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A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

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Re: A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

#61

Post by alanbernstein »

weliketocode wrote: post #59

This underscores why I'm almost inherently biased against most regulations. In a lot (not saying all) of cases, we figure out what's bad for us and make decisions to help solve it. Social, legal, and economic issues in our society often appear to work themselves out when left to their own devices. Yet, so many have the opposite gut reaction: Teens using too much social media? Regulate the industry! Tax them! Take awa…

I understand your general point, but I have never heard of a suggestion to regulate teenage phone use. Have you ever heard someone actually suggest this?

Re: A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

#62

Post by maze-le »

stef25 wrote: post #26
vinceguidry wrote: post #4

It's important for people to remember that humans are still intelligent creatures that are capable of recognizing, eventually, what's good for them and what isn't. How many of you guys remember the 70s and 80s, when TV and video games were supposed to turn us all into zombies? What happened? We eventually learned how to see these things as the tools that they are. Humans get fascinated by the new and shiny. This fasc…

You could probably make a better case for social media being much worse for your own mental health than video games. Everything's about instant gratification, creating and maintaining persona for the outside world to see and then hoping for approval thereof from your peers. The video game world is disconnected from reality, involves long story lines, planning, strategy, skills that you can learn. Maybe I'm wrong. If…

>> Everything's about instant gratification, creating and maintaining persona for the outside world to see

There are quite some of video games, where exactly this is the encouraged behaviour. Just think about the controversy over loot boxes or mmorpgs.

Re: A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

#63

Post by burkaman »

weliketocode wrote: post #59

This underscores why I'm almost inherently biased against most regulations. In a lot (not saying all) of cases, we figure out what's bad for us and make decisions to help solve it. Social, legal, and economic issues in our society often appear to work themselves out when left to their own devices. Yet, so many have the opposite gut reaction: Teens using too much social media? Regulate the industry! Tax them! Take awa…

I genuinely don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest teenage phone use should be regulated. Generally regulations are suggested when bad actors are blatantly unwilling or unable to regulate themselves.

Re: A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

#64

Post by slx26 »

burkaman wrote: post #63
weliketocode wrote: post #59

This underscores why I'm almost inherently biased against most regulations. In a lot (not saying all) of cases, we figure out what's bad for us and make decisions to help solve it. Social, legal, and economic issues in our society often appear to work themselves out when left to their own devices. Yet, so many have the opposite gut reaction: Teens using too much social media? Regulate the industry! Tax them! Take awa…

I genuinely don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest teenage phone use should be regulated. Generally regulations are suggested when bad actors are blatantly unwilling or unable to regulate themselves.

Yeah, I believe that the key point here is that regulations should prevent "harm" to others, not "self-harm". And as far as I know, that's how it goes most of the time.

Re: A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

#65

Post by canadianwriter »

afarrell wrote: post #36
coffeeandjunk wrote: post #20

A majority, 54% of teens, said they spend too much time on their phone, and nearly that many – 52% – said they are trying to limit their phone use in various ways. Knowing is one thing and actually getting rid of it is a completely different ball game. There's a gulf between the planner and the doer. The far-sighted "planner" in us knows that social media/Netflix/cigarettes are bad for us. When you conduct a survey,…

The best way to approach this is to start by mechanically removing the possibility of doing the thing you wish to avoid. In the cases you mention: - An alarm clock without a snooze button: https://www.amazon.com/Travelwey-Clock-Outlet-Powered-Operat... - An app that you can use to block facebook and other sites from your phone: https://freedom.to/ There are people who claim that this sort of thing is 'a crutch'. Thes…

I use "Space" which is a fantastic app that shows you how often you use apps and the like. You can set limits where it asks you if you are sure you want to use your phone. It also suggests taking a break from your phone at set times. https://findyourphonelifebalance.com/

Re: A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

#66

Post by stan_rogers »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #15
mc32 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were not detractors of books usually unlearned people; people who didn't base their opinions on studies of the effects, but rather based on their feels? On the other hand studies can be flawed and can be purposefully biased, so we have to watch for that. But if we have credible studies indicating harm from all the ways content producers and other want to retain eyeballs, then that's different, I think.

Usually, perhaps, but learned people had their objections to reading & writing as well. This one’s pretty well known, although couched in a few layers of rhetoric that mean it’s usually presented without context (and misattributed to Socrates). In Phaedrus , written by Plato around 370 BC, the character of Socrates tells how when the Egyptian god Theuth gave the gift of writing to King Thamus, Thamus replied: “…this…

Dude did have a point. Moving a large part of our memories outside of our skulls did change things quite a bit, just as leveraging the indexing and retrieval capabilities of computers (and systems of computers) has done more recently. We remember different things, and the way in which we remember those things is also different.

It's not that we've lost the abilities of our ancestors; it's more that we've gotten out of the habit of using them. How many hundreds of songs do you have stored in your head? Imagine living in a world where your "textbooks" and "user manuals" are written to have similar rhyme, alliteration and rhythm, and are only passed orally. People did live in that world (many still do), and when that world ends, and none of the kids today can recite, for instance, Inside Macintosh - they have to use some sort of grimoire or codex instead - it's easy to see that as a loss. It's harder to see it as a lever.

Re: A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

#67

Post by ddingus »

rayalez wrote: post #27
ddingus wrote: post #2

I found it notable the "Ready Player One" movie, featured the group decision to close "The Oasis" on Tuesdays and Thursdays. -->Because reality is real.

That was the most annoying part of the movie for me. The whole movie(and a book) was about using this amazing virtual world as the only escape from the shitty horrible reality. It wasn't just entertainment - people go to school there, people have friends there, for many it's the only source of happiness. And that's what it was for the protagonist, he understands this better than anyone. But the moment he becomes a bi…

Great take! Yeah, that would be a very common sentiment.

Just the idea of the escape not really being one when the real suck so hard is all I was getting at. Two, odd day closures would prove to be no salve.

The link up thread, on "the culture" is new to me. Great read, and thought provoking. Worth the effort of this brief chat for sure.

Re: A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

#68

Post by ddingus »

XorNot wrote: post #33
rayalez wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the most annoying part of the movie for me. The whole movie(and a book) was about using this amazing virtual world as the only escape from the shitty horrible reality. It wasn't just entertainment - people go to school there, people have friends there, for many it's the only source of happiness. And that's what it was for the protagonist, he understands this better than anyone. But the moment he becomes a bi…

Iain M. Banks had a much more nuanced take on this in A Few Notes on the Culture [ http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm ] (free to read online), where his general point was that things like the Culture's drug glands should be taken as contraindicators by the government that they're messing up in reality and need to do better. Ready Player One's problem as a movie/book is really that its not interested in…

It would, and that work you linked is new to me.

Thanks. Great, thought provoking read.

Re: A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

#70

Post by ddingus »

saiya-jin wrote: post #34
rayalez wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the most annoying part of the movie for me. The whole movie(and a book) was about using this amazing virtual world as the only escape from the shitty horrible reality. It wasn't just entertainment - people go to school there, people have friends there, for many it's the only source of happiness. And that's what it was for the protagonist, he understands this better than anyone. But the moment he becomes a bi…

Haven't read the book, but the movie was disappointing for me, even as a Spielberg and overall shallow popcorn fun lover. It felt like a typical family movie which is for everybody who doesn't look for any cinematic quality, cheap moral statements forcefully inserted here & there. Maybe I was not in a mood for it back then and should re-watch it, but the story really felt cheap and characters shallow.

It is.

I consider it a quick romp, and a bit forward looking, in terms of what rip, mix, burn sourced from more recent culture might look like.

Definitely need the right mood.

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