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The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There’s an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence,

Jonathan Haidt • The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood

Scrolling displaces observation, shuts out occasions for self-generated thought, silences out-of-the-blue invitations. Checking the phone reroutes the discomfort of blankness and emptiness. It stoppers authentic—often anxious—waiting. And, even more disturbing, scrolling narrows the field of my curiosity.

Lia Purpura • The Ecology of Attention

There is less time these days for anything other than economic survival. The internet has moved seamlessly into the interstices of this situation, redistributing our minimum of free time into unsatisfying micro-installments, spread throughout the day. In the absence of time to physically and politically engage with our community the way many of us ... See more

Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

The problem with substituting cultural consumption and active leisure for rest is that one person’s recreation is another person’s work. If museums, libraries, and baseball stadiums are to stay open, then security guards and librarians have to work, and baseball players have to play.

Judith Shulevitz • The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time

But what was the labor movement’s fight for shorter days and workweeks about, if not the social morality of time? And how about the way we’re always recalibrating our feelings for our friends, or our sense of how they feel about us, with the neurotic precision of a Larry David, based on how many minutes they’ve kept us waiting? If other people’s us

Judith Shulevitz • The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time

Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.

Paul Schmitt • Zadie Smith - Feel Free.pdf

He sees the hunger people have for a wisdom and nourishing that algorithms and devices don’t provide—but the humanities can. This is the real crisis in humanities, and it’s reached a boiling point.

I don’t travel as extensively as Dana, but I hear the exact same thing in my online dealings with people. They want something that the tech can’t provid... See more

Ted Gioia • The Real Crisis in Humanities Isn't Happening at College

The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

Rose Horowitch theatlantic.com

A brilliant 2015 essay by the economist Steven Horwitz argued that free play prepares children for the “art of association” that Alexis de Tocqueville said was the key to the vibrancy of American democracy; he also argued that its loss posed “a serious threat to liberal societies.” A generation prevented from learning these social skills, Horwitz w... See more

Sublime

Jonathan Haidt • The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood

Lia Purpura • The Ecology of Attention

Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Judith Shulevitz • The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time

Judith Shulevitz • The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time

Paul Schmitt • Zadie Smith - Feel Free.pdf

Ted Gioia • The Real Crisis in Humanities Isn't Happening at College

The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

The Atlantic • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid