engagement
Being offline is currently an online trend, or something.
As you may have noticed, and as I realised this morning, I haven't written anything in over a month.
The internet, what a place with lots of things in it. Imperfects we are cartographers reminded me of an idea I had while watching Toy Story 5.
In the film, the main child that most of the toys belong to plays with toys and uses her imagination, this is a juxtaposition to litterally every other child that spends every waking second staring at the fictional worlds equivalent of an iPad. Which is of course a hyperbole but it's a peice of children's fiction we are meant to analyse the motif not the individual scenes, I think?
Now what actually is it that all the kids are doing? In the film we can see that they play 1 game on it and use a group chat and a social media feed... So they are doing one thing. What is Bonnie doing? Using her imagination to create a story with her toys. So what makes playing with toys developmentally better than playing a game on an iPad? What is it the film is trying to get at that is deeper than just "technology bad"
I think it is the variety of skills and the engagement of someone in the activity. When doomscrolling you are occupied but not necessarily engaged, mentally you are just taking in stuff and not allocating time to deliberate on that stuff and physically you are moving a finger. However not to say that it is every feed that causes this. As Imperfect would call it "Bloomscrolling" is different, and from what I can only imagine would be allocating the time to consider what you are consuming. Ergo it must be that this artefact is a user side occurrence, even if many platforms are designed to make you doomscroll.
Compare this to playing with toys. To start off with you are of course using your imagination and creative skills in order to play. Teamwork could also be assumed as is that and communication not the point of preschool?
If you are exploring somewhere outside you can't really be occupied but not engaged like you can on a a phone or tablet. You would have to be physically moving as well as mentally observing where you are and where you want to go and how to get there, risk taking and risk aversion and critical thinking, you may even need your imagination for a bit of creative problem solving.
So the important difference that Toy Story 5 highlighted for me was engagement in an activity.
And I'm sure on the world of child psychology this is no new revelation. But we are always learning and growing, so it seems feesible to apply this to our use of the internet rather than merely following a trend?