"Young Taiwanese opt to stay home in summer, play on smartphones"

i just find it to be brain dead. when you are addicted to constant stimulation you are no longer using your brain. i find this fits with this culture(which encourages following superiors). for example when i ask my gf for a suggestion on where to go in which she actually needs to use her brain, or to use her own brain for directions instead of following google maps to the inch she really struggles with it. people are getting more useless with the constant phone-in-face.

thats my opinion anyway.

and when reading a book you put it down when finished. with the phone its like a constant tether. i’ve heard it described as a thousand paper cuts , or something like that.

I didn’t really play outside much either in Taipei. Where does one play? Not many options.

In the US I did BMX biking, we made a track using dirt from a construction site to do jumps on the track. Skateboarding, paintball, BB gun, football, basketball, baseball, we had swimming pools. There not that many options to play outside in Taiwan.

Nineties kids remember those days, too. I played outside every day in the summers. It wasn’t until high school that I holed up indoors on the computer more often. Our childhoods kind of straddled that transition.

There’s a lot of social science theory that’s been done in the past 5-10 years stating that individuals need ‘solitude’, defined as: time spent without direct distraction that allows the individual’s mind wander. It’s not the only way to achieve it, but most people in the past got a daily dose of solitude during their commutes, walking around, waiting in line, etc. Now, most people don’t have that. Yes, people could choose to look at their phones while on the MRT and find other times throughout their day to not look at their phones, but most people don’t. That’s the danger.

I think you’re right up until about 1995, give or take a year. If you were born in 96-97, your cell phones and fast internet were already a huge part of society by the time you started elementary school.

Yeah this is generally the cutoff. If you can’t actually remember living in the 90s, then you don’t remember pre-internet.

Commuting on a train in Vancouver in the 1990s: I always had a magazine and whatever novel I was currently reading. Buried in those as soon as the train got underway, and until it stopped.

Commuting in Taipei in 2019: same. Just now the magazines and novels are on my phone. I don’t see that much of a difference.

Now, the way you’ll see groups of friends at a restaurant, everyone on their phones? Or the way my university classes are now silent during the breaks, with everyone on their phones, whereas ten years ago they were noisy and raucous? Or people walking along the road staring at their phone, no idea about where they’re walking? Those worry me. But finding something to read while sitting or standing on a train? Not an issue.

Sort of a side bar: anyone else watched Good Omens? The original novel was set about thirty years ago; the TV show has been moved to current day. But what seems really anachronistic is how the kids at the center of the story spend their days outside, cycling around in a gang and playing made-up games at their fort in the forest.

But that’s England. I’m not sure that sort of thing has ever happened in Taiwan.

I completely agree with you on that point, but I think you are more of an exception than the norm. Most people are scrolling through social media feeds. Constantly doing so is what a lot of therapists think causes anxiety in young people.

exactly. they are not reading. they are getting their stimulation fix. and they do the same everywhere, not just the subway.

I don’t know how they do it, it’s really terrible for the eyes. I personally don’t mind several hours chilling in front of my laptop (like it a lot actually) but the addiction to cell phones is beyond me.

yea its pretty hard for me to imagine letting a kid play out in this lethal traffic.

Some shopping malls have dart games, it’s fun and cheap.

No wonder they are getting fatter.

Cellphone games suck. Why do kids like them?

My kids like PC, Switch and PS4 games but hate mobile games. They spend an hour exercising at home every day too, jumping rope and doing bodyweight lifting routines.

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In general, it would be really nice if there were more organized sports opportunities for kids in Taiwan. The government has done a good job with soccer leagues, but it would be great if they could subsidize leagues in other sports (basketball, badminton, etc).

That’s like saying TV sucks, or books suck, or movies suck, or board games suck. Yeah, a lot are terrible, but there are also good ones.

I think we’ve had this same discussion with the same news articles every time something new comes around. Public Enemy N°1 has always been the same, new fangled forms of entertainment, here to kill our social behaviours and make us antisocial.

2010s - Smartphones
2000s - Internet/Video Games
1980s/1990s - TV
Early 1900s - Books
Mid 1900s - Movies
1800s - The Telephone
1500s - Portable Printing Press
500s BCE - Written Word

Feel free to add more to this list.

Yeah! They played Call of Duty for real!

To be fair, when I was growing up in the '90s, all I ever did during the summer was stay in doors playing video games too. It was too dangerous for me to go out and play unsupervised with friends, and my parents were too poor and too busy to be able to take me on activities. It was the same situation for basically all of my friends at school. This isn’t anything new.

As a massive gamer, I second this. They’re few and far between, but in the last year I’ve discovered a handful of awesome mobile games, not to mention the vast library of retro ports that could keep you entertained for the rest of your life.

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I’ve seen scouting groups, boys and girls, in full uniform with all the decals they gathered.

Anything is better than schoolwork.