Every toddler becomes a hackerman when they find a tablet

Velcro is just so much better, why the fuck do we use laces?
- Aesthetics and tradition I'd say. Maybe there'll be a generation that couldn't care less about tying and there's a big flip.
  And then their kids have a hipster revival of laces and yearn for a nostalgic time they never lived in while saying they were born in the wrong generation lmao

Tieing shoes is done in 3d. One more dimension of complexity. Tablets on the other hand have a flat screen, so the toddler only needs to work two dimensions to use it.

We’ve made tech way too accessible - and now we’re paying the price for it.
Back in 1995, we got our first family PC. Dad was never able to use it; despite our efforts to teach him. Couldn’t grasp left and right mouse button, much less concepts like directories, installing software, drivers, etc.
But on his iPad? He can do almost everything: e-mail, Facebook, watch TV, YouTube. And get subjected to boomer brainrot. Just like a toddler.
Is he more tech literate? Absolutely not. In fact, he’s regressing if anything. But we’ve made it so easy, even my completely tech illiterate dad can now argue with strangers on Facebook or post dumb shit on YouTube.
And it fucking shows. The amount of goddamn complete idiots online is shocking. I miss 1995, when you had to be a nerd to get online. It filtered out a lot of folks who simply shouldn’t be online.

All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead.

I need you to understand that UX/design has been made super easy in order to attain more users. This in turn makes it easier for children, who are then also targeted by the likes of YouTube kids.
Devices and operating systems nowadays are dumbed down to a fault to control you as well, since you're not supposed to be tech literate enough to move to a competitor.
The barrier to entry is low, and adversely, the barrier to exit is also made really, really high.
- Modern UX is all slip-on shoes. Not even Velcro.

This is a parenting issue, not a kid thing. It's because parents put a tablet in their kid's hands, teach the kid to use it, then expect the tablet to occupy all the kid's time while they don't engage with the kid.
I have a 5 yo and a 3 yo. We have a family iPad, but the kids barely know how to use it. They virtually never watch videos on it (only exception was the one time they've been on an airplane). My 5 yo is very artistically inclined, so we downloaded a sketchpad app she can draw with. She also builds legos, so we downloaded the lego app she can use for instructions. Those are the only apps she knows how to use, and she doesn't even know how to navigate to find them. We have to open the app for her and get her setup before she can run with it. My 3 yo doesn't even know how to do that much.
We mostly use the iPad to video chat family or play music, both of which are controlled by grown ups.
Yet my kids are extremely proficient at a lot of other stuff relative to kids their own age. The 5 yo can fully read and write and can do simple arithmetic. The 3 yo can read small words, can write all her letters, and can count at least to 100. They both do small chores around the house, both help cook (especially the 3 yo has gotten very good at slicing veggies).
Toddlers being hypercompetent with a tablet is 100% a parenting red flag. It shows the parents aren't very engaged and just let the tablet do all the parenting for them.

:todlers bypassing all security measures just to watch mr beast (idk what kids watch on youtube)
- Aphmau, BTS, Jordan Matters, and a fuck load of shorts.

Unfun fact: due to growing up with tablets instead of normal computers a lot of kids nowadays don't know how stuff like directories work.
- More worryingly, shoving them in front of a tablet every time they’re being difficult means they don’t learn how to regulate their emotions.
  Difference between my daughter and her cousins is night and day. Few studies confirming this correlation with violent outbursts later in life too now.
  Tried giving it her on a plane once and she had no idea what to do with it and sat and played with her toys instead, so not that intuitive. She has a mechanical keyboard hooked up to a Pi instead.
  Also your link is broken
  
  Also your link is broken
  Guess this guy grew up with a tablet, smh... _/j
  
  they don’t learn how to regulate their emotions.
  I don't believe there's causation. Kids learn to regulate their emotions from their parents, with or without tablets.
  There are plenty of people with no regulation and no tablets. And plenty of well regulated kids with tablets.
  Point is, it's a parent problem, not a technology one. Though it's very possible that shitty parents would use tablets as a pacifier. But they could also use TV, or sticking the kids outside all day, or anything else.
  
  Also your link is broken
  It added my instance to the link for some reason, I think I fixed it now.
  
  More worryingly, shoving them in front of ~~a tablet~~ the TV every time they’re being difficult means they don’t learn how to regulate their emotions.
  The thing they're being shoved in front of isn't the problem.
- (Your Steam games all live in a folder called “steamapps” — when was the last time you clicked on that?)
  A few days ago, because I'm constantly tinkering with them to add mods, remove unskippable opening movies, etc. Video games are undeniably why I know what I do about directory structures and the like.
  
  I learned all the basics of computers when I was 10 from Minecraft. Learned basic life concepts from there much earlier. I learned file directories from modding Java edition. Learned networking from multilpayer. Get an error message? Read it, Google and try to figure out how to fix it. Learned some Java coding around age 12 from a modding lesson program my parents got me. Also learned electronic skills and soldering at the same age from disassembling broken stuff and savaging motors to make stuff.
  If kids are given a difficult, nerdy interface in one hand, and all the world's knowledge in the other, they'll be genius. If they're given an iPad they'll have no idea what a folder is, much less a MAC address.
  This is why all children should start on a $100 ThinkPad running Arch Linux, a cheap rooted phone, and Firefox with the links to stack exchange and arch forums bookmarked for them.
  Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
  
  Just yesterday I couldn't play a game I bought two years ago because ubisoft couldn't authorize steam.
  I spent a whole hour of my own free time trying to fix it through their interface. Resetting the password, restarting steam, unlinkin and relinking etc.
  My final and only solution that worked was to download 11mb of cracked dlls and executables from that one russian counter strike forums and then drag the files to my game folder.
  It took 2 minutes.
  On an unrelated sidenote I noticed video games don't feel fun anymore. I guess I grew up just a little lmao?
  
  I learned so much about computing by modding my own games. Adventure Construction Set, shitty mad libs games in basic, and then later spending basically every free hour from 12-18 years old modding Morrowind.
  Gotta wonder how many modern programmers learned from modding Minecraft.
- most kids today are technologically illiterate. We didn't call anyone who watched a ton of tv a tech-wiz, because tv was just a device made for consumption of content. Even though the tv uses electricity to work
  
  It's not just kids. Some of the phone/tablet kids are in their 20s now. They have no idea what a file or folder/directory is. When greeted with dialog boxes on PC they just click OK or next until they go away without reading at all. They're just as bad as most people in their 80s trying to use a computer. Oh and they can't type to save their life.
- Working at a university I have seen some astounding shit; people just barely 10 years younger than me who can’t read analog clocks or make change let alone use a mouse or move a file to a flash drive.
  
  Give the next one a Zip drive and document please.
  
  Some of that's cultural momentum right? Like I don't know how many pickles it takes to make a Peck of Pickles despite hours singing about it as a kid. There's not a lot of reason sans-nostalgia to read an analog clock or drive a manual car. (I love my manual, but they're not getting any less niche with EVs on the way.)
  And everyone's going to learn something the first time, some time. But it is just nuts that for some people that is apparently after getting a job with a Bachelor's, somehow. So much time, money, and energy was spent in the 90s/00s having computer classes in schools and now so much of it has been cut because the people in charge are so out of touch that watching youtube on a device designed to be easily usable is indistinguishable from "technical skills".
- That's horrifying.
- The stated article is from 2017. That’s not about kids growing up with tablets.
  
  Sep 22, 2021

They know how to navigate the phone in a corporate-approved way better than I do, but they have no idea how any of it works.
- My theory is that Gen X and Gen Y had the benefit of seeing things improve gradually while their peers used the tech. It's like taking a semester to learn something rather than cramming everything in a day.
  
  As a Gen Xer, I learned how it worked mostly from trying to get games to run and later, from modding and pirating them. These turned out to be extremely useful skills for someone like me that doesn't have $80 to blow on a single game.

your fault, and THANKS for doing this to the people that i'll need to have take care of me when i'm old and feeble. water? like, in the toilet?
- I don't know if you have seen the level of care cursive knowers give old people but I'm pretty sure you are going to get the same level of care.
  
  too true - i've spent far too much time in hospitals these past few years, and the amount of restraint shown by the families of patients is astounding. i've not yet been in a "power of attourney" position, but i'd have been busting heads if i was.
- I know, right? It doesn't even have electrolytes. That's not what plants crave.

It's real. My 3 yr old can't speak his mother tongue properly but can use phone like an adult
- That's a parenting red flag. That happens because the parents keep putting a phone in the kid's hand and expect the phone to occupy all their time. Spend time reading and speaking to the kid in his mother tongue rather than giving them a phone and they'll become proficient pretty quickly.
- Well that's because the phone is far more engaging and enjoyable than day to day life. By providing a 3 year old with a device it's effectively cementing the dependency on having some electronic devices available at all times

Don't give your kids velcro shoes after about age three. Deal with teaching them to tie them for a few months. No, it's not convenient, but you're doing it for them, not you.
- Before I discovered slip ons, I was always so mad we didnt have adult sizes with velcro. We have the technology to not have bits of string collecting germs from every bathroom we go in and every street we cross. What the hell?
  That being said, I fully understand why athletic minded shoes and shoes made for more than walking sidewalks/indoors still have laces.
- it's not convenient, but you're doing it for them, not you.
  All of parenting - especially the difference between good parents and bad parents - summed up in a single sentence.
- 3? Lol, we know you don't have children.
  
  I know right. Let's put a more realistic "before they're out of kindergarten" on that.
- I am pretty sure I struggled with that until middle school 💀
  I mean, I could do it, but slowly, with a lot of conscious thinking.
  And honestly, I still don't know to do it the "correct" way. I mean, bunny ears seem to work just fine anyway.
  
  There is no incorrect way. The typical shoelace knot is actually just a square knot, but one where you make the second part out of two loops (bights) rather than the standing ends. What technique you use to arrive there is completely irrelevant as long as the end result is the same.
  (You could use a traditional square knot instead if you really wanted to, but it would be annoying to untie.)
  
  easier said than done, but you need to change the way you think about it. don't think about the "steps"; think about why you're taking them. goes for everything else, too. i'm in my forties and i still find times i'm just following "steps" and not considering why.
  
  Bunny ears or a variant thereof is usually more stable anyway. I taught myself a new better way to tie my shoes at 30 something. Now I no longer need to double knot themand they always come undone easily by pulling the ends. Previously, knotting them the way my parents taught, my knots always came undone and the loops didn't lay flat on either side (getting skewed to up and down my foot/leg).
  
  "Left over-and-under right and pull ends tight, then right loop over-and-under left loop, pull both loops tight" was the way I learned. It's just the entire 'letting go then pulling thru' that broke my brain when I was a little kid. Also, fuck Asics, some of their laces won't stay tied unless you epoxy the knot.
- come on! it's a lot easier to not toilet-train your kids if you can afford all the diapers

Magicians say toddlers are also good at deciphering their tricks since they haven’t yet learned object permanency.
- Toddlers have object permanence. Object permanence develops at around 4-6 months old. Kids are still infants at that point. Toddlers are generally 1-3 years old.
  
  I don't believe in object permanence. I think it's a hoax just like the moon landing and the time cube. If I can't see something it stops existing. Just like how rocks are actually soft, they just tense up when something touches them.
- isJoke()

This says less about toddlers than it does about what Apple knows the public requires to use a computer.