By email,  from an acquaintance who is a docent at an historical-type museum:

I have seen the youth of America and I fear for the future of civilization.

Yesterday I did my regular museum shtick--a program for 4th graders (more or less 10 years old). We go over ground rules first, which includes cell phones off or on vibrate; no phoning or texting during the program; photography OK. I can't mandate that phones be turned off, because that's how most kids take pictures. This crew was from an affluent San Francisco suburb. They didn't just have cell phones. I swear, every one of them had an iPhone. Well, except maybe for the few who had Androids. And they knew how to use them. I started my program and looked out, expecting to see the usual sea of upturned faces. Instead, I saw a sea of Apple logos--most of the faces were hidden by iPhones. Instead of watchingthe program, they were viewing it through their cameras and taking videos. I asked them to knock it off (in nice, polite language) but about a third of them couldn't stop. They continued to video me, other kids, the surroundings in general. When they weren't looking through the camera, they were looking at the video or sharing it with the kid next to them. It wasn't as if they needed a zoom lens to see me--I was three feet away. They just couldn't put down the phones. I lost it, something I have never done before during a program. I barked at them that if they didn't put the phones away, I would ask the teacher to take them. The kids were shocked, but at least cooperated. (I later apologized to the teacher, but she said she understood.) The thing that saddened me was the utter attachment of these kids to their devices, so they automatically watched me though the camera instead of face-to-face. I've read all that stuff about how kids these days are not learning social skills because they tend to interact electronically, but this was the first time I'd seen it this acute.

Last edited by sigmoid freud (2011-04-24 21:10:33)