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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

#321

Post by nkkollaw »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #250
jakobegger wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enou…

iOS lets you block access to a single app, so that even if they click the home button they can't go anywhere else.

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

#322

Post by nkkollaw »

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.…

Android has limited access accounts, which would do many of those things.

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

#324

Post by tzs »

vorotato wrote: post #38
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…

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.

> 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.

They probably did lead to degradation of human memory--not in the underlying capabilities, of course, but in how well most people are able to use them.

There is some interesting discussion of this in Joshua Foer's book "Moonwalking with Einstein" [1]. Before books were widespread learning ways to use memory quickly and efficiently was important to scholars and others who worked with large amounts of information. Afterwards, it was good enough to just go with your raw, untrained memory, and the old memory techniques were almost forgotten.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Remember...

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

#326

Post by uhhhhhhh »

Why are we pretending this is unique or new to smartphones.

Television has worked this way for a long time, all media and advertising has worked on the same principals.

Instead of pretending this is "new and scary", we should be focusing on understanding the impacts and limits, and how much is too much, rather than this grey and white false narrative that smartphones are somehow solely responsible for the increasingly intrusive advertisements and attention grabbing reality we've been constructing for decades longer than smartphones have been around.

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

#327

Post by matte_black »

ckosidows wrote: post #276
EADGBE wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Throw the baby out with the bathwater; they said. I've deleted and re-installed Facebook countless times. It doesn't make me any holier, but having the choice of it there and choosing to go without seems like a stronger fight.

I've told this to a lot of people around me... unfollow everyone on Facebook. This does two things: 1. No more facebook feed 2. No more facebook ads You still get to keep messenger as an extended contact book, people can still tag you in stupid things and pictures, you don't have to have that awkward conversation telling people you're no longer on facebook. I guarantee you'll never feel like you miss your feed. Nobod…

The good news is after having no feed for well over a year I can now imagine just deleting Facebook and never coming back. Only reason I don’t is because it’s a decent way to reach people, but once that’s no longer the case, it’s gone.

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

#329

Post by jdtang13 »

cokeandsympathy wrote: post #280
Stranger43 wrote: post #199

Or in the words of the ancient philosopher plato upon learning about the written textbook """If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.""" And just as Plato had a point but missed a greater one something similar might be sa…

> Were kind of seeing a kind of trend where every new media invention goes though a cycle of hype and fear towards a new normal and usually a new political and cultural structure. And i suspect that a lot of the "fear" is at least partially a part of that process. That doesn't make this fear unjustified. The radio made Nazism more powerful. Trump doesn't become president without the current 24-hours news culture. ISI…

Exactly. Technology makes the highs higher and the lows lower. It's just an amplifier for human nature.

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

#330

Post by cableshaft »

pharrington wrote: post #306
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…

Yes, it's easy to write a TI-BASIC program on a TI graphic calculator. It's barely less easy to open your web browser, type in "jsfiddle" or "shadertoy," and get coding environments that have considerably better and more instant feedback than what's available on your TI. And that's before opening up your app store and searching for "compiler" or "IDE."

Yeah you can download an IDE and then not run the code, or run the code by connecting to a server, which you might not even have internet access at the time. And even then you're probably not able to make asset rich games on them, or create graphics, save them, and call them in your program (game). Design websites, yeah I guess. Create shell scripts, yeah no problem. But games are another story. Not impossible, I'm sure, but not easy.

Yes, the TI had this. I would spend 30 minutes drawing a dragon image and saving it, then loading it in my choose your own adventure text game, without breaking a sweat, changing things and iterating quickly while sitting through an algebra class where I knew everything that was taught instantly (because I already used it in code) where all the other kids needed the rest of the class plus more to understand.

I would use the greek alphabet as makeshift sprites, the letter "O" as a ball and the equals sign "=" as bricks in an alleyway clone, etc. I'm not saying kids should still be expected to do this. There should be newer and better tools, focused on that creation.

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