A Deduction Following An Observation:
 

Seizing the opportunity to socialize with an assumedly-intelligent infant of 16-weeks age, I observed an unnatural attention by said infant to the large screen LED TV on mute.

Preliminary deduction:

I think there may be something going on between humans and screens that we don't understand, let alone fully recognize.

So I'm thinking to myself I should turn that bouncy chair thing he's in to face away from that thing.

Preliminary deduction 2:

The screen is bad for kids.

Now what? He's looking at me. So I look back at him.

Deduction:

The beneficial human potential offered by the innate capacity for face-to-face interactions in infants and children is under threat.

Add to it the fact that so many people use the idiot box as a free babysitter. What can possibly go wrong?

Just about everything I'd say, P-O-P.

The preferred alternative is to present to the child a world of reality. At age 16 weeks, a child already has the capacity to communicate but lacks the physical ability to make it feasible for him. As such, he uses what he has-his vision and his brain.

Looking deeply into an infants eyes (forcing him to look into yours) locks on the radars of the persons involved.

'Forcing...' will no doubt be considered by the snowflakes to be in bad form.

Please insert, 'allowing him the opportunity to engage in what he already craves'.

Talk about face to face interaction, The cell phone, and social media will be the undoing of us as an inteligent society. It really bothers me when I go out to dinner, or over to someones house for a visit, and in the end, EVERYONE except for me is staring at thier phones by the end of the night.

The profound but unforeseen paradox is that social media is making us unsocial. The really surprising thing is how irresistable its allure is.

We are alarmed by the dramatic rise in autistic spectrum disorders yet demand that we do more of what causes it.

good work, nothing replaces human interaction

I recently witnessed a mother give her 3 yr old her phone to play a kids game. The kid was clicking away, the phone making all sorts of sounds. The 3 yr old's aunt jumped in and started interacting with the kid. Turns out the game was actually a learning game, count, spell, colors... the kid loved it. I doubt the mom ever did that, what a missed opportunity.

As tools for learning the devices are replacing teachers, schools and books which could be good. The attraction the devices have is dangerous.

My reading to the kids was a treat and reward after their long day of being in the real world. The screens seem to be increasingly blurring if not outright obliterating the line at which reality ends and phantasy begins.

Hours and hours of empty and unproductive screen time is destroying something in us that I Think is fundamentally necessary to our individual development as human beings in addition to our success as a collective.

If we turn the TV on in our house, my 2 yo runs faster that speedy Gonzales towards it. Then won't blink as long as its on.

Dogs wag tails. Peacocks have feathers. Big hair women preening and talking loudly.
Animal attention is distracted by big and colorful and moving.

The baby had to make a choice between what is considered traditionally normal vs. hyper-stimulous levels of information.
-To be attuned to the most delicate of sensory inputs, or to filter out almost everything around.
-To become a violinist, or break rocks.

His future brain development will reflect his immediate environment.

They Live.

Yep, the electronic campfire.
No wonder that "youth" now-a-days have no face to face social skills. Can't even talk on the phone - has to all be screen to screen....

its my untested opinion that with certain children that encounter and engage TV and video games, the image rate is far faster than reality and the young brains begin to process at that rate. When thrust into non-TV/video reality their brains can not accept the slower pace thus producing anxiety. This behavior is then lumped into the autism spectra and attention deficit syndrome . Brains can be trained and young brains are open to understanding and processing reality TV and video is not presenting the photon stream at a natural rate.

Again, this is just a hypothesis along with the beginnings of life starting in clay, catalyzed by metal ions, building smectic liquid crystalline polymers further developed by certain types of radiation that penetrated the Earths atmosphere prior to the full protective shield of the magnetic properties.

My oh my, lubey!

We observe the same vista. Yet I see the horizon, the simplicity, the beauty while you the nuts, the bolts, and also the beauty.

There is hope for us!

You sir, deserve an excellent weekend.

We were genetically made to walk delicately in the woods. Our mind to seek out new stimulus that is barely precept-able: Which way is north. Temperature changes meaning rain. A bird over the hill being upset by something. That deer head peeking through the shrubs a few hundred yards away. Inflections in another persons face and voice which indicate their true thinking and true feelings.
There is no danger of overload. The mind is free to finely tune itself to all.
Pull it all in.
=Vacuum mode.

Modern society is full of over-stimulus danger to the sensory system. Honking. Loud sounds. Fatal traffic. Bright lights. Flashing colors on screens everywhere. Signs to read everywhere but only a few are very important. Unpredictable and sometimes randomly aggressive human behavior. Ultimatum personalities. Small lies and big ones. People filling every square foot of our surroundings which we have to adapt and respond to accordingly. Hurry up and rush rush rush.
Have to filter most of it out, to be able to hear our own brain.
Too much stimulus.
=Protective mode

I've read autism is actually hypersensitivity that shuts everything down under duress. Not sure.
Great thread.

Autism is the result of the inability to master the processing of enormous amounts of competitive stimuli. The autistic brain compensates by creating its own stimulus and deriving some kind of benefit from it. It seems to be a cognitive form of morphine.

That's my guess, anyway.

I'm bored so I am going to change the channel....maybe the Mustang forum will offer more entertainment.

Tabdullah master merchant and buffeteer supreme, have a good weekend.

Be comforted to know Sandy's passing so long ago has had no long-term ill effect on your wit.

In addition, it sure is fun to watch the frustration you feign in dealing with we f'ing idiots here.

Misc (which might or might not be accurate):
-Smell therapy is useful in recalling past events.
-Cheap smell identification tests might be as useful as PET scans and spinal taps for identifying the early onset of Alzheimers. from the recent Toronto consortium.
-Vidalia onions taste like apples when the nose is negated (and they have more sugar).