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I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

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Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#151

Post by Thorentis »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #65
reader_x wrote: post #20

My 14yo daughter came home from binging 80s movies with friends and wistfully told me, “I wish I’d grown up in the 80s.” I said, “Why??” She said, “Because everything was a lot like it is now, but no smartphones.”

And I'm seriously hoping you corrected her romantic view of the past. Sure, the movies make it seem simple, but... you know, AIDS. It sucked even more if you were queer. "Crack babies" that weren't (that was just poverty we were seeing). Regan starved people with the 'welfare queen' stuff. Misogyny was so much more open. It wasn't the same. It wasn't better. It was different.

It's possible to long for one aspect of the past, without actually wanting to live in the past. If my kid decides that society is better without smartphones, I'm going to be quite proud, and saying "yeah but AIDS" will be the last thing on my mind.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#152

Post by ltbarcly3 »

em-bee wrote: post #138
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #104

This is less like being vegan and exactly like being Amish. The Amish, unlike what is usually believed, don't reject technology. They are very careful in adopting technology and seek to be deliberate about what technology to allow in their day to day life. I think this deliberateness unavoidably leads to being a Luddite. The dominant force in human history is the continual development of new technology and it's integ…

what kind of freeloading does rejecting a mobile phone lead to? sure it restricts me from doing certain things at certain times, but it does not increase my dependence on others compared to having a mobile phone. please elaborate.

It is freeloading on any general improvements in wealth that society gains due to anything the almost ubiquitous usage of cell phones makes more efficient.

Lets make a specific example: lets say in 2028, 98% of pizzas are ordered via clicking on a phone app. Over at the pizza place, nobody is on the phone full time, just to punch phone orders into the computer system. As a result, pizza places run with 1 less full time person every shift. Pizzas are cheaper to make, competition leads to pizzas being slightly cheaper than they otherwise would have been. Even though you still phone in to the pizza place to make your order, you get the lower price. This is freeloading, since you didn't participate in any of activities that led to the lower price. (yes I realize you could have used a computer but this is just meant to show an example of how widespread phone use can lead to benefits for everyone, even non phone users)

Lets say that everyone is .1% more efficient at picking up their kids from places kids need to be picked up at because they can just navigate to their GPS coordinates every time. Less idling and less driving around looking for them means less energy consumption, and less wear and tear on vehicles. This reduces demand for energy in several ways, which means lower energy costs for you, even though you continue to drive around parking lots trying to figure out where your kids are and why they aren't where you agreed ahead of time, or idling for AC and waiting for them to walk to where you agreed from the far side of the mall.

There are a lot of ways that having a communication/data link to the world allows for new more efficient ways of doing things, and probably these will continue to compound, and taking the benefits (various efficiency improvements) without the costs (suffering downsides of having a smartphone) is the definition of freeloading.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#153

Post by lrvick »

em-bee wrote: post #136
lrvick wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Silicon Valley where I am, everyone tells me it is impossible to live without one here too but that is just not true. I check matrix messages and emails and keep up with people and make plans to meet them when I am in my office, or in a stable location on a laptop. When I am on in the car, taking a walk, at dinner with my family... I don't need to be reachable at that moment. Society teaches you you need to be rea…

I check matrix messages and emails and keep up with people and make plans to meet them when I am in my office, or in a stable location on a laptop. that only works because you have alternative ways to communicate with those people. those alternatives are not available here. also as a foreigner i am also expected to do as the locals do, so my argument to use something else holds no sway whatsoever. The world will get…

The vast majority of people I interact with only communicate with Facebook products. That has not stopped me from individually stating my ethical stance every single time it comes up, which has resulted in many moving to matrix so they can reach me.

If you are fine with surveillance capitalism, then that is your choice, but if you have ethical problems with it, then you owe it to yourself to avoid living a lifestyle you find unethical. You absolutely have a choice to do something about it. No one physically forces you to hit "yes" on the Facebook license agreement.

Personally, when I find someone that has ethical convincing I don't share, like a vegan, I at least take the time to understand their view, and ensure I don't create situations where they can't live their convictions. I respect people with conviction so long as it does not harm others. Maybe in order to be friends with a vegan I don't eat at BBQ restaurants as often, and they in turn use Matrix or email to communicate with me.

Humans are often very accommodating of ethical preferences if you have the conviction to share them.

Personally if I somehow found myself in a country where literally everyone refused to interact with me unless I accepted the Facebook terms of service, I would suspect I am in a cult and GTFO at almost all costs.

If that is indeed the situation you are stuck in, I hope you find a way out of it.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#154

Post by Thorentis »

The easiest way to achieve something like this, is to embed yourself within a community of like minded people. If you don't give your kid a smartphone, but you send them to a school where everybody has smartphones, you're just setting them up to be an outcast. You need to find a school with parents who are like minded. That way, they will make friends with people who do not have smartphones, etc. Most capital cities in Western countries have at least one such school, but they may be difficult to find.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#155

Post by littlecranky67 »

teekert wrote: post #96
littlecranky67 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Smartphone/Attention economy is made to be addictive. In my opinion and observation, many adults, myself included, are overusing smartphones/social media, often mindlessly scrolling through stuff to "kill time", losing focus on more important tasks. I'm just saying this stuff is dangerous even to adults, and it takes quite some discipline to manage. That is why I am unsure that "education" in that…

I agree with you, I do more useless things with my phone than I'd want. But is limiting the solution? When they become adults, they can do what they want, what would be the best way to teach them healthy habits? I'm not convinced keeping the kids away from phones as long as possible it THE solution (maybe part of it?) We keep them away from heroine, from alcohol to a degree (although for me that started at 14-15). Ma…

I don't have kids, but I think limiting would be a good thing, or at least limit Whatsapp/Fortnite whatever and promote learning apps (and nothing with dark/addictive patterns). I think it is very important as a child to learn the benefits of long-term gratification vs. short-term. I.e. learn an instrument, language, sport, master any skill etc. takes time and dedication and will only pay off later in life. Smartphones often only chase instant/short-term gratification. Adults like us had their fair share of learning in our younger years (school, maybe uni or job training) and smartphones or the social media were invented later.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#156

Post by bsenftner »

Thorentis wrote: post #154

The easiest way to achieve something like this, is to embed yourself within a community of like minded people. If you don't give your kid a smartphone, but you send them to a school where everybody has smartphones, you're just setting them up to be an outcast. You need to find a school with parents who are like minded. That way, they will make friends with people who do not have smartphones, etc. Most capital cities…

I don't have kids myself, but every child I've met from a Waldorf School has been a captivating budding intelligence https://www.waldorfeducation.org/ They teach from a creativity standpoint, without technology. I'm a bad advocate, but every interaction with a Waldorf student sticks in my mind as "that kid's going somewhere".

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#157

Post by erybodyknows »

hans1729 wrote: post #47
mathieuh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think children will be more successful at outwitting nefarious companies' behavioural scientists than adults are? It is widely acknowledged that companies are successfully applying methods of grabbing and retaining our attention in order to sell us things, so I'm a bit cynical that children, already not renowned for impulse control, will be any better than adults in ignoring that.

The earlier they make their experiences, the earlier they can develop a mature response to abusive stimuli - if taught about the nature of those stimuli . I'm not advocating for giving developing brains blind access to predatory products. I'm advocating to teach them a healthy-as-possible relation with them. And the reasons adults suck at this is just that: because we were never taught to deal with it, because our sc…

Addiction has very little to do with knowledge (or lack thereof), and everything to do with feelings/emotions and their management.

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#158

Post by that_guy_iain »

em-bee wrote: post #112
that_guy_iain wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't need to prove his anecdote but prove that big tech is bad. The whole "I got recommended something that was actually related to me so I'm avoid big tech for the safety of my children" implies that him being recommended something that was actually related to him was dangerous. This is almost the same as "I was talking to someone about wanting to buy a gaming PC then I saw ads for gaming PC. They must be list…

i think the point was that it is scary to know that you are getting stuff recommended based on location. that means that you can assume that more recommendations are from nearby which implicitly reveals the location of the people in the videos. having my kids be seen 100 random viewers world wide is one thing, having the same video shared with all my neighbors is quite another.

So your neighbours can see your kid in Person but seeing a video of them is off? You don't want a friendly neighbourly vibe

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#159

Post by BlueTemplar »

lynguist wrote: post #25

During the Facebook hearing, they said that its internal data shows that Facebook is most harmful for 14 year old girls. I believe that if you can somehow shield your daughter of that age from social media, she will be fine. I had a no display rule for our toddler but during my absence, her mother introduced her to the iPad, and now she watches YouTube on it whenever I’m not around. I know that the American Pediatric…

The issue here is that teenagers are also the most likely to rebel and ignore your orders / circumvent your "shielding" attempts, and also be already capable enough that you're going to lose most of the time.

I'm not sure what the best solution is

- giving regular (but not too frequent) and detailed real life examples of things that went horribly wrong with other teenagers, combined with total freedom (in this domain)

- or reverse psychology combined with a heavy handed approach where they're going to quickly learn how to fool you and also how to hack your countermeasures, which would supercharge their learning ? (With the risk of a decade+ of bad relations...)

Re: I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

#160

Post by watwut »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #129
lelanthran wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I spent most of my childhood straight-edge and was thus cast out by peers for not joining them in their nonstop sex, alcohol, and drug addictions, and not being interested in sports. That's a false dichotomy - you posit that those things are the only alternatives, which is incorrect. I never did non-stop sex, drugs and alcohol (and ignored sports) in school, and yet I was part of a number of different social groupi…

> [...] and yet I was part of a number of different social groupings in school. While I share your objection on GP commenter's false dichotomy (though honesty who knows, maybe their high school was a real life enactment of Skins !) and their apparently judgemental attitude towards their peers, let's not forget that they also said they connected with: >> The computer nerds, the anime nerds, the hobbyists, the actors,…

That the parent poster created hateful caricature in his head about how majority of peers is strong argument against making your kids go through the same. Majority of kids are in neither of those groups, as you said. And also, you can be the hobbyists, the actors, the musicians, the magicians, the artists and be on good terms with other average kid - both inside and outside of your hobby. You don't have have to be outcast to like anime or make music.

But, the way OP socialized created false dichotomy in his head. He assumes all the kids not in his direct cycle are "non-stop sex, drugs and alcohol" kids. I mean, maybe he grew in some kind of hellhole being only one who did not ended up in jail. But even then, unless you are living in the same hellhole, you dont have to treat your kids the same.

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