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The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

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Re: The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

#101

Post by gthtjtkt »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #4

I am terrified about giving smartphones to my kids. France's new rule (no smartphones in schools - no exceptions) is genius, and I applaud them for that. What is a supercomputer in your pocket, with access to a significant portion of the sum total of human knowledge, good for, for most people? Playing fucking candy crush. We wish that we, humans, were better, but we are not. So what can we do about it? I have no idea…

> I am terrified about giving smartphones to my kids.

I am terrified by the fact that so many other people don't think twice about handing their toddler a smart device. Every time we go to dinner, there's a table nearby with a tablet planted in front of a child in a booster seat.

"There's no evidence that it's harmful", people say, but how could the evidence possibly exist? It would take 16+ years to do a thorough study (possibly longer), but smartphones have only been popular for half that time. And people have only been using them as babysitters for the past 3-5 years, at most.

We may not know the true extent of their damage until it's far too late for the affected generation. There's always a chance that the damage will be minor and/or reversible, but most people don't seem to grasp the risk they're taking.

Re: The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

#102

Post by j45 »

cableshaft wrote: post #85
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #4

I am terrified about giving smartphones to my kids. France's new rule (no smartphones in schools - no exceptions) is genius, and I applaud them for that. What is a supercomputer in your pocket, with access to a significant portion of the sum total of human knowledge, good for, for most people? Playing fucking candy crush. We wish that we, humans, were better, but we are not. So what can we do about it? I have no idea…

I had a TI Calculator in my pocket and I learned first learned how to program on it during classes from 7th grade on. I made all sorts of text-based games: rpgs, text-based tetris, action games, fighting games (which was basically just pick an attack and a different formula with random numbers would happen that said how much hp you hurt the opponent), etc. But 'smartphones' nowadays makes it difficult for you to crea…

I did the same with my TI85 as well. Part of it I think is we have to focus on productivity and providing value because the hardware couldn't render high end experiences.

Creating seems to have fallen by the day wide compared to mindless consuming, interaction and feeding content to social aggregation companies who sell users attention to advertisers.

As dreary as this topic is, it's kind of nice to see a healthy exploration about more than the one current way of using tech.

Re: The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

#103

Post by cpsempek »

candu wrote: post #89
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #4

I am terrified about giving smartphones to my kids. France's new rule (no smartphones in schools - no exceptions) is genius, and I applaud them for that. What is a supercomputer in your pocket, with access to a significant portion of the sum total of human knowledge, good for, for most people? Playing fucking candy crush. We wish that we, humans, were better, but we are not. So what can we do about it? I have no idea…

There’s a tendency to accept without question, in these sorts of conversations, that “trivial entertainment” is bad, or at least qualifiably inferior to either “good entertainment” (less Skinner-box-ish games, going outside, socializing, etc.) or “self-improvement” (reading, thinking, practicing, etc.) IMHO, most of us in fact choose all of the above; what we should be aiming for is the proper balance, not to replace…

a human need for mental and physical downtime, as well as for the sort of quick gratification that we rarely get from loftier or more productive pursuits

Could this not be said about drugs and alcohol? And while it may indeed be beneficial to use drugs and alcohol in a balanced, well moderated way, the downside risk seems to great to me to be suggesting this to a society.

Re: The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

#104

Post by orf »

Danihan wrote: post #59
orf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which will primarily hurt the ones who were using them for more interesting purposes. I guess they can record the lecture with a voice recorder (very cheap on Amazon) and get the lecture slides afterwards, like everyone else. It's pretty simple: thing A is widely misused and is causing problems to 99% of people. Banning it has a huge net-positive effect, despite having perhaps a negative effect on 1% of people. Wor…

You could use the same logic to ban all sorts of things for adults. And many governments do, to everyone's detriment. Alcohol prohibition says hello. It's exactly this type of generalized authoritarian philosophy that keeps the War on Drugs going strong.

Alcohol doesn't cause problems for 99% of people though does it.

You can apply that argument to anything banned. Why ban anything at all, why not let kids drink in class? Because it causes a lot more harm than good, especially in a learning environment.

So, we restrict things. You might not agree where the line is drawn, but there is a line and its position is obviously subjective. I guess we can measure the effectiveness of this on learning and with feedback from the teachers though.

Re: The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

#105

Post by [deleted] »

Momquist wrote: post #98
Danihan wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could use the same logic to ban all sorts of things for adults. And many governments do, to everyone's detriment. Alcohol prohibition says hello. It's exactly this type of generalized authoritarian philosophy that keeps the War on Drugs going strong.

If the ban is limited to a specific space/community (school or classroom), then it's completely different from alcohol prohibition and more akin to the ban of smoking in restaurants, which is accepted by most people even the smokers themselves.

[deleted]

Re: The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

#106

Post by vorotato »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #79
vorotato wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socrates felt the same way about books actually a lot of big thinkers in that era felt that writing and reading would lead to the degradation of the human memory. However the argument that kids shouldn't have books in school seems laughable. I would say they aren't wrong. Humans really can't remember entire books any more, but then they also don't need to.

It's true that there's a double-edge to it. The new advantage being that books became an extension of ourselves. Having access to printed knowledge meant we didn't have to memorize every line (and after all, we've come to learn that understanding certainly does not equate with wrote memorization). We can have a working memory of what we need to know on a regular basis, while retaining "pointers", or knowledge of wher…

I think there's a lot of value in having self-aware conscious behavior, it's important that you're doing what you want with your life. You only have one. People have definitely wasted their lives away, from their own opinion deep in a book. The vehicle by which people waste their lives is a lot less important than the awareness of what you're doing with your life, and that it's something that you actually wanted to do.

Re: The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

#107

Post by dragonwriter »

ictoan wrote: post #97
rflrob wrote: post #44

I'm always a little skeptical of arguments that new technologies are actually damaging . I'm willing to accept that people are sometimes unhappy adjusting to new things (and that people are unhappy with how other people use their new technology), but people have been saying that [new technology here] is bad for thousands of years—Plato even complained about writing because it's "bad for memory"[1]. If you frame the q…

If you read the article, it did mention Socrates warned about writing. Maybe Plato did say it as well. Anyways, your point was brought up in the article. Did you read the article?

> If you read the article, it did mention Socrates warned about writing. Maybe Plato did say it as well.

All the saying attributed to Socrates are by way of Plato's writing in which Socrates is used as a mouthpiece, and are more properly attributed to Plato. So, the references are probably to the same thing.

Re: The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

#108

Post by peatmoss »

I've been wondering about the new cellular Apple Watch. In particular, I wonder if I could get away with just having that, and use it to train myself out of idly reading the news during periods of micro-boredom.

The main thing keeping me from trying it as an experiment, is that I use my phone primarily for mobility (transit schedules, Car2go, ReachNow, lyft, bikeshare, etc.). And it appears that the majority of the services I use don't have watch apps.

Re: The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

#109

Post by [deleted] »

Danihan wrote: post #5
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #4

I am terrified about giving smartphones to my kids. France's new rule (no smartphones in schools - no exceptions) is genius, and I applaud them for that. What is a supercomputer in your pocket, with access to a significant portion of the sum total of human knowledge, good for, for most people? Playing fucking candy crush. We wish that we, humans, were better, but we are not. So what can we do about it? I have no idea…

I'm not sure why all students should be punished just because because some cannot use a new tool well. Socialism at its worst, in my opinion. The irresponsible drag down those with more potential.

[deleted]

Re: The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

#110

Post by dv_dt »

cableshaft wrote: post #85
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #4

I am terrified about giving smartphones to my kids. France's new rule (no smartphones in schools - no exceptions) is genius, and I applaud them for that. What is a supercomputer in your pocket, with access to a significant portion of the sum total of human knowledge, good for, for most people? Playing fucking candy crush. We wish that we, humans, were better, but we are not. So what can we do about it? I have no idea…

I had a TI Calculator in my pocket and I learned first learned how to program on it during classes from 7th grade on. I made all sorts of text-based games: rpgs, text-based tetris, action games, fighting games (which was basically just pick an attack and a different formula with random numbers would happen that said how much hp you hurt the opponent), etc. But 'smartphones' nowadays makes it difficult for you to crea…

I understand your worry, but your TI calculator was a tinkerer niche that was similar to the openness and simplicity of early home computers. Different niches proliferate, grow, and wane all the time. After you and TI calcs, probably came a generations of web programming tinkerers, and hobby makers and minecrafters. People who are interested in programming will hopefully find their own starting niches. Hopefully we don't ever stop opening up new areas - I think the best we can do as a community is promote tinkering in any form to provide a variety of avenues for kids to get exposed in different ways.
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