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Toronto Family Bans All Technology In Their Home Made After 1986
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Mary Am Shah reports in the Toronto Sun that 26-year-old Blair McMillan has banned any technology in his house post-1986, the year he and his girlfriend Morgan were born. They're doing it because their kids – Trey, 5, and Denton, 2 – wouldn't look up from their parents' iPhones and iPads long enough to kick a ball around the backyard. 'That's kind of when it hit me because I'm like, wow, when I was a kid, I lived outside,' says Blair adding that now 'we're parenting our kids the same way we were parented for a year just to see what it's like.' The McMillans do their banking in person instead of online. They develop rolls of film for $20 each instead of Instagramming their sons' antics. They recently traveled across the United States using paper maps and entertaining their screaming kids with coloring books and stickers, passing car after car with TVs embedded in the headrests and content infants seated in the back. Their plan is to continue living like it's 1986 until April 2014. Morgan, who admits she thought her boyfriend was 'crazy,' now devours books to pass the time and only uses a computer at work. 'I remember the day before we started this, I was a wreck and I was like I can't believe I have to delete my Facebook!' Blair originally experienced a form of phantom pain for the first few days after giving up his cellphone. 'The strangest thing without having a cellphone is that I could almost feel my pocket vibrating and I wanted to check my pocket.' Still Morgan says the change has been good for their family's spirit. 'We're just closer, there's more talking,'"
I was fishing with my 4year old today. We both catched a fish. He was more interested in the fish and the worms and the sea than any iPads or other post-1986 crap around.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
If they think that technology is bad for children then they should just become Amish. The truth is that the kids can play with a piece of string and be happy just as much as playing on a computer. If you give them string and a button, they could play inside all day with it. But if you give them the same thing and let them play outside with it, then they're good. Same with computers, they should just put the computers outside and the kids will be outside all the time. Sheesh, some parents don't even know how to be parents anymore.
Its interesting to see some of these people flip out completely instead of taking a moderate approach. Many modern technologies are very useful. When my kids at home ask me a question that I don't know the answer to, most of the time I can look it up on Wikipedia or another site. If my wife is going to the grocery store and I forget to tell her about something I need, I'll just text her and she'll pick it up. When I am picking up a friend or family member from the airport, it is a lot quicker to call them to coordinate the pick up time and stop than doing it the old way. The old way requires that you coordinate everything well in advance and nothing unexpected should happen to thwart your well conceived plans. And the list goes on.
If you don't want your kids using your tablets or phones, don't let them. I have no trouble letting my kids use the tablets and the phones. At the same time I don't let them play on them all day long. If they finish their homework and chores, they get some play time. And if they want to play a game on the tablet during their play time, well what is so wrong with that?
there is a MRI at the local hospital and they can insert a tiny thingy into a blood vessel to remove it.
The hospital is not in their home. They can get an MRI. Not to mention MRIs were invented before 1986.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Holy crap, dude it's only til next April. You need to chill WAY THE FUCK DOWN.
I mean an Amiga 1000 was a pretty kick ass bit of kit back then. I beg they hate going on holiday with a sack of tapes for the Walkman though.
I don't think they would allow pre 1986 nerd tech either.. that year is just a gimmick in their(his) plan. I would guess that you had cable pre 1986 so that's not an exactly new concept... and I can bet you he didn't go and fetch some old c64 if he even knows what one is(which gets us closer to the point that he probably believes such distractions didn't exist at all pre-1986). I mean - if they pick such a year.. are the aware of when the nintendo entertainment system was released? obviously, no, and if they do they sure as fuck aren't going to inform their kids about it. their "modern" problem isn't a modern problem at all.
I wonder how much their kids have started to spend time at their friends places.. would be pretty stupid to go on a roadtrip in a pre 1986 car without a cellphone as a backup too(it's a kia that's considerably newer..).
but for fucks sake the other kid IS FUCKING TWO YEARS OLD and the other one is FIVE - . and they go on an ultra ban on everything because they can't put the ipad on the top shelf - hell, I'd be proud if they could operate them, even iOS involves quite a bit of reading and even with familiar icons I bet the dad had to start the angry birds for the two year old one. they could have just bought them a ball.
as a conclusion I bet the guy didn't like friendly messages the wife was getting on facebook and wanted to do something ultra hipstery to fix that(being too stupid to understand that every woman with a picture gets friend requests from jafars, kinda like nigerian letters). because honestly they sound like they're from a national lampoon movie, but even they were a movie on it the kids wouldn't be 2 & 5 because those can't reach the top shelf. heck the kids won't even remember this experiment by the time they're 7 and 10.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
They're doing it because their kids – Trey, 5, and Denton, 2 – wouldn't look up from their parents' iPhones and iPads long enough to kick a ball around the backyard. 'That's kind of when it hit me because I'm like, wow, when I was a kid, I lived outside,' says Blair adding that now 'we're parenting our kids the same way we were parented for a year just to see what it's like.' The McMillans do their banking in person instead of online.
I had an NES in 1986. My parents had the exact same concerns about my siblings and me playing video games instead of playing outside.
If anything, with mobile devices, now, people *can* go outside and still be connected to whatever they want.
Going to the bank takes away time that could be used to kick the ball around the back yard as well.
If these parents were having trouble getting their kids to go play outside, surely it would have been easier to force the kids to simply go play outside without their ipads than it was to transport their whole family back in time 30 years.
If you are nostalgic for 1986, then just say so. You don't need an incoherent justification to be different. "I thought it would be interesting", is a perfectly legitimate reason to do something.
First off, the kids are not even in kindergarden yet (3 and 4 yr olds). They simply don't need electronics to teach them how to not interact with people, which is what these parents are doing. In fact, I'm quite happy to see a couple that's started taking back their lives from the continual interuptions of work and everyone else and actualy spending it with their children.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Y'know what caused a lot of those hard times in the first place? Religion.
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
Or you could, you know, not be an idiot and realize that I was attacking the message. The message is that their kids don't need technology; they'd do just as well fishing with dad. It was a stupid message at best.
That wasn't the message I got from the post... the message I read out of it was that if parents spent more time being, you know, parents, then kids wouldn't need to substitute electronic gadgets for them. The rise of kids using electronic toys is not new... I know people who were raised by their nintendos in the 1980's, and the Simpsons was making jokes about the kids being raised by the TV 20 years ago. The solution isn't to throw the technology out the window, though, it's to be a more involved parent, and it always has been.