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Where do the children play?

(unpublishablepapers.substack.com)
409 points casca | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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seqizz ◴[] No.45951557[source]
Reading the US 8-12 year olds' stats made me flinch, because as someone grow up in the middle east this is inconceivable. I guess I'll dive into rabbit hole about modern-day stats of Europe and other places to compare.
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lnsru ◴[] No.45951643[source]
Same phone addiction in Europe as elsewhere. No way to fight addictive stuff. Most parents don’t even try or care. Add tragic demographics and 8-12 year olds are all alone with their phones.

Let’s talk about special school system here in Bavaria (Germany). Kids from specific area go to same school for the first 4 grades. Afterwards they are divided between little geniuses going into „Gymnsasium“, average ones going to „Realschule“ and good-for-nothings going to „Mittelschule“. For the first years kids move between schools and later between classes according their preferred specialization. No way to make friendships when kids come and go. Obviously there is nobody to play with left. Only reliable phone and games there. And nice videos there. Education system actively pushes kids into phones since real connections can’t happen.

I see lots of negativity here. Folks, do you really believe, that throwing a child into new environment every other year is the way to craft friendships in the real world?

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1. cachius ◴[] No.45952332[source]
The founders of the Miniaturwunderland Hamburg were in the media describing how they push back against smartphones and media in their family life: https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/ndr-talk-show/miniatur-wun...

Strange coincidence: shortly after they were hacked https://www.borncity.com/blog/2025/11/12/miniatur-wunderland...

replies(1): >>45953193 #
2. lnsru ◴[] No.45953193[source]
Every morning I see dozens of kids sitting (this week in unpleasant cold) on pavement or standing somewhere in the rain with their smartphones on the way to school. No phones in/around school building! It’s a plague and doesn’t look normal at all for me. I would expect some regulations from government regarding this insanity. There are phone-watches and dumb phones to reach kids if really needed. It must be profitable to someone to hook kids like that. Weirdest poses in rain, cold just to have quality time with their smartphones. I want scream when I see this every day. In most discussions with adults I end up as a luddite, because I don’t support technology. In my times modern technology was messing with autoexec.bat and we learned something from that for later.