[HN Gopher] Smartphones and social media are destroying children...
___________________________________________________________________
Smartphones and social media are destroying children's mental
health
Author : mzs
Score : 179 points
Date : 2023-03-10 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| bstowns1970 wrote:
| [dead]
| the_brin2 wrote:
| I have a running thesis that I've been building out in my head
| for a while, and continue to see more data to support it.
| Basically - our technology has significantly outgrown our
| biological and evolutionary roots.
|
| So much of the modern world is unnatural from an evolutionary
| perspective. One post can reach millions of people, a far cry
| from how our brain evolved to process social connections. We just
| don't have the tools to process the modern media and social media
| landscape. I can't imagine what it's doing to the developing
| brain.
|
| I see so much of society similar to a deer freezing in
| headlights. Cars have been around for a while, but only blink of
| an eye in an evolutionary timescale. Deer haven't been able to
| catch up. In some ways, I fear our society is quite the same for
| us.
| flas9sd wrote:
| the deer in headlights, the blink of an eye are interesting
| representations. You can make that argument of what is deemed
| unnatural on a lot since industrialization took root (and you
| did, as in cars). That genie is out of the bottle with world
| populations raising in lock-step to technology.
|
| Humans continue to live - in mega cities, with mass
| transportation, mass communication, world wars for more than
| 100 years. I don't know to what degree we biologically adapt,
| but most certainly we do adapt. Smartphones are yet another
| shock to populations that I'm sure we'll absorb.
|
| The web-accessed FT article on youth mental health, this
| conversation, this message board of worldwide concurrency are
| all adaptions.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| https://archive.is/6keN4
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Is HN a social media as well? Fortunately I'm not on a smartphone
| /s
| thefourthchime wrote:
| Every time I see headlines like this, I think of this clip from
| True Detective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLZGMcwi758
| rationalist wrote:
| At some point one change will be more drastic than all the
| changes before.
| Eumenes wrote:
| First generation to be exclusively raised on social
| media/smartphones/constant tech engagement is not simply, old
| man yells at clouds.
| dakiol wrote:
| Sounds to me very similar to past situations. First
| generation to be exclusively raised on...
|
| - MTV?
|
| - video games?
|
| - rock and roll?
|
| - ...
| kenjackson wrote:
| D&D had way worse reps than either (maybe not rock and
| roll). People legit thought you were a horrible person if
| you played and that it warped your mind from day one.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| That's false equivalence. Smartphones are much closer to an
| innate/biological shift than a cultural one.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| They didn't have those things in their pockets 24/7, and
| the social media apps are designed to be addictive. Not
| exactly the same scenario
| wiseowise wrote:
| Did you seriously compare constant engagement of phone to
| occasional MTV or video games?
| megaman821 wrote:
| Read this book, Amusing Ourselves to Death https://www.am
| azon.com/gp/product/B0023ZLLH6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b..., but
| replace the word TV with Internet. You will be surprised
| how remarkably similar the arguments are.
| scld wrote:
| There's always the risk of it just being "old man yells at
| clouds"....except in this case it's the kids themselves telling
| us there's something wrong. Self-reported mental health and
| suicide rates are trending in a bad direction.
|
| Obviously the leap to causation needs to be taken very
| carefully, but "kids these days" are definitely a bit more sad
| and suicidal for _some_ reason.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| The latest studies have proven the causative link. It's not
| just correlation anymore.
| cornholio wrote:
| Self-reported mental issues are kind of like rape and sexual
| abuse reports in Sweden: when police started to take them
| seriously, the number exploded, apparently showing things
| were getting much worse when in fact they were getting
| better.
|
| There was always a massive disease burden hidden away in the
| younger generation, schizophrenic and depressive adults don't
| just spontaneously emerge. It's just that they wouldn't know
| about it and their family strongly resisted the notion they
| have the "crazy" kid, because the stigma was unbearable.
| Those kids would show up as "slow learners", "attention
| issues", "troubled", "aggressive", in the penal system,
| addicts etc. and only much later, if they were lucky, get any
| kind of treatment for the underlying issue.
|
| Remove the stigma and provide resources and many children
| will use them, perhaps to the point of over-medicalizing
| normal human variance.
| [deleted]
| clarge1120 wrote:
| Will someone please think of the children?!
| trinsic2 wrote:
| The article is locked behind a paywall.
| cwoolfe wrote:
| https://archive.is/6keN4
| jamesgill wrote:
| Some anecdata: My wife, a 25+-year middle school teacher, agrees.
| And so does just about every other teacher we know.
|
| In the past 10-15 years, teachers have seen a startling shift in
| children's health overall, but especially mental health.
| Attention span is out the window. Prying away devices is like
| pulling a toy from a toddler, often with the accompanying screams
| and wails (and occasionally violence). Kids have always mocked
| and gossiped and bullied, but devices and media have turned it
| beyond 11. Some kids (says my wife and others) seem in a constant
| state of fight-or-flight, unable to deal with the stress.
|
| Also: it's not just phones; at my wife's school, Chromebooks are
| prevalent and kids carry them everywhere, often open in the
| hallways as they walk, using them like phones. Side note:
| maintaining boundaries with Chromebooks is an even worse
| nightmare at some schools than smartphones. Google's hard push
| into K-12 education has been wildly successful; 'Google
| Classroom' and other tools are adopted by districts and create a
| hellscape of maintenance, security, and privacy concerns. For
| both staff and students.
| madduci wrote:
| OTOH, how do you defend yourself/your child from smartphone
| frenzy, when every other kid at school has one? Are you forcing
| your kid into (virtual) isolation from other friends or give it
| up?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Screen time and don't (let them) create accounts on services
| with age limits.
|
| You need to get them used to the concept of screen time and
| the rules by which you get more of it as early as possible in
| life so it becomes ingrained.
|
| When they're old enough to buy their own phone and pay for
| their own phone bill, they can have free use of their device.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Just say no. If you want a reason, phones and data plans are
| expensive. They can see their friends in person.
| ftl64 wrote:
| You've never had children, have you?)
| notch898a wrote:
| If the kid is old enough to need a phone, they're old
| enough to be a caddy or babysitter or something legal for
| kids to do and buy it themselves. You don't have to
| facilitate the purchase.
| madduci wrote:
| At the current prices (and climbing up), good luck with
| it.
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| You do realize that nearly every single person at a
| middle school has a phone? They are about 10 when they
| start where I live.
| [deleted]
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think there's a strong class component to it, too.
|
| I've got kids in public schools and one in a slightly-
| fancy private school.
|
| The public school kids all get phones super-early and are
| prone to mocking kids for "being poor" over stupid shit
| like not having a phone (one of mine was so-mocked for
| "only having one backpack"--JFC, was Fussell ever right
| to shit on the class-anxious, pitiful, absurd Middle,
| give me "High Prole" over that crap any day).
|
| Meanwhile, the private school kids whose parents are
| doctors and attorneys and VPs and related to major local
| politicians, get phones later and don't regard them as a
| status symbol. Phone ownership rate is _maybe_ 50% by 7th
| grade, while I 'd say it's that high (maybe higher?) by
| 4th or 5th in the public schools, and more like 95% by
| 7th. The private school also has much stricter rules
| about phone use during school (I gather all the area
| public schools have totally given up on stopping all but
| the most egregious use of them in class, as the parents
| who gave the kids the phones won't back them on enforcing
| anti-phone rules, and will in fact throw tantrums over
| any such enforcement)
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Actually I have 3 children from elementary to high school
| age. Only my eldest has a phone. We got it for her for
| our convenience as she is often participating in
| activities with unknown end times.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| My teenager bought their phone using gift cards accumulated
| through Christmas and birthdays. A phone plan through Ting
| costs them about $20/month.
|
| By the way, do you know what they do with their friends in
| person? Sit around on their phones watching tiktoks and
| browsing instagram then making comments to each other about
| it. They have no idea how to socialize without their
| phones.
|
| I mean look at the example they have to follow though, it's
| literally all around them. Adults do the same thing
| constantly. The social pressure to conform to it is
| ridiculously high and for an easily influenced teenager,
| astronomical. A child or teen that's outside of this norm
| is instantly visible and vulnerable; they are bullied
| relentlessly.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| As someone just out of adolescence and born in the tail-
| end of the millennial generation it's hard to know how to
| interpret takes like this.
|
| On one hand, I do think social media is deleterious to
| mental health - I can vouch, for the positive impact on
| my own the more I distance myself from it!
|
| On the other hand,
|
| >Sit around on their phones watching tiktoks and browsing
| instagram then making comments to each other about it.
| They have no idea how to socialize without their phones.
|
| Sounds so similar to the complaints levered at my friends
| and I for "not knowing how to play outside" because we
| wanted to shoot bad guys on the PS2 in the basement on
| the weekend. Or "not knowing how to socialize normally"
| because we talked over AIM all the time. When my oldest
| brother was a little kid, similar complaints for sitting
| in front of the TV. Or the older TV show trope of the
| teens tying up the home phone line.
|
| I think there is some unique evil to the
| algorithm/recommendation driven social media of today,
| but it's hard not to also see that these criticisms all
| fit a pattern that seems to have been ongoing for
| decades, and wonder where on the spectrum the truth lies.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I'm of the "Oregon Trail Generation" and I can relate to
| the things you said about video games and instant
| messaging because we had them as kids and into our teens
| also. I was still able to disconnect from those things
| and socialize without the devices aka "go outside". In
| fact my friends and I would get bored after a couple
| hours of console gaming or instant messaging, so we'd
| need to disconnect just to keep sane. That aspect of it
| has changed these days to where if you remove the
| devices, it's like removing a vital organ and they can no
| longer function as human beings.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Why it is not expensive for their peers though? Are they
| piss poor?
|
| What if they have no friends and nobody want to be friends
| anywhere but Snapchat, etc?
|
| I can see you are using 4 yo arguments for 13 yo teenagers,
| perhaps you do not have any children and are wasting our
| time.
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| This is epitome between theory and practice.
|
| My oldest just went to middle school this year. He has
| always had his own computer at home since young, so he's
| not new to technology. Personally I have not wanted to get
| him a phone mostly because mobile gaming is basically the
| worst thing ever invented. But I digress.
|
| Do you know what happens in middle school? The teacher will
| give you time to do some assignment, and then you know what
| they let you do when you are done? Play on your phone. You
| know what nearly all kids are doing at lunch? Playing on
| their phones and chatting with their friends about it.
|
| Now what happens if you don't have a phone? You get to sit
| there like the idiot without a phone. In middle school.
| Where kids are already learning just how much of little
| jerks they can be.
|
| It would be glorious if the school had a no-phone policy.
| But they don't. So you want me to say "no" to my son so he
| can be the one that gets to twiddle his thumbs while every
| other single person around is playing on their phone and
| chatting? Yeah, makes sense.
|
| Not to mention- the main reason we also had to get him a
| phone was for communication. That was our idea before we
| even realized how much they let kids use the phone at
| school.
|
| Also without even the above, your idea of "they can see
| their friends in person!" is really cute. Yeah, because
| it's that easy. We live in an area that you can't walk to
| anyones house. So your brilliant idea is they can't
| communicate with friends unless they are taken to see their
| friend? And who does that? What if neither family can make
| it work?
|
| I guess you don't know until you know.. but you- don't
| know.
| madduci wrote:
| This is exactly what I think about the story. Smartphones
| are now part of our lives, the only solution would be a
| global school banning of phones, but it isn't practical.
|
| If you want to give your kid as a present a bad life
| experience, don't buy a phone, but then live like a
| person in a cave, while the world goes on.
|
| The real lesson is to be a good parent and define clear
| screening times, at least at home, where you can, more or
| less, control it. But a total ban isn't possible IMHO
| [deleted]
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| This isn't just about the devices. It couldn't possibly be so
| simple of a problem.
|
| Everyone is approaching this situation as if the _status quo_
| of education before computers was _perfect_. Bullshit! How
| naive are we?
|
| These children are upset because you are taking something from
| them that they don't even have the words to ask for:
| liberation.
|
| Without liberation, school was 8 hours a day of _boredom_. It
| was sitting at a cold hard desk _waiting for the end_. It was
| prison, and it still is.
|
| Children misbehaving in these circumstances is not new! We
| talked to each other, passed notes, chiseled the "cool s" into
| our desks, and brought toys. Did you forget doing these things
| yourself? Have you really forgotten what it is like to be a
| child in school?
|
| These behaviors were easy for teachers to manage. Toys can be
| taken away, and vandalism directly criticized. Loud
| conversations were competing with lectures, and lectures can
| win. The rules made sense.
|
| Computers are not so easy. Toys? They are only software.
| Vandalism? It's a drawing app! Conversations? Silent. What
| moral ground do you have to stop these behaviors? Kids aren't
| doing "something wrong" anymore: they are doing "something
| else". Teachers are fighting them from a totally different
| position now: vain authoritarianism.
|
| That's the difference: children feel the liberation from
| prison, and it is _arbitrarily_ taken out of their hands. What
| value are you giving them in its stead?
|
| It's time to confront the failure of traditional education. No
| child wants it, and every child has readily available
| alternatives now; made of flashing lights and tactile switches!
|
| Education is failing to compete with children's attention. Why?
| Because it could only ever _just barely_ compete against
| _boredom itself_. That 's gone now. We have been liberated from
| it. The bar has been raised as it should have been at the very
| beginning. Wake up and get with the times.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| "only software"
|
| facile and reductive.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Are you going to take it away and put it in a drawer? Not
| without the rest of the computer.
|
| You are the one being reductive. You have lost the context,
| and that context is the entire point.
| rr808 wrote:
| > Attention span is out the window. Prying away devices is like
| pulling a toy from a toddler, often with the accompanying
| screams and wails
|
| Its not just the children though - adults are the same.
| pyrophane wrote:
| As someone who was bullied as a child, I'm very thankful that
| that the bullying was mostly limited to the hours when I was
| physically at school. I would go home and I had a whole other
| world I built for myself out of books and my own imagination,
| and I think that made my bad experience at school tolerable.
|
| I can't imagine if I'd felt like the bullying could always
| reach me through my smartphone or computer.
|
| I feel very lucky to have grown up on the cusp of all of this.
| I was born in the early 80s and my dad worked in technology, so
| I had a computer and a modem back in the BBS days, and got to
| discover being "online" when most kids weren't. It actually
| felt like a refuge, and something special. I wonder what feels
| like that to the weird, outcast kids today.
| dev_hugepages wrote:
| One a side note, school does not help ones attention
| (boringness)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I've found the opposite. I can be 100% tuned-in and focused
| in the classroom because I don't use my phone because it's
| disrespectful to the speaker.
| jacobmartinez3d wrote:
| The users of social media have a LOT of guilt and responsibility
| that never gets recognized in my opinion. The subtle "I'm
| hot/smart - sucks to be you" in literally every conceivable topic
| is so well disguised as being "how everyone else does it" that it
| goes unnoticed as being vain and narcissistic.
|
| Making video about blue whales? Make sure a quarter of the screen
| is covered with your filtered, augmented face and better yet your
| gym body! Making a short about how cute your relationship is?
| Make sure to make the point somehow in some subtle way that your
| in the relationship because you physically are more attractive or
| else it doesn't "hit" as much. Like be sitting down and then
| stand up to show you're tall when the beat drops haha - they get
| pretty creative and it's like clockwork.
|
| The subtle nature of it is what's so damaging to young people in
| my opinion because its how everyone gets away with being
| disgusting and vain - it's actually quite passive aggressive and
| if you are young you are just absorbing it like someone in an
| abusive relationship.
| RACEWAR wrote:
| [dead]
| simmerup wrote:
| paywall.
| cwoolfe wrote:
| https://archive.is/6keN4
| retrac wrote:
| There has been a change in social behaviour which I think is
| obviously linked to electronic media, and probably also the
| mental health issues. The % of American students who say they
| meet up physically with friends "almost every day":
| https://journals.sagepub.com/cms/10.1177/0265407519836170/as...
|
| It declines slightly through the 70s, 80s, 90s from ~55% to 50%
| (almost statistically insignificant) and then, starting in the
| mid-late '00s starts dropping steadily, now down to less than
| 25%. Half as many teenagers socialize in person with their
| friends almost every day, as they did in my generation. (And
| going by the data on "how many parties" attended, my generation
| in the 90s/00s was still relatively introverted compared to my
| parents' generation, even though we saw our friends every day.)
|
| source:
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02654075198361... (
| https://sci-hub.ru/10.1177/0265407519836170 )
| kurthr wrote:
| Thank you for this. That it corresponds almost exactly to the
| introduction date of the smartphone, then 4G, and then IG is
| telling. Maybe it's just correlation, but the feedback loop
| doesn't look like it.
| nisegami wrote:
| I sure am glad there aren't confounding factors like wage
| stagnation or a global pandemic involved.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| There are. It turns out some of these people know fancy stats
| vocabulary too and have thought about it a bit.
| https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...
| retrac wrote:
| The apparent decline in children's mental health seems to have
| started in late '00s or early '10s. E.g. here's a study from
| just before the pandemic making the same conclusion - digital
| media:
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190315110908.h...
|
| The decline has occurred in almost all developed countries, as
| far as I know. This includes countries where wages aren't
| stagnant and the employment market is solid.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Oddly enough, once the hype machine has moved on to TikTok:
| Facebook has stayed there. Come at me; I don't care. As long as
| they don't try to stay "relevant" and keep me "engaged" (I know,
| that ship has sailed), they're still a way to stay connected to
| friends & relatives.
|
| Facebook should just settle into a comfortable senescence and die
| eventually, like any natural organism. Or not die, like
| everyone's been warning about classical music for 100 years.
| Unfortunately, MZ doesn't seem inclined to do that.
|
| I never, never got any news from FB, and when someone gets
| political, or Instagram-ish with their perfect lives, I instantly
| Unfollow or Unfriend them. I never walked around staring at my
| smartphone with FB on it and I doubt any of the kids do, either.
| lacoolj wrote:
| It's definitely not just kids that have a problem
| skee8383 wrote:
| stop posting this paywall garbage on here.
| cwoolfe wrote:
| https://archive.is/6keN4
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Unfortunately, too many parents are either too unaware or
| apathetic to spend 30 minutes enabling parental controls on new
| phones, tablets, and computers before handing them off to their
| kids. Parental controls are very robust now, and easy to remotely
| manage from your own device. You can create an app whitelist, or
| require permission for installs, and limit browser usage. Non-
| emergency usage duration and time-of-day can be fine-tuned.
|
| The ability is there but sorely lacking wide adoption, and
| parents instead stick to more confrontational and less effective
| techniques such as manual snooping and taking of devices after
| the damage is already done.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I think there's ample lived experience showing that larger groups
| of adolescent human beings can be hateful towards people who are
| different in any way.
|
| In the past, young people were unable to escape this while at
| school, but once the school day was over they at least had a
| reprieve until the next school day.
|
| With social media, there is no longer any down time. You are
| vulnerable to harassment all the time.
| Philorandroid wrote:
| I'd held the position for years that social media had
| demonstrably negative effects on childrens' minds -- and all the
| while, I was derided, because at the time there was no empirical
| evidence assembled conclusively stating such, and my inductive
| reasoning to that end was handwaved away.
|
| I feel vindicated. Technology can be a powerful force for good,
| but perhaps giving impressionable young minds unrestricted access
| to the internet is short-sighted and fraught with peril.
| robg wrote:
| Couldn't there be a common cause, like lost sleep? Considering
| the role of sleep in washing away the daily damage to the brain.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| It can be many things, and sleep certainly is important.
|
| Social media is a lot of things, some of them good, some bad,
| but young people are not well-suited to handle the bad. Heck,
| most adults aren't either. You have to be a particular sort of
| person to handle a couple thousand people all over the world
| screaming "LOSER!" at you because you said something awkward.
|
| I've seen a lot of "you need to touch grass" comments recently,
| and it kind of gets to the heart of the problem. We didn't
| evolve in an environment where every facet of your life is
| available for inspection from freaking everybody in the world.
| One can counter that we should train our children to be
| circumspect in how they manage their online activities--a kind
| of abstinence education for the digital world--but that is a
| massive uphill battle.
|
| Digital communications are pretty good overall. I know my kids
| make use of it to manage homework, keep in touch with friends
| who are not local, etc. But there is a pretty big difference
| between texting the folks you met at summer camp and Instagram.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Showing a correlation without investigating the paths of
| causation is like blaming life for death.
| [deleted]
| itsoktocry wrote:
| "Correlation is not causation!" is a midwit[0] argument. Not
| everything can be a RCT. Correlation is where you start, and it
| doesn't take a ton of imagination to understand how causation
| might work in this case.
|
| [0]https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/iq-bell-curve-midwit
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Have you perchance misunderstood my post into that
| <<Correlation is not causation>>?
|
| What I meant is there literally: you have to <<investigat[e]
| the paths of causation>>, which is meant to mean, you cannot
| (should not) practically fight the full correlated context,
| but the specific cause.
|
| I.e., in the picked metaphor: "you do not blame life for
| death" - find specific causes and curb them.
|
| Which, by the way, if the "<<midwit>>" reference were still
| applicable, is beyond "IQ", because what was expressed is
| meant to be "in the set of basics" - yet to appearance absent
| in the article. I expressed that the article seems to miss
| that basic point.
|
| I.e., the idea that "smartphones and social media" would be
| detrimental is extremely cheap, as if saying that "heating is
| polluting" - yes, and also _useful_ , so you identify the
| weak parts and try to act on them.
|
| > _and it doesn 't take a ton of imagination_
|
| But the article did not exercise that. And I think it would
| have been "kind of required". See my other reply nearby,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35102296
| omnicognate wrote:
| Middlebrow dismissal, as it's often called on hn. ("Shallow
| dismissal" in the guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
| cowuser666 wrote:
| It clarifies the point he's making. It's not the point
| itself.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Not sure what you mean? I wasn't correcting or
| disagreeing with anyone if that's what you thought.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Middlebrow dismissal_
|
| ...In Argument Theory. Not in the current context though,
| as the poster (hi there) expressed something quite
| different. Details around, if the original post does not
| suffice.
| stametseater wrote:
| [dead]
| frereubu wrote:
| You might like to read this if you're looking for causation:
| https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _looking for_
|
| Thanks - but I was actually looking for _a constructive
| article if from the FT_ , which requires avoiding a cheap
| early stopping in the class of "entrepreneurs are at risk of
| distress".
|
| Lack of analytic depth in the identification of strict causes
| that brings the article author to solutions like
| "<<educate>>" (to what?), "fight <<addiction>>", "pause then
| just stop", "have an age limit enforced". In the parallel:
| "entrepreneurs: know the risk, fight your drive to be a
| workaholic, take a vacation and maybe you will decide that it
| is a better life". And if you wanted to be on HN - well, let
| us see your documents (we'll check your age).
|
| ...Post naturally related to my other reply nearby.
| taylodl wrote:
| What makes us so sure social media isn't destroying adults'
| mental health? Adults may have better coping mechanisms but it
| doesn't mean their mental health is being destroyed all the same.
| klooney wrote:
| I think it clearly is, people just care less.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > boys
|
| > girls
|
| The effect on people that identify as non-binary must be even
| more devastating.
| blockwriter wrote:
| It may well be the thing that is causing them to do so.
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| The timing correlates.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm not sure I got what you're saying. Are you saying that
| "smartphones and social media" may be what is causing them to
| identify as non-binary?
| blockwriter wrote:
| Is that not a possibility? In terms of public
| identification, my answer is, yes, definitely. In terms of
| private identification, my answer is also yes, but I
| appreciate that many people think this is a manifestly
| positive outcome. In which case, it is up to the individual
| to parse the perceived harms of social media use from the
| perceived benefits benefits and the desired outcomes from
| the undesirable.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Is that not a possibility?
|
| I was just asking what you meant, not implying wrong or
| right
| selimnairb wrote:
| Assuming, for the moment, that smart phones and social media are
| bad for these kids, what do we do? We can't raise our kids
| without exposure to digital technology, but I'm not sure how to
| keep it at arms length.
|
| I have an almost 5yo who obviously (I hope this is obvious and
| commonplace) doesn't have their own phone or tablet and has never
| used social media. But in a few years, they'll have peers that do
| use these things. Do I not buy them a phone? Do I just get them a
| cellular-connected watch so that they can call me if needed?
| Right now, my plan is to build them some kind of simple computer
| (e.g., Raspberry Pi 400) in a few years (i.e., once they can read
| and write) that probably doesn't have Internet access (at least
| at first), but allows use of Scratch Desktop and/or BASIC to
| learn programming, as well as "harmless" games (e.g., chess,
| etc.). I might also introduce off-line game systems like SNES and
| Genesis Classic.
|
| What are people with literate young kids doing to introduce their
| kids to digital technology in a sane, non/less-addictive way?
| jedberg wrote:
| FWIW we got my 8 year old a smart watch, and it's been great.
| We can text her and she can text us (and her older cousin) and
| we can call her and track her. She can't use social media or
| anything else, and I put one game on there for her (pong).
|
| Both she and her brother have access to our old phones and
| tablets with a curated list of games that at least vaguely
| teach you something. They get limited time on the devices.
|
| Rule number one is no screens when the sun is up, except on
| weekends.
|
| Also sometimes I let them play my S/NES emulators, which
| obviously have no internet access.
|
| I suspect she'll ask for a phone when she gets to middle
| school. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
| tflinton wrote:
| I also have a 5-year old, we've given him an iPad that doesn't
| allow software to be installed via the app store; doesn't allow
| any websites to be visited and has a screentime set to an hour
| a day. If he wants something on the iPad we have to unlock the
| parent settings and install the specific app they want on it.
| The iPad has iMessage/iPhoto/Music and everything else turned
| off. Most of the time he plays angry birds for a an hour or
| plays the piano on it or some other innocent activity.
|
| As far as giving him a smartphone; both my wife and I have
| agreed not until he's 16 and no social media until he's 18. We
| may give him a kids phone when he's older that only allows
| phone calls to a locked set of people and has no apps on it.
|
| I'm not too concerned about what his peers have or do; him
| feeling left out is a small price to pay for not having to
| endure the problems associated with social media.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| Question - what are your thoughts on giving an old laptop
| instead of iPad? Probably 5-year olds are too young for
| laptops, but in general there could be more a child could do
| for safe entertainment on a laptop than iPad/smartphone
| (theoretically atleast - with equivalent restrictions on
| accessing social media etc.).
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| most of us here grew up without smartphones, and we are doing
| pretty well technologically. it is the constant access to it
| that it is the problem imo, not technology in general. we do
| not allow kids to gamble, smoke, drink coffee, alcohol or other
| drugs since their prefrontal cortex is developing, why do we
| allow them a constantly available dopamine hit similar to, if
| not worse than the others ?
|
| just ban phones and social media (and any other constantly
| available, internet connected distracting device) for kids
| under 20 or something. educate society about the perils of
| phone usage. let them use desktops and all the rest, I think it
| should be fine
| kranke155 wrote:
| We obviously need kid friendly phones that can make calls and
| use useful apps and nothing Else.
| 13years wrote:
| I don't know how we will manage it, but it is about to get
| exponentially worse. With the introduction of AI, kids are
| going to bond to a fake reality. The manipulative effect is
| going to be orders of magnitude greater than social media.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Apple and Nintendo universe is your friend (as it allows for
| very fine grained parental permissions). Basic rules in our
| house:
|
| - Time limits on all games/apps (Apple/Nintendo settings) - No
| install of apps without parental consent (needs password) - No
| digital devices in bedrooms
|
| Initial "phone" will be an Apple Watch which allows calls/gps-
| apps but can be locked down for other apps 9-3 (calls only)
|
| Nintendo is great because you can have games that avoid the
| mobile "dopamine hook" feedback loop.
|
| Digital device ban from bedroom encourages accountability
| (public space usage) + prevents polluting the bedroom from the
| perspective of sleep hygiene/homework.
|
| Device limits mean digital usage is limited, and the "device"
| is what stopped the kid, not the parent (somehow they seem much
| more accepting of this than a parent yelling "put the device
| away!")
|
| My eldest is old enough to be using a computer which is again
| in the shared living space, and has less restrictions by its
| nature. I track all the usage, and we have occasional chats
| about what he's been looking at and whether it's "healthy" for
| mind and spirit.
|
| Regular chats about the harms of too much digital, addiction,
| and the potential harms of social media.
|
| They will get phones as teenagers, and they will be locked
| down. We aren't there yet, but the hope is that some
| restrictions + everything we've tried to teach them will
| minimise the harm. Time will tell.
| glomgril wrote:
| I have a very similar plan involving a Raspberry Pi, I agree
| that it's a great middle ground.
|
| IMO screentime that only involves video calls with family is
| perfectly fine, especially if it is a group activity. In
| general (timeboxed) social activities that involve multiple
| people watching/interacting with a single screen don't seem as
| potentially consuming (e.g. a Super Bowl party). That's our
| arms-length strategy at this point. Seems to have worked quite
| well so far w.r.t. not getting obsessed with electronics. We'll
| see what happens when peers start getting phones/tablets
| though...
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Smartphones and social media are destroying adult's brains, too.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| exactly, HN is one of them, even if the content is more
| elaborated usually
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Moderation and self control is the key to a normal life.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| I'll say it again, and I'll take the downvotes: in the future we
| will look back on allowing children access to social media and
| smart phones the way that today we look back at smoking ads
| targeted at children.
|
| Maybe even more incredulously.
| barrysteve wrote:
| It is worth pointing out that pre-2010, the internet and social
| media was a nice place to be. Even if myspace was kind of ugly,
| social media did not drive negative mental health outcomes
| until upvotes/downvotes and dark pattern engagements were
| applied to everyone.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I think we had different places. I remember the first
| teenager who was driven to suicide from social media way
| before 2010. Just googling showed me
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Megan_Meier who died
| in 2006 from cyberbullying.
| newman8r wrote:
| That's also around the time when smartphones started to see
| huge adoption. It became something you'd never be able to get
| away from.
| rcarr wrote:
| Disagree with this. Even myspace sowed a bit of discontent
| with it's "top friends" feature, with some people getting
| into arguments about being left out of the "top 8" or where
| they had been placed in the ordering.
|
| When Facebook came around people had already cottoned on to
| trying to shape their presence a bit better but then shit
| really hit the fan when Instagram came around and everyone
| started curating a completely fake presentation of what their
| life was like.
|
| Before Instagram there were no influencers. There were
| influential bloggers like Tim Ferris but 'influencer' and
| 'content creators' weren't job titles. To this day, I'm wary
| of anyone who isn't a photographer that says that Instagram
| is/was their favourite social media platform.
| TheMode wrote:
| Possibly, but I do not believe that it only impact children. Is
| there a benefit aspect of smoking ads targeted at adults?
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| "Smoking kills" is a proven scientific fact, known for a very
| long time (since the 1940s https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr/2000
| /highlights/historical/i....)
|
| Smartphone doesn't kill (and no one is arguing about this) and
| actually it's arguable whether it has really more cons than
| pros...
|
| I can well understand that smartphones may cause some issues to
| children (and others), but that's never going to be seen as
| dangerous as smoking is
| hattmall wrote:
| What about all the kids that get shot trying to steal food
| from a drive thru because it's a TikTok Prank?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Smartphone usage increases facebook usage. There is a
| _causal_ relationship between social media usage[0] and
| loneliness and depression, which kills.
|
| In other words, social media kills in the same way cigarettes
| kills.
|
| Smartphones without social media do not kill.
|
| [0]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328838624_No_Mo
| re_F...
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| The parents of children who have died of suicide due to cyber
| bullying would disagree. As would the parents of children
| suffering from eating disorders, self-harm, and numerous
| other mental conditions induced, at least in part, by social
| media.
|
| The link between physical health and phone use is less direct
| than to cigarette smoking, but is still present.
| djaychela wrote:
| I'm one of these (step) parents. I've long held that social
| media is a cancer and tried to model and promote
| responsible usage.
|
| I've failed totally, and two of my children have had
| horrible mental health,with suicide attempts and ongoing
| issues to this day. Another had long struggles with drugs
| and has a pretty fragile mental situation even though he is
| mostly out the other side of that now, and on a better
| path.
|
| I'm sure the anecdotal defense will be used, but I'm
| convinced that being exposed to all of the ills of the
| world via social media has been in part to blame for this,
| and this despite what I hoped were worthwhile attempts to
| demonstrate restraint in use of phones and social media,
| and educate my kids.
|
| Them smoking (without social media existing) would have
| been better, imo.
| cwoolfe wrote:
| Whoa! I've been saying the same thing for the past couple
| years. Glad I'm not alone.
| notch898a wrote:
| And the adults' access to the phone. It's made it incredibly
| easy and low-effort to snitch out any kids actually
| independently outside no matter where they are. People would
| shit bricks to see the freedom I had as a kid, to roam the
| countryside alone with a rifle shooting rabbits. Or going miles
| out from age 7 up snake infested creeks. The average fat
| American is way too lazy to walk all the way home to snitch a
| kid out, but with a cell phone they can call the cops
| immediately.
| endisneigh wrote:
| they say on social media, lol. also, adults are not somehow
| immune to the ills that children are susceptible to.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > they say on social media, lol
|
| hn hasn't much in common with tiktok &co
|
| > adults are not somehow immune to the ills that children are
| susceptible to.
|
| Children are more malleable in every aspect, there is a
| reason why we call the "formative years" formative
| tgv wrote:
| Have you never seen an adult addict? Because social media
| is addiction, nothing else.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Well yes, I tried weed in my 20s and I'm glad I didn't do
| that at 13
|
| You're making my point
| tgv wrote:
| Not really. Weed isn't very addictive, and for every 20
| year old that tries and quits weed, there are dozens that
| try alcohol, smoking, or coke and have a hard time
| quitting. Now, those can be expensive addictions, whereas
| a social media addiction is free, so it won't force you
| to rehab.
| wooque wrote:
| More like alcohol, it's not for children and for adults it's
| nice if consumed sporadically and in small quantities.
| dmje wrote:
| 100% agree. Have an upvote.
| monological wrote:
| It's not even only children, it's literally everyone. Who
| thought it would be a good idea to put a screen in everyone's
| hand with infinite content that's engineered to be highly
| addictive. It's a fucking no-brainer.
| gsatic wrote:
| Your basic Jurassic Park story where corporate robots will keep
| acting like they are in control of what they have built, till
| the very end.
| StrangeATractor wrote:
| It's funny the lengths I've seen people go to on HN to make
| everyone and their kid suddenly given a smartphone not a big
| deal at all, which couldn't possibility have any ramifications
| for mental health or development.
| gnu8 wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
| his salary depends on his not understanding it."
| thriftwy wrote:
| How about the upside of, you know, accessing the riches of
| human knowledge, entertainment and communication?
| StrangeATractor wrote:
| To clarify: If all smartphones were basically just an
| encyclopedia, instant messenging and music device I think
| they would be much better for people. Currently, most time
| on a smartphone is spent engaging with the attention
| economy, which I think is where most of the real poison
| lies.
|
| I think even if you got rid of the attention economy
| though, smartphones would still have negative consequences.
| A smartphone will help you kill some time, even if you're
| just browsing wikipedia. I think sometimes it's good to be
| bored, it can spur you into doing something new. Now we
| don't get bored, we get placated.
| edejong wrote:
| We decided it's better to present this in a curated program
| called education.
| thriftwy wrote:
| What if everybody else in the same edication programme
| has a smartphone?
|
| What of people have, like, free time?
|
| For me, education was the worst part of my life and the
| Internet perhaps one of greatest.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Internet of today has nothing to do with 1990/2000
| internet in term of content and especially in term of
| things competing for your attention, and spread of
| misinformation
|
| The problem isn't necessarily the device, but the content
|
| Kids spend up to 10 hours per day on screen, most of it
| on smartphones [0], and they're not reading encyclopedias
|
| Average tiktok user screen time is over 25 hours per
| months: https://wallaroomedia.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/03/tiktok-...
|
| [0] https://i2.wp.com/www.surexpositionecrans.org/wp-
| content/upl...
| thriftwy wrote:
| I understand all that but you really want to keep that
| baby while throwing the water off.
|
| For starters, the 1.5 hours ot TV may go.
| lm28469 wrote:
| I'd much rather put my 8 years old in front of some
| cartoon than god knows where on the internet. Content
| wise it's much less risky
| lm28469 wrote:
| smartphone != internet
| nunobrito wrote:
| Let's be serious. Between 3 to 7 years: smartphone ==
| youtube.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| ... and not the _good_ parts of it.
|
| My kingdom for the ability to allow-list what my kids can
| watch on YouTube. I'd pay double what they charge for
| YouTube Premium just for that. Youtube-dl'ing the videos
| and putting them somewhere easily accessible is a giant
| pain. There's great stuff on there but YouTube makes it
| so damn hard to curate it.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Basically that. Quite difficult to leave them alone or
| they'll just watch bad stuff eventually because of the
| fantastic algorithms.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _My kingdom for the ability_
|
| Then, for your kingdom, you will be able to afford
| building an app that plays YT videos only if matching
| some regular expression based on your whitelist. You can
| apparently stream YT videos through the ExoPlayer library
| or other tricks, see e.g.
|
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29607104/how-to-play-
| you...
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I'm pretty down on social media. But, you can easily argue that
| "my child should never smoke". You cannot easily argue that "my
| child should never use social media".
|
| Part of raising a child in the modern era needs to be teaching
| how to manage and handle the use of these things. Hell, online
| games are a great example of a social platform where kids are
| often in the majority.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > But, you can easily argue that "my child should never
| smoke". You cannot easily argue that "my child should never
| use social media".
|
| Oh, I think one can so argue. Social media as in "public or
| broadcast-to-all-'friends' style posting, that pushes content
| at you in a way designed to maximize engagement above all
| other concerns", yeah, that stuff's digital asbestos. I'm not
| gonna take my kids gambling, either, and certainly not going
| to let them do it on a regular basis. Social media's just as
| low-value and dangerous.
|
| Texting and equivalents, sure, not so much.
| colpabar wrote:
| > But, you can easily argue that "my child should never
| smoke". You cannot easily argue that "my child should never
| use social media".
|
| That might be true now, but it could always change. Don't
| forget that we all used to think smoking was perfectly
| healthy.
|
| I'm hoping that movies/shows in the future show how we
| currently use social media and it shocks people the same way
| media made now does with cigarettes because we realized how
| unhealthy it is.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| No, it will not change.
|
| Humans are social animals. We depend heavily on each other.
| Perhaps, we will rebrand social media... but the underlying
| fundamental issues will persist. Even if the next wave of
| tech is called Group Links, people will still need to learn
| how to navigate the noise.
|
| I suppose I could be wrong. If we abandon the internet,
| disband the newspapers and the post, and generally give up
| on democracy entirely. But I don't like the sounds of that
| either.
|
| Smoking is simply a bad comparison, though it's true, both
| are currently harmful. One however needs to be addressed in
| a way that promotes healthy use, the other pretty much
| falls under the umbrella of adults can choose to make their
| own choices.
|
| Now before I go off down the "but think of the children"
| path too much further... I'll reiterate; this all falls
| primarily on better education, not stricter laws and
| enforcement. Censorship is a double edge sword and
| implementing it above the scale of the household is very
| dubious. There's a reason minors are admitted to rated R
| movies with their parents, for example. Even drinking ages
| are sometimes flexible.
|
| Anyways, I feel like I could rant about this topic forever
| right now, but I'm just stop here.
| notch898a wrote:
| I would argue the effect of smoking was also a lot longer
| to see the effect. I've been to countries where kids smoke
| (middle east) and there's no apparent effect on the smoking
| kids. You'd probably have to wait until their 30s to really
| see the damage.
|
| Watching a kid watch TV there is almost an immediate
| feeling of unhealthiness that isn't as apparent from
| watching a kid smoke. The smoking kid will keep on playing
| soccer, the kid on the TV is sucked into the sedentary low-
| thought activity like they're in a trance.
| Merad wrote:
| I'm not sure that a majority of adults are actually capable
| of using social media responsibly. How do we teach kids to
| use social media when it seems like our entire society is
| incapable of handling it?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Its not that society is incapable. Its more that Social
| Media went viral before we even had a chance to digest
| "this is social media", this is how you operate it.
|
| The lava from the explosion is now cooling, the dust is
| settling; and we are now starting to see is the newly
| formed dystopian world that has been created from.
|
| As unlike cigs, that have been around longer than the
| internet. We've known for a long time they're bad.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| If you put me in front of someone on an operating table
| and ask me to operate on them I would be incapable of
| doing it.
|
| That's not to say I don't have the capacity for it. I
| just got put in front of a patient before I had the
| chance to digest any medical studies.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| We can learn from history. The invention of the printing
| press comes to mind.
|
| But yea, it's hard to pass good practice on to future
| generations when the current ones don't have a clue what
| they are doing.
| ihaveabeardnow wrote:
| at what age do you think most children would be capable of
| being taught how to manage/handle these things?
| comfypotato wrote:
| Cigarettes are so very bad for you that I don't think this will
| ever be the case. I remember working on the administration side
| of cancer treatments, and half of _all_ of the insurance codes
| were variants of lung cancer from smoking. There's a point at
| which you smoke so much that it's more likely than anything
| else to kill you.
|
| Your point is valid that today's smart-phone-social-media is as
| young as cigarettes were in the 1920's, but the general
| problems have been around forever. Young folks comparing
| themselves to Instagram models is very analogous to air-brushed
| magazine models in the early 2000's to cite a recent example.
| They've just been magnified. Smoking introduced a new problem.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Especially teens. The most vulnerable target age group for
| anything that gets projected to them as being "cool".
| Unfortunately the responsibility to steer them in the right
| direction only lies in the hands of their parents.
|
| Apps like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok do an incredible job of
| wooing kids into a void of delusion that would slowly deflect
| them away from things that matter (education, relationships,
| socializing etc.) to things that push them into continuous,
| useless loop of validation and security (think about all the
| underage suggestive content on those platforms, simply
| disgusting)
| quattrofan wrote:
| [dead]
| 13years wrote:
| We might even look at all social media by all participants the
| same way we now look at smoking. It is isn't healthy for the
| adults either.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| The problem is that smoking is pretty much 100% bad
| (excluding a brief period of being more alert) - social media
| has some good sides in that it allows you to keep in touch
| with family and friends who may be far away. It was fun and
| exciting to catch up with people I'd moved away from. And
| then it became a vile sludge of toxic positivity mixed with
| outrage.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| I wonder if there's a way to model this as a simple Lottery
| trade off. Imagine a lot of game that has 100 times better
| odds of winning a Powerball sized multi-million jackpot,
| but every hundredth winner of this jackpot, (distributed
| randomly with a probability of 1/100) is arrested and
| publicly fed to lions. Would ticket sales increase or
| decrease versus the current scenario?
| InfamousRece wrote:
| Smoking reduces your chances of getting Parkinson's disease
| so it is probably less than 100% bad.
| notch898a wrote:
| Yeah the problem with smoking is mostly self control.
| It's clearly not a good habit but you can probably smoke
| a cigar a month for social or even personal enjoyment
| reasons and get more good than bad out of it.
| burnished wrote:
| Oof, that is not true and frankly terrible advice. Most
| people who quit smoking try the 'just sometimes' approach
| and it leads back to the original smoking habit.
|
| Framing it as self control problems is also a non
| starter. That shit is skillfully made addictive - if your
| outcomes are a high chance of chronic use and related
| illness or a low chance of occasional use and
| questionable benefits then the overall expected value is
| still deeply negative.
| [deleted]
| mikrl wrote:
| >The problem is that smoking is pretty much 100% bad
|
| Bad FOR you, yes; bad as an experience, no. It tastes good
| and facilitates socialization.
|
| >social media has some good sides in that it allows you to
| keep in touch with family and friends who may be far away.
| It was fun
|
| Again, this speaks more to the experience than the health
| effects. Note that you said 'it was fun' in the same way
| that I can say the cigs I've smoked were fun.
|
| I don't think the comparisons are too wrong to be honest.
| They are both activities that can facilitate 'fun' social
| interactions but with a deleterious effect on one's health
| (cardiovascular and mental)
| classified wrote:
| > It tastes good and facilitates socialization.
|
| Or it tastes like shit and facilitates people running
| away from the stink of your poison. Maybe they'll
| socialize over it.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I think it depends on the people and on the cigarettes. I
| actually like the taste of one specific cigarette brand.
| I very rarely smoke, less than a packet a year, if that
| (0 during 2020 - 2022). I do hate the smell, though.
| squarefoot wrote:
| That's subjective. I quit smoking 30 years ago and,
| unless someone smokes directly into my face, I still like
| the smell of tobacco.
| comfypotato wrote:
| I think the issue with the comparison is that cigarettes
| are much worse.
|
| Like the original comment, I won't be surprised if social
| media becomes stigmatized as people continue to realize
| more negative effects, but I doubt any of the effects are
| going to be as serious as cigarettes.
|
| It's hard to compare the data, but I'm pretty sure
| smoking is much worse for you. A bad smoking habit is
| likely to kill you. There's a point at which you smoke so
| much that it's more likely to be the reason you die than
| anything else. Social media just makes you miserable.
| wyre wrote:
| I think it's too early in social media's life to
| distinctly say it's worse than smoking. Not enough time
| has passed to allow for a long-term longitudinal study on
| the long-term effects on social media use.
|
| While tobacco might be a first-order cause of its ills
| (cancer, etc), the second order effects of social media
| might have cascading effects that is too early to tell on
| a long time frame.
|
| I'd be intrigued to read any decade long studies looking
| at the well-being of users of MySpace and the early
| adopters of Facebook.
| halfnormalform wrote:
| Smoking also has a strong social component. Smokers
| socialize around the ashcan. It's fun and exciting to catch
| up with the other smokers in your building or at your work.
|
| It does become a vile sludge, you're not wrong about that.
| stormbeta wrote:
| That aspect at least is easy to solve by drawing a stronger
| line between public content and stuff seen by people you
| actually know. This would be more of a social change than
| technical of course.
|
| The harder part is figuring out how to handle public
| content, because there are still innocuous or positive uses
| for it as well.
| korroziya wrote:
| >The problem is that smoking is pretty much 100% bad
|
| Smoking has far more benefits than social media, especially
| social benefits.
|
| If you have a pack of 20 cigarettes at a bar, you have 20
| new friends you haven't even met yet. Smokers stick
| together. Sharing a cigarette is a bonding moment for a lot
| of people.
|
| I could go on. Fuck social media. I don't want to see
| underage girls whoring themselves out. I don't want to see
| man children acting cringe for likes. If I WANT to keep up
| with my family, I'll call them on the phone.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > social media has some good sides in that it allows you to
| keep in touch with family and friends who may be far away.
|
| Sure, but there are numerous other ways of doing that
| without bringing in the problems of social media.
| j45 wrote:
| Social media is one part.
|
| Manufacturing behaviour through creating habit loops from
| notifications and scrolling for dopamine hits is an issue
| beyond social media.
|
| People are working for companies for free to be their valued
| and attentive audience to resell to the highest bidder.
|
| With small kids of my own I am finding it important to talk
| to them about things they don't understand, such as being
| careful of screens and smartphones. They have their own fear
| of google home as boogie man, which was unintended since we
| tried it out as a simple way to play whitenoise.
|
| As much as I will worry and take the precautions I can, I
| also see how kids being born today are so much smarter. Just
| ahve to make sure to unlock their enjoyment of the real world
| first, whether its sensory play, the outdoors, etc.
|
| So far, the smile from a screened expreience doesn't compare
| to being outside.
| deadly_syn wrote:
| The kids beig born today arent any smarter IMO, just more
| tuned to operate the technology by virtue of being native,
| just because someone can speak english, french, chinese,
| german, etc... does not grant the ability to utilize those
| skills to say something meaningful or having literacy in
| media using that language.
| 13years wrote:
| > Manufacturing behaviour through creating habit loops from
| notifications and scrolling for dopamine hits is an issue
| beyond social media.
|
| I agree, but they are mostly intrinsically linked.
|
| > So far, the smile from a screened expreience doesn't
| compare to being outside.
|
| Yes, this is wisdom. It also reflects that beyond the
| manipulative algorithms, there still remains unfavorable
| outcomes of living life online.
| hattmall wrote:
| Agreed 100%. I've said this for a while as well. I can see
| lawsuits too because Social media companies are doing the
| same as tobacco, making changes to make the product more
| addictive and they also have the information to show that it
| is bad for health. I don't know to what level they are
| suppressing that information, but it seems likely.
| 13years wrote:
| We got a glimpse of that in the documentary Social Dilemma.
|
| I expect it is going to get substantially worse. With the
| power of AI, data mining behavior for attention is going to
| surpass anything we have likely seen before.
| rixed wrote:
| I don't know... Are we looking back on allowing children access
| to TV or video games the way we look back at smoking ads
| targeted at children yet?
|
| We do not vilify smoking because we realized it kills but
| because smoking has been regulated out of society (because of
| its cost) and part of this regulation was to change the public
| perception of it. I don't see in the west a similar regulation
| targeting social media any more than I've seen one targeting
| stupid TV programs that were probably also damaging children
| mental health. Unfortunately.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Are we looking back on allowing children access to TV or
| video games the way we look back at smoking ads targeted at
| children yet?_
|
| TV and games "back in my days" had no personalized tracking
| and targeting. They could only try to target the wider
| audience, not you specifically by mining all your private
| info and use dark patterns to manipulate you. Modern social
| media apps know everything about you and will not hesitate to
| weaponize it against you for ads if it makes them money.
|
| Also, "back then", parents could look at the TV shows or your
| video games and see the kind of stuff you were exposed to and
| limit it or complain to the authorities to ban it. Now, you
| have no idea what ads or manipulative dark patterns your
| kids/teens are getting on their phone.
|
| Big, big, difference between then and now.
| barefeg wrote:
| > Now, you have no idea what ads or manipulative dark
| patterns your kids/teens are getting on their phone.
|
| I'm not sure about teens. But I'm present when my kid plays
| games and he despises ads and micro transactions as much as
| I do. He's also not allowed to buy anything so he's more
| selective about what games to play (a few ones that we have
| subscriptions for)
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Sure but for everyone like you there's 100 parents who
| leave their kids unsupervised with tablets and phones.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| In some spaces - yes. We are looking back in a similar
| manner.
|
| Limited TV screen time is strongly encouraged in basically
| all the literature for new parents (under 2 hours).
|
| Gaming is seeing a strong push against some of the most
| egregious abuses targeted at children (micro-transactions and
| loot box gambling).
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Are we looking back on allowing children access to TV or
| video games the way we look back at smoking ads targeted at
| children yet?
|
| I know a lot of people who do.
| j45 wrote:
| Unencumbered consuming is a big problem.
|
| Children seem to do better when creating instead of consuming
| on screens. Except they almost always like creating more in
| real life (painting, piano) vs the app.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| My take is that playing minecraft or such is fine. Instagram
| is not. Playing with blocks in real life is probably better
| (but I appreciate you can't build moats in real life so
| easily).
| salemh wrote:
| [dead]
| xg15 wrote:
| Or we might look back fondly at a time where we _only_ had to
| deal with addictive social media sites and your kids ' friend
| groups weren't 50% AI bots yet.
| Diederich wrote:
| We got a lot of shit about it at the time from various sources,
| but I think my wife and I were correct in limiting our son to a
| flip phone until he was 18. It was _very_ awkward in a lot of
| ways, because all of his peers had smart phones, and him not
| having one got in the way of some good things.
|
| However, a couple of years later, now with a smart phone, he
| seems a lot more grounded than a lot of other young people he
| interacts with.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-03-10 23:02 UTC)