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A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

nytimes.com

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Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#111

Post by briandear »

wlesieutre wrote: post #47
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #21

>Technologists building these products and writers observing the tech revolution were naïve, he said. >"We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand." A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all kn…

I see this playing out right now with Apple's phones, which get continuously bigger and shinier and brighter with every new generation. Then they give us "Screen Time" and Tim Cook talks about giving people the tools to be aware of how much they're using their phones and to make their own decisions about it. If drug companies said "We're discontinuing Advil for your headaches and replacing all painkillers with small…

You are loosely comparing a large smartphone with tobacco; yet the reality is that an iPhone is more like matches: you can use it to start a campfire, light a stove to cook some kale or use them to smoke crack. It’s your choice what you do with the matches and it certainly isn’t the match manufacturer’s fault people choose to light the crackpipe rather than “healthier” options.

If I understand you correctly, it’s the phone fault people are addicted to bad content? The phone is just too easy to use, too high quality that unwitting victims are just defenseless? If we are talking kids, that’s a parent problem, but if we are talking adults, then it’s a problem of self-responsibility. Grocery stores have plenty of ice cream for sale: it’s up to you to not buy and eat it all the time. Grown ups ought to act like it instead of blaming shiny objects of their own obsessions. Adults aren’t victims of their phones.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#112

Post by jobigoud »

andrewla wrote: post #98
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #21

>Technologists building these products and writers observing the tech revolution were naïve, he said. >"We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand." A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all kn…

> A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all know this. This is ridiculous. I mean, utterly and completely ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself. This all happened by chance, not by some miracle of data science. For every product that captured 6 year old brains, there are millions of failed products that did not capture any brains at all. For every claim of "hey, I…

He never said these data scientists predicted the 6 year old brain and created the program accordingly. Just A/B testing and measuring what works best and what doesn't and progressively refining the product to match these findings is data science.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#114

Post by naravara »

Tehchops wrote: post #30

I think it's less about the screen time, and more about what's on the screen. Echoing some of the existing comments: Games and sites today are vastly different than they were 20 years ago. Games like Civilization, Quake, Diablo, C&C, Mortal Kombat, Tony Hawk etc... were definitely addictive. But modern games like Fortnite and Clash of Clans are not engineered the same way. They are specifically designed to function l…

>Not sure what the fix is either, other than ruthless enforcement of quotas.

Or just not letting kids get into those games. At some point my wife pointed out that I had a problem disengaging from certain types of games (for me it was MOBAs specifically). They are super-addictive.

It never really got in the way of anything and if I had anything else to do I would go do that, so it wouldn't really qualify as "addiction" in a DSM sense. But the issue is what it does when you don't have anything to do. They have a way of swallowing up basically ALL of your free time. And I didn't feel happier or better off for having spent my time that way, it felt more like compulsion than desire. I see a lot of young people on the internet being enslaved by compulsion like this, engaging in somewhat problematic consumption of video-games, porn, or social media.

I decided to just uninstall and stop playing those sorts of games, but I was also a grown-up with life experiences, hobbies, social connections, and responsibilities before I ever started. I knew what I was missing with "real life" by letting myself sink into that so it was easy enough for me to stop, I had other, more edifying sources of dopamine to go after. Kids, often times, either don't have enough freedom of movement to go do those things or just plain don't know what else there is out there. It's the same reason drug and gambling addiction tends to take hold among people with depression.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#115

Post by driverdan »

To me it seems the focus is wrong. Screens are not the problem. Most people having kids today grew up with screens. The problem is how the screens are used. Mobile devices and many apps have been developed to feed dopamine. This problem isn't isolated to children either.

You can disable or control this addiction pattern. Short, repeating patterns with rewards are how you feed addiction.

Turn off most or all push notifications. Don't mindlessly use devices in short, repetitive ways that reward your brain with dopamine (eg checking social media over and over for new posts). For things like social media, HN, and reddit have specific times of the day you use them and that's it.

Short cycle games like Fortnite feed this pattern too. Put time limits in place. This applies to adults too. It's really easy to play one more game.

> “Other parents are like, ‘Aren’t you worried you don’t know where your kids are when you can’t find them?’”

If this is you stop. Give your children freedom. You don't need to track them or know what they're doing 24/7. Being a helicopter parent will hurt them far more in the long run than giving them screen time.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#116

Post by manfredo »

trynumber9 wrote: post #3

> There is a looming issue Ms. Stecher sees in the future: Her husband, who is 39, loves video games and thinks they can be educational and entertaining. She does not. I'm still peeved so many people hate video games categorically. Age of Empires & Civilization got me into history as a kid and I checked out dozens of books as a result. Plus, the reason I ended up wanting to learn more about computers was to make game…

Modding and making my own video games got me into programming. If it weren't for games I probably wouldn't be in a field as lucrative as tech.

I'd say it's important to avoid Skinner box style games, but otherwise they can be fun and mentally productive. If I had a kid I'd introduce them to games like Kerbal Space Program, racing games (e.g. Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo) [1], and maybe some RTS games as they got older. I think it's important to choose what games children. The examples listed above reward learning, discipline, and skill. Not luck or pure time commitment.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#117

Post by castlecrasher2 »

tejohnso wrote: post #59
Tehchops wrote: post #30

I think it's less about the screen time, and more about what's on the screen. Echoing some of the existing comments: Games and sites today are vastly different than they were 20 years ago. Games like Civilization, Quake, Diablo, C&C, Mortal Kombat, Tony Hawk etc... were definitely addictive. But modern games like Fortnite and Clash of Clans are not engineered the same way. They are specifically designed to function l…

Can you explain how overdoing it with Quake and Diablo is not the same ball-game as overdoing it with Fortnite?

A simpler example is Battlefield 1942 vs Battlefield 5, 1, or any of the recent entries: the first had zero unlocks; everything was available, and it was a game for the fun of it. In the newer entries, the unlocks and other bars you fill provide a sense of achievement and progress, and maybe that just gives players with fun objectives to do while playing but the cynic in me sees people gloating about 1000 kills with the Kolibri and thinks it's more about preying on addictive tendencies.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#118

Post by forgottenpass »

andrewla wrote: post #98
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #21

>Technologists building these products and writers observing the tech revolution were naïve, he said. >"We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to understand." A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all kn…

> A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all know this. This is ridiculous. I mean, utterly and completely ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself. This all happened by chance, not by some miracle of data science. For every product that captured 6 year old brains, there are millions of failed products that did not capture any brains at all. For every claim of "hey, I…

>This all happened by chance

Nobody fell down the stairs and discovered that the tumble accidentally linked their KPIs to engagement metrics.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#119

Post by Retric »

manfredo wrote: post #101
danesparza wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've gotten me wondering: Why AREN'T certain games subject to the same regulations as slot machines? Is that a state-by-state regulation? A federal regulation? And does the regulating code specifically mention physical machines? Thanks in advance for satisfying my curiosity.

Video games are protected by the first amendment right to free speech and expression. Slot machines are gambling devices that take in and pay out money. The two aren't really comparable. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the regulations on slot machines only apply when they're used in real money gambling. Presumably, if someone built a slot machine that didn't take in or dispense tokens, and could not be used in gam…

Not necessarily. Right now the industry is largely unregulated, but that's more a question of enforcement than any sort of real legal protection.

In the US you can't build a slot machine that accepts money and dispenses tokens that have value. That's often how things operate in Japan, but the same model is generally illegal in the US.

It's questionable if spending real money on virtual currency to buy "loot boxes" that randomly give things of value is legal. And if that's legal, it's not obvious if changing the rate of rewards is legal.

Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

#120

Post by sys_64738 »

This is no different than when people were buying TVs for the first time in 1956. Those closest to the tech display the greatest fears.

In the 1980s there was hysteria that video games would turn kids into social pariahs due to the bad effects from violence and gore. But shooting a cluster of pixels in 1984 is trivial compared to running the bloods and guts of realism of a PS4. But not much is said anymore.

I think iPads are bad for kids as they become the subject matter, not that what they're trying to do. This is why iPads in education are bad IMO. Kids need to allow their brains to develop the appropriate cognitive functions but things like instance access to info reduce the ability to think, reduce the ability to memorize, and reduce the attention span of kids. In adults it's different as we're already as under/developed as we'll get.

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