This is in part why I plan to raise my kids on open source, ethical software. I'm not going to force them, but libre software will be the normal in my house. These black box proprietary systems are predatory and hamper creativity.
A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
191–200 of 516 posts
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#192I think the point of life is to love each other, and that means interacting with each other. And the best way to do that is face to face. When screens get in the way of this, that's when they go bad.
I remember back in high school when I wanted to play Diablo 2 LoD more than anything else. I had a great time, and don't actually regret it, but I think if I had not been able to break free of that at the proper time, it could have had bad consequences on my life. "All things in moderation" as they say.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This all happened by chance Nobody fell down the stairs and discovered that the tumble accidentally linked their KPIs to engagement metrics.
No -- a thousand people fell down the stairs, nine hundred and ninety nine of them found no link between their KPIs and engagement metrics, and the one that did thought that they figured out how the human brain works, instead of just realizing that they were successful for reasons that they likely will never understand or be able to replicate. And a thousand of those .1%'ers will try a second time, and the .1% that s…
I'm not a data scientist nor a psychologist nor an addiction expert nor ...
But I've played some games. I am 137% confident that some form of "level up" (roguelikes, MMOs, MOBAs, FTL) is an extremely strong addiction factor. League of Legends, that free game whose net worth is among the highest of all time.
In real life, you study->grades->job->promote->takeoverworld. Or liftweights->liftmoreweights->liftmoreweights. Or climbmountain->climbhighermountain...
In games, you do that in 1/100 the time and effort. Tap a few buttons and "you win!!!!"
A sweeping statement to the effect of "people don't understand addiction" is basically malicious and I accuse you of being the inventor of gamification or one of their PR folk.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
(waldorf kid here) while that is an obvious confound, the waldorf pedagogy strong encourages children not be exposed to any screen time at all. It goes further: even at the kindergarten level, all toys and costumes are natural materials, you won't find a single piece of plastic among items intended for a child's use. Even the crayons are made of beeswax.
> It goes further: even at the kindergarten level, all toys and costumes are natural materials, you won't find a single piece of plastic among items intended for a child's use. Even the crayons are made of beeswax. I can't possibly imagine the purpose for these restrictions.
Waldorf is all about fostering imagination, so they try to limit anything that comes with a pre-defined set of ideas that tell you how to interact with it. A plastic firetruck already has an identity; an unfinished wood truck can be anything.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's simply the most well known example. Blizzard had a real money auction house in DIII which they got a cut of profits from virtual item sales so they clearly understand items have value. PLEX in eve online directly links real world money with their in world currency etc.
I could go on, but saying it's virtual is not necessarily enough to protect these companies.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#196I bet 40, 50 years ago you could see the same sort of article about Television
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
"A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all know this." Hell, I'd argue that many 40-50 year old brains clearly don't stand a chance against a trained data scientist.
Don't stop there... I'd argue a prime-of-their-life 34 year old _data scientist_ doesn't stand a change _against their own algorithms_ if they immerse themselves. It's addiction. We need to stop acting like it is "weak-minded" people (children is a dog-whistle for this) who are susceptible to tech addiction. The idea of "standing a chance" is literally like saying you can consciously control your dopamine receptors t…
Bingo (anecdata)... a few years ago I spent the last 15min of a flight into SFO talking to a lady (who had been playing Bejeweled for 4 hours straight) about using touchscreens so long (it's my job). She mentioned how shaky she gets when she has to stop playing...
I asked what she did... a game designer at Zynga.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don't know. I have never seen anyone buying more coca cola on a weekend than i would be able to afford with my salary.
I have seen people putting shit ton of money into those machines and they lost easily 100,- Euros per Hour?
I'm sure there is always a white/gray/black thing going on but i do put a slot machine at the very end of black not in gray or white at all.
Coca Cola and the water stealing and the addiction is btw. an additional example for something not that good, it does not make a slot machine any better.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#199I have a 2 and a half year old son now. My wife and I have found for us that the right answer is simply moderation, variety, and supervision. 1. We moderate how much time is spent on screens. Each day he probably spends a total of an hour or less in front of any screen (iPad/iPhone/Projector). 2. He does watch some (highly filtered) educational YouTube content, but we also make sure he's playing educational and inter…
That's a great point. But it takes a lot of time and effort to filter the content your child consumes. That's because the system is designed so the end user has almost no control over the information flow. So this will affect the poor disproportionately (once again). If you don't have time to discover child-friendly, educational content, no money to buy ad-free movies and games from trusted companies, you'll just giv…
> But it takes a lot of time and effort to filter the content your child consumes.
It really doesn't if you use the tools available.
For instance Amazon FreeTime (https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-FreeTime-Unlimited-Monthly-Sub...) gives you a curated library that is appropriate for the age range you set.
There's no microtransaction apps or other nonsense like that.
You can even set limits like "30 minutes app time per day", "30 minutes book time", "30 minutes video time", etc.
You can also remove or add specific apps you want your kid to have access to.
Honestly it's wonderful to give a young kid that level of autonomy and access to information. You should still pay attention to what they do. But there's no need to give them access to the open internet or to curate everything yourself.
Re: A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
#200This is in part why I plan to raise my kids on open source, ethical software. I'm not going to force them, but libre software will be the normal in my house. These black box proprietary systems are predatory and hamper creativity.
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