The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

donkeyd wrote: post #178

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 half-sister (13) got a new iPhone 7 for her birthday (which I find ridiculous, because expensive). I really feel like it's messing up her as a person. As soon as she holds it she's oblivious to the outside world. I took it away from her on new-years eve and stuck it in a closet. She said she wanted to get it back at 12 am, I told her 12:15. At 12, she went outside with us, to watch the fireworks. She stayed outsid…

> Pretty much every time her phone is placed out of sight, she turns into a fun, engaging person. But when it's in sight, she needs to have it, to mindlessly scroll, double tap in instagram, or whatever the latest app fad is.

Are you absolutely sure they're "mindlessly scrolling", and not just being fun and engaging to their friends on the other end of the social network?

I hate this assumption - one sees a person glued into an IM or a social feed and thinks they're just being a drone. They're not - they're engaging in an amazing achievement of humanity that is immediate communication that transcends physical boundaries. And quite often, what's happening on the remote end is more important than what happens next to you.

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

#242

Post by jclardy » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #193

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays you can get much cheaper all-purpose computers though; if kids are tinkerers like you were, they will find a way, either on their smartphones or on a raspberry pi or whatever. And if they don't - accept it, they're not you, and they'll probably end up better off than you did.

It's more complicated than that because distractions play a huge role. If you've got access to endless stream of entertainment and games you're obviously less likely to find time to explore the other stuff that you can do with computers. I know quite a lot of tech savvy and smart people who loved tinkering with computers but never really got to the point of being able to do anything professionally because they've got…

I agree with this. I was also a calculator-tinkerer who learned TI-Basic on my TI-83 (And later z80 assembly.) I doubt I would have ended up down the same path had I had an iPhone 7 instead. Yes, there are educational apps, but then again there is infinitely more content available than what is available for a calculator.

The limitations on the calculator seemed to be a big driving factor in my interest at the time. The drive to push it beyond its intended purpose. With smartphones...you don't really have that because apps already exist for nearly everything.

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

#243

Post by LesZedCB » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

I just got back from a trip to joshua tree for a week where none of us had phone service. Our only means of communication was when we met up or posted notes on physical community boards.

Pretty much every single one of us commented on how that made the trip so much better. I personally felt so relieved by the disconnect and wished I could stay that way. Just a small anecdote.

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

#244

Post by ntsplnkv2 » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

vorotato wrote: post #62

Chaebixi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also just going to say, if you had taken away my smartphone/internet in highschool "Smartphone" and "internet" are two separate categories, and the former is strongly associated variously low-value, deliberately-addicting behaviors. The internet still has valuable corners, but the action is now where the monitization's at. High school (and younger!) kids (generally) using their smartphones for stuff like getting st…

Do you have evidence for that claim? You know your parents said the same about you with your computer games. In reality, yes you played games, you also learned more. The truth is you used more of your time than they did and some of it was productive, and some of it wasn't. VSauce has a good episode about how every generation thinks this about the next, and there has never been any evidence for it being true about any…

I'm not quite sure how to frame your argument-I think appealing to tradition?

> You know your parents said the same about you with your computer games. In reality, yes you played games, you also learned more.

This is quite the claim. I know many smart people who played video games. And I know plenty dumb people who play video games.

This isn't just generation to generation. Many on here are looking at their own generation. Kids are not the only ones playing candy crush.

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

#245

Post by noir_lord » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

Diederich wrote: post #194

lettergram wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As I posted elsewhere, our teenage son has a flip phone. He always has, and he always will, until he can buy and sustain something more fancy himself. As far as desktop, he runs whatever the latest version of Ubuntu LTS. He does not have administrative access to it. I wrote a small program that watches the title of whatever the current/foreground window is and compares that title to a configured list of regular expre…

Teenage me would have been all over that box.

"Little johnny spent 3.5 hours on 'advanced algebra last night'".

Our family PC (this was back in the 90's) had RH on it for about a year before anyone noticed, I grew up around computers (family friend was a sysadmin for an aerospace company so we got lots of 'broken' stuff and cast offs), I had frankenbuilds with drives duct taped to the outside of them but my favourite was the monochrome VGA 386 laptop when the family PC was a 286, the internal ribbon had snapped from been opened and closed, it cost me about 50p to fix it and it was going in the skip (dumpster) anyway.

My plan with my step-son is to keep the bar low enough that he'll keep pushing beyond it, he's already shown a fair amount of interest in Linux, he figured out how Gnome works faster than my GF did, I caught him watching videos on Linux the other day and now he wants to try some of the other DE's.

I find it really hard though, I remember what I was like at 7 and I want to sit and explain it all to him but then he loses the part where he has to work it out for himself so I restrict myself to answering his questions when he gets stuck or nudging him in the right direction.

The family friend just dumped programming books on me and answered stuff when I got really stuck but his response to any question was "and what have you tried so far?", I still remember getting a mouse driver written in assembly to work (pretty much the last time I wrote any actually since I discovered Turbo C and Turbo Pascal pretty soon after).

I think our next project will be a tracked robot with one of the r-pi's I have in the drawer.

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

#246

Post by cpsempek » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

AFNobody wrote: post #121

cpsempek wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Over half of fatalities in cars have nothing to do with DUI-type impairment. Would you ban those as well? But lets say you ban alcohol and re-create the problems of the Prohibition. Banning the way…

That's reasonable, certainly alcohol has real effects beyond the scope of the dangers of mindless games, or, marijuana even. I didn't intend to suggest games have the same types of effects as DUIs, a shortsighted comparison on my end.

I am more interested in how a position of moderation is in theory attractive, and may even show benefits in controlled situations, but in practice use of substances or mobile games can lead to excessive use (i.e., abuse) and have a net negative on a user physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, etc.

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

#247

Post by en-us » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

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?

Nope, I've got too much scrolling to do. These headlines aren't going to read themselves.

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

#248

Post by shawnz » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

DamnInteresting wrote: post #159

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. Hey smartphone makers, if you're listening: Let me set an alternate PIN that unlocks the phone in a limited access mode, or "kid mode." Only pre-approved apps are available. Only pre-approved contacts can be called/texted. In-game purchases require the more secure PIN. Maybe when the phone is in this mode I can track its location easily, and make it emit a noise.…

Multiuser support is built into Android in recent versions.

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

#249

Post by chasd00 » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #230

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…

So, there is no rule that you have to give your kids a smartphone. It won't screw them up no matter what those already addicted to their phones will tell you. Our rule is the kids can have a smart phone when they can buy it and a data plan on their own. So far our first didn't do that until she was 18. The second was a little earlier at 17, but she was heading off to college and really felt that she needed it. Our 16…

a buddy of mine has a good setup. His teens have phones, ipads, and the like but he has every charger. Inevitably they have to hand the device over for power and then he decides on when to hand it back.

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

#250

Post by bonestamp2 » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

jakobegger wrote: post #207

DamnInteresting wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am terrified about giving smartphones to my kids. Hey smartphone makers, if you're listening: Let me set an alternate PIN that unlocks the phone in a limited access mode, or "kid mode." Only pre-approved apps are available. Only pre-approved contacts can be called/texted. In-game purchases require the more secure PIN. Maybe when the phone is in this mode I can track its location easily, and make it emit a noise.…

I‘m pretty sure Apple won‘t do that, because they want you to buy your kids their own iPhone. Why doesn‘t the iPad have this sort of multi-user mode? An iPad is the perfect device for sharing. But no, if you don‘t want your kids to read your emails, you need to buy them their own iPad.

> if you don‘t want your kids to read your emails, you need to buy them their own iPad.

You're right. But I still think I would buy my kid their own iPad even if my iPhone/iPad had a kid mode. My kid has their own iPad and I still find times when it would be ideal to give them access to the basic features on my phone/ipad. Frankly, if iOS just added the ability to password protect any app then that would be good enough, and it would be useful for more than kids... hand you phone to a coworker or relative to look at photos they can't accidentally/intentionally hop over to your email.