Remembering My Used Car Show

Remember to use your imagination as much as you can.

The Teardown

Wednesday :: May 22nd, 2024

👋 Hi, this is Chris with another issue of The Teardown. In every issue, I cover how we evolve in concert with the technology that enables our day-to-day lives. If you’d like to get emails like this in your inbox every week, hit the subscribe button below.

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The OG Podcast About Cars

Feast your eyes on this specimen:

What’s happening in that image?

It could be a kid rapping to Shimmy Shimmy Ya by Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Or, he could be serenading someone over the melodic wonder that is Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman by Bryan Adams. By the way, you’re welcome for presenting you with that wonderful video distraction (if/when you click)

If he’s extraordinarily future-sighted, he’s recording a podcast that will later generate millions in revenue.

But, that’s really just me in action. I’m recording something akin to a car commercial, in which I explain a make and model and some of the features. And, I’m creating a lot of that content from scratch, using my imagination. That imagination is, of course, sourced in part from reality - seeing cars, reading magazines - and in part from the magic of making things up.

Are you wondering: did you really do this Chris?

Yes, yes I did. What was it? Play? Being lonely? Imagination time?

One thing it was: a kid harnessing his interests and imagination to pass the time. We call that, broadly, play. Some kids play more outside, some more inside. Some are into arts, crafts, games, and more fantasy-oriented activities. Other kids do physical activities - sports, perusing the woods, etc.

Are kids today capable of all these things? Or, in this specific demographic (i.e. pre-teen-ish kids), are kids replacing play with consumption?

Causing The Anxious Generation

I’m thinking about that question in reference to a new book by NYU professor Jonathan Haidt (Substack:

After Babel

) called The Anxious Generation. The official website of the book describes the troubling content:

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the *play-based childhood" began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the "phone-based childhood" in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this "great rewiring of childhood" has interfered with children's social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

According to Haidt, kids began playing less in the 1980s.

I was born early in that decade. No one had phones in their hands. They didn’t exist as far as the average consumer was concerned. Watches, glasses, and other augmented devices weren’t furiously notifying us of distractions just yet.

So, like lots of kids, I played lots of sports. I roamed in a backyard that was about a third of an acre, large enough for games built around launching or throwing something for distance (e.g. baseball, football, etc.)

The Nintendo Gameboy arrived on the shores of the U.S. in late 1989, when I was eight. And, like many other kids with these new devices, I played Tetris and Super Mario Land.

It’s also possible that I had a Nintendo console by that point, but I’m not sure. The point is that both the console and the handheld required attention that eventually forced me away from other activities - like playing outside, arts, crafts, etc. I don’t think I’m a misguided adult as a result.

Haidt’s book discusses how today’s restructured time, when tied to social media, causes all sorts of problems and increases mental illness in teens. He uses the term epidemic

I think the conclusion makes sense. But, there is nuance.

Intuitively, you imagine that a life overrun by screen-based consumption rather than doing things isn’t quite as rewarding or healthy. Spending ten hours a day on social media doesn’t seem valuable compared to ten hours of playing sports, building, drawing, talking to other kids, etc.

The Lonely Kids

One thing that’s lost in this discourse, though, is a basic recap on the concept of a lonely kid. Kids were lonely before growth-hacked devices cemented themselves to our eyeballs. And, loneliness isn’t always something you control when it happens to you.

Maybe a group of kids thinks your shoes are stupid and doesn’t want to talk to you. If they and you withdraw enough, you’re alone in effect. You didn’t do anything to cause the problem, but it might be hard to recover from such an atrocity. At first, you’re alone. Then, maybe, you feel lonely. You’re not appreciating or enjoying your time by yourself.

I was a lonely kid once. And, one thing that I haven’t squared for myself but hope to understand some more through reading Haidt’s book: did the internet and subsequent devices exacerbate that problem?

Maybe. I think they helped reinforce parts of my personality (addictive tendencies) that blended well with digital media.

I look around today and see a lot of adults on phones. What they’re doing, most of the time, is irrelevant. What they aren’t doing is socializing. So, one thought I always have: should we expect kids to do anything different when they see us on phones all the time?

I’m not sure. But I’m not writing to blame one side or the other at the moment. Reality is more complicated.

And, I think the concept of play is complicated too. There is play in the tangible, physical world, and play in the digital world. Is that latter sort of play and fantasy-making bad for you?

A Closing Thought: A Change In My Reading Habits

I think the answer is, not entirely, but I need to come back to that point with some additional support. There’s a future post in the phrasing.

I’m fascinated by the concept of fantasy. It permeates so many aspects of life. There are fantasies that blend real-life action (i.e. LARPing). There are digital fantasy worlds (e.g. Second Life). And, there are many books built on various types of fantasies.

That last observation sparked another: one thing that kids on screens probably aren’t doing is reading. I’m talking about actual books. Not screens. Ignore whatever is mandated in schools. My focus is on books kids choose to read (or not) vs. external requirements.

For years, I’ve avoided fiction because I wanted to make my time reading time worth it. That worth was tied to learning about things relevant to daily life, perhaps to help me at work, or to help parent, or etc. But, I forgot that fantasy and my broader imagination is a fundamental to my concept.

So, I’m back to reading fiction. I’ll comment at some point soon on how that’s going. Many fiction books are very long! The book my wife just bought me - as a refresher for fiction - is 828 pages long.

Notes For Follow Up

Instead of belaboring this post with more writing, I’m going to stop here with some bullets on how I’ll follow-up

1. I want to dig into different types of play to understand their impacts on the brain.

2. The Haidt book is on my reading radar. As discussed, I’m trying to read less nonfiction. But that book is close to the top of my nonfiction list.

3. I’d like to dig deep through rebuttals of Haidt’s book. If you guessed they could be found, you were right. I’m aware of a couple and want to digest them further

4. Also, recent Hard Fork episodes touched on The Anxious Generation and the broader screen-time epidemic. One featured Haidt himself, and another featured listeners responding to Haidt’s conclusions.

   1. Episode with Haidt: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/podcasts/hard-fork-apple-lawsuit-reddit-ipo.html

   2. Episode with responses: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/29/podcasts/ais-messy-moment-listeners-respond-to-jonathan-haidt-shrimp-jesus.html