> Educators say their tried and true lesson plans are no longer enough to keep students engaged at a time of struggling mental health, shortened attention spans, reduced attendance and worsening academic performance. At the crux of these challenges? Addiction to cell phones.
Yes, cell phones are a problem. But what keeps getting ignored, by practically everyone, is the detrimental effect of letting covid spread unchecked.
Kids get long covid, we know this now. It represents differently in kids than adults. This can have a direct affect on their performance at school, including the symptoms described above.
Getting multiple covid infections increases your risk of long covid. We are failing to take even the simplest of precautions to protect our children. This will impact their everyday life, including academic performance.
I fully expect people will downvote this due to the mass denial that the pandemic is not over. That's fine. But I know there are people reading that actually pay attention to what Epidemiologists are saying, rather than relying on hearsay or institutions motivated to keep the economy propped up in the short term.
Whatever effect COVID has on education appears far smaller than smartphones, based on changes in schools when phones are effectively prohibited during school.
> And if I’m struggling, as someone who’s not burdened by having children to take care of or even not having the most demanding job or hours to make ends meet, I have no idea how others manage to have a curious mind and succeed the way they do.
Paradoxically, I _feel_ like I have more time after I had kids than before. This is of course, after YOB (year of baby- first 12mo).
You see, I experienced such small slices of free time during YOB, that I became way more efficient at a ton of stuff, and dropped things that were time wasters.
Because I reproduced, I needed more dough. After working 3 jobs, 90 hrs a week for long enough, I decided to study programming.
Went to a code boot camp and walked out with a job. But the grinding didn’t stop there. What followed that was years and years of grinding, and studying as much as possible outside of programming at work.
Until finally, I got where I was going. I climbed up the ladder until I got tired of climbing, and avoided more stressful and time-demanding roles like management. I get senior dev compensation, don’t work more than 40hr/week, and I don’t commute. This is the life I built.
For everything I pursue, there are others who can run circles around me. But I can still look down from that ladder and see how far I came.
Wait, what am I talking about? Ok, the whole point is I became efficient and middle-class because I have mini-mes that deserve it.
Also, you never know what’s on the other side of that wizard level person you see. Everything I said sounds nice, but I wasn’t taking care of myself. Last year I had a mental breakdown, and am just now getting out of it.
So yeah, you’re not alone, etc etc, you know. There’s probably more people that can relate than you think.
It's wild how much kids teach you about yourself and your time on this earth, let alone your time available each day.
It's hard work but I can't think of a better motivation to improve one's self. And the best part is you don't even necessarily realize that it's happening.
I had surgery for a torn meniscus repair. I’m on the couch for a least another month.
I’m using this precious expanded free time to compose music, my primary form of artistic expression.
Software-wise, I’m on a platform team for a large company. I’m making some performance enhancements to our http client, and a plug-n-play library for app devs to easily integrate LLMs in their products.
Piling on the "Do the Physical Therapy" train, I had this done 2 years ago, did the PT work and now back 100%. It's a pain (literally and figuratively) but future you will be super happy current you did the work. Look into chair yoga, it will help you keep all of the other bits stretched out. Good luck!
There are so many cold critters out there that have always existed. Everyone blames covid when it's clearly the season flu, it's nonsense. It's time to move on.
Or, if even $300 seems steep for a computer to use for just some windows software, go to a used computer shop. I picked up my daughter’s Thinkpad for like $150
Edit: sorry, missed the portion of the parent comment mentioning used.
A crappy app that solves a problem would be an upgrade in a lot of cases, rather than a company engineering a problem to justify an app that’s been created.
It's more likely that a company started off with a solution for a problem, then got told by investors that it wasn't a big enough problem, and so they had to "pivot" into a more crowded space, without really adding much value.
