The thing is, I've worked in this field for a long time now. I'm getting invited to do talks all over the US on these topics, and regularly have parents tell me I blew their minds and changed the way they're looking at their kids behaviors. I've taken kids from having violent meltdowns whenever it's time to turn off minecraft to being able to turn off the game when they realize it's not doing it for them anymore and it's time to stop.

And about considering that I might be wrong- I used to think screentime was a problem, and I realized that approach was the wrong one.

But the biggest contributer to success was parents having an open mind on how to solve these problems. Parents who came in with paper thin arguments about screentime being crack and all kinds of nonsense they're parroting from FB ultimately had damaged trust with their kids, and the interventions didn't go nearly as well because the kids saw no reason to engage if the trust wasn't there.

I actually work with kids in a mental health capacity, spend time talking with kids with screentime and school refusal issues, and am a published author and lecturer on child socialization. Kids mental health outcomes are worse for a lot of reasons, but the argument that things got better for the boomers, then increasingly worse is absolutely true. And now as things are getting really bad for kids, and they're aware that it doesn't need to be this way, that's creating a lot of endemic despair- although again that's just the tip of the iceberg on an increasingly complex mental health crisis. Having genuine curiosity and listening to kids rather than insulting opinions that challenge your own is important if you actually want to figure out solutions. Otherwise, you're just part of the problem.

Although, just to make it clear, here's the problem.

-Screens aren't crack. They're a medium. Trying to take away phones at this point is like trying to take away paper. And while there *are* problematic things, it's a much better plan to actually help kids gain digital literacy, plan for use, diversify their opportunities for fun, and learn metacognition around their screen use than compare them incorrectly to drugs.

-Kids mental health really isn't good, and blaming screens is literally blaming both a symptom and a band aid. Being on a screen all the time isn't good for your mental health, but for a lot of kids, after COVID, they didn't really have much else given that going outside isn't something kids are really encouraged to do much anymore.

-Taking away screens turns kids into hackers and damages trust.

-Taking away screens also doesn't help kids build functional relationships with them. Too often the parents don't have functional relationships with screens either, so taking away the screens is just hypocritical, and sets kids up for failure later in life.

-The screentime debate is honestly being poisoned by a bunch of alarmist nonsense that wants to reduce it to the same debate we've been having since the popularization of the novel. It's a very new technology that we need to actually understand how kids interact with, rather than comparing it to mind rotting drugs. While there are impacts, I think, again, the more significant impact is on society as a whole. We're just picking on kids for the same brainrot that boomers are getting (but worse) from Facebook. And kids can smell the hypocrisy.

You're labeling a bunch of right wing, idiotic headlines that aren't rooted in any sort of reality. You can blame the left for all kinds of stuff, but honestly? NCLB did far more harm to kids learning than any of that shit, and that was Bush.

... Did you even read the comment, or are you showing that your reading comprehension levels need help?

the thing is, the kids aren't stupid. Sure, a lot of them are a bit brainrotted from tiktok, but the boomers brainrot is *far* worse. They're smart, they're able to see the writing on the wall, and they see a social contract that has no reason to continue. And we've failed them, handed them a big steaming pile of shit and told them to get better grades. It'd be laughable if it weren't so sad.

yeah, that's bs coming from an anonymous coward who doesn't talk to kids. They hate fascism, they hate the right, they hate that they're seeing their country get stripped for resources with the same energy of copper thieves. They don't like the left because it failed to meaningfully protect them, just give them lip service, but the right's insistence that 'thoughts and prayers' instead of common sense gun reform to protect them against school shootings has made it clear where things stand.

Few things happening.

-COVID. It did a huge hit on kids, on their wellbeing, social development, and academic performance. Kids are still getting over the burnout from that.

School issues. Schools are hitting a teacher cliff, and teachers are all burned out from all the extra BS they have to do. On top of that, schools are wildly underfunded for the things that actually matter, and are having a hard time retaining talent as the stress load for teachers just keeps going up, while their salaries aren't competitive.

Someone posted something about absenteeism with a 'back in my day' sort of energy. So, on that- yes, schools will still send truancy officers to check in. A lot of the time, it's kids with serious mental health problems. See the COVID burnout thing, and the next point.

The kids are not ok. If you look at kid's mental health, it's frankly in the toilet, and a lot of it comes down to the world that they're inheriting. They're facing a global warming cataclysm, the rise of fascism, and a garbage economy with no hope of ever achieving the American dream. They're often latchkey kids because both parents have to work to pay rent. They're having AI and social media infiltrating their lives, and have no real sense of community (COVID disrupted so many community programs oriented at helping kids with this, and thanks to DOGE cuts, a lot of other nonprofits that did great community work are dead.) Doing well in school is based around a social contract that ensures that it will have some meaningful payout, and right now, that social contract is a joke.

It's not 'How much homework' they should be looking at, or 'is homework a good thing,' but 'what sort of homework results in the best academic achievement. A lot of teachers use homework as a sort of ongoing assessment tool to determine if students are understanding the content- which is a really good thing to do! But, there's probably better ways to do that in the classroom where you can correct misunderstandings in realtime. And based on the subject, there's probably a lot of reinforcing instruction that would be best done at home. But trying to ask questions about 'how much' or 'is it a good thing' misses the mark completely, and ultimately is going to give you unreliable data points.

One of the lessons we've had as the Federal, multi-branch nature of the US governmennt has frustrated Trump is that the government may be fucking us over, but it's not doing it in *unison*. It's doing it piecemiel, on the initiative of many interests working against each other, just as the framers intended. The motto on the Great Seal notwithstanding, there are myriad roadblocks to consolidating power in the hands of a single individual. It takes time and repeated failures. This is why the second Trump Adminsitration is worse than the first; they've figured out ways around things like Congressional power of the purse, put more of their henchmen in the judiciary, and normalized Congress lying down and letting the president walk all over them. It's a serious situation, although fortunately Trump isn't long for this world.

While that's true, a responsible generation aims to boost the next generation to a *higher* level than the education they received. The world has become more complex and faster-paced, and even if that weren't true, the consequenes of aiming high and falling short are better than the consequences of aiming for the status quo and falling short.

So while I'm 100% onboard with skepticism that technology will magically make education better, I think the argument that "the education I got worked for me should be good for them" isn't a strong argument. What we need is a better ecducation that would have been a better education fifty years ago: stronger math, science, and language skills, general knowledge, and, I think critical thinking and media literacy. Possibly emotional intelligence -- it's kind of pointless to teach people critcial thinking skills if they are carried away by emotions.

There are no economic or security reasons to blockade Cuba, so that leaves *political*.

It used to be believed that bullies were low status individuals who are lashing out out of frustration. But research has shown that bullying is an effective strategy for achieving and maintaining social status. In other words it's a political winner. So the focus of research has shifted from the bully to the people around him who enable the bullying. The inner circle are the henchmen -- people without the charisma and daring to initiate the bullying, but join in when the bully gets things started. Around them are the audience, the people who wouldn't risk participating but enjoy the bullying vicariously. And around them are the much larger group of bystanders, who don't approve but are waiting for someone else to stop the bullying. Then off to the side are the defenders, who stand up to the bully.

Perhaps the least appreciated supporting factor in the phenomenon of the high-status bully is the silence of the bystanders, which is dependent upon the perception of widespread approval. Since you can't visibly see the the line between the approving audience and the apalled bystanders, the silence of the bytstanders is absolutely essential in sustaining the bullying.

Lot's of Americans are apalled at the idea of using military force to inflict suffering on the Cuban people. But that's only politically advantageous *because* of *them*. Tney are indistinguishable from the relatively small number of people who are thrilled when Trump announced he can do anything he wants wtih Cuba. The gap between actual approval and *perceived* approval is absolutely critical in establishign and maintaining any kind of authoritarianism. This is why would be authoritarian leaders are so focused on punishing and marginalizing any kind of expression of disapproval.

In 1790, the US population was 94.9% rural. There is no country. in the world today that rural -- Burundi, which looks like blanks spot in the world at night satellite picturs, is 88% rural.

The largest city at the time was New York, with a population of 33,000. Northern Manhattan was near-wilderness, mid-town was farms and country houses.

In 1790 the US was. country you could "police" with sheriffs and volunteer posses, largely to keep the peace. If you got robbed, you hired a private thief catcher. This works in a 95% rural country with just 3.4 million inhabitants. It would be chaos in a country 87x larger.

8GB is plenty of RAM for what most users use their laptops for, if the OS doesn't gobble it up with background tasks. Probably be a good idea to steer clear of Chrome as a browser on these things.

It's actually more like an iPhone 16 Pro runing MacOS in a laptop form factor. Apple basically rummaged through their parts box and pulled out a mobile CPU that'll deliver 50% more single core performance than what's in a high-end Chromebook with only 80% of the power draw. And Apple's got *massive* economies of scale on those parts, so they can afford to deliver a lot of bang for the buck.

The only place the Neo appears to falls short is in RAM, but this is *not* a power user machine, it's for basic office tasks and multimedia consumption. Realistically 8GB is plenty for many users.

In any case, the desktop isn't the center of most users's universe anymore; the switchboard of their life is their smartphone. This is a gateway drug to MacOS IOS integration, and eventually onto the upgrade treadmill. Users will switch seamlewssly between their iPhones and Neos all day long, with data on iCloud and iMusic etc., and when it comes time to upgrade their phone or their laptop, they won't be *stuck* exactly, but if they leave the reservation they lose a lot. But they certainly could upgrade to a *much nicer* Macbook....

It's no wonder the other laptop makers are sitting up and taking notice. Apple has set up a one way conversion ratchet for people tempted by a really nice and perfectly adequate entry level machine at an entry level price.Nobody else has the vertical integration -- chip foundries to device manufacturing, to software platform -- spanning desktop and phones that's needed to do this.