Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 270 posts

Re: Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

#171

Post by whywhywhywhy »

rock_hard wrote: post #92
krisives wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years ago it was called "VCR parenting" now we call it "tablet parenting" - People live hard and complex lives, so I'm not going to make judgment on a single parent trying to provide for their kids being unable to be a full-time entertainer as well. The good news is technology and apps are making it easier for parents to be better with less effort (which may sound harsh but is how life gets better overall)

I agree that I rather hand my kids a tablet or smartphone then putting them in front of a TV or game console. What I sometimes miss from the conversation is that there is a lot of good things one can do with such device...and yes, also some bad ones...just like with a scissors or a lighter. It’s on parents to teach their kids how the world functions and how to integrate into it...always has, always will! And the late…

>I agree that I rather hand my kids a tablet or smartphone then putting them in front of a TV or game console.

Is an actual computer not an option?

Re: Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

#172

Post by pmarreck »

jeffhuys wrote: post #156
FussyZeus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we change nothing else, what needs to be done is we need to put serious time and money into addiction treatments. We have so many companies and scientists of varying stripe all researching exactly how to punch dopamine out of people's brains in the most efficient way, starting early on with food sciences and the tobacco industry, into today with social networks and casual games. We now know how to trick peopl…

Don't forget porn. It's really new that everyone can find decades worth of porn, anytime. It's causing serious issues like erectile dysfunction and social problems. It's really taboo to talk about and people don't realise they're addicted to porn. Masturbation might be normal but constantly filling your mind with pornographic pictures and associating them to orgasms is proven to be detrimental.

Empirical evidence from unbiased sources to support this assertion, please

Re: Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

#173

Post by icebraining »

sah2ed wrote: post #149
icebraining wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With parental controls, kids do not have other ways of obtaining games, unless it's something like a browser game, and then it won't be recorded either. So your comment seems to be based on an impossible premise.

> With parental controls, kids do not have other ways of obtaining games ... Still possible outside the home or at school. Borrowing a device from the next door neighbor who could care less about parental controls is one way for kids who are intent on playing a game their peers are raving about. Then there is the option of using an older (teenage) sibling's device for the same purpose if left lying around in the hous…

Right. In which case the monitoring wouldn't work either.

Re: Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

#174

Post by pmarreck »

jmngomes wrote: post #162
gpmcadam wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for smartphone usage having any impact on neck or muscle strain, versus non-smartphone usage, and why it would disproportionately affect millennials?

There are widely available sources and studies on the subject of how bad posture is destructive to the human skeleton...

... And yet you took the opportunity to cite none of it. I know about the studies of sitting for long periods...

Re: Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

#175

Post by whywhywhywhy »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #86
ModernMech wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen versions of several of these ruin people's lives very close to me. For example, I knew someone who played WOW to the detriment of his schooling, health, and social life. WOW is another product that is explicitly engineered to be addictive. The difference between then and now is cell phones and social media are consumed at a scale that affects almost everyone, to a degree that hasn't been seen before. It's w…

I'm wary of the proposed solutions. I spent very significant time during my childhood using computers. At the time, I would have had scarcely anything to prove that time was in any way "useful". I would have been hard pressed to convince others that my behavior was not detrimental. Because I did spend so much time freely using computers, I learned how to use them. I learned about Linux, partitioning, bootloaders, pro…

Is an (Android or Apple) tablet a computer though?

Re: Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

#176

Post by pmarreck »

gpmcadam wrote: post #145
hilyen wrote: post #73

They should be pushing for a study on neck injury / muscle strain on smart phone use. Millennials and the next gen after are going to pay dearly from injuries from bending their necks/heads down for years and years looking at their phones.

Do you have a source for smartphone usage having any impact on neck or muscle strain, versus non-smartphone usage, and why it would disproportionately affect millennials?

Why is this guy getting downvoted simply for asking for evidence?

This is Hacker News. Raise the bar, people. Leave the baseless assertions and hearsay to Reddit. I expect citations in discussions here. In fact I just scrolled through this entire discussion and did not find A SINGLE LINK to outside evidence/data. How do you expect to debate anything with any validity, based on nothing but bullshit?

Re: Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

#177

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

astura wrote: post #102
tlrobinson wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have kids so I haven't looked into it, but I assumed there would be more games with educational value on iOS than Nintendo. Is curating your kid's apps to only allow such games an option?

What's the point though? The app store is 99% low quality garbage. Sure, you can spend your time and effort searching out the 4-5 high quality gems that may exist and configuring the ipad but it's 10x easier just to buy a Nintendo game and call it a day. Nintendo's first party games are almost always very fun, always high quality, ad free, and always(?) kid friendly. When you buy, for example, a Zelda, Mario, or Kirb…

The Switch offers digital downloads too, some of which are pretty low-quality (and the number of these will only increase this year).

Re: Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

#178

Post by jpalomaki »

krisives wrote: post #120
trothamel wrote: post #106

For the record, these shareholders seem to control about 0.2% of apple stock.

Also consider that most big players in the game have very little incentive to reduce screen-time in a meaningful way. The more time spent on devices consuming media the more they sell from their App store.

It may be a big opportunity for Apple. After all most of their income comes from device sales, not from app store. Offering tools for parents which make them feel good, might cause them to spend the extra $100-200 per kid and get them iPhone instead of cheaper Android device.

Of course others could follow with similar features and this would remove the possible advantage Apple had, leaving them with no advantage and reduced app store revenue. Or if others don't follow, this might drive developers to other platforms.

Re: Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

#179

Post by Angostura »

fsloth wrote: post #142
tlrobinson wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have kids so I haven't looked into it, but I assumed there would be more games with educational value on iOS than Nintendo. Is curating your kid's apps to only allow such games an option?

"games with educational value" Unfortunately that's a near non-sequitur. For example a "math game" may actually be a crappy button smashing experience that's made to look "educational" in the store. Etc.

Having watched my kid build bizarre red-stone power contraptions in minecraft, picking up the basics of logic circuits along the way, I disagree.

Re: Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children

#180

Post by myaso »

Just for parents? Why not just give all users the ability to block certain usage patterns and access to applications -- kinda like the StayFocusd plugin for Chrome. Hell, charge a monthly fee to access the web interface to manage it; you get a mechanism to induce friction and you get a subscription business -- I would pay for this shit since I value my attention more than someone who you pick off the street. How does 300$ a year sound? like weight watchers for attention (we know that model works already). You get a nice upsell on an already expensive device. Maybe this will be a nice way to maintain profits given that people aren't replacing their devices as often anymore, keep trying the stunt of billing incremental features as revolutionary and people will stop believing you.
Post reply on HN