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Sadia Kalam's avatar

Oh Garrett it breaks my heart when I see children and teens and young people as well as elderly people and my peers unable to hold a conversation and make eye contact.

In my tradition eye contact is actually not something encouraged between men and women who are not married but being able to be present doesn’t mean you have to have that necessarily. I routinely “forget” my device and leave it uncharged and it’s actually exhilarating lol

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Garrett Kincaid's avatar

Well said, Sadia — it’s especially sad for me to see parents at a playground, or with their kids anywhere, and being enveloped in their phones.

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Sadia Kalam's avatar

Dr Haidt calls it a screen-based childhood.

When I was funding early childhood education, it seemed like all the experts kept packaging “solutions” into tech based tools to help parents raise children. It’s a generational problem now that people don’t know how to relate to each other, even their kids need to be entertained constantly through apps. What do I feel my child? Let me ask AI lol.

If you’ve ever had the privilege of looking at a baby in the eyes, and STARING— it’s like the most interesting black screen and you’ll never pick up your phone again in the same way.

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Michael Sanchez's avatar

Garrett, this was great! I wonder how much phones can function as a means of escape—can we find liberation in these tiny devices? While phones dramatically limit our ability to make physical community, we are simultaneously more interconnected than ever before. I know technology can certainly feel like a black hole, but how much of this can we blame on technology versus the state of the current world?

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Garrett Kincaid's avatar

Hey Michael, thanks for reading! I agree that phones can be a means to escape, but that’s a bad thing. They let us too easily slip away from whatever discomfort. Of course, there are many benefits to our devices, but I’m suggesting that they are, by nature, attention-consuming. And if one wants to retain their attention or put it elsewhere, one has to work against their devices.

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CansaFis Foote's avatar

…full train only one of us not doing it…and i am not him…instead i tilt to type to you…we are diseased and toystruck…

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Garrett Kincaid's avatar

Did you hear them all shout in unison? Is that why you assumed the position?

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CansaFis Foote's avatar

...one second let me ask my A.I. for that answer...

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