reading important news on Slashdot instead of wasting time on unproductive digital entertainment.
Well duh! (Score:2)
What were they supposed to do? Write a novel? Yeah, that's pretty easy to do when you are starving, worried about the landlord kicking you out, and dodging bullets on your way to and from school.
Manage their bank accounts they don't have? Oh wait, maybe use western union on line to pay bills with the cash they have.. Oh wait, you need a bank account for that.
Hmm, go to online courses that they can't afford to get that MBA? Purchase publishing software or graphic art software? Learn to write Java for En
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.
Cause = "OMG I've got to have that" (Score:2)
Used to be called keeping up with the Joneses. Nor sure what it is now. Marketeers just love these people.
Isn't it the other way around? (Score:2)
The article implies that people that are poor waste more time (and likely, a greater percentage of their already small income) on Digital Entertainment.
Isn't this really the other way around?
I think people that waste lots of time watching movies and buying gadets they don't need end up being poor. (Of course rich people are an exception, but I'm talking low/middle class here).
Same as it ever was (Score:2)
"Work is the curse of the drinking class" --Oscar Wilde.
waste on liquor and cigarettes? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
As explained in the article, poor parents and their children often waste both their time and money on...
... slashdot posts
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: (Score:3)
Introduction to such devices and the information they can access might lead to FREE THINKING!
Baaaaaad.
They also might become curious about how it works which leads to learning what is under the hood... and that will prevent them from being mindless consumers of corporate informational garbage and they might even become PRODUCERS of information. How can you convince them that Obama is a communist then??
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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: (Score:2)
Re:And... (Score:5, Informative)
I couldn't find the study earlier, but here is a pretty good writeup of the effect:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
"Willpower turned out to be more than a folk concept or a metaphor. It really was a form of mental energy that could be exhausted. The experiments confirmed the 19th-century notion of willpower being like a muscle that was fatigued with use, a force that could be conserved by avoiding temptation."
I don't disagree that regular exercise of willpower can have positive effects, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok.. I am no nutball conservative and I believe in a certain amount of social spending, but this will be a corps of people with masters degrees in communications or some such that don't have the knowledge and ability to do anything but teach people how to do a Google search.
There are bad government programs and this would be one of them.