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The Poor Waste More Time On Digital Entertainment
New submitter polyphydont writes "Children of parents with low social status are less able to resist the temptations of technological entertainment, a fact that impedes their education and adds to the obstacles such children face in obtaining financial comfort later in life. As explained in the article, poor parents and their children often waste both their time and money on heavily marketed entertainment systems. Such families often accumulate PCs, gaming consoles and smart phones, but use them only for nonconstructive activities."
Children of parents with low social status are less able to resist the temptations of technological entertainment, a fact that impedes their education and adds to the obstacles such children face in obtaining financial comfort later in life.
I didn't see anywhere in the article where they called that a fact. Conversely, the article seems to explain it to be a correlation and, if this concerned me, I would be more worried about the overall growing trend regardless of social status. From the article:
A study published in 2010 by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that children and teenagers whose parents do not have a college degree spent 90 minutes more per day exposed to media than children from higher socioeconomic families. In 1999, the difference was just 16 minutes.
The study found that children of parents who do not have a college degree spend 11.5 hours each day exposed to media from a variety of sources, including television, computer and other gadgets. That is an increase of 4 hours and 40 minutes per day since 1999.
Children of more educated parents, generally understood as a proxy for higher socioeconomic status, also largely use their devices for entertainment. In families in which a parent has a college education or an advanced degree, Kaiser found, children use 10 hours of multimedia a day, a 3.5-hour jump since 1999. (Kaiser double counts time spent multitasking. If a child spends an hour simultaneously watching TV and surfing the Internet, the researchers counted two hours.)
Perhaps people of a lower social status feel the need to escape more so than people who have an easier life? If you live in a crappy environment, are you surprised that you want to spend 10 hours a day pretending you're a valiant knight in Skyrim or being swept up in "Adventure Time" where anything can happen?
As explained in the article, poor parents and their children often waste both their time and money on heavily marketed entertainment systems.
The funny thing is that if you look it as dollar spent per hour enjoyed, it's not a waste of money. It's actually much more affordable than taking your kid on a field trip or sailing or even to the movies. Hell, football pads and gear probably cost more than a Wii with games. I agree that the kids should spend more time visiting the library but as someone who grew up underneath the poverty line, I feel like this interpretation of this study was pretty shallow. I mean, if you're concerned about poor people spending money on video games, why aren't you demanding we outlaw the lottery and gambling? Numbers-wise it's not rich people who enjoy those stupid, expensive habits.
My work here is dung.
Waste and spend are two entirely different things.
Anyone who thinks they have all the answers deserves derision. Sounds like s/he's got it figured out, IMO.
I've observed that many affluent people spend great deals of cash on sporting goods, expensive hobbies, and out-of-home entertainment.
It's not like they're all buying computers and then using them for productivity.... it's just that a great deal of more productive, healthy, or useful activities are still much more expensive than cheap TVs, cheap computers, and cheap video games.
It's not like the rich people stare at the wall all day instead of playing video games.
Seriously - while the ghetto dad is playing with his $200 XBox, the rich dads are riding $2000 bikes with $3000 worth of shiny spandex.
People have different degrees of impulse control. The ones with good control of their impulses tend to do better then the ones with poor control of their impulses.
On NPR they were talking about the Marshmallow test. Where kids were place in front of a plate with a Marshmallow on it. They were told you can eat that Marshmallow now, however if you wait for 15 minutes you can have two.
They tracked the children threw adulthood. The ones who waited to get two on the average achieved more then the ones who just took one right away.
When you spend money on the quick fix you are trading off time for the long term goal.
If this is a genetic trait, or a learned trait is up to interpretation, however it comes down to, if you grow up in a family who is poor because the parents lack impulse control, then either genetically or as a learned habit it will be passed to the next generation, who will then live in poverty.
It isn't about how hard they work, some work very hard, much harder then the rest of us, it isn't that their are stupid either, some of them are very intelligent. However if you cannot control your impulse to buy the quick fix, you will not be saving up for higher value things.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Most children just use their bikes to ride about on. One of my friends from school saved up to buy a really good racing bike, then spent all his time taking it apart and building better bits using his dad's workshop.
Now he builds racing bikes professionally, and you *cannot* afford one.
You get all kinds of geeks, everywhere.
Anarchism is as related to socialism as it is to any other totally unrelated political ideology.
"So if you don't give any answers and instead just bitch about everyone ELSE'S answers, then you don't deserve derision?"
Not when the purpose of commenting is itself, to deride something worthy of derision.
And since when does "having an answer" make a fucking bit of difference? Newt Gingrich wants to KILL drug dealers.
That's fucking stupid. Does not forwarding a solution myself make it any less stupid? Nope.
I can't ever recall anyone asking for this information for any other reason than to use it to smear someone.
You don't need to know because it doesn't matter, you WANT to know because you think you can then go "AHA YOU SUPPORT TEAM BLUE YOU'RE A _____" or "I KNEW IT, YOU SUPPORT TEAM RED, YOU ARE A _______"
You want to know because it will allow you to avoid addressing the actual issues, and frankly, YOU and those like YOU are what's wrong with politics in this country.
It's entirely possible to address his position without knowing anything else about him.
The US maintained a libertarian economic policy from the end of Reconstruction through 1913. A time period that coincided with the greatest period of economic growth ever seen in history, creating the first universal middle class in history.
"Universal middle class"? Where the hell did you get that tripe from? The Gilded Age was an age marked by robber barons who hoarded wealth at a rate that is almost incomprehensible today. Do you have any wealth or income statistics from that age (they conveniently start at the end of the era you covet) that would back up your assertion?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I got to do a lot of cool things as a kid but looking back at them the reason it was possible was my family had a reasonable bit of money. It wasn't all that cheap. Even simple things like a day at the museum that is like $50 for two kids and an adult, never mind food or any extras. That is amusing and educational, but for one day max, and realistically you probably don't stay all day. Well $50 will nearly get you a video game (most are $60 these days). Less used or on sale on Steam or something. That can entertain you for days on end.
So if a family doesn't have much money, it isn't hard to see why they'd choose games over museum visits, even if they understand it would be better educationally.
Hell I am setting up our labs (at a university) for a summer program for high school and middle school students right now. Cool summer engineering academy thing. Looks like it would be pretty fun and educational for geek type kids. However, it costs money. I don't know the details, that isn't my area, but only people who can pay, probably a fair bit (couple hundred is my guess) can get in.
The guy was making the valid statement that a corporation can not force you to do anything.
I think 100,000 well-armed Pinkerton Detectives would disagree. And by "disagree" I mean "bust you upside your head with a fucking baseball bat if you defied the company that hired them as its private army."
nor can they send armed police to toss me in jail
Who's going to stop them, the government that you got rid of because you don't like paying taxes?
No company has that power..... only government.
No, the only thing STOPPING the companies from having that power is government.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
And as someone who actually donates his time refurbing PCs for the poor let me say....fuck them do gooders. Sure i know that a lot of what is gonna be done on these old P4s is gonna be time wasting, so fucking what? Like poor folks aren't allowed to have ANY fun now? This is the same kind of horseshit that has caused our education bubble which I'm sure will burst any day, because no matter how much the liberal elite scream "more education!" that doesn't change the fact that if the jobs aren't here they simply aren't here and for many that student loan will just be another boat anchor weighing them down that they will never pay off.
So let the poor have a little fucking fun, its not like theirs lives don't suck shit bad enough in this country. In my area DSL is the cheapest thing you can get, cheaper even than basic cable, so that old P4 gives them not only entertainment but news, weather (which when you live in Dixie alley can save your life), it allows them to stay in contact with distant relatives and friends, it can do a hell of a lot of good and bring happiness to someone's life which to me is worth more than some elitist being whiny about the way they use it.
As a final note let me just give everyone the profile of my last giveaway PC recipient so that you can see what I mean...72 year old woman, shut in thanks to a bad heart, until recently had her daughter and two grandkids living with her in a 3 bedroom single wide because her daughter's husband turned into a wife beater. Now its just her as the daughter finally found a job and was able to get state aid for child care (I gave her a PC too and good luck ever getting a dime from the husband because he sold everything that wasn't nailed down to support his new meth habit and skipped state) so its just her and her cat all alone out there in the middle of nowhere.
Now she chats daily with her old friends from HS, is learning how to quilt from online tutorials, gets to watch TV online (where she is at no signal for OTA) and generally has a hell of a lot happier life than she did when i first met her. And all of that is thanks to a P4 donated by a local business for me to refurb. So to hell with these whiners, if you are gonna be getting rid of some older hardware PLEASE donate it, there are plenty of guys like me that are happy to take a little time and refurb that for someone that really needs it. If you don't know anybody like me personally there is always the churches and freecycle, but those old machines can bring some happiness into a fellow human being's life, isn't that more important?.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.