[echelon]

That's a bit like saying addictive drugs themselves aren't a problem.

Technology is designed to trick humans into engaging with it. They use us for profit.

It's asymmetric warfare. One or two parents, with jobs and responsibilities, against kids with peer pressure and billion dollar industries hawking them on, claws in their back and brain.

[minusthebrandon]

My wife and I both work full-time and we still stick to my daughter's iPad restrictions: only an hour a day, no Instagram or TikTok or YouTube at all, and she only gets it after homework and chores and other things are done. We never take it anywhere. It's important that parents set AND KEEP boundaries.

My daughter now knows not to expect to be able to Snapchat her friends or anyone else because she's never been able to. When she mentions that her friends all have it, we remind her that our house is not their house and we have our rules in place for a reason, which we are always willing to explain.

While I agree that screens and TV ARE very addicting, that doesn't mean that parents are powerless or that the majority of the problems brought up in this article are not the fault of the parents.

[londons_explore]

Lack of ability to snapchat friends might not seem important... But communication is key to nearly everything in life, and not being part of those snapchat rumours, disputes and controversies now will probably mean your daughter doesn't get as good at the skills to interact with her peers in 20 years time.

[minusthebrandon]

She interacts with her peers at school and with her family... by that same token, ANYONE who grew up before Snapchat or the Internet had or has lacking social skills.

Also, she CAN FaceTime. I would not consider Snapchat or TikTok to be "socializing with friends" for an 8 year old.

[jjk166]

> She interacts with her peers at school and with her family... by that same token, ANYONE who grew up before Snapchat or the Internet had or has lacking social skills.

You know how we don't really get this whole social media thing the kids are into these days? That's because we lack those social skills. Just like how your parents' generation struggles with E-mail despite it being so simple, because you grew up with that.

It might not bother you that you're bad at Telegram or whatever because none of your peers use it either. But her peers do.

[minusthebrandon]

My parents struggling with e-mail is no way the same thing as lacking social skills. That just seems a lack of technology skills.

My point was that saying Snapchat or social media leads to greater social skills than what previous generations had is very hard for me to believe.

[jjk166]

Tomato tomato

You can communicate via a method your parents can't because you used it extensively in your prime while they didn't. Your grandparents probably had the same issue with fax machines and your grandchildren will probably have the same problem with neural-messaging. Every generation thinks "but this time it's different" and every generation is wrong.

[NegativeLatency]

I missed out on texting because of similar choices by my parents, at the time it was not fun

[snazz]

Yes. I don't know how old the GP's daughter is, but restricting communication apps—especially during a pandemic—seems counterproductive. TikTok, sure, whatever; it's a time suck and doesn't really help with social skills. But socializing online really matters now, especially for adolescents.

Edit: If she's eight years old, then this seems like a more reasonable restriction. Disregard what I said previously. Eleven or twelve might be a better time to get Snapchat, especially since that's about the time that most kids get their first smartphones today anyway.

[minusthebrandon]

Yes, she is 8. But even if she were 10 or 11, we'd probably keep similar restrictions. She does have access to FaceTime and our time restriction will probably grow as she ages.

[anonunivgrad]

A minor should not have access to Snapchat. It’s all fun and games until she sends a nude picture to a boy out of naïveté, falsely lured into a sense of security by Snapchat.

[_zamorano_]

Yeah, it's doable and congratulations for achieving.

But anyway, he is right. For most parents is an uphill battle against tech and social media they're bound to lose due to mostly exhaustion.

[ccleve]

How old is your child? Whether you can get away with this very much depends on the child.

[minusthebrandon]

She's 8. I'll grant that this works for us now. As she ages, we'll give her more responsibility for handling boundaries on her own.

[dijksterhuis]

> That's a bit like saying addictive drugs themselves aren't a problem.

I mean... They're not. They're inanimate f----- objects. They've never maliciously set out to cause someone harm because they're inanimate f----- objects. They don't have an understanding of the concept of morals or ethics because they're inanimate f----- objects.

When I ingest them into my body -- that's when all hell breaks loose. They become a problem for me when I use them.

> Technology is designed to trick humans into engaging with it. They use us for profit.

Who is this mythical "they"?

Technology is designed to do many jobs. Some of them include gamification to "maximise engagement" or some other cringeworthy buzzword. Some of them are literally as simple as "turn the lights off at 10pm" or "wake me up at 10am".

It's how we, as a collective species, implement and use technology that's usually the problem.

"technology" itself is, again, an inanimate f----- object.

> It's asymmetric warfare. One or two parents, with jobs and responsibilities, against kids with peer pressure and billion dollar industries hawking them on, claws in their back and brain.

I think this is called life? Yes, lots of things all happen at the same time and there's alway societal pressures one way or another.

But calling it warfare is pretty extreme and may be something useful to reflect on.

[pbhjpbhj]

So, how about when your schoolwork requires you to 'ingest the drugs', you visit YouTube to watch the video your teacher picked out (they did a bad job IMO, but hey) ... then you're supposed to leave [cold turkey!] and get on with your work, except the website is highly animate and designed carefully to entice you to stay. All of a sudden you're spending the afternoon watching dross on YT because kids lack self-control and companies know how to exploit that.

Of course there's some blame goes to the teacher, but hey.

I think your response is disingenuous.

Aside, I don't know what tech you're using but mines all been blinken-lights and conditioned-response dings (by default) for years.

There is certainly a conflict, OP might have been slowly melodramatic in their choice of words but just as casinos foster their whales, so too tech companies use the psychology of addiction against consumers.

[dijksterhuis]

In your YouTube example there are are few people that have responsibilities:

- teacher

- video maker

- YouTube Devs

- companies

- "kids"

- individual

- school

- etc

YouTube (the drug) is just a series of instructions that make a slab of glass light up in a certain pattern and a speaker to oscillate in a particular fashion (depending on hardware).

It's an inanimate f----- object. It doesn't have "responsibilities".

That's the point I'm getting at. Why don't we, collectively, stop blaming the drugs/tech and start finding solutions to the actual problem?

It's easy to point the blame finger, it's harder to solve a problem.

[pbhjpbhj]

A key difference is that YouTube/companies in part work to increase 'engagement' (which in turn encourages overuse, and encompasses the courting of addictive behaviors) even when it reduces utility.

The other parties want to maximise utility.

[dijksterhuis]

Do you not think drug dealers aim to "maximise engagement" too? It's not the drug's fault for the dealers actions. So how about we stop blaming an inanimate f----- object and work to find a solution to the problem.

In your schoolwork example I can come up with four potential solutions off the top of my head:

- Speak to the teacher about concerns and ask about other ways of doing what is required

- Speak to parents and ask them to help with the homework

- Buddy up with a friend and watch the required video with a friend to avoid falling down a rabbit hole

- Use software like youtube-dl to download the video locally, to avoid temptation of watching another video

Then we come back full circle to the parent comment. It's not the drug's fault. It's not the phone's fault. It's not some software instruction's fault.

Blaming and ascribing fault is only helpful in identifying the problem. After that, the question becomes what can I do about it that will helpful for me today? What is my solution for how this affects me?

i.e. learning to develop personal responsibility.

[lishzen]

You know, technology doesn't just materialize spontaneously, it is made with a human purpose and that purpose (with all the subjectivity of everyone that participates in creating and fostering the technology) is imbued in those inanimate objects. When you use technology it guides you in its intended use according to its purpose, when you open a door by its handle, when you put your headphones on.

Phones and youtube specifically are made to make money by gaining and keeping one's attention. They achieve it with tactics that trigger addiction. Some people become addicts, some not so much, but if you have a human brain you will feel the pull to abuse them.

In the case of phones and youtube the "mythical they" are the ones who profit from them and don't care about the effects of their tactics on the users. Maybe it is not warfare but it sure is asymmetric.

[dijksterhuis]

I agree on some of your points, but you've missed what I'm getting at here it seems.

I'm saying that it's not the software's fault. In the immortal words of Philip K Dick: "dont blame the drug dude".

Blaming some faceless, mythical "they" gets everyone exactly nowhere. It doesn't solve anything.

There's a bigger question that everyone could be asking...

[michaelt]

> They're not. They're inanimate f----- objects. [...] They become a problem for me when I use them.

In common usage of the english language, a thing can be a 'problem' without being sentient or unavoidable.

A pothole in the highway can be a problem if it's damaging people's cars - even if they could avoid it by driving more cautiously.

[dijksterhuis]

I see what you're getting, and I like the pothole analogy. I agree with the fact that it can be used like that in the English language, but I disagree with the idea behind it.

In the pothole analogy - it's like saying potholes are the reason for all these people's cars being damaged.

If no cars were driving over the pothole then the pothole wouldn't be a problem as no damage would ever be caused! It's an inanimate f----- object. It's just there.

It's the fact that people are driving cars on a road that has potholes that causes their cars to be damaged. It's some action that was taken that causes an effect to occur.

Then we get into the murky world of who is actually responsible and what is the solution. Which I don't have an answer for.

[jjk166]

You clearly didn't read the article.

Phones certainly can be a problem, but the problem here has nothing to do with the phone.

[echelon]

I did read the article and saw the author blaming themselves and calling themselves bad parents.

It's not all their fault. They're fighting an asymmetric war. Millions of parents are.

[jjk166]

Oh, you read the article where a mother repeatedly says her 11 year old daughter is just like a crack addict because she prefers being on her phone to making her bed? The article where the mother admits to going into fits of rage and punishes the 11 year old child for doing nothing that isn't normally tolerated even in this already very strict household? The article where this mother of an 11 year old blames nothing but the phone for the fact that this girl entering into adolescence behaves differently than when she was a child?

No, this article was written by a narcissist who can't handle her little girl growing up and rather than dealing with it in a healthy way is instead raging against an inanimate object.

[goatlover]

Nine hours on a phone during the day is normal for an eleven year old? That sounds like a problem.

[jjk166]

Having never been an 11 year old girl in a pandemic, I can't really speak to what "normal" is. Based on the the girl's behavior as described in the article, it certainly has had no noticeable negative effects.

[onemoresoop]

It's not about the pandemic, it's not even about phones but about the technology/software running on them that turn them into skinner boxes.

[justforyou]

>> That's a bit like saying addictive drugs themselves aren't a problem.

You clearly feel that statement is false but don't provide any support for your strange point of view.