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

> I mean, the massive progress in science, medical, renewable energy, etc. are pretty good problems to be solving.

Yet the greatest minds of our generation are trying to make people click on ads more (forgot who this quote is from)

Nokia is already at the retro game: https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-3310

I've found that I'm actually -thinking- about things when I'm in those short times (queues, between courses of meals at friends' houses when everyone else is doing the food or wherever) when I'm stood alone and would have previously reflexively ended up on my phone looking for stimulation.

I wouldn't say all of my time was wasted (and HN is the only remaining regular thing I look at, but I tend to read an article or two and comments and then be done, rather than repeatedly looking through it for something), but the vast majority was. Maybe better filtering was needed for me, and I've achieved that in other areas by subscribing to a couple of worthwhile email lists (of relevant interest areas) where I get maybe 1 email a week that takes maybe half an hour to filter and that's that.

Most of the spare time I've reclaimed is being used usefully - I'm learning Python at the moment, so I'm finding I'm doing bits an pieces here and there with that, and also I've actually made time to go back to practicing and enjoying playing the guitar, which I've done for a long time. I'm starting to feel more musically creative as well, which is definitely a change from the past few years - I had thought that it was all gone, so perhaps we're experiencing something similar?

I'm not sure all of it -is- pretty normal. Yes, of course the teenage 'striking out on my own, the previous generation knows nothing' etc... we've all been there and experienced that. I don't expect them to follow any of the paths that I have, or become how I think they 'should' be. But I really think this is different, because they are not in control of their own minds in a way that every other generation was much more so.

Yes, of course, no-one's life is without influence and advertisers have always sought to claim your attention for their own needs. But now you have the process being personalised for each user, and weaponised because accurate stats on effects can be captured quickly and iterated on straight away. Everyone's personal weak spot can be identified, analysed and taken advantage of - and in a very short timescale. That was most definitely NOT the case in the past; behaviour of advertising and attention capture was at best aggregated across a large fraction of the population at a time, sometimes the entire population at once.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I'll clarify what I meant.

Parents need to learn to back off. It's the one thing this generation of parents (Gen X and older millenials) seem to not have gotten. You can't force your children to be you or to be a version of you who didn't make the mistakes you did.

What I'm about to say might be a little bit too much of internet psychoanalysis, but I see it too often all over the internet as well as from people I know in real life, and I feel like this is a general trend because of that. So, this needs to be said somewhere for the chances at least one person will see it: this sort of thinking in my opinion stems from the parent putting too much of their own sense of self in a child. Specifically, seeing a child as either an extension of their being, and even a "second chance" to do things right from the beginning. The success of a kid or their failure is essentially the parents' since said kid is an extension of themselves. This can lead to the child becoming an instrument of the parents' self-validation.

While a lot of this may be intended with the kindest of intentions, it is unintentionally extremely selfish, and it gets parenting backwards. A child isn't you, and they aren't a chance to fix yourself; they are their own person, and they have an existence apart from you and deserve respect apart from you. The point of parenting isn't to have a smaller version of yourself, it is to cultivate an individual who has their own self-agency and own right to self-determination. Of course, in this process, that person will no doubt emulate many parts of you...but that process will be natural. It should not be the focus of your parenting and it shouldn't be forced.

Once a parent realizes this, then a lot of these things that keep them up at night won't turn out to be as terrible as they seem, mobiles, drugs, bad boyfriends/girlfriends, art school, you name it. Sure, you want to take care of your child, make sure they sleep, eat, get a great education, and may be not do too many drugs. But the person I was replying to was fretting that, god forbid, a child be more distracted by a phone like x or y person they know was distracted by games, and not become z person they should be. It's so ironic, because so many distractions have existed for decades, but you've turned out fine. Why not let your child discover for themselves what turns them on, despite the distractions and all? Why do you know who they should be? (hint: it might have a lot to do with who you should be (or are), not what the kid should be).

The entire thing about play is that it is play and adults aren't there to supervise. Parents need to learn their place and let kids fail a little and get hurt a little bit. It's part of growing up. And for the parents, understanding this will hopefully get them to realize you won't "fix yourself" by "fixing" your kids instead of looking inward.