[europsucks]

What will earn him more money in later life, though - stacking bricks, or using a computer?

Why can't you do both?

Did they also study how much you learn about using a computer by stacking bricks?

What if they found that kids who only play with bricks suck at Tetris? Would that be a cause for concern?

[barry-cotter]

As someone who is aggressively positive on screentime and on money, this is still sad.

Children should be interacting with the physical world because they’re little animals who should be interacting with their surroundings to learn how they work, just as you and I should be using our bodies because it feels great and helps our minds to work.

Using a computer is an abstraction that can wait until after children have a solid model for how the world works. Computers are tools, wonderful, fascinating, useful tools, but Tetris isn’t even 3D, generalising from actual blocks to Tetris is not going to tax the imagination of anyone.

[clarry]

> What will earn him more money in later life, though - stacking bricks, or using a computer?

I'm pretty sure we recently saw a study that showed a lot of kids being tech illiterate despite growing with and regularly using a bunch of gadgets.

Turns out playing with a screen doesn't teach you computers.

[jimktrains2]

I like to use the analogy: just because you can drive a car doesn't mean you can fix a car.

Honestly, some people just treat computers as magic despite using them every day and having it explained what it's doing. We don't need to expose kids to computers more -- it's literally impossible not to -- we need to get them to -- or not squash -- their desire to ask 'why', 'how', and 'how can this be changed'.

[tonyedgecombe]

Which will earn him more money in later life, though

That's a poor measure of somethings value.

[europsucks]

How do you measure the value of stacking bricks, then?

[_Schizotypy]

The ability to manipulate objects is great to foster understanding of our world and development of spacial visualization. Apparently there are some people who don't understand how to properly put an air filter cover back on in their car because they don't understand it just needed to be rotated 90 degrees, which is honestly incredibly sad. The benefits come from brain development and understanding how things work together which, if you want to think about it in monetary terms, helps in any industry. Everything is an interacting system.

[europsucks]

I know a lot of people who can't use a computer or a smartphone, which is also very sad. They never learned to explore and experiment with the user interface. If you explain something to them, they write down every step. When the next software update changes a little thing, they are lost again. That's very similar to your "just turn it by 90°" example.

Do you have elderly parents you support with their computers? Then maybe you know what I am talking about.

I am not saying kids shouldn't play with bricks. The whole premise of the article seems silly. Nobody claims kids should play with computers instead of bricks.

As for becoming computer savvy, I've seen kids pick up quite a lot from playing with computers. They quickly figure out how to find and launch the games they like, for example. And they also experiment, for example rearranging the UI. Then there is Minecraft.

[altairiumblue]

You really don't. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that it should be ignored

[izacus]

> What will earn him more money in later life, though - stacking bricks, or using a computer?

What does using a computer here mean? Playing video games? Staring at YT videos? Or coding?