at some point people need to take responsibility for what they spend their time on
A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
151–160 of 516 posts
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#152>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 disagree with your last point. Technology will always be "just a tool." By its nature, it is morally neutral. The use of technology for good or for evil reflects the morality of the people deploying it. Explosives, baseball bats, water, radios, software. All have been used for noble purposes and for evil. That does not impart morality to the technology.
There's a saying "When you let the camel's nose into the tent, the rest of him follows." If a technology has so many awful capabilities, then there ought to be a good reason to tolerate its existence.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm already being downvoted, hopefully mostly for my tone rather than content, so by all rational means I should abandon this and go complain another day, but this really gets my goat. A/B testing and measuring -- are you kidding me? That's how you go from 35% conversion to 36% conversion, not from 2 daily active users to 1e7 daily active users. Refinement only works if you're exploring a space that has productive al…
Zynga copied base from another developer and then A/B aggressively to squeeze maximum. It is not like it would be some shameful secret, that was even basic advice to developers after.
Zynga had repeated success, untill market saturated and other developers caught up. That does not make these tactics not working, that just makes them so common that they are not such a huge advantage anymore.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They are specifically designed to function like a slot machine. I work in the gambling industry, making literally slot machines. Slot machines are heavily regulated and there is a lot of "engagement" tricks that can not be used in the gambling industry. The kind of trick that Candy Crush will use. The dangerous side of gambling is for people that think that they can "win money". But the games themselves are kind of…
Sry what? You have no issue working in that industry because those games are 'boring'? But you do not have any issue that you create something which is literally boring and only there for other people to put there money in and play never again (because it is so boring) or lose everything?
> You have no issue working in that industry because those games are 'boring'?
Not because they are boring, but because they are less addictive than they can be. So they are "boring" in comparison. If we were allowed to use all tricks that mobile and on-line games do it will be really bad for society as it will create more addiction.
It is like Coca-Cola. Even that so much sugar makes it problematic, I find it better that at least does not include cocaine like it did in 1891. Does that make Coca-Cola good? No, it does not. But I find that makes it a lesser evil. Even that cocaine-less Coke is more "boring" nowadays, it is the right thing to do.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#155I hate the term "screen time". The screen isn't the important part. Yeah, if your kid is watching pointless videos, it's not good for them. But at the same time the educational tools available on iPads are amazing compared to what I had when I was a kid.
I have a 5-year-old who goes to kindergarten at a great school. But games like MathTango or Twelve A Dozen are capable of engaging him to a much greater degree than anything else I have found, and they get him engaged in more advanced mathematical concepts than either I or his teachers at school can do alone. When gamification convinces him to just spend a little bit longer solving a few more math problems to get to the next level, it's a good thing.
Stop thinking in terms of "screen time". It's not the screen that's hurting your brain, it's stupid apps that make you stupid. Just don't let your kids use apps that you don't think are good for them.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a fascinating turn-around though— I wonder if she considers what she's doing gaming? Basically, there are a lot of extremely high quality single-player narrative games out there, many of which provide a story/explore difficulty level where it's almost impossible to die. Would she still be prejudiced against those, or now that she understands the appeal in broad terms, would she consider upgrading to games that…
I don't think she's really interested in what I or my brothers considered "games". The high-intensity/fast-reflex or long-investment kind of games we would play probably did not appeal to her. She seems to have gravitated towards the casual-gaming stuff, where the end-goal of the game is meandering and there's a great deal of instant gratification ("Congrats! You clicked a button! Have a trophy!") With that said, I r…
A lot of modern open-world games incorporate the meandering/gratification loop you're talking about though.
I can't find it now, but there was a heartwarming story on reddit a few months ago about a dad dying of cancer and playing BOTW on a switch in his hospital bed, and bonding with his adult son over it— he never even made it off the Plateau (the initial tutorial section of the game), but was having a ball running around collecting plants, making potions, getting gear, whatever.
Even if the violence level of Assassins Creed or God of War isn't your cup of tea, something like Detroit Become Human or Horizon Zero Dawn could be a good fit.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#157> 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…
>Age of Empires & Civilization got me into history as a kid and I checked out dozens of books as a result.
So this is kind of a problem. LOTS of people of our generation learned a lot of our history from games like Age of Empires and Civilization. But these sources of information aren't neutral. They had biases baked into their narratives by the simple structure of game design.
The notion of "nations" or "civilizations" as discrete, immutable, and clearly defined categories is actually straight up wrong. The idea of history as the story of competition between these civilizational entities is likewise wrong. But tons of people of our generation think of history this way. They think of technological advancement like a "tech tree" as if all of human progress can be charted on a map with no consideration for alternative ways the world could have shaken out. Monotheism MUST be invented after polytheism, you MUST have invented the wheel in order to invent agriculture, and so on. Overall you're being fed the idea that the world as it is is the only way the world could have been, which is just not the case.
We were being acculturated into a specific (and imperialistic) worldview about what history is and how culture works. But because nobody ever took video games seriously, they never bothered to understand and unpack their influence as pedagogical tools. It's not like a novel or a movie where the morals and themes of the narrative are there to make an intentional point. With games the logic of needing to have a game to play and goals and objectives to meet winds up transmitting themes and morals that people either don't intend or don't bother thinking very hard about.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
In game items don't have value. If they did, then effectively all games with RNG mechanics would be banned. Heck, even the original Rogue would fall under that umbrella.
Depends on the game. In multi player games where people can exchange items, people will pay real world money for other players items. EX: People buying WoW gold.
> "buying WoW gold"
IIRC, Blizzard doesn't profit from that directly and explicitly prohibits it in their ToS.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#159Got an 8 year old daughter. After trying all those things, here's where we settled:
- 2h Netflix time per week
- Offline phone with audiobooks
- Offline PS3 with SingStar
- Occasional music video on parent's smartphone
No free TV usage, no YouTube and no Internet-connected devices. Seems to work well for now!
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Just give me a damn phone that I can call a car or text friends on, I don't want to or need to spend hours consuming media on a giant shiny screen. But if I get a giant shiny screen foisted on me, I know it's going to happen. Giant screens aren't being foisted on you, you go to the store and pay for them. You could buy a featurephone if you wanted.
I'd like to keep the useful parts of a smartphone without optimizing the addictive parts. Too much to ask apparently.
What is the evidence for your argument that Apple is "optimizing the addictive parts"? Your argument seems to be entirely based on screen size; is there some study that demonstrates a correlation between screen size and 'addictive' qualities?