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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

#291

Post by jimejim »

ip26 wrote: post #146
jimejim wrote: post #57

This has always been a form of Luddism. Tech is inevitable. I view tech similarly to how I view sex-ed in 2018: it's been proven that if you do abstinence only education then bad things happen (teen pregnancies, stds, etc...). Your kids are going to grow up to be adults with bad tech habits if you don't start teaching them how to use it responsibly and protect themselves early. Help them find good content. Have days…

This has always been a form of Luddism. Tech is inevitable. it's been proven that if you do abstinence only education then bad things happen How about driving technology? Children receive abstinence-only education on driving until they turn 15 or 16. There's plenty of precedent for young children being unable to safely & responsibly handle certain things. Was it Luddism that I wasn't allowed to operate a table saw wh…

Introduction to tech should still be age appropriate and have constraints. That's different from avoiding it completely. Some apps should be limited and it should be pointed out why to the kid so they understand the dangers.

We know there are problems with ads, privacy, and subtle ways our "free" apps try to gain our attention. Kids are more capable than you may realize of understanding those issues too, and the sooner you work WITH them to learn those issues and how to counter them, the better.

Having said that, if a parent doesn't have a healthy relationship with tech themselves, they're going to have a hard time teaching their children.

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

#292

Post by undersuit »

jjeaff wrote: post #204
Benjammer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can't control your dopamine uptake, but you can certainly control your actions. Especially when you recognize what is happening. If I see myself spending too much time on my phone, for instance, I'll put it away for a while.

And if the alcoholic sees themselves drinking too much they'll stop.

...

You just kinda ignored the whole point of the person you're replying too. This is an addiction, phone games or alcohol or lotto tickets, just because you can stop doesn't mean other people aren't addicted.

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

#293

Post by scotty79 »

andrewla wrote: post #123
jobigoud wrote: post #112

Earlier 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…

> That's how you go from 35% conversion to 36% conversion

It's also how you go from unique and successful entertainment product to something completely unusable and boring is just few hundred A/B iterations.

Enjoyment is not the space where gradient descent works particularily well.

Amazon is absolutely horrible expeirience for me. It's hard for me to point e-commerece site I used that's worse than amazon.

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

#294

Post by gumby »

The screen itself is not the issue, it's toys and games that play with the child instead of the child playing with them. Imagination and learning to explore and reason comes from open-ended play ("play" is really just a word for learning).

People talk of a stick being a sword, a cane, a ruler, etc, but let's not forget that a stick can also be broken, bent, and manipulated in ways that one might not be able to with a toy or game that has programmed behavior. A lot of, perhaps most of, the useful learning come from crossing the "obvious" boundaries of some design.

This is one reason so many computer gamers from the 80s became interested in computing -- because it was easier to get "behind the scenes" and poke away at your machine. Everything's so professionalized and hermetic these days it's hard for a kid to explore.

Disclaimer: parent of a 20 year old who was not allowed electronics until he was 10. No calculators, no Star Wars. So I may be biased, but I lived my bias.

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

#295

Post by scotty79 »

watwut wrote: post #153
andrewla wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Zynga had repeated success, untill market saturated and other developers caught up

I'd say, until people got bored with the same single local optimum game that all Zynga games converged to despite differnt skins.

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

#296

Post by wutbrodo »

jjeaff wrote: post #204
Benjammer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can't control your dopamine uptake, but you can certainly control your actions. Especially when you recognize what is happening. If I see myself spending too much time on my phone, for instance, I'll put it away for a while.

Right, I'm not fully convinced either way, but it seems to me that if you're capable of understanding the arguments against something, you're capable of starting to take steps against it.

This doesn't mean simply wishing an iron willpower on yourself, but one thing that worked wonders for me is modifying my environment to put barriers between me and bad things. I come from a family with a history of addiction and mental illness, and I think my personality can be a bit addictive along a variety of axes, but I consider my interactions with a host of addictive things (drugs, unhealthy food, screens, etc) to be pretty healthy. I know I have a sweet tooth and enjoy the occasional toke, so I don't keep junk food in the house; if I want anything unhealthier than cottage cheese, I can walk my high ass down to the store and get it. There are plenty of apps and extensions to limit screen time: zenscreen is good for mobile, feed eradicator for Facebook, blocksite for Reddit et al, YouTube has a setting to remind you to take a break after N minutes of watching, etc etc etc. I don't have any particular tricks for drugs, but I never developed the caffeine addiction most have because it was beyond crazy to me to start your day with feeding a physical and psychological addiction. [1].

I get that this pattern-matches to a hyper-individualist "external forces don't matter" take on the world, and it's not. But I think of it like defensive driving: feel free to dvocate for external changes and blame external forces, but when it comes down to it, you are the person who has the most invested in yourself and the person with the most power to change your habits. HN's historical fatalist consensus of all-powerful algorithms before which we can only cower in fear seems hugely counter-productive, and honestly a little silly.

[1] Caffeine is a particularly easy physical addiction to kick, given how brief and mild the withdrawal is. More powerfully physically addictive drugs like tobacco or heroin are in another category which I've avoided entirely, so I'm making no claims about them.

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

#297

Post by a13n »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #148
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.

> Why AREN'T certain games subject to the same regulations as slot machines? Slot machines are regulated because they fall under the category of gambling and video games don't meet the legal definition of gambling. (Although, I'd agree that it's starting to seem more and more as if they should.) There's a pretty good explanation of the criteria at https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti... but th…

> the TOS of all games say that the player does not own them

Yet loads of people sell their in-game items (that they got through chance) for real money. So in a sense, they do own them.

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

#298

Post by mindslight »

marcosdumay wrote: post #274
mindslight wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that analogy, I guess web browsers are cheese. I don't think FOSS is even necessary for what I'm talking about (although it seems to be sufficient). Non-networked binary distribution of yore was also (mostly) aligned with the interests of its users.

> Non-networked binary distribution of yore was also (mostly) aligned with the interests of its users. It's much more related to who is paying the bills. Technical concerns do make some difference, but are eclipsed by the money question. Our current problem is that people mostly don't pay for software anymore. So we are left with FOSS and anti-user software.

Though it's harder to be lucratively anti-user without a channel for telemetry and control.

I've long pondered if an economy around Free software could be better implemented. We take it as a forgone conclusion that wide source code availability precludes charging per-instance, but really that's just an assumption.

Of course the idea is likely moot in the light of network effects, which seem to be a major underlying factor of the current harsh dichotomy.

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

#299

Post by InitialLastName »

dabernathy89 wrote: post #136
samatman wrote: post #94

Earlier 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.

> I can't possibly imagine the purpose for these restrictions.

Satisfying parents who reflexively think "natural" == "good"

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

#300

Post by undersuit »

dwighttk wrote: post #174
wlesieutre wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Perhaps I just don’t have smartphone addiction, but (if I do) there is something different between this “addiction” and others. There are no withdrawal symptoms for me. I feel the compulsion to pick it up and look at it, but if I don’t have my phone, after reaching for it in my pocket and not finding it a few times I just stop. I don’t feel a need to go find a phone or feel rotten because I don’t have one. And these…

The withdrawal symptoms are subtle but can be extreme. Think of a stereotypical teenage girl whose phone has been taken by her parents, she's lost her world and she's going to have a full on panic attack. That's a whole lot different than "oh no I left my phone at home, I guess I won't have access to it until I decide to go home.", but look at how much choice you have over your addiction compared to the teenagers.
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