Gen life: Have smartphones destroyed a generation?

[Space Cat]

So which is it?

The one that baits clicks today. An article "Has ad revenue destroyed press?" would be nice too.

[admin]

That's a really interesting/introspective comment. Bandwagon banter on this forum usually places the blame squarely on the millennials. Didn't happen by divine intervention, pure laziness, or smartphones alone.

Welp, older people are in charge of government, education, corporations, capitals, media, propaganda, probably everything except for "dank memes" on the web (though companies are paying for creating them too nowadays to appeal to younger audiences).

If I agree for a moment that the generalization about my generation being really lazy and spoiled is true and not a selection bias, then where the parents and teachers have been?

For example: I read that people in the US could call CPS if kids are playing unsupervised on the lawn. What are the chances that a person will become responsible and not narcissistic if parents had been helicoptering around him/her for years while media and ads were repeating "SPECIAL SPECIAL SPECIAL FIND YOUR UNIQUE WAY"?

This is just a sad map (source):

playgraphicDM1406_468x518.jpg

That map had me rolling.

I once at 8 years old saved up my allounce and decided to go visit my big sister that lived about 125 miles away in mineapolis. I went down to the bus station in the small town. Bought a bus ticket. Got on the bus, and road it to the city. Called my sister from the bus station to pick me up. My sister immediatly called our dad and asked, "dad do you know where charlie is"?

He just said, " well when you get tired of him, send him back".

The most amazing thing is no one thought it was strange. Not the lady that sold me the ticket. Not the bus driver. No one on the bus. No one ever asked me where my parents were at the whole trip. The Minneapolis bus station was not exactly a safe place in those days for anyone to hang out.

[Britkid]

Actuallly, you need a smartphone even with the computer. The computer allows you to access the text/photo/voice message/gif and smile face systems but not the active telephone call system. The smartphone needs to be connected to the Internet and then on the computer app, you need to scan in the QR code displayed on the computer app to your readily available WhatsApp connected phone.

OK, so assuming you don't want to make or receive calls, but just read and send messages, can you use whatsapp in a computer without owning or having access to a smart phone?

[frozen-north]

That map had me rolling.

I once at 8 years old .....

The most amazing thing is no one thought it was strange. Not the lady that sold me the ticket. Not the bus driver. No one on the bus. No one ever asked me where my parents were at the whole trip.

It used to be quite different. Nobody had heard of dioxin and persistent organic pollutants yet. There wasn't much of an awareness of the effect of lead on children either, and a little asbestos exposure was nothing to be concerned about. But I don't know how much of parent's fear is explained by an increase in crime against children, or if it just the case that society has become more aware of what can actually happen.

[snobrd4life]

OK, so assuming you don't want to make or receive calls, but just read and send messages, can you use whatsapp in a computer without owning or having access to a smart phone?

You still have to activate the service from the Android/iOS app. Doesn't necessarily have to be a phone. It could be an iPad/iPod or Android tablet and have the verification SMS sent to a dumb phone. You then input the code into the app and voila, you have an account. As EEUU said before, you have to be able to scan the QR code on your computer to be able to make the connection.

[snobrd4life]

please delete. double post

[Space Cat]

But I don't know how much of parent's fear is explained by an increase in crime against children, or if it just the case that society has become more aware of what can actually happen.

In case of the US, the crime against children and road accidents involving them are falling:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... n-america/

It looks like never-ending fearmongering by media changed the culture.

[at46]

But I don't know how much of parent's fear is explained by an increase in crime against children, or if it just the case that society has become more aware of what can actually happen.

In case of the US, the crime against children and road accidents involving them are falling:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... n-america/

It looks like never-ending fearmongering by media changed the culture.

I think more people are coming out to speak about sexual assault suffered in childhood and that exacerbates the perception. The media removed the associated stigma so lots of skeletons are falling out of the woodwork.

[thisisreallycomplicated]

Since WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, I suspect that it is just for the purpose of tracking the users.

Facebook is creepy. Especially the facial recognition stuff they do, where they locate people on other peoples' photos. Combine that with stuff like pokemon for herding phone zombies, and you've got a global surveillance network.

[Space Cat]

I just found this amazing paper: "Microaggression and Moral Cultures":
http://reason.com/blog/2015/09/11/victi ... beyond-dig

Sociologist Jason Manning identify a "culture of victimhood" that they distinguish from the "honor cultures" and "dignity cultures" of the past. In a victimhood culture, they write, "individuals and groups display high sensitivity to slight, have a tendency to handle conflicts through complaints to third parties, and seek to cultivate an image of being victims who deserve assistance."

In honor cultures, men maintain their honor by responding to insults, slights, and violations of rights by self-help violence. "Cultures of honor tend to arise in places where legal authority is weak or non-existent, and where a reputation for toughness is perhaps the only effective deterrent against predation or attack," write Campbell and Manning. They note that honor cultures still exist in the Arab world and among street gangs in Western societies. During the 19th century, most Western societies began the moral transition toward dignity cultures in which all citizens are legally endowed with equal rights. Dignity does not depend upon reputation but exists as unalienable rights that do not depend on what other people think of one's bravery. Having a thick skin and shrugging off slights become virtues because they help maintain social peace. The aphorism that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is practically the motto of dignity cultures.

And now...

Horwitz makes a strong case that unsupervised and unstructured play among children teaches them private, noncoercive ways to resolve conflicts and generate cooperation, lessons that are very important to how they conduct themselves when they become adults. Supervised play, by contrast, trains children to expect adults to step in to adjudicate disputes and apply coercion. Horwitz fears this is flipping the social default setting from "figure out how to solve this conflict on your own" to "invoke force and/or third parties whenever conflict arises."

[FrankPintor]

OK, so assuming you don't want to make or receive calls, but just read and send messages, can you use whatsapp in a computer without owning or having access to a smart phone?

You still have to activate the service from the Android/iOS app. Doesn't necessarily have to be a phone. It could be an iPad/iPod or Android tablet and have the verification SMS sent to a dumb phone. You then input the code into the app and voila, you have an account. As EEUU said before, you have to be able to scan the QR code on your computer to be able to make the connection.

Short answer: no.

To actually use Whatsapp you need to have an active phone connection. You can do what EEUU and BritKid say to activate the account on your phone, but you can't actually use it on another device, for example tablet or laptop with web.whatsapp.com, without an active phone connection.

There are ways around this, emulating a phone on your laptop with an Android emulator like Bluestacks for example, but they're not straightforward.

[snobrd4life]

Thanks Frank. I've actually played around with installing Android x86 AOSP on my laptop and it works so smooth. If it were easier to keep updated with security updates I'd consider it a legitimate daily driver since it has so many benefits of a a traditional OS and phone.