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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.
So, schools aren’t even capable of teaching students how to read clocks anymore?
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.
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
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.
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.We also need to teach them how to write in cursive so they can read the declaration of independence.
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?
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.
The point is the instinct to check phone for the time is so strong that they’re not looking around for clocks.
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.
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.
It was the only way I could tell how much time is left, I didn’t have a phone till highschool. In school counting down the second till school was over was so crucial.
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This would be gen alpha at this point no?
Feels more like we should teach kids better rather than remove the clocks.
Feels like we have a limited amount of time to teach kids and we have more important things to teach them during that time
I am pretty sure this was being taught for maybe 1 day in 1st grade after you learn about numbers. For first grader learning analogue clock probably is also a fun activity.
Perhaps we should start paying teachers so that we attract more intelligent ones with more passion
I know someone said more or less the same thing when it was posted on Tumblr, but if the schools realize most of their students don’t know a thing they should know… Shouldn’t they teach it?
its not in their standardized tests and that’s the only thing that determines funding. Its a nightmare …
Apparently it’s literally in the standardised tests… that’s what’s causing the problems! 😉
That is a good point, but analog clocks are IMHO in the realm of sundial clocks or audio casettes or floppy discs. Technology that was once usefull, but now it’s replaced by better alternatives. Time is after all just a number, and it does not matter how we choose to represent it.
100% it is antiquated technology.
Absolutely not comparable to floppy disks. The hands are a representation, not a technology. Technology-wise, most modern “analog” wristwatches are quartz, and therefore digital, not actually analog. Yet we choose to make them with hands because that provides a better representation of the passing of time.
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The reason is better is because a number on its own doesn’t provide any representation whatsoever of the passing of time. It represents the current observed time, but it does nothing to represent graphically how much of the day is left.
The arguably best representation of the passing of time is a 24h analogue watch/clock, even if that has its own set of issues which make it a terrible way of displaying the current time.
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It goes beyond just showing what part of day you are in. Everything is reduced to angles. You don’t have to do any math with numbers, just look how much the pointer has to move to see how much time is left until an event you are interested in, and you get to visually compare that angle with the entire half of a day to get an even better perception of the passage of time.
Technology-wise, most modern “analog” wristwatches are quartz, and therefore digital, not actually analog.
Wat… that’s not how that works. Quartz watches can be digital or analog but what matters is whether it has a digital display or analog hands.
Time isn’t just a number though. Especially not when it comes to clocks. And it’s also bound to Mass.
It’s not better, it’s just different, your comparison is flawed.
Personally, I prefer analog watches for most cases, because it’s much easier for me to do calculations visually. To add 6 to 7/19 on a digital clock I need to turn on my math brain (19+6=25, 25>24 => 25-24=1), but on an analog watch I can just visually read the number opposite of 7.And that’s just one example, there are other cases, besides just being easier to read at a glance. I’ve used both digital and analog watches since birth, but analog watches are marginally better for daily use, where to the second precision isn’t necessary.
Digital isn’t better it’s just different. Also a tonne of wristwatches are still analogue.
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I used to have one, but now I set my phone clock to be displayed as an analogue clock so that kind of made it obsolete, since it now has all the benefits of an analogue display with the additional advantage of automatically syncing time and adjusting for time zones and daylight saving time.
I wear a watch for the time. I like it more than using my phone.
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Wristwatches are just jewelry at this point tbh. They’ve been rendered completely redundant by cell phones. The only people under 60 who wear them are doing so as a fashion statement.
I’m sure a lot of wristwatch stans will downvote me but I don’t care I’m still right
For office attire or going out, sure.
If you’re doing repair work, running lines, etc, a watch is the choice. Your hands are busy, so a watch is what you need (Except for specific trades where you don’t want to risk it getting caught in machinery).
I can say with 100% certainty that I know large swaths of folks in their 20’s and 30’s who regularly wear watches. Some smart, some digital, some analog.
I use my wristwatch all the time to take dogs’ pulses.
Having a cell phone next to a grumpy dog is asking for a broken cell phone. I’m sure people in other fields need wristwatches as well.
Just because you don’t use them don’t mean they’re not useful.
Ever since college I’ve always worn a cheap watch on my wrist least for the same reason my grandpa stopped keeping a pocket watch: its more convenient to check on your wrist for the time than your pocket.
Granted we’re getting way off topic here since except for a few years its ways been a digital watch. Asserting analog watches are more numerous in models when digital watches are more numerous in sales, therefore reading an analog clock is a useful skill is odd to me. When I was wearing an analog watch for my allergies it was a flieger because the mental tax of making the hands turn into a singular time was a frustration.
I learned, though, from this that how you present time changes how you perceive time. Kids who grow up with digital representations of time consider “the current moment” in a much narrower and instantaneous scope than people who grew up thinking of time as being a spectrum on a dial
Watches are just more convenient. You don’t need to carry a phone everywhere and with texts and calls showing on the watch you don’t need to find your phone to check.
I use my watch with alarms/ timers to know when I need to clock out or in from lunch etc while I mostly leave my phone at my desk while at work so if I’m walking around the building I still get my alerts through my watch
Watches that can get alerts can show digital time. So, chalk another point up for not learning analog time.
Wristwatches don’t have the negative psychologically addictive and anxiety-producing effects of smartphones
It absolutely is tho. Usually more precise, 1:1 translatable into written text, can use the superior 24h system and uses the same reading system that is already taught in school anyways.
Right! Just to prove a point, I am going to make an NTP enabled rolex, and sync it to my microsecond accurate local NTP server! :P
To be fair, I did have a watch that automatically synced itself to the us naval observatories atomic clocks over the air.
Yeah, but you need to factor in the distance to the transmitter. Going to add at least a few microseconds to your time accuracy!
Latency is accounted for in the sync process
“Ususally more precise” > This depends on how precisely it is set, not on the display. Unless it’s a connected watch, but then it’s much more expensive and less energy efficient.
“1.1 translatable into written text” > Both are, you’re reading the same number
“Uses the superior 24h system” > Adding 12 to a number isn’t complicated. And with habit, most people who use analog watches and the 24h system know which position of the needle means what number in 24h format without doing the math. Some clocks don’t even have digits. Unless you’ve been sedated and woke up in a room without windows, you’ll know which side of 12 you’re on. And otherwise, you’ve got more pressing issues.
There’s nothing stopping an analog clock face from representing 24h time:
I was ready to hate it but after a good look, it doesn’t look that bad. Doesn’t work for small wristwatches but could look nice for a big wall clock.
🤢 what an utter abomination
This is why puppies die
I need reading glass (sigh I got old) With an analogue watch face I can work out the time, blurred lines can be seen. Cant read blurred numbers.
Knowing a clock is more than just telling time.
When you’re walking with your homies you gotta be able to call out “gyat 3 o’clock” , so your fellow bros know where to look.
Ok you know what. I was ready to conclude that learning to read analog clocks isn’t that useful but you’ve actually convinced me otherwise.
As someone who struggled with analog clocks into my twenties, being able to see the hands move gives me a better sense of time passing and I remember reading stuff that supported that. I have a better sense how much time I have left for something looking at analog vs digital basically and it’s a fairly common experience apparently
Are they going anywhere, tho? They start cheap and are very energy-efficient, so I think they’d stay. If there is a probability to face them IRL it won’t be bad to learn how to read them.
Yes.
But they don’t need to know it. So they stopped teaching it.
Honestly, how often do you read analog clocks?
I mean, I learned it as a child, but it’s been probably months since I actually had the need to read an analog clock, and I’m just not used to it anymore. I have to think about it, 20 years ago it was just my spine doing the thinking and it felt effortless.
Daily. There’s one in my kitchen and one at my office.
It’s not just about telling time though. It’s about representing things in a different way. Correlating one thing to another, and making someone think until the representation automatically becomes the output. You are forced to see things in a different way, which is what learnding is all about.
Learning how a sundial works would teach them more than leaning how an analog clock works, in that regard.
A lot, since I have an analog wristwatch and a wall clock. There were also analog clocks in several of the exam rooms where I last had exams.
I guess many people don’t use them regularly, but regardless, the simple fact that they still exist is enough to be worth learning about them. Not everything you learn at school is meant to be used every single day.
Every day?
Every day? I use an analog watch face on my smartwatch, I have an analog clock in my car, I have another couple at home….
So what? I don’t.
I don’t have a smart watch and hardly anybody I know actually owns some analog clock?
Take a look around you. Where are any analog clocks? Church towers, train stations, old people. That’s pretty much it. Your smartwatch is a choice. You could just as well use a digital watch face. There is literally no benefit in that case - except your personal preference.
You literally asked “Honestly, how often do you read analog clocks?” and I answered. And then you say “So what?” So why did you even ask if you were gonna turn around and belittle answers?
It’s called rhetorical question.
I’d argue that you are a very small minority. Most people under 50 probably barely have any analog clocks around.
Most people under 50 probably barely have any analog clocks around.
Every home/apt of every under 40 year old person I have ever been in has had at least one analog clock. And most have had several.
Also, grandfather clocks are a thing. And they’re gorgeous.
Extremely anti-social to act like digital clocks are better - similar to acting like social media and Facetime calls are in any way superior to irl face-to-face interaction - as our current loneliness epidemic demonstrates
I disagree, I am under 50 and wear an analog wristwatch every day, but if I want to know the time I just look on my phone.
So since you don’t use something no one should learn it? Crap take.
I actually agree with you. I can read an analog clock, but what worth is the skill? Most clocks are digital, and it gives me nothing more to read an analog one. People downvoting you is just silly. Some skills are allowed to die out if they add no value in modern life.
Yeah, same for me
I wonder how many people feel this way about writing when everyone just types/texts everything.
There are fewer and fewer applications for writing, but it’s still more important than reading an analog clock.
How so?
I genuinely don’t understand the clock-face-reading-is-a-useless-skill opinion so both seem equally important to me.
Fair enough. Most people don’t encounter analog clocks anymore. And many of us have smart watches or phones where we check the time. Since I have a non-analog watch, I don’t find I ever look at analog clocks anymore. If it’s in a room, I just don’t notice it. Growing up, it was important to know, but now I just never have a use for it. Learning is important, but there are so many more interesting and useful things to learn.
Yea that’s kind of what I was thinking when I said eventually handwriting will go the same way.
If people never encounter it and do all their writing on keyboards, it’ll eventually be a useless skill as well.
Someone else made a comment and I think it’s great so imma plagiarize it-
If kids are taught to read an analog clock early, which isn’t very hard to learn, they are getting a leg up on fractions, percentages, and geometry.
I don’t actually believe this is true.
It rather, I imagine that they could get an even greater leg up if that time was spent teaching something else
I heard they’re gonna remove schools because kids show up to them not knowing anything.
Florida is getting rid of all the books at least.
Time’s an illusion anyways, might as well
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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.
So many edgelords in the comments shit talking younger generations for learning different things.
Y’all sound like old farts crying about how schools stopped using slide rules and how modern music just isn’t as good.I think keeping analog tech along side the digital equivalent is probably a good idea, just in case. Plus learning varied systems makes for more adaptable and smarter people.
There is some truth to that, but this doesn’t seem like the thing to focus on, if that’s the goal. Surely there is a better subject to fulfill those needs.
Like… If we all forgot how to keep time, and we had to invent a new system of time keeping… Surely we could do better than what we have now.
You sound like someone who doesn’t know how to read an analoge clock.
I bet you could figure it out if you looked it up. And you would be better for it ❤️
Probably not. I can read an analogue clock and I am no better or worse for it.
Jokes on you, because just that you learned to read analogue clocks, makes your brain more plastic. I am sure you know what that word means, but for anyone else, plastic means adaptable. The more things you learn the easier it is to learn more things.
What? Of course you are better off for it. You know how to read time more than one way.
In what way am I better off for being able to read time in more than one way?
Imagine life in the post-apocalyptic hellscape. All electronic devices have been rendered useless due to the EMPs from all the nuclear blasts. You, with your unfathomable ability to tell the time from an old wind-up clock, are viewed as a literal god among men (and women)
You sound like one of those edgelords who acts like grumpy old men who cry at young people for doing things differently.
I bet you could stop talking and everyone would like you better ♥️
No publisher, no byline, no way to know what the source of the claim is coming from.
But they did include a bit of meme art, so it seems indisputable.
When I look at a digital clock I always convert it to analogue in my head. Guess I’m that old.
oh look yet another warmed over “DAE the kids r bad” talking point that i’ve been hearing literally since i learned language.
