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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

#401

Post by 2snakes »

isodude wrote: post #370
cf141q5325 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about and being from that AoE games generation, I think a big part is the absence of any restrictions and incentives to stop. Only very few of my friends back then had unrestricted access to videogames or even TV. And even if they did, there is only so much time you could sink into a sp game before you might want to do other stuff. This even more so for non strategy games. There was only so much you could get…

The world is boring. I mean, doing anything requires quite the effort if you are not doing it with the correct tooling. Games helps out with that alot acting both teacher and timespender. Everyone is attached to a screen, it's not just kids. Just sit down on a bench or a bus and reflect on your surroundings. It really is surreal. This is obviously the kind of reality they have to meet, so they adapt and learn. Bannin…

In re: boring, I guess it takes genius to see what everyone else doesn't.

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

#402

Post by cirgue »

cwkoss wrote: post #379
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?'

Is there a "Stallman" hosts file, that blocks all sites that do not have incredibly free software? I feel like dumping a kid into the deep end of linux box with access some so-so games installed and letting them figure out how to make things work is extremely valuable learning experience. It's the "passive" screen behaviors that are harmful IMO.

Sample of one, but I would be willing to pay roughly $20 per year for this service if it were updated a few times a month.

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

#403

Post by OpenBSD-reich »

mindslight wrote: post #298
marcosdumay wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

IMO the problem is two pronged: a) hardware changes too much too fast creating a constant hamster wheel of driver hacking which puts GNU, Illumos, and BSD at a disadvantage, and b) that hardware is nowhere near significantly documented enough to make driver writing quick and painless. (a) can be fixed by having platform standards where the interfaces and commands are the same between device brands, but I think the better solution would be to fix (b) by using force of law or taxation to make device manufacturers fully and publicly document their hardware so that there are no "magic" or secret instructions, allowing FOSS hackers the ability to write open drivers. Ideally solution for (b) would be wide enough to include firmware and microcode, and penalty (tax) being both heavy enough (50%-200%) and applied at the customer purchase point of the chain (tax is on the final MSRP of the computer/phone/game-console/microwave/vehicle and not simply on the price of the noncompliant internal component[s]).

(b) can be done with a proposition in the State of California and a few million spent on a very convincing ad campaign ("Vote yes on Proposition 42 to take back total control of your computing devices! Don't let advertisers and data leeches control and dictate your life from behind the curtain!"). California because it's home to a big chunk of Big Tech, and because it's a market too big to simply ignore and not sell into.

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

#404

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

jiveturkey wrote: post #272
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #208

The same people that buy organic peas also have a paranoia about screens. How unsurprising. The article doesn't say there has been any peer-reviewed research to show a little screen time is harmful. It just says, oh, check it out, here is a grab bag of assholes, we picked out of a population of like 1 Million engineers, and THEY DONT LET THEIR KIDS USE SCREENS. Well guess what. I was a video game engineer for 10 year…

I don't disagree with you, but your personal anecdote is irrelevant and worthless. She's the most advanced. So the 95% of kids are doing worse than she is. Do you have data on how much screen time the other kids are getting, and how it is affecting them? You can't go from complaining about lack of research and then using your single data point, incorrectly. Anyway, the article may not say it but there is research in…

woosh

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

#405

Post by corey_moncure »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #390
corey_moncure wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, Common Sense Media. Your website helped me get control over what my wife and parents were exposing my four year old daughter to, by establishing a neutral source of extremely valuable information. It became very easy to set guidelines thanks to your rating system and the wide range of titles reviewed. The new 3D animation style and cutesy animal characters are dangerously subversive. My mom thought I was b…

This is funny to read. Kids stuff has been getting tamer and tamer over the years. Check out the early 2Oth Century Disney cartoons, the original Popeye, etc.

Do you suppose a lot of four year olds were watching disney cartoons for hours in their homes in the early 20th century?

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

#406

Post by Benjammer »

kopo wrote: post #206
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…

Yuval Harari keeps saying this, that we live in a time where the systems know our weaknesses better then we know them ourselves.

It's so much worse than this. The systems aren't "evil." They don't "know our weaknesses."

The opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy. The machines are optimized around numbers and parameters and have no idea what a person is or what a weakness is or what the concept of "weakness" means at all. They are statistical optimization algorithms designed to make one number get as close as possible to another number, by tweaking the values of a whole bunch of other numbers.

Like, a person who knew your weakness and had bad intentions would hone in on the weakness and then use it to manipulate you and take pleasure from interactions where you feel bad and they feel good. The computer is just existing at a higher level of ideas than your feelings, and will simply steam-roll your brain into mush as a minor side-effect of its effort to make that one number look like the other number.

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

#407

Post by int_19h »

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.

My approach to this has been to retreat to books whenever I find myself too immersed into any digital activity that doesn't yield any tangible results at the end of it (i.e. it's just a time filler). Books can be very engaging, to the point of "one more page" syndrome - but they're still finite, and much easier to put away, all in all. Plus, it is very rare to find a book that doesn't have even the smallest nugget of genuine contribution to one's experience and knowledge. And there's so many good books, you could fill many lifetimes with them.

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

#408

Post by TJSomething »

toyg wrote: post #384
nine_k wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if a player does not have a title to anything in the game, the player has control over some items, and can sell this control? I suppose tokens in casinos also don't belong to players, but they are readily exchangeable for money. On one hand, this may be enough to consider it gambling for money. On the other hand, many games may expressly forbid selling in-game stuff. This is not easy to enforce, though, unless yo…

It is extremely easy to enforce: just make items non-transferable, so they can only be gained by actual questing. As soon as an item is gained, it is permanently associated to a given account. Done.

How would you prevent the sale of accounts?

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

#409

Post by forgotmysn »

Pharmakon wrote: post #388
2snakes wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just tell him to use Chrome/Firefox and Adblock Plus.

Better to use uBlock Origin, which won’t let through “acceptable” ads. If you really want to protect the kid, and are willing to set it up or teach them, uMatrix is good too.

Just use both

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

#410

Post by Benjammer »

djsumdog wrote: post #176
ravenstine wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see two problems with how we view addiction: - Everything has a potential of being addictive, but we focus so much on drugs since they have some especially addicting properties that aren't present in other habits. - We're stuck with Enlightenment age thinking such as "tabula rasa" and we attribute too much human behavior to free will, an ill-defined term that nobody whom I ask can provide a comprehensive answer to.

My generation grew up with TV shows like The Transformers that got kids to beg their parents for toys. McDonalds has marketed to children for the better part of a century (and it has followed many people into adulthood). The medium has changed, but the practices are the same as Edward Bernays and Anna Freud cooked up so many decades ago (Sigmund was never happy with the way his family members used his psychoanalysis…

>Kids don't want toys, and hence we see Toys-R-Us disappear

Toys-R-Us died because the founder left, his successors couldn't keep innovating, they sold out to Bain and KKR, and then it was driven into the ground for margins.

It's not because "Kids don't want toys." You thinking kids don't want toys almost seems more like brainwashing than if kids actually didn't want toys anymore.

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