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I'm providing a link to a review of the study where Professor Slouchy goes into more details. I don't want to just ramble about them here. Please check it out. It's absolutely fascinating. We all know that children have a tendency to wander off, touch every object in sight. And in my case, when I was a child, I used to put anything and everything that I could find on the ground in my mouth. Rocks, bugs
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 1:04
This is so incredibly interesting to me. And after reading the study, for whatever reason, it's making me think about this book I read years ago called Necessary Losses. Subtitle of that book is the loves, illusions, dependencies and impossible expectations that all of us have to give up in order to grow
So my six year old, for instance, he knows all too well that he's not supposed to be doing stuff like leaning over the guardrails of my mom's third floor apartment or getting too close to a vast nest in our garden. Things like that, but he keeps doing them despite knowing what's likely to happen. So it made me wonder if such behavior from kids much against the advice and instructions from caretakers and family, is also a part of this process of them figuring out the world
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
And also another observation that really struck me was the conditioning in adults that almost always makes them risk and lean towards experiences that are rewarding rather than those that are explorative in nature. So that aspect of the study really stood out. And I made me actually wonder about the choices we make in life as adults
It's that sort of I'm a big kid now attitude. And I saw that happen an awful lot. And I would talk to my students afterwards and say, you knew this was going to end badly. Why did you do it? And a lot of the times they were pretty honest with me. They would say I wanted to find out for myself. And I think that is a very powerful statement coming from a mind that is still fully developing
Todd Mitchell
@Todzilla · 2:29
So it's easy to say something like this right after a study comes out. But as a game developer and particularly as a game designer, I could have told you a lot of this. And most game developers and designers recognize these things because the way games work if you think about it. And of course, we're very selective with how we allow kids that young to use screen time and devices and things like that
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