The kids with phones are alright • Hacker News Board

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#441

Post by marysol5 » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:10 AM UTC

ColdStream wrote: post #146

mumin00 wrote: post #130

We need limits though and that's the whole point. The effect of doom scrolling on the young brain is something we can't just turn a blind eye to. Add to it bad people trying to hurt the young ones and using them

I joking argue that we should cap computer speed at 486 level's. You can still do office stuff, some graphics and audio but you are not running a doom scrolling setup with that kind of limited hardware. You are barely running Doom! I think smart phones are really cool when they aren't in the attention economy. But high performance but low power draw chips and media accelerators unintentionally allowed for these kind…

I agree, but in that our constant drive for MORE and MORE compute is the real negative.

We've gone back to heavy CPU burning applications rather than nimble and efficient. Not to mention the amount of background processing for tracking.

Even Microsoft was once sued for how much energy they wasted with nonsense.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#442

Post by psd1 » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 10:02 AM UTC

customguy wrote: post #392

psd1 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweetheart, on this showing, you could insult me for twelve rounds and not land a single blow.

Then surely we shall go for thirteen at the least! I wasn't teying to be insulting though, I am just being playfully irreverent.

Well, let's be friends then - I'm somewhat robust. But your calibration is off for good-natured ribbing. Either you skewer someone and they have the self-awareness to acknowledge it in good humour, or you reduce their life experience to a bullet point and not even a correct one.

My bullet point would probably be "champagne socialist" or "trustafarian"; you can tag me as such; the truth is never libel.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#443

Post by philipallstar » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 10:51 AM UTC

marysol5 wrote: post #404

philipallstar wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely true. It's "right wing" because the soft power is with the left (or was until maybe very recently) and so only principled people of the left (e.g. Bill Maher) and all the people of the right (either principled on speech or saying things that are more likely to be censored) are going to be talking about it.

What on earth are you on about, we've had 20+ years of right-wing governments. >and all the people of the right Tell that to the Tory MP who had me arrested for upsetting them, or the UKIP goon's forcibly removed me from their "Free Speech Conference"

> What on earth are you on about, we've had 20+ years of right-wing governments.

The Tories were barely right-wing, and they were in power for 14 years, not 20+, and for the first 4 they were in a coalition with the lib dems.

Look at the immigration numbers in the UK to see how not right-wing they were. Insane to think that's actually right wing.

> or the UKIP goon's forcibly removed me from their "Free Speech Conference"

The UKIP conference removing you is not evidence of general soft power in the UK.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#444

Post by charlieyu1 » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

NoPicklez wrote: post #96

My question to these sorts of articles is, okay so what do we do then? What do we do when we know that social media it not healthy for kids. Its not good for their attention spans or mental health to a much greater degree than other forms of media. Nobody is saying kids shouldn't have phones, but they should be able to use them without being engulfed in social media content that has been shown to have a negative impa…

I grow up with ICQ and Geocities when I was 14 and I'm fine.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#445

Post by ClumsyPilot » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

marysol5 wrote: post #407

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We imprisoned kids for making an offensive video of a burning cardboard xopy of grenfell tower But we gave legal immunity to the corporate executives that forged fire testing certificates and caused the actual fire that killed over 100 people And when I say we have Russia-style corruption no one believes me

>We imprisoned kids for making an offensive video of a burning cardboard xopy of grenfell tower 40 years are not kids bro. and wasn't jailed >The 49-year-old was given a 10-week suspended jail sentence.

> They were arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and taken into custody

He was arrested, jailed, tried and convicted. He was not imprisoned, which I did not say he was. The only thing I misremembered is the age.

The actual criminals that caused death of a hundred people have not been charged with any crime.

Amazing how pointing out obvious corruption is unpopular here. Or do people honestly believe that making video about a crime should be punished more than the crime itself?

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#446

Post by big_paps » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:18 AM UTC

I would say spending everyday hours on your phone especially on social media is way more harmful then being filmed by someone. That aside: This over-the-top behaviour is really damaging. That i sit here in Berlin and can watch how someone in Scottland is called out as a pervert over a minor event is modern lynch mob behaviour, and i am quite sure the intention of the people who spread this is less to protect the kids then just to feel moralic superior.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#447

Post by rpdillon » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 8:52 PM UTC

specproc wrote: post #338

rpdillon wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Section 230 is very important for all website operators. It doesn't just protect big companies. If you repeal it, now you're making every blog owner responsible for whatever some idiot says in the comments section.

As noted elsewhere in this thread, scale is important: I think it's entirely reasonable to have different rules for platforms with millions of users.

That's worth discussing, but you recommended a repeal.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#448

Post by Timwi » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 12:04 AM UTC

Lerc wrote: post #15

api wrote: post #10

The problem is not phones. Phones are fine. The problem is specific apps that make use of addiction engineering. These are bad on desktops too but the extreme portability of phones makes them a hundred times more potent. Like all risks it doesn’t affect all kids equally either. Some are less vulnerable for various cognitive reasons just like some are less prone to chemical addiction. Kids with wealthier and/or more e…

Would it not be a better approach to remove any incentive to provide an addictive product. Companies don't do that just to be evil. Evil is just the byproduct of money. Make it illegal to advertise to anyone under the age of 18. Make it illegal to trade data about anyone under the age of 18. What incentive would then remain? I don't think they will do it for the long term gains of training behaviour for when they are…

I think it should be illegal period. Advertisement is deliberate manipulation by exploiting known psychological vulnerabilities in humans. It's a despicable thing to want to do intentionally. It should be a criminal offense.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#449

Post by Timwi » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 12:09 AM UTC

api wrote: post #56

Telaneo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Even the platonic ideal of something like Facebook isn't really a problem (assume a Facebook with a chronological feed which shows nothing but what your friends and liked pages have posted, and it'll be a lot less addicting than what we have today, and a lot more social!). It's possible to have a phone and not have any apps on it which are engineered to make you addicted. If the relevant companies behaved th…

Facebook was on balance good until the algorithmic timeline.

I was on LiveJournal a long time ago and I distinctly remember seeing Facebook, when I first tried it after everyone couldn't stop talking about it, as an unviable alternative precisely because it didn't show exactly what you subscribed to without filtering or manipulation. So either the algorithmic timeline was always there, or it was introduced early on before Facebook got big.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#450

Post by Timwi » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 12:11 AM UTC

NoPicklez wrote: post #126

api wrote: post #10

The problem is not phones. Phones are fine. The problem is specific apps that make use of addiction engineering. These are bad on desktops too but the extreme portability of phones makes them a hundred times more potent. Like all risks it doesn’t affect all kids equally either. Some are less vulnerable for various cognitive reasons just like some are less prone to chemical addiction. Kids with wealthier and/or more e…

> IMO if you intentionally and knowingly engineer something for addiction you are committing a form of assault. Whilst I agree that addictive things can be bad how far does this ago? Food manufacturers purposely make foods that are addictive. Video game companies use ways to make games more addictive. Companies make things that we want and sometimes we get addicted to wanting it too much.

> Whilst I agree that addictive things can be bad how far does this ago?

We don't need to get bogged down in this question before doing the first obvious thing and banning the most addictive things known to exist.