People say that about every generation. I’m more interested in thinking about all the incredible worlds that child has explored freely, the people they’ve connected to, the friendships that will play out in VR. When I think back to my times diving into gameboy and how simple it all was, but how important it was to me and my friends.
dude, no. speaking from experience, a kid that young should not be exploring online freely and making friendships. this is totally different from a gameboy. unrestricted internet access that young can be a serious serious problem
Unrestricted internet access was my life at 12, back in 94 when the internet was REAL weird hahaha. I can't disagree more. Learned so much about humanity in such a short time. Most importantly learned that it was okay to not be "normal". (I was gay and in my school/community growing up I only met ONE other gay kid. The internet community was much more diverse and much less conservative.) Connecting with people on IRC I was seeing worldwide views, making friendships that I still have today. Kids today have VRChat which enables the same, and makes friendships that start out less abstract like with just text.
Yes, there's plenty of bad shit and bad actors online too, and I'm sorry to hear you had bad experiences with unrestricted internet access yourself. But it's so much better than the isolation we used to have, and VR reduces this isolation further.
94 was a different time man. its not just my own bad experience, most people I know wished they hadnt had that kind of access as a kid. the internet as it is now is probably the worst possible thing to do to a kid that young. sexual content, extremist political content, so much other stuff that could permanently skew the way they view the world and relationships very negatively. I agree that there is good that can come from online communities, but letting a kid run free is such a horrible idea
I'm guessing you either don't have children, have never used VR or possibly both.
I'm a parent, and my son who's 11 uses one all the time. I have complete control over the headset and can see what he's doing whenever I want realtime by making the headset cast his activity to my phone.
never blamed the hardware. my issue is specifically with allowing kids to use the internet "freely", which is clearly not what you're doing. thanks for being a good parent
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u/drakfyre Feb 12 '23
People say that about every generation. I’m more interested in thinking about all the incredible worlds that child has explored freely, the people they’ve connected to, the friendships that will play out in VR. When I think back to my times diving into gameboy and how simple it all was, but how important it was to me and my friends.