Playing Minecraft with touchpad + keyboard? Ouch, have been stuck like that at times⌠not fun.
Looks like a cover designed to stimulate Boomersâ âsuperiority complexâ when they blast tech, gaming and new media
âBah, back in my day we went outside and built treehouses, our only limit was our imaginations! What are these kids building in these online games? Are they even using their imaginations?!â
âMeh, looks pretty blocky to me, those graphics are terrible!â
Ditto, my house
Alright, wellâŚthis is my house too, in winter at least. And yet, there is a koyaanisqatsi to the current equilibrium of gameplaying to outdoor activities in our kidâs (and our) lives. Plenty of us have managed to raise kids who are able to enjoy the creative freedoms and limitless learning available online while not sacrificing good old fashioned outdoor play and imaginative play unaided by technology, and thatâs great. Yet we all (parents anyway) know that kid who does not have that balance, and this cover rightly exposes that lack, right? Mark, I know from your posts that your kids have this balance, but didnât that cover sting a bit, or strike you as True with a capital T? I know it did for me.
You mean⌠a high-speed Twinkie assembly line? Yum!
EDIT: Awwww man! The Twinkies arenât on Youtube!
Uh oh, whatâs a âhappy mutantâ to do when a beloved comic artist shoots a well-deserved critical arrow at⌠technology? Praise the art or get all defensive?
Shrug it off and go handling the tech.
Art is nice, but thatâs about it. Go for a month without art, wherever you are, and itâll suck but youâll survive. Go for a month without technology, and the cities, stripped of their infrastructure, collapse.
Not all kids have huge back yards nor do they all live in safe neighborhoods.
#notallkids!
My comment was seeking to position technology activities involving kids and non-technology activities involving kids. The fact that my comment used âoutdoor activitiesâ is relevant to my life and my kids and my backyard and my neighborhood. YMMV.
(did you believe my comment was somehow elitist or lacking in privelege-checking?)
Funny how one image can spawn such different responses based on demographic. Iâm sure the readers of the New Yorker have a very different idea about it than I do.
Ware is making a perfectly valid observation.
Childrenâs minds are engaged and stimulated in different ways by different kinds of interactions.
Thereâs a lot of value engaging with a rich sandbox world like Minecraft or Kerbal Space Program.
But it isnât a substitute for social interaction and social play. Or for doing something constructive in the physical space. Actually building something real.
Or going outside and horsing around.
I know kids who would, if not challenged by their parents, sit around thumbing their fucking phones all day.
I know some adults who would do the same thing. o.O
Those kids on the cover are interacting socially. Theyâre playing a game together. Itâs no less social than tag or Parcheesi.
Iâm not so sure that the picture is intended to be âanti-gamingâ (then again, I donât know whatâs been written up in the magazine).
When I look at that picture I see two kids playing together. Thereâs nothing anti-social at all, and the bedroom shows signs of lots of other forms of play.
People need to get over their fear of âscreensâ. Itâs not the device that matters, its how itâs being used. And the best thing we can do to get our kids getting the most of their âscreen timeâ, is to encourage âactiveâ use of devices, as opposed to âpassiveâ media consumption all day long. This includes using them as tools for learning, communicating and creating, as opposed to mindless channel surfing or the latest mobile âfree-to-playâ game.
Yeah, Iâm really not sure what the intention is. My first impression was the same as yoursâhereâs two kids enjoying a game together, once they get tired of that theyâve got lots of toys and outdoor activities to move on to. Theyâre going to have a fun day!
It wasnât until I read the comments here that I realized it could also be read as the artist pointedly depicting lots of traditional kidsâ activities (toys, books, swingset, etc.) available but unused in favor of the game. That kinda doesnât make sense, though; the scattered toys, and the crayons and paper on the desk, certainly look like someone was enjoying them recently. So I dunno.
Has anyone actually read the magazine?
Edit: HEY LOOK THEREâS A LINKED ARTICLE YOU GUYS. Itâs a mildly but benevolently bewildered father talking about how his ten-year-old daughter loves creating all kinds of neat stuff in Minecraft, alone or with friends, in between playing sports and going to summer camp and having a social life and generally being a healthy, well-adjusted kid.
So there you go!
Carpenterâs Block mod and ForgeMultipart will help a little with that blockiness problem (slopes and extra tiny cubes, whee~). Err, not that I would personally know anything about that as a well adjusted, productive adult in modern society⌠Iâm far too serious for such nonsense and I totally donât have the Regrowth modpack running in the background right at this minute! Do not look behind the curtain, I am not terraforming a blasted wasteland!
Edit: That is to say, if itâs okay for me I donât think itâs going to corrupt children any more than say, everything else in the last 30 years weâve been moaning that they never play outside any more.
