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

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

theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 478 posts

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

#131

Post by cryptoz »

BeetleB wrote: post #75
cryptoz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP here, but there are literally thousands of ways that not having a smartphone could be a punishment. The first thing to realize is that times change. People didn't used to have clean shirts either, but they do now. Making someone wear a dirty shirt might not have been a punishment in the past (what else did they know of?) but it could certainly be seen that way now. Give a child access to a smartphone for years…

>Give a child access to a smartphone for years. It will change their brain, it will become a part of them (as far as they are concerned) as it will be predictable, reactive, entertaining, etc. You are describing a drug. Besides, we're not talking about taking them away for good. Just while they are in school. When I was a kid, people were into Gameboys. Yet no one took it as a punishment when schools did not allow th…

> You are describing a drug.

Yeah, so is the article.

> Chris Marcellino, who helped develop the iPhone's push notifications at Apple, told The Guardian last fall that smartphones hook people using the same neural pathways as gambling and drugs.

> Besides, we're not talking about taking them away for good. Just while they are in school.

I didn't say for good. Even during that length of time, it could be seen as a punishment. I'm not arguing that it's good to take them away or good to keep them - I'm not sure. I'm just saying it's important to recognize that taking away something like a smartphone could be a punishing experience for a person.

> When I was a kid, people were into Gameboys. Yet no one took it as a punishment when schools did not allow them.

Gameboys have only one purpose: games. Games and games alone are clearly not useful in the school environment. Smartphones have a billion purposes and have limitless potential for learning - not to mention, various other things that are important, like peace of mind in communication, etc. Again, I'm not saying these kids shouldn't be able to do without. I'm just saying it is a thing: people are attached to their smartphones in a new way, as described in the article, and taking it away can cause harm just as keeping it could.

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

#132

Post by DougN7 »

johnchristopher wrote: post #76
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…

> What is a pen and a piece of paper in your pocket, with the potential to express creativity and share it with others, communicate, good for, for most people? > Playing fucking tic-tac-toe.

I doubt the bulk of pen and paper is used for playing tic-tac-toe. I find the OP's concern to be valid more or less.

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

#133

Post by anvandare »

djaychela wrote: post #72
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 don't know what age your kids are, but it'll be a difficult struggle when the time does come. I've got 4 step kids, who are 11, 13, 16 and 18. All aside from the eldest have smartphones, (they have each had them when they have gone to secondary school), and it's a constant problem - probably the thing where I have the biggest disagreements with them (I have an excellent relationship with all four of them, and they'…

>I have spent many an hour trying to tell them that nearly everything they use isn't agnostic about its behaviour, but that it tries to manipulate them into spending as much time as possible in the app/site and so on.

Very well said. Apps and social media and clickbait-sites are digital Skinner boxes, its creators (dopamine) dealers. As a general rule, if you can't put something away for a week (or even better, an unspecified amount of time), you're addicted; and addictions are never a good thing.

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

#134

Post by agumonkey »

IpV8 wrote: post #67
agumonkey wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped believing in progress personally. Progress doesn't help you in many important part of life. We're spending too much time on science, and often to fix economic / political errors of the past.

Interesting. Personally, I enjoy living in a world where my friends have overcome cancer, where I can spend < 1 hour a day focusing in food, and I am able to travel halfway around the world to experience machu picchu and be back by then next monday. At what point do you think we stopped productively progressing? Have you considered joining an Amish community?

I do think about amish lifestyle a lot.

curing cancer is a worthy endeavor that is not on the same plane as most technology we spend time talking about (believe me I wish I could have saved some family members)

experiencing machu picchu and coming back in a week .. feels pointless to me. time is required to experience things fully. there's a middle ground between risking your life on a boat for 6 months before reaching south america and uber fast tourism.

And in a way I think that only people that really want to go the distance should travel.

The old agricultural system was too demanding it's true, but it's not removing it that makes life better. See how people eat shitty things, waste meat etc .. Also with proper education, one can go really far if he knows how to use energy, even without heavy industry behind.

It's a shifting plane, new ideas create new societies, they don't make the previous one better.

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

#135

Post by TylerE »

j45 wrote: post #102
cableshaft wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exp…

I think the key thing with programming on the T/Is was that input handling and output was super super simple.

Text display addressable by row/column... something like 8x24 if memory serves?

No mucking about with event loops, window handlers, setup functions...

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

#136

Post by saint_fiasco »

matchagaucho wrote: post #71
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…

Banning smartphones because of distracting apps is equivalent to banning guitars because of heavy metal music. It's the content, not the tool. Schools should be teaching kids how to use these tools to create content; not just passively consume.

I wouldn't allow a guitar in the classroom either, except when they are specifically required, like for music classes.

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

#137

Post by seangrogg »

radlad wrote: post #123
dv_dt wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> probably came a generations of web programming tinkerers Neopets allowed "pet pages" containing HTML when I was 10 years old, and this was my first foray into programming.

Likewise; to this day I still talk about how Neopets' pet pages were my introduction to building web content.

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

#138

Post by jdbernard »

craigsmansion wrote: post #63
Danihan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you could have the answer to nearly any question at your fingertips, and yet it's arbitrarily taken away? How is it not a punishment?

> Because you could have the answer to nearly any question at your fingertips, and yet it's arbitrarily taken away? There's a person there, usually in the front. They have the answers in their head . It is their job to put those answers in your head . To transfer those answers you can ask them a question. It's what they're there for.

The key here is "any question." When did classrooms give you that kind of flexibility? In my experience it was hit or miss between how many on-topic questions an instructor would allow, let alone questions that deviated from the lesson plan.

Modern public schools institutionally are not designed to cultivate the intellect and knowledge of individual students. They're designed to transfer a specific set of ideas to a large group of people at once.

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

#139

Post by death_syn »

lettergram wrote: post #129
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…

My wife and I are going to have a son in a couple weeks. We literally were discussing today. We came to the conclusion we don't want them to have a cell phone until they are fairly old. We plan on actually installing a landline instead. We subscribe to the theory that, to some extent, we need to struggle to grow. So, I've actually convinced her to pretty much let our son (and additional children) get free access to a…

When it comes to super old phones, what would you do about security concerns?

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

#140

Post by djaychela »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #126
djaychela wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what age your kids are, but it'll be a difficult struggle when the time does come. I've got 4 step kids, who are 11, 13, 16 and 18. All aside from the eldest have smartphones, (they have each had them when they have gone to secondary school), and it's a constant problem - probably the thing where I have the biggest disagreements with them (I have an excellent relationship with all four of them, and they'…

I have a 4 and 6 year old so they are not interested in phones yet, but I'm concerned about giving them a device in future with unrestricted access to the internet before they are ready to deal with everything they might see there. (I'm not ready for most of that, but I'm old enough to know I don't want to see it. )

The internet has been filtered in the house for years (their Mum is an IT tech in a primary school) - both via the broadband supplier's filtering and also using OpenDNS. It's not a perfect solution (and obviously can be bypassed as soon as they have smartphones with Internet access), but it's another element to think about... plus, of course, educating them in the right way so that they see it as a good thing to be kept safe, rather than a bad thing that they're being kept away from something they covet.
Post reply on HN