I am not a deep thinker. I’m more of a deep drinker. My education is scattershot. I often boil concepts down to thumbnail sketches and run with them. Take childhood development. Yeah. Take my childhood development, please, as Rodney used to say.

Ugh. Forget about me. I meant normal people. I’ve boiled down the process of raising anklebiters to two interesting takes on the subject: Jean Piaget and B.F. Skinner. They’re more or less opposite poles on the child-rearing compass.

Both guys had some complicated ideas behind their snot-wiping advice. I’m a simpleton, so I’ll oversimplify it so even I can understand it: Piaget thought children developed mostly internally, if you encouraged them a little, and Skinner thought they developed mostly from external factors, like whacks on the knuckles or candy, depending on what kind of mischief they were getting up to.

I ate lunch with Skinner way back when. He asked me altogether too many questions about how I ended up the way I was. I figured eventually he was going to stuff me in a box and feed me corn kernels only if I pressed the correct button, so I stopped eating lunch at his house pretty quick.

I’m sort of interested in Piaget’s thang, though. His ideas about child development seem to align with my own ill-considered opinions here and there. His ideas about how very small children proceed through a series of stages seems pretty believable. These preliminary stages are cognitive egocentrism, anthropomorphism, finalism, and animism. These stages happen between the ages of 2 and 7, more or less. They’re called the pre-operational phase. You’re not yet ready to begin thinking concretely and logically until you go through these steps.

1. Cognitive Egocentrism

In Piaget’s theory, egocentrism refers to the inability of young children to see things from perspectives other than their own. This means they believe that everyone sees the world exactly as they do.

It highlights that young children can’t fully grasp that others have their own thoughts, perspectives, or knowledge.

2. Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism is when children attribute human characteristics or emotions to non-human things (animals, objects, or even forces of nature).

Piaget saw this as a way for children to make sense of the world. Since they can’t fully differentiate between human and non-human behaviors at this stage, they project human traits onto everything around them.

3. Finalism

Finalism refers to the child’s belief in the idea that things happen for a purpose or that everything has an ultimate end or goal, even if it might not make logical sense.

Children in the preoperational stage often struggle to understand cause and effect in the logical, scientific way adults do. They tend to think more in terms of intentions or purposes behind events, even if those events don’t have clear goals.

4. Animism

Animism is the belief that inanimate objects or natural phenomena have a life-like quality, or even a soul.

Animism reflects a developmental stage where children can’t fully separate the properties of living things from non-living things. It’s another sign of their egocentrism and their tendency to humanize the world around them.

I got to thinking about all this because I’ve been watching women clutching smartphones like they were heart-lung machines, while acting like preadolescents, and I’m trying to make sense of their behavior. I see it out and about in my own life, but I also went down one of those YorubaTube ratholes that had loads of women being arrested and thrown out of airports and wrecking fast food restaurants and similar hijinks.

I didn’t associate these behaviors with Piaget right away, but the chronically addicted social-media-loving smartphone clutchers all seemed to have the same worldview to me: solipsism, anthropomorphism, scapegoating, and paganism. I realized I was just renaming Piaget’s four stages of preadolescent development. I had to go back and look it up, and torture it a bit (thanks, B.F.!) to get it to fit, but it’s pretty close.

You have to remember that for a toddler dealing with the world using Cognitive Egocentrism, the little bastard is just doing the best they can. They’re not yet capable of moving on to more nuanced views of the world and the people in it. Solipsism is an adult-ish version of this worldview. You’re technically capable of understanding other people’s ideas and motivations, you just don’t give a shiny shite about anyone but yourself.

Anthropomorphism is plenty easy to spot. I’m regularly informed that so-and-so’s daughter has acquired a “grand-dog.” This animal was “adopted,” of course. And “rescued,” natch. Grandma now buys it Christmas presents and bakes birthday cakes for it, and babysits it. “My computer totally hates me” is a different but easily recognizable signpost on the anthropomorphic highway. And by the way, you should totally argue with that bitch in the GPS while you’re zooming down the anthropomorphic highway.

Scapegoating is pretty close to Finalism. It’s a question of degree, I guess. Children wonder what motive force is behind everything, because they don’t know how the world works. Adults assumes there’s a motive force behind everything, and they know damn well who it is. He’s in their social media feed with a Hitler mustache photoshopped in.

Animism is just paganism without portfolio. By the way, did you buy an Earth Day present for your grand-dog?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the average American woman has a smartphone slapped into their hand more or less exactly when they’re reaching the end of their pre-operational phase. The phone, and all the stuff it shotguns into her synapses, ensures that she never progresses any further. The development of iPhone Barbie is seven years of Piaget followed by the rest of their life subjected to B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning, courtesy of Steve Jobs’ festering corpse.

Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which behavior is shaped by its consequences. Developed by B.F. Skinner, it focuses on how actions are influenced by rewards (reinforcements) or punishments.

Reinforcement increases the likelihood of a behavior happening again. It can be:

Positive reinforcement: Adding something pleasant (like giving a treat).

Negative reinforcement: Removing something unpleasant (like turning off a loud noise).

Punishment decreases the likelihood of a behavior happening again. It can be:

Positive punishment: Adding something unpleasant (like giving extra chores).

Negative punishment: Taking away something pleasant (like taking away screen time).

In operant conditioning, behaviors are learned through the consequences they produce, and these consequences can either strengthen or weaken the behavior over time. It’s used widely in both animal training and human behavior modification.

The woman in the video is completely calm, in an unreasonable sort of way, until around the 9:00 minute mark. She’s going to jail over nothing, but the only thing that can get a rise out of her is being separated from her phone. It’s her Precious. It tells her everything she needs to know, succors her, protects her, and assures her she’s going to get a discount, not arrested. There’s even a name for this phenomenon now: nomophobia.

Nomophobia (short for “no mobile phobia”) is a word for the fear of, or anxiety caused by, not having a working mobile phone. It has been considered a symptom or syndrome of problematic digital media use…

I’d explore the effects of male smartphone use, but it’s a waste of time. Men don’t progress past being 7 years old anyway, no matter what they’re clutching.