261–270 of 1001 posts
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So, why are alcohol (and nicotine) still legal then? Maybe there is a 100 year old lesson hidden somewhere...
And maybe that lesson is hiding in ellipsis or maybe it's not. Who knows...
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Achieving 90% of not is simpler than you think: ban smartphones from schools during school bours. If the parents want the kid to have a phone, then the parents can get a flip phone.
I think we should go even further: ban all phones during school hours. There is absolutely no reason that kids need to have a phone in school. If the parent needs to reach them, then call the school office who can get your kid on the line. There is no emergency so dire that a few minutes' delay in talking to your child will make a meaningful difference.
I commuted one hour from and to middle school and high school, I definitely needed a phone to communicate with my mother when stuff happened (and occasionally happened), such as missing the bus or being late for lunch.
The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…
This is a social problem, not a parental one. When you allow for-profit companies (or anyone) to create addictive products that intermediate the social experience of an entire generation, how is a parent supposed to stand against that?
It's how kids interact and it defines their entire social experience. Disallowing them access is like sending your kids to school and not allowing them to talk to anyone.
We don't allow our kids to have access to alcohol or cigarettes because it's bad for them. How is this any different, when we know it's doing harm at scale?
Because "it's speech"? That doesn't hold up. Pornography is also generally considered protected speech, but no one lobbies for unfettered access for kids.
Beyond that, restricting social media does not infringe on free speech. That assertion is so obviously wrong on so many levels that it feels silly and pedantic to start itemizing them.
The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…
You dont have kids, do you. Seeing them being pushed out of entire school community due to higher principles is heartbreaking to say at least, this is place from which teen suicides come from. Parents usually cave in the pressure. I would go and even claim I would ban all current social media platforms below 18. Ther are simply not enough protections, consistently, its place ripe for abuse and tons abuse is happening…
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> if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them It's really not that simple. The products have become so widespread and influential that they change the very culture of our society for the worse. It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions. There's a…
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I for one deleted all of those platforms and my life is definitely better (I'm way less distracted for once, but the list is longer). What do I care what others do?
I would however imagine you have some relationships of some kind that you care about. Can you imagine your relationships changing if these others you cared about changed their behaviours? Then extend this imaginary possibility to the relationships of these others. It's a network we are in we are not operating entirely alone.
Care of the other is wanting what is good for the other.
Sometimes this care is not forcing the other to change, sometimes it's encouraging them to change to benefit them as it benefited you.
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> if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them It's really not that simple. The products have become so widespread and influential that they change the very culture of our society for the worse. It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions. There's a…
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I for one deleted all of those platforms and my life is definitely better (I'm way less distracted for once, but the list is longer). What do I care what others do?
Because we live in a society?
Would you care if everyone around you was smoking crack, sociopathic or seriously mentally ill?
I feel so bad for teenagers/kids who we essentially screwed over with this tech experience. That said, I don't feel great for the rest of us either! I feel like my phone has become a significant negative in my life. And in general, I'm quite scared because we have put things in place that we know are bad for mental health: 1. Even if we may not like it all the time, there is tons of data that show that personal inter…
The average american adult went from socializing with friends and family 12+ hours a week few decades ago to less than 4.
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> if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them It's really not that simple. The products have become so widespread and influential that they change the very culture of our society for the worse. It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not, some of your friends will still be more or less subtly influenced by its existence in your social interactions. There's a…
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I for one deleted all of those platforms and my life is definitely better (I'm way less distracted for once, but the list is longer). What do I care what others do?
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Hard disagree. It’s algorithmic “engagement maximizing” systems, specifically. (Engagement is code for addiction.) If those pocket PCs had useful and creative apps only and maybe some non-addiction-optimized games they’d be fine. The problem is the apps, not the hardware. With kids the absolute worst seem to be YouTube, TikTok, and Roblox. All three are banned in our house. The kids have their own devices (with monit…
YouTube has a treasure trove of creative, stimulating, enlightening, entertaining, and didactic content. There is more interesting stuff there than you could watch in many lifetimes: science from Veritasium to lectures from Stanford on every topic imaginable, thousands of hours of high-quality content on every topic from WW2 to the most niche retro computer you can thing of, the best orchestras in the world playing a…
Feels to me like attacking the problem from the wrong angle.
The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…
> if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them. Relevant bit from the essay: "But much of my book is about the collective action traps that entire communities of adolescents fall into when they move their social lives onto these platforms, such that it becomes costly to abstain. It is at that point that collective mental health declines most sharply, and the individuals who try to…