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

I think that the touch interface of smart Phones causes a dopamine reward in the brain. So when you get a push message or likes the touching of the screen reinforces dopamine.

Observering smart phone zombies, people walking around addicted to their smart phones not aware of their local immediate surroundings.

Social media is cashing in on the most valuable assets you have friends and family selling gained information as advertising. Thus we are addicted to selling information about ourselves. We are addicted to the dopamine reward of getting likes on social media.

New Years resolution try and use cell phones less as they are addictive. So far going so so.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and other industry insiders probably known about the addiction. That is why their children are not given cell phones.

Cell phone interruptions probably are a cause of shorter attention spans. Short attention span are not good when solving mental problems. People are taking ADHD attention like Ritalin,Adderol deficit order medicines to cope with short attention caused by smart phones.

Instead of being with local friends and family we are on our cellphones. Instead of watching movies together we watch personal streams on Netflix.

Cell phones are addictive.

> 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.

But that's the thing, they weren't. I can't find that upstream in this thread. But I'm happy to hold that position.

> It's so ironic, because so many distractions have existed for decades, but you've turned out fine.

I'm not convinced that many people actually did. Right now, it's getting more and more absurd, more and more shallow and violent, and climate and pollution nobody really feels responsible for. The branch we evolved on is being cut off, and we suffer from bystander paralysis. But we're fine because we can actually sleep well in this pathological mess? How sure are we that the people who act out in silly or destructive ways are not more sane still than those who don't even do that? Personally I'm not sure at all.

> Why not let your child discover for themselves what turns them on, despite the distractions and all?

Because they're not by themselves, we're not talking about kids finding mobile devices in the woods. It's kinda saying let the kid deal with the onslaught of machines and algorithms made by all adults except their actual parents, as if the whole world only wants their best, while the parents just selfishly want to have a second chance at their regrets and so on.

I super duper disagree. I don't disagree with your point in a vacuum (Franz Kafka expressed similar thoughts in letters to Elli Hermann), but in this context I do. Like when someone says "too much sugar is harmful" and someone else talks about how we shouldn't expect others to conform to our ideals of beauty. Yeah, it's technically correct, but in context it smells, because it's not addressing the actual point made in the least, and is making assumptions about people you don't know the first thing about.

If a kid gets hooked to ElsaGate videos ( https://i.imgur.com/AlTHFn5.jpg ), who am I to say they're wrong? Someone paying attention. If 99.99% of the people on the planet said "it's fine" that wouldn't make it fine, it would put 99.99% of the people on the planet my personal trash heap. When I was a child, I didn't hold back with my opinion, so why would I do that as an adult? I haven't even found ONE serious adult who can actually take in ElsaGate (the linked image is a joke, a tiny crop of a still frame of a trailer, but even that's too much already). And that's just a derpy bumbling first step, this shit will evolve and iterate. But oh yeah, let's mock "think of the kids". This is cavemen playing with nuclear bombs, bragging.

There's being hurt a little bit, and there's being swallowed whole, and the thing about getting swallowed whole is that you don't live to get hurt a little bit another day.

>While they may not have formulated a valid argument, I think there is a valid argument to be made, so I will try.

Excellent.

Television was a broadcast medium, its increasingly becoming an on-demand medium with streaming services. You make valid points about it being less interactive, but by the same token, the interruption driven forced marketing/forced viewing of content X (advertisements) in order to consume content Y is a staple of the entire advertising industry. Targeting advertisements based on demographics, location and other admittedly wider and less specific metrics happens in television, even in print media. The difference with smartphones is the metrics are more specific, as is the ability to target individuals rather than groups.

But that difference doesn't hold up to laptops. The entire argument about mobility, reward based gaming (see DLC and online gaming, as well as the huge number of people that play basic games on facebook not using mobile), feedback loops, highly specific metrics and targeted advertising exists there, as well as on tablets, yet were sitting here trying to blame smartphones as the issue.

Personally, I have office on my phone, as well as google docs, regularly edit/collaborate on documentation, and have even used a keyboard and mouse with my smartphone to connect to work through vpn's and do sysadmin and scripting work. Admittedly I'm the minority there, but a large number of laptops and desktops are dedicated gaming/fun machines, not everyone is an office/word/programming monkey every time they sit in front of a computer.

My argument is smart phones are NOT the issue, the internet, with its highly specific individual metrics and targeting abilities, applying the same marketing tactics used in print and television media as well as used in interactive tasks, is the issue. Exposure to that through desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones etc... is the problem (scale). To focus on just smartphones ignores that a significant portion of people interact with these same highly targeted, manipulative and distracting applications through multiple devices, I don't know anyone who uses facebook solely on their smartphone, but I know a number of people who only use it on laptops/desktops and refuse to use it on smartphones due to security/privacy/battery life and other reasons.

Variable ratio scheduling and all other methods in question apply to every device you use to access the product using those methods. Smartphones amplify this to a degree by portability/access, but we shouldn't pretend that smartphones themselves are the issue, or the sole source of the issue.

Meh to a certain extent but I'd rather use a giant Wacom on my desktop with all its processing power when using something like Zbrush then to do it over an iPad. Same with music, it's a lot easier to present dense amounts of information when you actually have the real estate to display it.

The article even takes that a notch further: for things that really matter to you, once you find your true calling, you wouldn't even procrastinate in the first place. You get immersed in omnivorous curiosity around it, you get lost. There's no social media/tv/external factors that would distract you from it.