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A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

nytimes.com

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Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#171

Post by watwut »

mikepurvis wrote: post #20
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother tolerated my and my sibling's videogame obsession throughout our youth, but she still largely felt we were wasting our time. I don't think she ever really understood the appeal. Now she's older and retired, and whenever I visit to see what she's doing with her leisure time, she spends most of it on her laptop playing a fish aquarium game or Farmville on Facebook.

That's a fascinating turn-around though— I wonder if she considers what she's doing gaming? Basically, there are a lot of extremely high quality single-player narrative games out there, many of which provide a story/explore difficulty level where it's almost impossible to die. Would she still be prejudiced against those, or now that she understands the appeal in broad terms, would she consider upgrading to games that…

I don't think farmvile translated to interest in narrative game. There is no reason for it to. Whatever appeal of farmvill to her is, it very likely not be found in completely different narrative game.

It is sort of like assuming that someone who likes guitar rock songs would like metal, because both are music.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#172

Post by ConceptJunkie »

wlesieutre wrote: post #144
briandear wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the argument is that his phone is too good and he is sucked in? So a crappier phone is the answer? That’s like saying people drive too much so we should remove the air conditioner and radio. It reminds me of the Colonel Sanders scene in So I Married an Ax Murderer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TPMS6tGOACo

I don't want to go back down to a feature phone, but if you said "I want to bike more places instead of driving my car everywhere" it would be reasonable to not want to buy an $80,000 luxury sedan that you love to zoom around in. Unfortunately Apple has decided that's the only car they're going to make.

Well, it's a good thing there are alternatives to Apple. Their products are grotesquely overpriced anyway.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#173

Post by Balgair »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #21

>Technologists building these products and writers observing the tech revolution were naïve, he said. >"We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand." A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all kn…

> At some point maybe a decade or two it will be a smaller version of the concerns about the tobacco industry.

To be fair, the comparison is applicable, but not the best. I think it's more akin to slot-machines and other forms of gambling, themselves heavily regulated (though maybe not for much longer [0]).

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/14/politics/sports-betting-ncaa-...

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#174

Post by dwighttk »

wlesieutre wrote: post #47
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #21

>Technologists building these products and writers observing the tech revolution were naïve, he said. >"We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand." A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all kn…

I see this playing out right now with Apple's phones, which get continuously bigger and shinier and brighter with every new generation. Then they give us "Screen Time" and Tim Cook talks about giving people the tools to be aware of how much they're using their phones and to make their own decisions about it. If drug companies said "We're discontinuing Advil for your headaches and replacing all painkillers with small…

Perhaps I just don’t have smartphone addiction, but (if I do) there is something different between this “addiction” and others. There are no withdrawal symptoms for me. I feel the compulsion to pick it up and look at it, but if I don’t have my phone, after reaching for it in my pocket and not finding it a few times I just stop. I don’t feel a need to go find a phone or feel rotten because I don’t have one. And these feelings (that I don’t seem to have anyway) don’t get stronger and stronger until I get back to my phone.

I’ve felt withdrawal symptoms for caffeine, and I can only imagine it is worse for stronger drugs. Maybe this addiction is of the same sort but the withdrawal is so slight that I don’t notice?

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#175

Post by 282883392 »

ip26 wrote: post #146
jimejim wrote: post #57

This has always been a form of Luddism. Tech is inevitable. I view tech similarly to how I view sex-ed in 2018: it's been proven that if you do abstinence only education then bad things happen (teen pregnancies, stds, etc...). Your kids are going to grow up to be adults with bad tech habits if you don't start teaching them how to use it responsibly and protect themselves early. Help them find good content. Have days…

This has always been a form of Luddism. Tech is inevitable. it's been proven that if you do abstinence only education then bad things happen How about driving technology? Children receive abstinence-only education on driving until they turn 15 or 16. There's plenty of precedent for young children being unable to safely & responsibly handle certain things. Was it Luddism that I wasn't allowed to operate a table saw wh…

Driving is a much smaller scope than technology. If you restrict the development of technology skills, when you eventually reintroduce technology it will take months or even years to catch up to peers that have been using technology for their entire life.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#176

Post by djsumdog »

ravenstine wrote: post #45
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #21

>Technologists building these products and writers observing the tech revolution were naïve, he said. >"We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand." A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all kn…

I see two problems with how we view addiction: - Everything has a potential of being addictive, but we focus so much on drugs since they have some especially addicting properties that aren't present in other habits. - We're stuck with Enlightenment age thinking such as "tabula rasa" and we attribute too much human behavior to free will, an ill-defined term that nobody whom I ask can provide a comprehensive answer to.

My generation grew up with TV shows like The Transformers that got kids to beg their parents for toys.

McDonalds has marketed to children for the better part of a century (and it has followed many people into adulthood).

The medium has changed, but the practices are the same as Edward Bernays and Anna Freud cooked up so many decades ago (Sigmund was never happy with the way his family members used his psychoanalysis research to sell products, even though they used it to help sell the English version of his book).

There is more of it today, yes. Kids don't want toys, and hence we see Toys-R-Us disappear .. they do want games, and it's pretty important for people in tech to teach kids about how absolutely atrocious in-game purchases are and how you should NEVER participate in that rubbish and discourage everyone else from doing so in the hopes it eventually goes away.

But it won't, because there are always people who don't know, or even with full knowledge, can't help those addictions.

It's a complicated problem, but current phones/tech are just the medium.

But the medium can also be the message.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#177

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

remarkEon wrote: post #7
trynumber9 wrote: post #3

> There is a looming issue Ms. Stecher sees in the future: Her husband, who is 39, loves video games and thinks they can be educational and entertaining. She does not. I'm still peeved so many people hate video games categorically. Age of Empires & Civilization got me into history as a kid and I checked out dozens of books as a result. Plus, the reason I ended up wanting to learn more about computers was to make game…

RTS games in particular were extremely fun for me, and I don't see how playing hours of Starcraft and C&C wasn't an exercise in strategic thinking. I share Ms. Stecher's skepticism, though. Games today are fundamentally different from what they were when we were growing up (I'm guessing we're around the same age if you were big into AoE). Some of my friends have kids now, and the games I see them playing make me crin…

> I don't see how playing hours of Starcraft and C&C wasn't an exercise in strategic thinking.

You're kidding, right? Those RTS, particularly Starcraft, are an exercise in APS more than anything else.

* For non-gamers, APS = actions per second. Being able to issue more commands than your opponent and "micro" (from the word micromanage) your units to tightly control their behavior are a large part of winning Starcraft. It's fascinating to watch high level Starcraft players clicking their mice at an almost inhuman rate.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#179

Post by piyh »

danesparza wrote: post #56
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #21

>Technologists building these products and writers observing the tech revolution were naïve, he said. >"We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand." A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all kn…

"A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all know this." Hell, I'd argue that many 40-50 year old brains clearly don't stand a chance against a trained data scientist.

As a person who wants to move from analyst to data scientist, this makes me aware I should probably take some techno ethics as well as learning stuff like R and analytics

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#180

Post by wlesieutre »

ghostly_s wrote: post #160
wlesieutre wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to keep the useful parts of a smartphone without optimizing the addictive parts. Too much to ask apparently.

What is the evidence for your argument that Apple is "optimizing the addictive parts"? Your argument seems to be entirely based on screen size; is there some study that demonstrates a correlation between screen size and 'addictive' qualities?

It's more the 3rd software companies that are optimizing the addictive parts than Apple, because that's how they make money.

Having the screen be smaller makes those software products suck enough that I don't like using them for extended periods, it's a defense mechanism against hyper optimized advertising engagement apps.

Personally I think that's a feature.

My other problem with Apple that they're only interested in the high end $750+ for their phones. The SE was comparatively a steal at $400, and nothing about the new ones is $250 more impressive. Can't be securely held one handed and adds a big screen that I don't want, so I'm not excited about paying more for it.

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