“Grandpa’s having a heart attack kid, quick dial 911!”
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Telephone books came with instruction of how to make (and answer) a call, and advice on correct telephone etiquette.
Am I supposed to be surprised and the point is?
This is just more evidence how everything has to be faster today, leaving less time for creative thinking and more for just doing something fast! Too many many people have become less than the sum of their experience/education. They can’t think for them-self, can’t create something new and can only respond rotely.
We are too busy giving the bums rush to anything requiring non-instinctual thought and this busyness leaves us void of anything not routine, brings our collective IQ and skills down and leaves us vulnerable to commercial manipulation.
This is why we elect the dumb ass politicians we do, we don’t have time nor the energy to get involved, IMHO.
Stop being such luddites. Sure phones have advanced to the point where people can’t let go of them. However, you have a place to write down a creative thought, record encounters with police so there is no mistake of what actually happens, or get a hold of someone you might need.
I wish I could say I was amazed by the few responses I read. Sadly, I’m not.
I gave an honest response to the question of why I would give a cell phone to my child. That is, as parent I feel a little bit better, a tiny bit safer, knowing that my child has a way to call for help in case of an emergency.
Is it an optimal solution? No.
Does it replace every other bit of safety instruction I give my child? No.
Is it a new and potentially beneficial option that was never available to me when I was that age. Yes.
Do I want to protect my child in this complicated and dangerous world with every available resource I can? Yes.
That is why I want to give my child every possible option.
What I got in response to my statement was a diatribe about the current generation. What a waste they are. Inattentive, unimaginative, superficial and having a herd like mentality.
That is an awful lot to label children in general with. There were comments on how the cell phone is the modern equivalent of a pacifier or game station. How they were disrupting classrooms and how they were making people dumb.
Those statements are superficial and wrong. They are simplistic talking points designed to placate to the lowest common denominator.
Things are different now then when we were children. New things are here that did not exist back then. Different does not mean bad. Different does not mean stupid. Different means different, with all the nuances and repercussions that come with change. Change does not make up stupid.
Things change very, very fast in our society. Accept it and work with it. Be open to options.
Here is a personal example from my life that does not involve phones. My father was born in the 1920’s. His first airplane flight was in the late 1940’s where he paid a barnstormer to take him up in an old WWI biplane. His second flight, 20 years later, was in the late 1960’s when he took his wife and myself down to Disney World in a Boeing 727 airliner.
Apply this rapid change of pace to the change with cell phones and try and imagine what things will be like in 20 years. Remember that the iPhone is only 7 years old.
To those who remember some kind of idealized past where things were simple and children respected their elders, you can take off your rose colored glasses and go back in your homes now. Nothing to see here. Nothing I can say will change your minds. You can come out on your porch and scream “get off my lawn” at all the kids who pass by. I hope to be with them, we understand.
Crime is down, lower then it was when I was growing up.
Children are actually safer then they were when I grew up.
Yet you are more “afraid” and “scared”, why? Obviously, you are a product of the 24hr news cycle brainwashing that leaves you less informed, more scared and afraid of your neighbors then network news did in its day!
Another one of your B.S. lines: “Things change very, very fast in our society. Accept it and work with it.”
Do you really believe events moved in slow motion a generation ago? The only thing that has changed is the speed of communications and misinformation, the speed of much else hasn’t changed much! All that has changed is the information and misinformation influx you perceive your world with. And because there is a greater quantity of information and misinformation influx you spend less time THINKING about the merits of each piece of information. You are the typical numb minded individual who believes speed and quantity trumps slow and quality!
I am so glad I didn’t have you as a parent!!! Undoubtedly, I could have never been trusted to venture out and navigate my neighborhood independently as I did; only armed with common sense, self-confidence to slowly explore and encounter the unknown places and people in the most parental unmanaged and uncontrolled way imaginable. How else do you learn to meet and interact with people, Facebook?
Sad, you obviously believe with all your talk of “speed”, “rapidness” and “new technology” can replace a childhood of slow learning low tech common sense and the self-confidence to explore and encounter unknown places and people!
“How they were disrupting classrooms … ” – With adults, cell phones disrupt many other places – movie theaters, court rooms, college lecture halls, etc.
When I left home, to work on an Air Base, out in the middle of Nowhere, USA. I got a bit homesick, now and then. And had to save up quarters to get a long distance call thru to back home. Even with the charges reversed, the damn phone company still wanted a connection fee, up front. So the calls were only a once a month or so, thing.
Kids these days can now talk to anyone they want to, whenever it strikes their fancy. And it’s free to them, in many cases. So no matter if they’re just going to grade school. Or they’re off to some college. Or they’re overseas for the Peace Corp or something. They’ll never know that level of separation of family and friends, that I went thru, many years ago. Because they no longer have to.
And someday their kids will have hologram phones. So they can see and talk to mom and dad, almost for real. So even less of a lurch, for them. Funny, when my parents were kids, there wasn’t even a rotary dial on most phones. And for part of my childhood, our home phone was a shared line (some party?).
“And it’s free to them, in many cases.”
Teach them how they will be paying for free, though – with information collected by their usage (browsing, texting, making purchases of media and making calls) on their “phones”.
When I went to my grandfather’s auto parts store in the mid-1970s (then I was about the average age of children in this video), a single black phone similar in shape to the phones in the video sat on the counter.
I thought that shape was very formal and businesslike and already even slightly old-fashioned because the phones in homes started to place dials in the handle.