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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

#421

Post by zmmmmm »

I'm concerned about my kids screen time, but I'm also concerned that there seems to be an "anti-screen-time" cult that is operating on virtually no evidence, yet insists that any form of time with "screens" is bad. Some of the computer games that my kids play are some of the most cognitively complex and creative things they do. For one example, Minecraft, has simply no equivalent "real world" activity that it can be compared to.

The problem with blindly saying all screen time is bad is that it actually prevents us talking about what is good and what is bad about it, and therefore actually impedes progress. As a result, we have almost no guidance to either parents or app developers about what constitutes "good" content, which actually results in more "bad" content and more kids being exposed to "bad" content because parents are just operating in a complete blind spot where they let their kids have small amounts of "screen time" during which they can do anything.

It's like saying "I limit my children's tobacco time to 1 hour per day" - which is ludicrous but that is exactly what being promoted currently as "good practise" for parents to follow.

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

#422

Post by kopo »

Benjammer wrote: post #406
kopo wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Good point and well put.

These issues were being raised as far back as 2005-6 when debates were raging about whether likes/clicks/views and other "easy to collect" numbers were the right proxies for peoples needs and feelings. We know which camp prevailed.

What's changed is people's reaction and awareness. Hopefully we learn how to inject some love into the machine and dilute the apathy.

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

#423

Post by WalterBright »

manfredo wrote: post #101
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.

Video games are protected by the first amendment right to free speech and expression. Slot machines are gambling devices that take in and pay out money. The two aren't really comparable. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the regulations on slot machines only apply when they're used in real money gambling. Presumably, if someone built a slot machine that didn't take in or dispense tokens, and could not be used in gam…

> if someone built a slot machine that didn't take in or dispense tokens, and could not be used in gambling in any way, it wouldn't be subject to those regulations

I did in the 1970's, and it's perfectly legal (roulette, not slots):

https://www.ebay.com/p/Las-Vegas-Roulette-Intellivision-1980...

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

#424

Post by fzeroracer »

There is unfortunately a lot of anti-tech or anti-science bullshit sentiment behind the idea of restricting access to phones or screens. It reminds me a lot of how you would have people in the tech industry peddling fears about GMOs.

That said, they're not necessarily wrong. They're just missing the forest for the trees. The issue isn't social media or videos or even video games. It's advertising. The cold calculating hand of the free market will reach out to anyone and everyone for the sake of profit, which is why we see a ton of ads, shitty malware-ridden games and abuses of the system in order to gain a foothold into using children as weapons in the advertising war. Every click and every watch is more money, no matter who it is.

In a way it's similar to the way cigarettes were advertised as being for cool people, resulting in affecting children because it infects them with that message from an early age. Flintstones ads featuring Winstons Cigarettes being a great example.

So how do we stop it? You either prevent them from using it, full-stop or you actually create a walled garden designed to protect them from the exploitative behaviors of certain youtube content creators and lassiez-faire app stores.

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

#425

Post by WalterBright »

When I was young, it was the TV. My TV watching was severely limited until I left home, and while at the time I thought it was an atrocity committed against me, I'm glad of it now. It's too easy to lose a whole day to TV.

As a result I spent time outside, hanging with friends, reading, and building things.

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

#426

Post by WalterBright »

I was obsessed with pinball (the predecessor to video games) for a while. It cost a dime for a game, a quarter for three. I had no money, so it was a big deal to get to play a game. The pinball machine is very set up to give "rewards" for points scored, such as giving out free games.

One time in the dorm, the coin op broke, and the machine allowed unlimited games for free. I played, and played, and played, and then something broke in me. I totally lost interest in pinball, it bored me silly, and in 40 years that interest never came back.

One of my first jobs was testing video games. That ground to dust any interest I had in that. It revived briefly when Doom came out, but that didn't last long.

I suppose I've dodged a bullet with that.

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

#427

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #425

When I was young, it was the TV. My TV watching was severely limited until I left home, and while at the time I thought it was an atrocity committed against me, I'm glad of it now. It's too easy to lose a whole day to TV. As a result I spent time outside, hanging with friends, reading, and building things.

These days, I sometimes catch myself worrying about fake "karma" points on HackerNews or Reddit, and then laugh and forget about it.

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

#429

Post by mindslight »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #397
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…

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! I have two adult sons. They were online as early as ages 2 and 5. I beg to differ and all that. If kids are being ignored and not getting their needs adequately met, etc, then what happens online can have a huge adverse impact on them. But I don't think this is…

You're right of course, but not exclusively - both are necessary. IMHO the era your sons were growing up, the concern was properly contextualizing online interpersonal interactions, which were completely invisible to parents by default.

Now we're dealing with websites/apps that have been explicitly designed to addict mature adults, playing people as pawns against one another. I'm familiar with the idea of "Rat Park" [0], but I think even if we can be absolutely sure kids' needs are being met it would be naive to rely on it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

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

#430

Post by HoppyHaus »

Aeolos wrote: post #334
faitswulff wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GIMP comes to mind...

Gimp 2.10 is really rather pleasant to use. Some pains remain, but it's (very slowly) getting there.

Gimp as a whole becomes ten times better once you enable single window mode.
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