The only reason you need to know analog clocks nowadays is to solve all the analog clock puzzles in video games.
Or if you have a clock?
The only reason you need to own analog clocks nowadays is to practice solving all the analog clock puzzles in video games.
I don’t play video games. Although I don’t actually own an analogue clock, either. But they are quite nice.
playing video games is a slippery slope to owning a lot of analog clocks. youre saving yourself a LOT of money
That’s helpful to know, I’m trying to live frugally.
Crazily enough, living frugally is also a slippery slope to owning analog clocks.
Believe it or not, the penalty for not owning analog clocks in my country is jail. Straight to jail.
oh look yet another warmed over “DAE the kids r bad” talking point that i’ve been hearing literally since i learned language.
This has got to be rage bait like the litterbox thing right?
Litter box thing? I thought it was just my half wit town who believed in that bullshit.
Yup. Of course it is and half of the comment section is falling for it.
Always feels like these articles (and headlines in particular) are made to stir up division on social media.
Anyone who wants to understand how to read an analog clock can learn it in two minutes, it’s not like you need to be taught in school. edit to add: My brother recently told me that he was at the library and his friend’s teenage daughter looked at the analog clock and said indignantly “I can’t read that!” So apparently it is true that people aren’t learning simple skills like this.
Are all public clocks in the US digital clocks? Off the top of my head, I can tell you 4 locations within walking distance that have analog clocks, one of them being the train station.
Nope, it still seems like most of the ones I see are analog, as in my library example. Probably most people ignore them and just check their phones for the time since they are constantly looking at them anyway.
Honest question; why would they? Digital clocks and watches are have been cheaper and more accurate (and as a result more ubiquitous) for many years now. I think there’s a strong argument that analogue clocks are obsolete, and that’s why teens and kids aren’t learning to read them.
I personally know how to read an analog watch but I do it so rarely that it takes a bit of time thinking before I figure it out and convert it to 24 hour time. Because I use digital time absolutely everywhere and never analog time.
Hell I even got a digital wrist watch, mostly because it’s easier and faster to read for me but also because it’s more accurate. I will admit that the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy also played a role in the purchase.
Digital vs. analog watches that run on batteries are no more or less accurate because of how the time is displayed. I have a digital clock display on my battery-powered cordless phone (yes I also have a landline) that is constantly plugged into a power source and it loses a minute or two every day. Your computer and phone only keep displaying the correct time because they frequently update themselves from an online source.
My watch frequently (daily but only if I’m sleeping with it, for some reason) updates itself via radio. It’s generally accurate to a second or maybe even half a second. But the main reason, It’s easier to tell exactly what the time is in seconds when it’s digital compared to a fast spinning stick. Not that it really matters, I just like it.
Sounds like divisive bullshit.
After all the millennial horseshit we had to hear in the 2010’s and we’re just gonna turn around and do the same shit, huh?
“Gen-z is killing the analog clock industry” news articles incoming
Yup, hating on the next generation is a tale as old as time. Idk why, but every generation seems to do it. Maybe it’s being uncomfortable with them being different or afraid of their youthfulness. I don’t get it.
I’m not gonna do that, fuck that. I do hope this much screen time is ok for kids, even as a young programmer I didn’t have an iPad everywhere. Nobody seems concerned about their privacy, but guess what: neither did my millennial peers.
I think everything will be ok with alpha and Z. Let’s not repeat our the mistakes of our parents.
I think it’s important to not give certain things the benefit of the doubt. This clock stuff is just plain stupid to get bent out of shape about, but the other two are serious concerns.
This is just anecdotal, but I was a late 90’s kid that had as much screen time as I wanted growing up. I played an absurd amount of videogames, and had to be dragged outside by my siblings or I could comfortably stay indoors in front of a game or the internet for hours on end. I spent most of my early years (age 3 to age 15) in front of a screen. Yet, I did just fine in school, got a degree, and now work as a software engineer. I fell in love with my highschool sweetheart, and after waiting until I had my degree, we got married at 23, almost 10 years after we started dating. It felt like my obsessive amounts of screen time as a kid didn’t have any negative side effects to my life as a whole (outside of being a quiet and reserved person, and some could argue that that’s not a negative) and led me down a successful career path.
However, I don’t think kids these days have the luxury of doing that anymore. The content put in front of me as a kid was games made by teams that were passionate about the thing they were working on. Forums and early YouTube videos were created by some no name person with the hope of sharing something they openly cared about. Social Media didn’t exist yet and once it did, I never really got into it.
The content put in front of children these days is one of three or so things:
- Mindless dribble. (looking at you, Youtube Kids)
- Rushed, broken games made barely finished enough to get people to buy them just to make a quick buck, and the ones that are finished are so heavily tied into marketing it’s like the game is basically one big ad. (looking at you, Fortnite and Rocket League)
- Content made with the express purpose to either gain influencer status, or to use that influencer status to market something, primarily to children who are especially vulnerable to the scummy marketing practices they are using.
Obviously there are exceptions to these everywhere, but I’m talking about the things that are actively being shoved down kids’ throats. It’s not that I think that the content I consumed was better than what I see kids consuming now, but I think that the motivations behind the content can just as easily influence children as much as the content itself. I think that in a lot of ways, this kind of content is actively degrading kids’ brains, and from my experience, it’s not the screen time, it’s what’s being shown on screen that’s the issue.
Thankfully I’m tech savvy enough that I can make the internet for my children what it was for me as a kid, without all the marketing and money making schemes that pass as content these days, but a lot of people just toss a tablet in front of their kids and call it parenting.
I was going to rant about privacy as well, but this is getting way too long. Just know that I think digital privacy is really important, and think that we’ve paid the price for not considering it earlier, and there are ways we can save our kids from the same fate.
Sorry, I tend to write way too much on topics I care about, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
tl;dr - The clock thing is stupid, but please approach the constant exposure to the modern day internet and the digital privacy topics with a bit more scrutiny.
I don’t believe this for a second. You can literally just look at it and intuitively understand. Not to mention part of the standard elementary school curriculum is how to read a clock.
I’d like to see their faces when trying to read a binary clock.
Guys lets be honest why point at small Numbers which you have to read in a specific sequence while doing some math when you can easily and nowadays probably more efficiently (paper-ink) display them… Analog clocks are going to disappear and people will watch at them with the same eyes as we watch a sundial…(Btw I had to search for the translation of the world sundial that’s how common it is … 😉)
I can ready It but i get teens Who dontAnalog clocks are a better representation of how we think of time than a digital clock.
If someone looks and immediately afterwards someone asks them for the time, they will look at their watch again. The number isn’t really what matters, it’s “how long until X will happen” that matters more.
You know you’re meeting is at 10:30, you see it’s 9:55. You know it’s about a half hour until the meeting, and the meeting will happen when that big hand gets to the bottom. The numbers themselves won’t do that for you, you have to think 60 minutes in an hour, 60-5 = 5 + 30 = 35 minutes away. When you check the digital clock again you see 10:17, so you have to think 30-17 = 13 minutes until the meeting. But with an analog clock it’s like a reusable progress bar (well progress arc to be more accurate). Quick glance and you see how far the minute hand has to go and you’re good.
Sure the mental math needed to get a sense of time with a digital clock isn’t all that hard. But it is an additional step over the adhoc progress arcs that analog clocks provide.
Digital clocks are fine and all, but are just slightly worse than analog clocks. Just how technology is going I guess, always giving us something that’s technically more advanced but worse for humans to interface with.
Er, what? If I look at the clock and see it’s 0955 I know exactly that it’s 35 minutes. Same for every other example you give. If it’s 1252, it’s so easy to add 8 minutes then add whatever it is more. And you can do that for any time. Say 1017. “Oh no!” Never fear, the just add it to the time wangs are here: +13 to 30 and woah! Easy, foolproof and actually intuitive
1030-955=75. So intuitively, it would be 75 minutes until the meeting. Oh wait… maybe it’s not intuitive?
210 degree arc is always going to be 35 minutes. Whether it’s the 35 minutes from 9:55 to 10:30 or 9:50 to 10:25 or 3:15 to 3:50 or whatever. Sure you have to get used to the arcs. But once you do, it’s a quick glance at the minute hand and seeing how far away it is from the time of the meeting (or whatever the next thing is). Time for a computer is a number, time for a human is how long until a thing is going to happen.
They should just be taught how to read time in school
If only they still taught how to read a sundial, but those damn new fangled analog clocks…
So, schools aren’t even capable of teaching students how to read clocks anymore?
They are creating more and more idiots out there. The trend of “Help, our students don’t understand xyz, let’s stop teaching that immediately!” is disgusting. Maybe think of teaching it in a different way or just spending more time on that topic?
Schools have more important things to teach kids with the limited time they have
No, screw that whataboutism. When I went to school, I learned so much information that is virtually useless to most people, and not nearly enough skills and knowledge that would actually be helpful in daily life. I would like to see the situation improve for future generations.
Analogue clocks are everywhere and being able to read them is still important. Besides, if schools aren’t even capable of teaching something so simple to students, I think that calls into question their ability to teach far more complex things.
We also need to teach them how to write in cursive so they can read the declaration of independence.
It’s because analog clocks are becoming obsolete. You can scream about the young peoples all you want but that’s the reality.
I’m not screaming about the young people; I was “the young people” not that long ago. Not everyone who criticizes education is an out of touch boomer resisting every societal change.
Actually, analogue clocks have been obsoleted in almost every way by digital clocks for at least half a century, as digital wristwatches first hit the market in the 1970s. And yet, analogue clocks are still found everywhere. Classes, stores, train stations, homes, offices, not to mention the majority of wristwatches, still mostly use analogue clocks. In fact, excluding screens, I wouldn’t be surprised if most people came across more analogue clocks than digital clocks on a daily basis. They’re technologically obsolete, but haven’t fallen out of use.
I have to have an analog clock within sight in the morning. When I first wake up I’m too tired and bleary eyed to think about numbers but I know what angle the minute hand will be at when I have leave to catch the bus to work. When you’re familiar with an analog clock it’s far more user friendly than looking at some numbers and have to do some math. Sure it’s simple math, but first thing in the morning, I’d rather just glance at the minute hand and when I see the angle I just know.
So I don’t think it’s not going away despite it being obsolete, it’s not going away because it’s more user friendly. Sure there’s a learning curve, but once you’ve gotten the hang of it, it’s a more efficient way for a human to get a sense of time, which in many cases is more important than having a numerical representation of time.
Sorry I just assumed this was more boomer shitting on the youngins like usual so that’s my bad.
Perhaps the fact that we pay them like 30 grand a year is a factor? That’s how much my one bedroom apartment costs 😂 there’s no money left over for food or loans or electricity or gas
Financial stress has been proven to make you dumber
How is that whataboutism?
It’s not that schools have become unable to teach kids to read analog clocks or kids have become unable to learn it. It’s not that they can’t it’s that they don’t
But speaking of whataboutism, your argument is literally “well what about all the useless stuff that I learned in school???”
How about they stop teaching useless stuff, and the first things they can throw out are cursive and analog clocks.
No one knows how to read a sextant any more. The horror!!
Analog clocks are not really essential technology.
Ok but there are still many places with analog clocks, learning how they work shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.
I feel like this says more about these students’ schools, rather than the students themselves.
Who cares. Analog audio, video, phones, all out the window. Next people will be complaining people don’t even know anything about vacuum tubes. Digital clocks are easier to read and make more fuckin sense. Leave the kids alone. 🙄🙄🙄
Kids these days do absolutely still know how to read analog clocks.
Besides, they probably shouldn’t put effort into that. Those things are close to useless nowadays. It’s mostly a case of schools being conservative… but then, it’s not that much of an effort, so there are more important things to care about.
Not sure about that. For high school math it is still quite important that students are familiar with circles and angles on circles. Analogue clocks are a gentle introduction to this.
I’m guessing they know how, but it’s not as quick as just glancing at it. I mean fuck I’m in my 40s but that’s true for me, too.
I do know how to read an analog clock, but I dont read it subconciously, because my brain works on digital time, so I will have to look at it and then figure out what that time is if it were on a digital clock.
So if I see an analog clock I would rather look at my phone because that is just quicker than doing the conversion.
If you want to know more, look at the video Technology Connections (2?) did about it.
If we only taught things that were “useful” then we’d be discarding half the curriculum. Stuff like history, art, and how a fucking analog clock works, is worth teaching, even if it’s not something everyone uses every day.
Actually, a lot don’t. I mean, like, at least fifty percent. You would be surprised. I don’t think it’s schools being conservative so much as it didn’t occur to teachers and staff that analogue clocks are frankly obsolete (I still like them). I didn’t read this article, but it sounds like that’s being corrected.
Anyways, I really respect your attitude that it’s not worth getting bent out of shape or spending a lot of time on, I think you’re right. A lot of people get precious about it or, worse, make fun of kids like they’re stupid because they haven’t wasted their time learning to read, essentially, a sundial.
If only there was a building children could attend where they do things like teach how clocks work
Seriously! I’m pretty sure that was part of 1st or 2nd grade. Maybe both…
In my elementary school we even had clocks, where the numbers were large dice the teacher could take out and rotate so they showed ½, 30 or 18 instead of 6, for example. It’s not hard to learn, if you’re at a school. But then again, digital clocks are so everpresent that it might not actually matter…
The problem is unless you really use the skill a lot you’re not really gonna learn it from school. I had to teach myself how to read analog clocks in highschool cause even though I’m pretty sure I learned it in elementary school I grew up with computers and eventually smart phones so I never had to use it.
Edit: Also for context I was born in 2001
We had one in every classroom. So we only had to look at it for reinforcement of the original lesson.
We had them too but at least for me in elementary school I didn’t really care what time it was. I remember I knew what position on the clock meant school was done but other then that didn’t really need to read it cause the teachers would just bring us as a class to whatever our next class was for that day. By the time I got old enough to start caring smartphones were prevalent enough that I never really needed to learn how to read a clock. It wasn’t until highschool where teachers got more strict about enforcing no phones out in class that I then learned how to read clocks so I could know when class would be done.
We learned analogue clocks in children’s TV also
Gather round, children, time to learn how to use a dial up modem, and after that we’ll go over Morse code.
Did you not learn morse code in school…? I’m rather young and that was taught in one of my classes I’m fairly certain. Even if it was mainly for fun, and only really remembered how to do SoS
