Watching energetic young kids run around, I can see how tempting it is to give them an interactive device which consumes their attention and makes them easier to handle. But phones seem designed to encourage the shortest possible attention spans and rabid multi-tasking, the opposite of deep focus. So what do you do? Is it as simple as banning phones, if you're willing to give them the needed attention? What about friends' phones and the Internet in general? What if they fall in love with web programming at the age of 8? You want them to be familiar with technology and ideally to be able to drift between multi-tasking and deep focus. I haven't read much on how to achieve this from a practical parenting perspective, though.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21906727
Watching energetic young kids run around, I can see how tempting it is to give them an interactive device which consumes their attention and makes them easier to handle. But phones seem designed to encourage the shortest possible attention spans and rabid multi-tasking, the opposite of deep focus. So what do you do? Is it as simple as banning phones, if you're willing to give them the needed attention? What about friends' phones and the Internet in general? What if they fall in love with web programming at the age of 8? You want them to be familiar with technology and ideally to be able to drift between multi-tasking and deep focus. I haven't read much on how to achieve this from a practical parenting perspective, though.