Don't Douthat
There’s a lot of fascinating stuff in the Conversations With Tyler episode with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. But, what stood out the most to me was his concerns about exposing children to screens too early. I know that there’s a lot of back and forth about the effects of screens. A few days ago, I saw a New York Times article claiming that they’re not as bad as we make them out to be. Still, I lean toward the side of concern. The Screens of Good assignment that I give to sophomore designers in my user-centered design lecture is proof that position. Ross Douthat shares that concern and has a solution. Real-life.
COWEN: What do you think we’ll see as the main cost 30 years from now from letting our children sit behind screens for so many hours a day?
DOUTHAT: I think it’s bad for human imagination, for normal relationships, for appreciating reality as it actually exists. I think the reason we may not see costs is that it has a numbing effect in certain ways on human behavior. That it doesn’t necessarily lead to egregious acting out of the kind that leads to crime waves or political tumult or anything like that. So the costs — I think the costs are likely to be felt in, as I think they’re already to some extent being elt in, increased mental disturbance on the margins, difficulty forming marriages, families, normal human relationships, and more cultural despair, I think.
Later, Douthat shares his advice:
DOUTHAT: I think that young human beings should be given a sustained encounter with actual physical and social reality before being placed in front of a screen. And I think that that should be educational common sense. And that we’ve gone in the opposite direction is an unfortunate thing.
Source: Cowen, Tyler. “Ross Douthat.” Conversations with Tyler, conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/ross-douthat/