/afk: away from keyboard (2011)
a guy starts filming his friends on the day world of warcraft is released and follows them forward for multiple years, documenting how their lives and relationships are affected by the game. a unique portrait. i put this one first for a reason.
While I agree this would be nice in an ideal scenario, I think we should still zoom out to consider the collective, and also consider the difference between men and women showing off their bodies, in terms of safety, and potential arousal and irritation of others (not even just men, but also children and their parents), especially with overstimulated porn-brained men all over the place. And then there's importing of other cultures with a lack of actual integration, where dressing like that would seem self-degrading and potentially even an invitation to harm.
Women walking around (let alone training) wrapped in a super tight casing showing off every detail of their party zone, is going to have an effect on their environment. Women can tell men they need to get a grip all they like (even though it's not just men who critique it), we need to be realistic and ideally act accordingly and respectfully. We just can't seem to agree on norms and decency anymore.
You can experience varying degrees of love without being able to fully mutually surrender, in the relationship in general, or intimacy. Ideally a safe container is grown within which to be that vulnerable and dissolve together. That safety and desire/willingness/ability to feel entirely exposed isnβt a given with every person who claims/thinks they love you, or you them. So I think sacred power and mutual surrender is pretty accurate.
I genuinely think we're sleepwalking into one of the biggest generational divides in modern history, and it starts long before our children ever enter the workforce.
I encourage every parent to spend some time reading what teachers are saying about the children entering their classrooms. Kids who can't sit through a lesson, follow basic instructions, regulate their emotions, hold a pencil, tie their shoes or tolerate being told no. Some kindergarten teachers are reporting children arriving without basic independence skills, including a lot still in diapers.
Meanwhile, we're entering a time in which AI will fundamentally change what it means to be educated, intelligent, and employable⦠and somehow, our response has been to put more technology in front of children at increasingly younger ages.
I don't think we're talking nearly enough about the consequences. The research on executive function, early childhood development, and excessive screen use should be getting considerably more attention from parents. Not praising Ms Rachel for babysitting your 6 month oldβ¦Attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and emotional regulation aren't simply nice qualities to have. They're actual foundational abilities that influence how children learn, solve problems, and function independently.. and many of the experiences that help children develop these abilities are purely disappearing from everyday childhood.
Unstructured play. Boredom. Reading. Physical exploration. Real conversations. Working through frustration. Learning how to entertain themselves without someone or something constantly providing stimulation.
We're raising children in an environment where practically every uncomfortable moment can be eliminated with a screen (just go to target and youβll see at least 3 babies on phones) and every difficult question can increasingly be answered by AI.
But what happens when a child never develops the patience to figure something out independently? When they've spent their early years consuming content engineered to capture their attention but struggle to concentrate on something that doesn't immediately entertain them? When they've never had to develop their own imagination because an algorithm has been entertaining them since infancy? "Brain rot" might be an exaggerated term, but the concerns about attention, compulsive media use and the displacement of important developmental experiences are very very very real.
Not only that..then we send these children to school and expect teachers to somehow reverse years of habits while simultaneously teaching them reading, mathematics and everything else.
I think the next generation's greatest advantage may have surprisingly little to do with how early they learn to use technology.
I think it will come down to which children develop the independence, curiosity, emotional resilience and critical thinking skills necessary to use that technology effectively.
I want my child to understand AI. I want her to build things with it, question it, and take advantage of opportunities that didn't exist when I was growing up.
But I also want her to be able to sit with a difficult problem, read an entire book, entertain herself, have meaningful conversations, disagree respectfully and navigate the world without needing an algorithm to tell her what to do next.
The goal shouldn't be to raise children who can compete with AI. It should be to raise children who have developed enough of their own abilities to do extraordinary things with itβ¦.And I increasingly believe that starts with giving them a childhood that allows those abilities to develop in the first place.