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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

#411

Post by int_19h »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #126
baybal2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember myself struggling with Quake 3. It really felt to some extend hypnotic. Only after giving myself a proverbial slap on the face at around 2014 when I was 13 or so, and getting conscious of that being a problem, was I able vent Q3 out of my head.

I was addicted to video games into my 20s. Even now I have urges to fire up some MMO. It was only when I started working in UX design and researched human behavior that I understood how incredibly addictive video games are. Well designed video games go above and beyond to make you keep playing them. Even as a professional designer I frequently look to games to get ideas about how to hook visitors to spend more time i…

The interesting thing about both your examples (Q3 and MMOs) is that both are games with no finish point.

I think that's not a coincidence, and it's not just about games. If you think about it, all forms of entertainment boil down to giving our mind a different world to inhabit for a while. It's pretty obvious with books and movies and theater etc, and with "traditional" games. But in a sense, the gaming board of something like Bejeweled is also a world, just a very simplified one. And stuff like social networks are also a world, the one that's built out of real people, but with its own set of relationships and problems and drama etc. All of this lets your brain "go elsewhere".

But here's the big difference. Some forms of entertainment engage in such world building to tell a story. But a story has its finale - once it is done, you leave the world it inhabits, and come back to reality. You can go back for another take, but the thing about stories is that the second time is not like the first. It's diminishing returns.

With modern - problematic - forms of entertainment, like MMOs and addictive mobile games and social media - the world is intentionally designed to be inhabited permanently. Worse yet, it's designed to be painful to withdraw from, even temporarily. There is no final line - there's no "game over, you won" in a MMO, or a happy (or sad, or any) ending of the Facebook drama. The people who make those things want it that way, because every minute you spend in their world, they can extract rent from you. With stories, you pay per story; here, you pay per hour.

Basically, social media and addictive games are the equivalent of a never-ending soap opera that's on 24/7. Imagine if something like this existed 50 years ago; do you think the effects would have been different? It's just that back then, it was not economically feasible. And now it is; and here we are.

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

#413

Post by cthalupa »

solean wrote: post #380
gameswithgo wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is fortnite more like a slot machine than doom or mortal kombat?

It's really not, feels like a case of "the things I did when I was young were good, but the kids these days..."

Mortal Kombat and Doom didn't have loot crates where the cool looking items were all low chance to be had upon opening and the loot crates can be bought with real money?

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

#414

Post by Cursuviam »

faitswulff wrote: post #273
jimison wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. :\

GIMP comes to mind...

I always thought the name was supposed to evoke how masochistic it is.

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

#415

Post by doctorless »

Pfhreak wrote: post #343
ConceptJunkie wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Translation: "But muh 1% and racism. Reeeeeeeee." Both parties are heavily influenced by and for the rich. But only one party is obsessed with identity politics, and it's not the one you're implying. Your side has far more to lose than the side of Fox News and Limbaugh if the fairness doctrine were to return. Because for every one of them, there are 10 media sources slanted in the other direction.

Your "translation" is clearly out of tone for Hacker News. Both sides play identity politics, they just focus on different identities. Most people are blind to the identity politics of their own party because those identities feel natural or correct to them, making the identities less obviously visible. (Or, inversely, the identities of the 'other' party feel obviously wrong, making them more jarring and stand out as…

Tone is relative. Although the words individually are not incindiary, the post being replied to was equally incindiary in nature. Subtlety in verbal attacks does not have true distinction, other than one having (weak) deniability of malevolence. Arguably, it’s because of this it is more dishonest.

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

#416

Post by cthalupa »

corey_moncure wrote: post #358
shlant wrote: post #27

The organization I work for, Common Sense Media, has done a good bit of research on screen time, addiction, and it's effect on families. Here is the report on Technology Addiction: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/technology-addicti... Here is our other research reports covering a wide range of media/technology topics effecting children, families and teachers: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research?page=1

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…

>There was a scene where the male Air Marshall (who was following them), woke up in a drunken haze (yes, there was a scene where shots and drinks were involved) with 2 new tattoosand in the bedroom or hotel room with another man (and all that that implied)."

This appears to be a PG rated movie. This is nothing new. Let's take a step back nearly 25 years and check out things that happen in 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', a movie with the same rating:

Finkelstein makes himself a female doll. A detached leg is used to seduce a villain, whom promptly begins to engage in foot play. There is a torture chamber crossed with a casino, where the casino games determine the level of torture inflicted. There's a skinned head, various detached body parts, brains, etc.

Let's go back farther! Watership Down - 40 years ago.

Doe rabbits fancied by one of the villains are offered up in compensation for his efforts. References to the needs of doe rabbits to sustain the warren Various bits of violence/gore with the rabbits, including a rabbit choking on a snare and coughing up blood Mild profanity - use of 'Damn' and 'Piss', with Fuck replaced with 'Frisk' in several instances.

>There is just no way this stuff is age appropriate. I don't care how far the Overton window has shifted.

PG as a rating is specifically not any sort of indication to age appropriateness. Emotional development of children in the ages in question is going to vary drastically, and the whole point is that it is then suggested that the parents, knowing best what content their children will be able to handle, make the decision. The maturity level of content in PG movies has, if anything, dropped over the years.

Note that I am not questioning your choices on what you find appropriate for your children, just your interpretation of what PG means and whether or not the Overton window has shifted.

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

#417

Post by corey_moncure »

cthalupa wrote: post #416
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…

>There was a scene where the male Air Marshall (who was following them), woke up in a drunken haze (yes, there was a scene where shots and drinks were involved) with 2 new tattoosand in the bedroom or hotel room with another man (and all that that implied)." This appears to be a PG rated movie. This is nothing new. Let's take a step back nearly 25 years and check out things that happen in 'The Nightmare Before Christ…

Thank you! I won't show these movies to my kids (yet), either.

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

#418

Post by dragonwriter »

corey_moncure wrote: post #358
shlant wrote: post #27

The organization I work for, Common Sense Media, has done a good bit of research on screen time, addiction, and it's effect on families. Here is the report on Technology Addiction: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/technology-addicti... Here is our other research reports covering a wide range of media/technology topics effecting children, families and teachers: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research?page=1

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…

> There is just no way this stuff is age appropriate.

For a four year old? Sure, the MPAA PG rating fairly firmly indicates that the film contains material likely not appropriate for young children.

> I don't care how far the Overton window has shifted.

The content allowed for any given MPAA rating has generally gotten less extreme over time, rather than shifting the other way.

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

#419

Post by Wowfunhappy »

wott wrote: post #350
mindslight wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The dark pattern is series themselves. 1. They are massively produced and have replaced many other programs. There is always new content available, you can spend your life watching 3 new episodes an evening. 2. They are in fact not series any more, but serials. Each episode of a series has an independent storyline and comes to a conclusion; episodes can mostly be watched in random order, you can miss a broadcast, it…

"The dark pattern is series themselves."

So, making good content that happens to span multiple episodes? That's the kind of engagement I really don't have an issue with.

However—Netflix has autoplay next episode turned on by default, and if you find the setting to turn it off, each episode ends with a large screen prompting you to PLEASE click to play the next episode. As someone who really likes episodes to end cleanly and give me time to think, this REALLY annoys me.

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

#420

Post by sizzle »

kartan wrote: post #55
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…

> 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…

Very cool profession, where can I learn more about the tech behind the gambling industry, got any good recommendations? Are any start-ups shaking up the traditional slot machine gambling industry? Is it still run by shadowy Mafia types like we see in movies?
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