431–440 of 467 posts
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Is it, though? How many jobs will there be 10-20 years down the road where the main requirement is to be able to sit still for 8 hrs, ask before you go pee, and do as you're told? How many of these jobs will be automated instead? Or, differently, is that the kind of job you would want your kids to have?
All the bad jobs will be like this with ai monitors
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I'm sorry, I fail to see how providing a counter-example to someone pooh-poohing phone use by children is now analogous to advocating for productive cocaine use. It seem unproductive to deal with bizarre flights of fancy on the part of HN commenters, so I'll get back to my phone or something else productive now.
I explicitly added the disclaimer to preempt your attempt to ignore my question, which you did anyway. Fantastic. You know exactly what I was trying to say. ONE counter example to a statistic doesn't invalidate the statistic and you were trying to say that just because very very very rarely someone makes productive use of their phone (one out of millions), that therefore there's no problem with how people use phones.…
This thread exists on a post where someone laments that their child, upon turning 10, stopped making arts and crafts, and started maintaining social media accounts and spending a lot of time on her phone.
This thread itself started with someone pushing back against the assumptions in that article, pointing out that many of us of a certain age dealt with what sound like similar argument, spending all of our time on a newfangled computer, indoors, when "normal" kids were outside doing outside things. Or in this particular case, spending time on the computer instead of studying. I relate to this, because while my parent were more supportive, I too spent my childhood on a series of entry-level computers: a Timex Sinclair TS-1000, a Commodore VIC-20, and so on.
That comment, and therefore this thread, specifically says, "who am I to say that Minecraft, Youtube, or some variant of it won't be the future operating system of society." So true!
Then another user, seemingly not able to understand how computers seemed like an incredible dead-end waste of time in the early 1980s, suggests that phones are completely different, because "your interests in computing would lead to job opportunities."
That's the context in which I posted. Remembering that what seemed like a completely dead-end waste of time turned out to be one of the best careers in the world, and seeing how dismissive the most recent comment was.
So I tried to give an example, just one example, to show how the parent commenter's assumptions resulted in an unfair blanket statement. On a thread about a little girl who doesn't color now that she found Instagram. Within the context of "lead[ing] to job opportunities."
Does that make sense now? Obviously most people aren't going to derive their primary income from streaming in the future. I never made that claim.
It turns out 99.9% of people who color and make string art and fashion paper clothes for dolls also don't end up making a career out of that when they're adults. In fact, given a 10-year-old child, perhaps job opportunities shouldn't even be the primary concern.
So your most recent comment says I ignored your question, which is weird, because I didn't actually see a question mark:
You're taking one example and generalizing it. I'm sure someone did something productive with cocaine once too, but that's not generally its outcome. (just a random example that occurs to me, I do not agree with the "War on some drugs" btw it was just an example)
I still don't see what sort of question you were trying to ask there, or I'd try to answer it.
Now you're mentioning statistics, which is interesting to me. What exactly is the statistic on what's going to happen 15 years from now when this 10-year-old kid is entering the work force? How are these future statistics derived, anyway? Man, what I would have given for such a thing back when I was ten!
Given how people are, I'm guessing my attempt to remind you of the context in which these comments exist will fail. But hey, my parents insisted I spend time as a youngster writing, so it's good practice.
TL;DR: You don't know what the future holds for the current generation of young kids using phones, and neither do I. But the present hold many surprises for those in the past who never could have predicted that I would end up making a nice living with those weird computer things, or that people could possibly ever earning a living making YouTube videos or playing video games on twitch or doing whatever an instagram influencer does, and there are probably many, many, many more people involved in video editing and production today than one might have expected 15 or 20 years ago.
That's all. Don't be so quick to assume that smartphones--or any other technology--are 100% bad. That's it. That's the only thing I was saying.
P.S. Personally, I don't think the kid's problem is the phone, but the social media. TikTok and Instagram are a poison to humanity.
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> How is it so obviously not heroin Its quite obviously literally not-heroin. If you want to make an argument that it should be treated like heroin because it is in some relevant sense more like heroin or other things that it is broadly accepted should be treated like heroin than it is like other things that it is broadly accepted should not be treated like heroin then...some evidence besides simply stating your beli…
The point you're making may be that it is akin to "drugs" but not all drugs are like heroin and what you are describing is nothing like heroin cravings and withdrawal. Why not go with something that invokes less emotions in the reader like "caffeine" or "nicotine"? Because the itch to check on a notification or scroll through the news feed is surely closer to the itch for a cigarette or your vaporizer than... heroin.…
That's my point. Maybe not heroin; maybe cocaine? Personality changes, treasure wasted pursing new highs, panic and hysteria when its denied...
When my parents had a say in my technology usage (amount of time spent in front of a screen, turning off the router at midnight, etc), I would want to find ways around it, such as jumping onto a neighbors hotspot, or saving up and secretly buying myself a second phone so they couldn't take it away. Sometimes I could get away with pulling an all-nighter on my phone.
Before I got into technology, it was books. I read for hours every day, and my parents complained that while reading was good, I was doing it in excess.
Once these limits relaxed, so did my desire to exceed them. Now I've moved out and live on my own, I find myself wanting to spend far less time on the computer.
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> thousands of engineers observing realtime metrics to make small tweaks to make you use something just a little bit longer. As one of the thousands of engineers dedicated to making you use your consumer electronics a little bit more: it's really easy to defeat my work. You make a conscious decision not to use the product, you catch yourself using it, you stop. Do it for about a month and you've broken the habit. Tha…
Here is a little exercise: imagine yourself being a drug dealer, and read your own comment out loud. It rings perfectly, and it is no coincidence, proportions aside. You cannot absolve yourself from responsibility just because your target audience 'had a choice'.
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In your YouTube example there are are few people that have responsibilities: - teacher - video maker - YouTube Devs - companies - "kids" - individual - school - etc YouTube (the drug) is just a series of instructions that make a slab of glass light up in a certain pattern and a speaker to oscillate in a particular fashion (depending on hardware). It's an inanimate f----- object. It doesn't have "responsibilities". Th…
A key difference is that YouTube/companies in part work to increase 'engagement' (which in turn encourages overuse, and encompasses the courting of addictive behaviors) even when it reduces utility. The other parties want to maximise utility.
In your schoolwork example I can come up with four potential solutions off the top of my head:
- Speak to the teacher about concerns and ask about other ways of doing what is required
- Speak to parents and ask them to help with the homework
- Buddy up with a friend and watch the required video with a friend to avoid falling down a rabbit hole
- Use software like youtube-dl to download the video locally, to avoid temptation of watching another video
Then we come back full circle to the parent comment. It's not the drug's fault. It's not the phone's fault. It's not some software instruction's fault.
Blaming and ascribing fault is only helpful in identifying the problem. After that, the question becomes what can I do about it that will helpful for me today? What is my solution for how this affects me?
i.e. learning to develop personal responsibility.
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This resonates with me because when I was a kid I really enjoyed video games and I would program them into my cheap, rudimentary computer. I even sold some games I made on cassette tapes. My parents were really distressed that I was wasting my time. But-- surprise-- I had/ have a long and successful career making video games. Now I am a parent and I tend to let my kids play a lot of game on their computer. But it is…
> I tell them it is important to create media as well as consume media. I agree with you, this is something that I seem to believe deeply. But why is it important? Do they ask you that? What do you/would you tell them?
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This resonates with me because when I was a kid I really enjoyed video games and I would program them into my cheap, rudimentary computer. I even sold some games I made on cassette tapes. My parents were really distressed that I was wasting my time. But-- surprise-- I had/ have a long and successful career making video games. Now I am a parent and I tend to let my kids play a lot of game on their computer. But it is…
TikTok is all about creating media as well as consuming media though.
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Blanket statements are easy but reality is much more complex. iSH, code learning apps, Codecademy via the iPad browser, iBooks, Library Genesis for getting any book in existence for free, Duolingo, cloud coding. I could go on... There's many, many ways of learning through these devices.
> There's many, many ways of learning through these devices. You can artificially lock down the device and expose only such things, but default mode is YouTube and Roblox type stuff.
Not sure what your point is here.
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I have to study for certifications and generally expand my technical knowledge outside of work. It's not constant, but my quarterly objectives aren't achievable without "homework." Everyone is different though. Some people have lower stress jobs where they work for a single company and have plenty of time to learn new stuff on the job (or never really need to acquire new skills). But I work in consulting, so acquirin…
I don't think its fair to call non-billable hours "homework". Having non-billable hours is part of running your own business. If you own your own business, you can do your nonbillable hours at any time in the day, including not in normal working hours, but you can also do your billable hours at any time of the day.
I'm also not the owner or anything of the sort; I'm a mid-level IC with no direct reports.