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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

#251

Post by jimison »

mindslight wrote: post #205

Calling it "screen time" is missing the elephant in the room. The largest part of the problem is that the software we're directly interacting with has been designed by companies with interests directly contrary to ours! Social interaction will inherently set off more chemical rewards, but it is the tuning of the feedback loop (optimizing for micro-interactions) that keeps us glued. Emacs/mutt/libreoffice/python/kodi…

> Emacs/mutt/libreoffice/python/kodi have not been adversarily tuned to fire off the reward centers of our brains

Indeed, some of those could desperately use a little polish to stop firing off the pain centers of our brains. :\

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

#252

Post by thrmsforbfast »

crwalker wrote: post #237
thrmsforbfast wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your methodological criticisms are spot-on. > The same people that buy organic peas also have a paranoia about screens. How unsurprising. A lot of parents lack sophistication when it comes to "screen time". I have multiple in-laws who seem to not understand that it's what is on the screen that matters. As you predicted, those same people are also prone to magical thinking about other things: vaccination, fluoride, ra…

> "there's nothing wrong with allowing near-infinite screen time ... it's not the screen that's the problem" I beg to differ. Humans aren't built to sit and look at screens 1-2 feet from their face all day. There aren't infinite hours to choose from. There are 24 today. Every hour spent on the screen incurs a tremendous opportunity cost: exercise, adventure, socialization, cooking, grooming, sex, sleeping, etc. Digit…

That's true. I perhaps should have put "allowing" in italics to emphasize it's the permission to use, not the actual use, that's unlimited.

No one worries about allowing 24/7 access to a microscope, because although "microscope addiction" is I suppose possible, it's so bloody unlikely that we don't worry about it.

I think certain computers are similar to the microscope in this respect (e.g., an apple ][ with nothing by apple basic).

Obviously, excessive screen time is always bad. The point is that if you can limit what's on the screen (e.g., an apple basic interpreter), people (even/especially children) will self-moderate their screen time, so you don't have to worry about moderating access to the screen (similar to the microscope).

Obviously, if my child starts spending 10 hours a day looking through a microscope, I'm going to intervene. Ditto for BASIC programming. But I don't feel the need to, a priori, restrict access. The odds of either of those things happening (esp. in a way that's not healthy/constructive/short-lived) is so low that I don't worry about it.

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

#253

Post by cirgue »

VectorLock wrote: post #230
mindslight wrote: post #205

Calling it "screen time" is missing the elephant in the room. The largest part of the problem is that the software we're directly interacting with has been designed by companies with interests directly contrary to ours! Social interaction will inherently set off more chemical rewards, but it is the tuning of the feedback loop (optimizing for micro-interactions) that keeps us glued. Emacs/mutt/libreoffice/python/kodi…

This is the conclusion that a lot of people on HN seem to be reaching. Now how do we go about filtering out the 'bad screen' while allowing the 'good screen?'

I think the easiest heuristic is this: is the platform a delivery mechanism for advertising? If so, bad screen.

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

#254

Post by bluntfang »

Cyph0n wrote: post #134
fawak wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the highest levels of play. So not for 99.99% of the players. Although it's not the same subject, this reminds me of a video by Duncan "Thoorin" Shields, a rather controversial and prominent eSports figure: "Gaming is a Waste of Time" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiXfnfBk3BM ) In the video, he talks (among other things) about people justifying the time they spend on video games by the fact that some players…

How did you come up with that percentage? Have you ever played CS? Firstly, OP basically said that CS is not a strategic game at all, which is completely false. Secondly, CS can get extremely strategic in the professional scene, but it is also quite strategic at higher ranks in the game's competitive mode ladder. It is also a heavily team-based game: e.g., if one of your team members is not communicating, you are at…

>How did you come up with that percentage? Have you ever played CS?

Ok, well tell us the percentage of CS players that play at the highest level?

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

#255

Post by cma »

dxhdr wrote: post #209
fhood wrote: post #95

Ok, come on. There is way too much "back in my day games weren't that bad" in this thread. Do you guys remember WoW? And Diablo?!?! Talk about a game designed to target addiction centers. The issue is not games like Fortnite. The issue (as you said) is people letting their kids spend all their time playing Fortnite.

Older games like Diablo were not engineered to maximize Day 1 / 7 / 28 retention rates. All mobile games today optimize for those metrics.

Diablo was much more of a slot machine than Fortnite is imo. Neither come close to being as much of a slot machine as watching a baseball game as a fan. Or participating in fishing.

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

#256

Post by mindslight »

pesfandiar wrote: post #240
VectorLock wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the conclusion that a lot of people on HN seem to be reaching. Now how do we go about filtering out the 'bad screen' while allowing the 'good screen?'

One good way to distinguish the two is whether or not it's pure consumption/entertainment or production/learning? I realize at times it may not be easy to do (e.g. watching cartoons or playing games that teach children something).

I mentioned kodi for a reason. I've definitely binged on seasons of shows using kodi (or mplayer), but it feels relatively deliberate. I don't support Netflix et al, so I don't know specifically how many dark patterns they've implemented to "increase engagement" or w/e, but I do know the setup is there. And obviously if you're using Youtube for "TV time", then game over.

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

#257

Post by xeonoex »

piyh wrote: post #185
themagician wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, playing Dark Souls requires more brain power than the vast majority of most peoples’ jobs. If my kid was good at Dark Souls I’d be impressed. Hell, if I was good at Dark Souls I’d be impressed with myself.

Difficulty != brain power requirement. Flipping heads on a coin 20 times in a row is difficult, but doesn't require thinking. Flipping a water bottle to land is difficult, but doesn't require critical/analytical thinking skills.

Beating Dark Souls requires lots of things. Hand-eye coordination, focus, determination, discipline to grind until your are good at something, learning the game world, learning the enemies, problem solving, etc...

Good games definitely require brain power and critical thinking. I think most people that don't play good (at least my definition of good) games don't understand some of what they teach. I believe that learning anything can be good for you.

Kids need to learn how to learn, focus, and grind to be good at something. Video games help with that. Well, not the generic slot machine simulator "games" or "brain training" games that are popular on mobile, but actual games with depth that provide challenges.

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

#258

Post by thrmsforbfast »

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.

Buy older computers (1980s/early 1990s) that don't provide access to those games or the internet.

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

#259

Post by kirsebaer »

wlesieutre wrote: post #180
ghostly_s wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's more the 3rd software companies that are optimizing the addictive parts than Apple, because that's how they make money. Having the screen be smaller makes those software products suck enough that I don't like using them for extended periods, it's a defense mechanism against hyper optimized advertising engagement apps. Personally I think that's a feature. My other problem with Apple that they're only interested i…

You could try setting the screen to grayscale. It's still functional, but less appealing.

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

#260

Post by selimthegrim »

samatman wrote: post #94
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that the kind of parents that raise such children re the kind of kids to put them into waldorf schools, not that waldorf schools do something special.

(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.

Are they still making you memorize colors for days of the week? My ex gf tried to go out of a Waldorf program into engineering at CU Boulder and had no clue how to use a computer.
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