Totally agree, Amy. People can be as nice or as nasty as they want to be, and have been for millinea. An insult is an insult, no matter how you slice it. In the early days of the internet, I forget where I found it, but someone posted a Shakespearean insult kit, which had 3 lists of words, which you could mix and match in order to insult someone, as in, "You bawling, blasphemous, treacherous dog!" or some such. Insulting and hurting people is as old as time. We've just got more advanced tools to use to do it anymore.

I tend to agree that it is a tool, but do think it is harming us in a few specific ways.

I think there's now a default to "Google it" instead of try to figure out the answer to a problem.

For instance, people might be out socializing and during conversation somebody says something about tomatoes being a fruit. Another person says they're a vegie.

Ten or fifteen years ago, this might get people into a conversation trying to figure out who might be right. "Well, for school lunches, tomato sauce counts as a vegetable," or, "Well, the tomato has seeds in it and it develops from a flower, so I think it must be a fruit." (etc)

Now somebody whips out a phone and goes to Wikipedia or Googles it.

So, I think that is going to have a long-term detriment to people's critical thinking ability.

Similarly, the ability to just look something up I think is a detriment to school children. The idea of reading about something & coming to one's own conclusions is somewhat lost. Not that it's not wonderful to have so much information at your fingertips (or not have to rely upon the Library's discretion to determine what you'll have access to).

As for civility, well, the internet didn't have much impact on it until we could use the internet on the go. So, if one wants to argue about technology bringing down civilization, the internet isn't the cause (smartphones are more likely).

I would say though, that the lack of parents getting in their kids faces for rude behavior is much more to blame. I don't mind elbows on the table, but I'll come down on shoving, pushing, name calling, please & thank yous, excuse mes, taking turns, etc. From what I've seen, I'm in the minority as a parent.

Thanks, Amy! I'm going to put that on my Kindle!

Agree, for the most part. Where I think the breakdown in human interaction occurs is in the ability to reach many more people with incivility ANONYMOUSLY. I would assume there would be much more pausing before speaking without that anonymity. I admire the fact that Amy attaches her full true name to what she writes on the internet.

I do have to agree in part with the idea that the internet is destroying civility, but I don't think manners are the major issue.

When your children have more friends on Facebook then in their own neighborhood parks, that's a problem. Parks that in my youth were jam packed with kids now lay empty. The park in my parents neighborhood was demolished due to lack of use, and a garden put up. I see parents having to literally blackmail kids into getting off the games and going outside. I also see couples on dates staring at their individual smart phones as they wait for the food to arrive.

I think the downfall of civility, if that's what you want to call it, is related indirectly to the internet, as now people don't require face time. Why go out with your friends, when you can sit in your PJ's and talk to them in your bed with a bottle of wine? Manners and grammar wither from lack of use. And critical thinking, gotta agree with Shannon.

On a side note, I think it would be beneficial to limit internet access to children under 16. It seems to be turning them into social vegetables. While some parents monitor what, where and how much their children do on the internet, many parents I've seen tend to throw a phone, laptop or game console at little Johnny to shut him up.

I agree, Amy. And yes, with Google, we can move on to more interesting topics, and we can try to solve more interesting problems. Why circle around the drain of something that's been asked and answered?

As for the loss of face time, that seems to be a problem for people in generations born pre-Internet. We have different standards (not better or worse, just different). Once all us old fogies die off, this will just be the way it is, and no one will think a second thought about it. I bet when the phone was invented, you had a bunch of people bitching that we were all going to hell in a handbasket because people didn't drop by each other's houses anymore.

And I'd be a little surprised if people had as many local friends as Facebook friends. Facebook friends are just people you happen to know. I could never handle that many real friends, nor would I want to.

Monica;

Maybe it's different in different areas, but I live in a decent sized neighborhood with lots of parks, but now if you walk through, you see tumble weeds. When I was a kid, these parks were packed. Standing room only.

The difference between kids and adults is that we've already learned social skills. The primary reason you send your kid to elementary school is to learn social skills. I find the process has slowed down or stopped altogether when kids can get together for a play date of video games. I also think the internet is indirectly responsible for the surge in popularity of extra curricular activities for children, and gyms for adults. If they weren't glued to a screen, they wouldn't need 6 different classes to get them active.

Also, the information generation is generally obese, and the best reason I can think of other than the wide variety of crap available, is plunking their asses down to technology. As much as people like to say that it all revolves around parental responsibility, we all know some parents out there don't deserve the title.

Political Attacks in the 1800's (Via Advice Goddess)

What would political attack ads from the 1800's look like? Video 1:43.

Thomas Jefferson said in his presidential campaign:
  John Adams is a hideous, hermaphroditical character, with neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensitivity of a woman.

That isn't the worst of it.

George Smathers attacked his Senate opponent in 1950.

"Do you know that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy."

Wtf: I understand what you mean, but I don't think meeting in parks is necessarily better than what kids have today. It's just different. We like the idea of kids in parks because it's what we did. Parks today kind of suck with so much emphasis on safety.

There are so many different kinds of social skills and so many ways to learn them. Kids are still getting face time with other kids in school, and with the pervasiveness of technology, it might be just as important for them to learn how to be social online. So much of life happens online now.

I think we'd be hard-pressed to find a direct link between tech and obesity. Weight has far more to do with food -- types and portions. I was a sedentary kid. If my parents had insisted I stop reading, I would have just played with my dolls or something similar. It's not like the choice was between TV or baseball. It was more like TV or coloring.

There are certainly downsides to all this technology, but there are benefits, too, and future generations will incorporate both, just like we did with the tech we had.

"if Jefferson got elected, men's wives and daughters would be legalized hookers in short order"

Speaking as a father of a daughter now, I've given this issue quite some thought - when we say we want to criminalize prostitution, what we are basically saying is that we want the full force of law to be brought and used against our own daughters (having a team of men with guns brutally lock them up in a cage) if they so much as try to exercise their right as adults to make free consenting choices about their lives. This is highly barbaric, and NO sane and decent father should prefer that teams of armed men brutally attack and cage their own daughters for mutually-consenting victimless crimes ... so as a father, I must conclude that prostitution must be decriminalized. It is disgusting that society still perpetrates such violence against women.

"I think we'd be hard-pressed to find a direct link between tech and obesity"

If there were such a link, the Japanese should also be one of the most obese nations.

"For instance, people might be out socializing and during conversation somebody says something about tomatoes being a fruit. Another person says they're a vegie ... Now somebody whips out a phone and goes to Wikipedia or Googles it. So, I think that is going to have a long-term detriment to people's critical thinking ability."

I actually think this trend is a good thing, because instead of arguing for half an hour based on no evidence whatsoever and each side insisting they're right based on nothing other than their own deluded self-belief, the matter can be settled by reverting to actual scientific fact, and they can instead spend the next 15 minutes on something that actually advances the conversation beyond the level of whether a tomato is a fruit.

What I miss most about pre-Internet days was a certain difficult to describe 'sense' of the world in terms of geography, geographic isolation and distance. This is a sense that our kids will never know. Now we're all just ever-connected 'nodes on a network' - there is no real 'geography' anymore because you're constantly in touch no matter where you are. I can't rationally say why this is "bad" other than that I miss this overall sense of a previous era.

I think the internet is one of the greatest things, and poorest things to ever happen to humanity.

Greatest things: A technology forum I post on, recently had a question posted that asked how to get around the YouTube blackout in Pakistan. The modmins (administrators and moderators) had to shutdown the question for violations of Terms of Use for piracy violations. But somehow the suggestion of an answer ended up in the question shutdown admin post. We have modmins from about 35 countries.

Poorest things: The stream of consciousness that spews like a shallow sea that drags around our ankles day after day. There are so many people who repeat, ad infinitum, the lies, falsehoods, of politicians, their parents, their peers, etc. Then when you try to get them to think, face facts or justify their position they retreat into a corner and gibber rhetoric.

This is what happened with Ted Cruz and Dianne Feinstein. He repeatedly tried to get a valid response and Feinstein couldn't do it.

But you see this on the topic of gay marriage, drugs, or any other controversial issue. For that matter, you see it in this week's Steubenville rape trial. The boys were guilty because they were stupid and took advantage of a girl who was just as stupid to be blackout drunk in public.

There are so many people who repeat, ad infinitum, the lies, falsehoods, of politicians, their parents, their peers, etc. Then when you try to get them to think, face facts or justify their position they retreat into a corner and gibber rhetoric.

That's not new, it's just the same old ignorance delivered in a new package.

"There are so many people who repeat, ad infinitum, the lies, falsehoods, of politicians, their parents, their peers, etc. Then when you try to get them to think, face facts or justify their position they retreat into a corner and gibber rhetoric."

Gee I wish I knew someone like that! ;)

Just how do you teach a boy or girl about the real world - guns, crime, principles, justice - while they sit in front of a monitor?
I'm sure Crid doesn't know anything about my job, even as brilliant as he is with prose, because the detachment of the Web lets him make shit up.
Search for "Lenski affair", and you'll see a grand case of this.

The Web delivers a level of abstraction EVERY TIME, just like a book. No, the book is not the whole story. The Bible IS NOT God.
Sending an email is not standing up for your rights. Not by itself, it isn't - any more than a red ribbon means you Support Our Troops.

While some parents monitor what, where and how much their children do on the internet, many parents I've seen tend to throw a phone, laptop or game console at little Johnny to shut him up.

Posted by: wtf at March 17, 2013 9:47 AM
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I've heard it's sometimes easier for a mother of two preschoolers to grab a shower than a mother of one, since the two kids can play safely with each other, while a single kid who's strong enough to get out of an upside-down playpen will likely cause serious damage or get hurt.

But....if the single kid is a bit OLDER than, say, three, why, WHY doesn't the parent simply say "do you want to do chores with me or stay in room X and play with blocks by yourself?" If the kid later whines "there's nothing to do," the kid needs to learn, fast, that that's an invitation to do chores all day.

I.e., why do parents PAY for kids to sit, get fat, ruin their eyes, AND ruin their attention spans when none of that will help them in their reading abilities - or school? Quote from 2012: "Nationwide, 70% of kids between the ages of 8 and 18 already have a television in their bedroom."

I would also suggest that in addition to having regular unpaid chores later on, kids should have to EARN money through extra chores rather than getting allowances. That way, at least, kids won't be passively waiting for money - and they'll be less addicted to consuming in general, since they'll learn to think twice before spending.

While, yes, I agree that one could move on to more interesting things, my example was particularly uninteresting (it's just something that made a nice example).

I still maintain that the exercise of "debating" (or, as I think of it, social problem analysis) is good for people. I think it helps foster the idea that one can approach a question from different ways (USDA vs biology in my example), that differing opinions isn't always grounds for hostility, AND helps people work toward identifying facts (as opposed to opinions). Given that lots of what is on the internet is wrong anyway, I think this is a good skill to foster. Not to say I'd give the internet up for it, but it's still a good social experience that is on the decline (and frankly, when was the last time you went out bowling/for drinks/whatever and had some really groundbreaking discoveries from the conversation anyway?).

What the internet does is provide anonymity. Yes, people have always slung mud and will always sling mud, but people didn't use to be able to say it in the privacy of their home, without anyone to know who they are.

It also has provided a way create a multitude of personalities, as in the cyber-bullying that occurs - can't just block one person, you have to block the many personas that they created with the free email accounts that they created.

The internet may be a cause of additional obesity, but so is the increase in homework. Having hours of homework starting in elementary school, children are mentally exhausted before even trying to do something active.

Schools are also stopping exercise, like running during recess, so children have to have other activities. Kids can't play on the swings, monkey bars and play gyms. There are parks that don't have them because of injuries to kids who may jump off and kids passing by.

Googling has it's pros and cons. It answers questions that my son asks that I have no clue what the answer is. But it also gives you so many answers that it can be overwhelming, especially for topics like vaccinations. Even though the science is right, the science links come way below all of the people saying that it has linked to their children's autism.