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The kids with phones are alright

heatherburns.tech

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Re: The kids with phones are alright

#261

Post by recursive-call »

whazor wrote: post #166
anon291 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids shouldn't have smartphones until much later, like late teenage years. A flip phone for kids who are out of the house regularly with some contacts is fine. No need to be a Luddite, but what do kids possibly get out of a phone? If I didn't have work and to chauffeur people around, id toss mine too.

I'm not 100% sure yet but I think an iPhone can be configured such that toxic social media apps cannot be used.

it’s incredibly simple. put parental controls on the phone. when i was a kid i couldn’t download any apps without my dad’s approval, and none of the major social medias have a functioning web experience on mobile, they just redirect you to the app store page

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#262

Post by krige »

m000 wrote: post #247
RandomLensman wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is that agreement that it is in total a net negative to society. That said, with bans upcoming or in force in a lot places, what measures should we monitor to see improvements in wellbeing etc. (screen time isn't one there, I'd say)? What do we do if those do not go up noticably?

I agree that the positive effects of Social Media is understated, and probably on purpose. Social Media allowed ordinary people to challenge on a global scale the oficially-sanctioned narrative. A generation has already grown with full distrust on what they learn from traditional media. With that picture, addressing the (undeniable) negative effects of Social Media is only the sales pitch for introducing new legislat…

> Social Media allowed ordinary people to challenge on a global scale the oficially-sanctioned narrative.

Hasn't been true for a while. Now it grants people with money and state actors unprecedented control over what ordinary people are allowed to see and mold them to desired narratives.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#263

Post by achenet »

jhbadger wrote: post #195
worble wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, it's been infuriating reading these social media bans for children, as if when kids suddenly turn 16 or 18 or whatever magical nimber the courts come up with, they are suddenly immune to the psychological tricks from multi million dollar companies hiring the best psychologists with no morals money can buy. Social media needs to be heavily regulated to the point where it's safe for everyone, or banned entir…

For starters, what's "social media"? It's kind of a undefinable phrase. Obviously Facebook and Instagram are agreed to be "social media".But is Youtube social media? How about HN? Or any website with a comment section?

I'd argue that generally speaking, the problematic social media tend to be ad-supported websites that focus on user-generated content.

so Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit are all social-media, because all are ad-supported, and all are focused on user-generated content. HN is focused on user-generated content, but not ad-supported (okay, technically HN is 'advertising for YC', but in practice, the site isn't optimized to get you doom-scrolling so you click on more ads), and a website with a comment section, if it's like a blog or something where the majority of the content is generated by the website owner, isn't focused on user-generated content.

The combination of user-generated content + advertising, however, seems to create websites that will try to get their users addicted to the site, which can harm the lives of their users.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#264

Post by ruszki »

bko wrote: post #225
ruszki wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, the fact that these large platforms can block you and they block you randomly (which is the case of Reddit for me, because I dared to use privacy protecting extensions when I commented on a subreddit to which I wasn’t subscribed; Instagram permanently blocked me because I used VPN when I wanted to login) is way larger restriction on my speech than removing these harmful platforms completely. Currently, I’m…

Sure there was basically a cartel in social media. You saw coordinated censorship campaigns to ban the former president of the United States for example. But I wouldn't discount the amount of political interference there as well. The last administration admitted to flagging individual posts for the social media companies. But it's true there is a lot of coordinated censorship even without state interference. But this…

> this tends to resolve itself as there is a market opportunity to create a better product

If the market is fair and leveled. Which is not the case without intervention as we know for hundreds of years at this point. And governments clearly started to no intervene even when their own laws would require it.

> which lifted its restrictions

This is categorically not true. Twitter home page is massively censored and coordinated. And this was quite obvious around Charlie Kirk's death, when normalization of racism was heavily promoted, and without a doubt promoted. Not before that, and after that was so obvious that they touched the algorithm for that (I have a far right racist fake account there to monitor this specifically). Also from Musk's own words, when Grok didn't lie for them. And since controversial topics, like racism, alt-right, etc spreads better, "lifting restrictions" mean exactly to form public opinions towards these. The market is not fair even towards ideas for a long time (and probably it was never true).

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#265

Post by karahime »

alt227 wrote: post #234
karahime wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're not, and yes, it is. I sincerely hope we do not take phones and other computers from future generations. That would be a terrible thing to do to them.

I very much hope we continue to bring our children up outside of a digital world, encouraging them to interact and learn physically before introducing them to digital devices later in life when they can treat them sensibly as a small part of a healthy and full life. Giving addictive and attention stealing tech to children from a young age is like giving drugs to rats, they will continue to hit the feeder bar until th…

Old style rat drug experiments with rats in a barren cage being administered morphine are barely a good behavioral model for rats, let alone people. This is the aforementioned moral panic language. If the point was that solid it wouldn't need to make this multi-step analogy.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#267

Post by inigyou »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #199
aethertron wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are good Shorts. One problem is a flick of the thumb scrolls you down to the next, then the next, and many are crap. The uncertainty about whether you're going to see crap or gold is part of what makes recommendation-based infinite scrolling addictive.

And that uncertainty doesn't apply to watching normal videos? I dunno, if shorts gets unreliable because it ran out of the channels I regularly visit then I just leave.

It doesn't because in the normal video interface you select what to watch next.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#268

Post by nekusar »

achenet wrote: post #263
jhbadger wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters, what's "social media"? It's kind of a undefinable phrase. Obviously Facebook and Instagram are agreed to be "social media".But is Youtube social media? How about HN? Or any website with a comment section?

I'd argue that generally speaking, the problematic social media tend to be ad-supported websites that focus on user-generated content. so Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit are all social-media, because all are ad-supported, and all are focused on user-generated content. HN is focused on user-generated content, but not ad-supported (okay, technically HN is 'advertising for YC', but in practice, the site isn't op…

The problem is capitalist companies using heavily gamified psychology to prey on people.

Mastodon doesn't have this problem.

Pixelfed doesn't have this problem.

Lemmy doesn't have this problem.

Peertube doesn't have this problem.

But "social media laws" would hit all of these as well.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#270

Post by XorNot »

recursive-call wrote: post #259
inigyou wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lucy Connolly was arrested for threatening to kill a thousand people, for example.

I think generally the argument is that these usually aren’t credible threats, they’re hyperbole, and the police are overstepping by arresting people for saying they’ll do something when they have no evidence that that person would actually do that. A free society doesn’t arrest someone for saying “I’m going to burn down so-and-so’s house.” It waits until you actually go to so-and-so’s house with a can of petrol, and…

Sending death threats has never been legal.

The statical lie with the UK numbers is the vast majority of cases are about the use of messaging services in domestic violence cases.

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