The more things change…

My post from earlier earned me a stack of email. A lot of was in agreement, but one email from a reader named Larry jumped out at me:

At a restaurant, for example, don’t kids have crayons and a placemat to color? Hasn’t this been common for decades? How is that inherently any different than an iPad? Isn’t the point to give a child something to do? Certainly we can question specific things kids might be doing on an iPad, but isn’t the concept of offering a distraction to a child in public really pretty normal and common and not really that bad?

I see Larry’s point — my specific example isn’t all that new of a situation.

He goes on:

The technology has changed, but the idea stays the same. The same thing with my nephew who is prime Minecraft age. When my brother-in-law put it in the context of, “These are basically like the Lego we had as kids” it made perfect sense. Similar concept, new technology.

Clearly, we look at the world with a filter based on the time in which we live, as @rounded_wreck on Twitter wrote:

@512px when I was a kid, and we were on a long drive, my father used to tell my brother and I to put our books down and look out the window.