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Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#371

Post by lazide »

taeric wrote: post #160
lazide wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re confusing things a bit. Of course someone will be more successful at doing thing x if they are scheduled to do thing x. That is good for planning/preparing for the future. Being scheduled to the gills means that the ‘now’ is constantly filled with planning/preparing/doing things for the future though. And with no time for the present or for being able to think/daydream.

I'm not confusing it. I'm questioning if people are really more scheduled today. Especially as we get to middle and high school. Many of us had jobs back then. Isn't uncommon for many small businesses to have a lot of help they use their children for. Not even going back to farms. Though, hard not to see all of the chores that many of those would have around the place as scheduled. Edit: Tried to stealth fix, but I d…

Ah! I’m not sure if I saw your post before the edit or not. To respond to what you’re saying..

I’m not 100% sure what is real and what is selection bias. What is due to class shifts, increased income earning, etc. too. This seems like something that should have studies around it with actual data, but I couldn’t find it directly with a quick search.

All I’ve personally experienced is seeing parents (and myself) struggle to get kids into various activities due to the huge demands on our own time/mental energy, and trying to figure out how to get a good outcome for the kids from it. All of these folks I know were either from low middle and now high middle, or high middle and still high middle class backgrounds.

Upper class type folks already had a set of things they ‘did’, and while there was competition, it looked different.

I found [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6720124/] which is quite interesting, but that also seems to be oriented around ‘what do various types of extracurricular activities/after school social interactions actually produce’.

Which is very interesting, and goes more to the outcome as compared to changes over time.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#372

Post by c22 »

uoaei wrote: post #311
SomewhatLikely wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My young kids would be totally unaware if they were bumping into others, or causing them to stop abruptly, or otherwise interfering with others. Of course if those strangers yelled at them or provided some less harsh form of feedback it might register with them, but I find most people don't say anything so it's on me to let my kids know the effects they're behavior is having.

Sure, it's important to give them feedback. That's a different thing from merely thinking for them, however. A (brief) conversation about the effects they may have on others and the feelings they expect others to have would go a long way toward engendering more pro-social considerations.

Perhaps the parent had these discussions with the kids before and 'Control yourselves!' was just a short-hand reminder to exercise some self-control. I wasn't there, so I have no context, but nothing about your story made it sound like the dad was thinking for the kids. (I'd expect that to sound more like 'Stop taking up the wnole sidewalk! Line up single file! Stand still!')

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#373

Post by bowsamic »

mantas wrote: post #368
bowsamic wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes concentration and effort to follow schedule They should aim to become a so-called “mindless office worker” as it offers a very high quality of life, so yes that is a life worth looking forward to. It’s a life our ancestors would sell their daughters for

If your mom drives you around and makes sure you put in some extra time on top… I’m not sure it takes much effort. Especially when stopping those activities is not a choice. Zen monk and prisoner schedules may seem similar, but skills to follow both are very different. I don’t agree that office drone life in rat race is worth looking to anymore. It’s a miserable mix of depression, obesity, long hours away from one’s…

If you think that the average office worker is obese and depressed then that’s a wild projection. Do you know who is much more likely to be obese and depressed? A poor person.

The stuff about AI just makes you sound out of touch with reality. You clearly spend too much time online and it has detached you from real flesh and blood life. Re enter your life

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#374

Post by bowsamic »

mantas wrote: post #369
bowsamic wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can not play if you want but you will be impoverished This enlightened thinking is good for you ego but you do actually have a material body to feed, so you either play the game of life or you die

Game of life and rat race is two different things. And yes, you may call it impoverished. But is it really worth to optimise for material stuff? Settling down with less may pay off a ton in other departments.

It is very much worth it to optimise for material stuff. Why wouldn’t it be? I’ve never had to starve but I think it would be quite horrible, as would be living in very poor accommodation. I would like to optimise this away

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#375

Post by c22 »

mwint wrote: post #346
Waterluvian wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we interrupted it we did have that discussion. “You play it so much and if it breaks there isn’t another one.” It seemed to register. But I think one of these days some sacrificial tech will really teach them this. And I wonder if that will make all the difference for respecting cell phones. I mentor a highschool robotics team and 90% of the kids phones have cracked screens.

Ya know… how crazy would it be to set up a charity-ish thing for buying kids replacement screens for phones? Just the part and tools, mind you. Not labor. They do the labor themselves. It’s really not that hard. (Even in the so-called unrepairable phones! I did an iPhone 12 battery last year. iFixit has those guides down to a science). Might work miracles at showing teens they can fix problems (even those that even t…

Don't underestimate your skillset. I've repaired plenty of phones myself, but I've also been working with small tools and soldering electronics since I was a young child. My father, who is a perfectly capable adult human being with experience using many tools (but not many small detail-oriented tools) tried to fix the screen on his phone after I implied it might be pretty easy and he ended up having to buy a new phone.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#376

Post by Aerbil313 »

duckmysick wrote: post #265
mrguyorama wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't allow your kids to fuck up, they will never build healthy behaviors around fucking up. It's very helpful for kids to give them safe chances to fuck up.

I've been wondering: how do we teach kids about addiction (substances, gambling, phone/internet) and its consequences? Theoretical explanation is not effective. Letting them experience it first hand might be too destructive, because of the nature of the addiction. Can any parent chime in what worked and what didn't?

I'm 18. My parents did not moderate my smartphone usage, they just told me the harms that will result from phone addiction: life spent wastefully, especially in the critical years of middle and high school, bad grades, cognitive decay, vision decay, etc. I wised up and never get addicted to my phone ever, nor have used it for time-wasting distractions like social media. I hate those parents who restrict their kids' phone usage forcefully, they can't learn to use them safely. What happens when they grow up and be introduced to the world of unrestricted phone usage?

Just kidding. I was an addict just like almost all other classmates of mine. I'm currently curing my myopia which is 4+ diopters in one eye thanks to using my iPhone 5 cms away my eyes, laying in bed countless nights. I was ~155 IQ (can't remember because of poor memory), now down to 150. My memory was the best I know among people, I used to never forget anything which I can classify as 'timelessly relevant info', so I would remember everything in a science book I read once three years ago (but not the yesterday's lunch). People would frequently comment about my memory and comprehension. Not so much, I wasn't able to remember things from the textbook the teacher is going to ask in late high school. Now my brain is still foggy, but I'm recovering. I'm very unfit, confirmed by a doctor, again recovering from that. I was in %0.5 in my country's university exam alhamdulillah, and I wonder how would it be if I have ever stopped looking at my phone and actually studied.

After many years, what saved me was that I made some custom software that can block my iPhone all by myself, using the Odyseus' trick [1], using your present self's willpower on your future self[2]. Because my parents refused to put a password for Screen Time and said that good ol' phrase: "Can't you stop yourself? Just stop looking it, it's that easy!"

I firmly believe no one person can fight trillion dollar corporations spending tens of millions of man-hours reverse engineering biological reward circuits in your brain. Everyone I see around me is as addicted as their rest of lives allows them to be, except grandpas who still have those dumb phones. I saw the transformation of my beloved relatives after they got their first smartphone, for the worse. They're not the same person anymore.

My life goal for this world is to put and end to this shit. I'll inshaAllah sell that phone that is restricted, make that Linux distro, browser, applications and all things that restricts you from harming your wellbeing and wasting your life, all while being fully functional for things one really need (think messaging, finance apps, government service websites etc.). Thankfully Transformer models came just in time.

Human brains are not designed nor meant to be able to handle current smartphone technology, the current smartphone technology is designed to exploit human brain for profit.

See the entire catalogue of research at: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/

1: https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Odysseus-and-the-S...

2: https://github.com/aerbil313/timelock

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#377

Post by c22 »

evandale wrote: post #329
IanCal wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"beating into submission" is a phrase that does not mean physically beating. > I never neglected her if that's what you're trying to get at. If you did that to a child it would be neglect, that is the point. Children aren't cats. It is more complex with a child. It's easier when they're a baby, but increasingly more subtle as they get older. Nobody is saying you can't take things away from them or set boundaries, but…

> If you did that to a child it would be neglect, that is the point. Children aren't cats. I would never do that to a child. Even if they had a bowl of food and water and a toilet in the room I wouldn't expect them to be able to take care of themselves. That sounds like something a psychopath would do. Stop straw-manning me, it's incredibly rude, and against the rules. You bring down the discourse of this site when y…

You brought up your anecdote about your cat in a thread about children and child-rearing. It's absurd to accuse people of straw-manning you just for assuming you meant to draw parallels between children and cats.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#378

Post by makeitdouble »

It's weird there is little discussion about having kids play more online to have them discover that space the same way they discover the rest of the world.

We let kids look at cars, poison signs, stairs and elevators and make them understand hos it works and why it's dangerous. Online threats shouldn't be different.

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#379

Post by chiefalchemist »

nathanfig wrote: post #110
chiefalchemist wrote: post #37

Ahhhh. So it's not social media? That said, social media aside, I wouldn't want to be a teen today. Too much fear. Too much gloom & doom. Too much adults preaching "Don't do Y and/or Z (and not offering "do this instead" alternatives). And parents are looked down upon for not overseeing their kid's every move. So yeah, the parents live in fear as well. This level of fear is not healthy. We've removed agency and repla…

One major cause would not subtract another

The point is, the mainstream media narrative has been 95% focused on the social media devil. That's leading to stagnation elsewhere.

It's not only unstructured play, it's physical activity that's needed. But how do you tell a society raised on taking pride in fat & stupid that the bridge they brought is - in the context of history - one of the biggest scams of all time? You don't. You go all in on blaming something secondary like social media (which - fyi - parents could exert more control over).

Re: Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

#380

Post by [deleted] »

Gerard0 wrote: post #252
lolinder wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree based on my own kids, but want to add a caution lest someone misunderstand: this testing, learning, and growing is of a kind that can only be done without adult supervision. It's not something that you can give them with a private lesson. It's not something that can be taught in a classroom. It's not something that can happen at all without adults letting the kids figure it out on their own by…

Of course we told (many times) our 3 yr old son not to put his hand on the stove. And one day he just had to try it and feel what all these stories were about. He started crying immediately. We went to the hospital and came back rather quick. It wasn't so bad, just had to have a bandage for a couple of days. Some weeks later he does it again. On purpuse. !!?? I tell my brother and he answers: "I kind of understand hi…

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