[malvosenior]

So you don't think what I said is true? That every form of entertainment targeted toward young people for the past half a century has had the same rhetoric attached to it? Were you alive in the 80s? Do you remember that D&D was accused of causing Satanism and causing teens to commit human sacrifice? I'm seriously not making that up, it happened.

The entire thesis of the blog post is that tech companies are "ruining" our children by employing psychologically manipulative product development. My argument is that this has been happening for ages and people continue to grow up as regular human beings.

[rosser]

Of course it's true that most forms of media and entertainment have been subject to, "Won't someone THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!" responses from busy-bodies, fear-mongers, and others.

That in no way mitigates the fact that this medium is categorically different. None of newspapers, comics, D&D, TV, or any of those other things had immediate, real-time feedback adapted specifically to the individual user, and designed to weaponize the amygdala and dopamine responses to maximize engagement, at the cost of basically everything else.

Interactive tech brings a sea change in this phenomenon and its effectiveness. You can't meaningfully dismiss that, because it's predicated on the paltry shadow of what happened with non-interactive media.

EDIT: Consider, for example, the cohort of children whose early development screen time correlates profoundly strongly with their inability to hold a pencil. That's new. TV didn't do that. D&D didn't do that. Screens did.

[malvosenior]

I beg to differ. I think you're definitely overestimating the importance of individualization. TV has been doing all of these things for half a century. People will literally watch it all day and definitely become addicted.

Advertising has been "weaponizing the amygdala" for a century. It's designed to instill insecurity and envy.