[myspy]

That's true. We restrict access to Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, FB, they can use WhatsApp, YT, iMessage, Phone and Pinterest. I'm fucking annoyed by other parents that don't set boundaries that way. I have so much discussions about other platforms. Pushing them to physically meet is hard too.

We grew up at a time where SMS was a thing when I became 16. I know that keeping up is cool, but social media is a disease. The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn't even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.

I'm annoyed mainly because people around me make bad decisions that have an influence on my own life.

[belorn]

People tend to agree with expert advice when that advice align with their own personal views and values. Sadly both smart and dumb, educated and uneducated people falls for this and the pandemic demonstrated this in waves and continues to do so.

Take this study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0?error=coo...). How many people on HN will agree with the ranking of those interventions? Early restrictions on travel and preventing people from gathering are the most effective measure to prevent an pandemic, but what people want to form sides around are the discussion around masks. Shutting down airports and imposing general self isolation are not in alignment of what either smart and dumb people believes in.

[nicolas_t]

One of the criteria I used when choosing my son's school is that mobile phones are not allowed at all in school. It's a primary school (until 12 years old) so you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age but from what I've heard of other parents, smart phones are common already this early.

I don't believe in completely forbidding access to everything when my son is older but there's a time to introducing things like this and it's not this young.

[RGamma]

> you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age

Elsagate videos got many tens (hundreds?) of millions of views at the time. If you know where to look you can see the cumulative engagement of babies in front of their tablets.

[TeMPOraL]

There's this old stat about video games, oft quoted a decade or more ago in context of Zynga, etc., that one of the largest game market is casual games, and the players are predominantly working-age women.

There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices.

I also wonder what the breakdown of Netflix streaming hours is. I suspect a huge chunk of it is just toddlers and pre-schoolers watching the same episodes of Cocomelon over and over again.

[RGamma]

Edit: E.g. see this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaqTWtLZgs (What If 10 SPIDER-MAN in 1 HOUSE ??? || Hey All SuperHero , Go To Trainning Nerf Gun !!)

50M views with lovely comments such as "Ujhgjjgfgk", "ĤĎĎ hcl jdjdsewi10000000000", "nnnmkkk", etc.

This sort of shit gets billions of views...

[srmarm]

This sounds like a really good way of approaching it. From what I understand the argument against is clear but enforcing it in the face of peer pressure a little more complicated!

My nephews school allows basic 'dumb' phones but not smart phones which seems a fair compromise.

[nicolas_t]

Yes, the peer pressure is exactly the point. The older your child is, the more his peers will influence his behavior. I hope by the time he goes to middle school, I'll find a school with this kind of restrictions.

Dumb phones is definitely a smart compromise...

[dimgl]

> The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn't even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.

If you stay home and others don't, it doesn't affect you. If you're isolated and safe, why would you care if others go out and do what they want?

A commenter in a sibling thread asked why "people are so nitpicky" and "why people are so hostile to each other". This comment is why. It's exemplary even. You should look inward and figure out if you're part of the problem.

[triceratops]

> If you're isolated and safe, why would you care if others go out and do what they want?

Because they'll get sick and fill up the emergency room. If I have a heart attack or stroke at home, that's a problem for me now.

[tnel77]

It seems you are a good example of what they were talking about. Not understanding cause and effect such as using up medical resources that could otherwise be used for regular emergencies.

[watwut]

It does, because the hospital is overloaded and I cant get access for unrelated health condition.

It does, because there are places I have to go to and I am at higher risk there.

[tsukikage]

That's a fine stance if staying home is an option for you, but many people are not that fortunate with their logistical and financial situation.

Meanwhile, it transpires that the outside world is full of people who I am sure are upstanding and willing to self-sacrifice for their fellow man in theory, but will point blank refuse to bear the mild inconvenience of a piece of cloth over their face in shared spaces for the comfort of those around them in practice.

I mean, it's not news; most humans have never cared much about the welfare of strangers; people doing what they want and ignoring the externalities happens all the time - smoking in public spaces, drink driving... the pandemic simply served to viscerally ram home just how self-centered we all are.

And thus we come full circle to the start of the thread. Hell is other people. The more we interact with other people, the more obvious this becomes. As our world becomes more connected, no room is left for illusions on the subject; it's little wonder teens end up holing up in their rooms avoiding everyone.

[belorn]

People should not go out when they are sick. That they do so because of a logistical and financial situation, trading other peoples health for economical gain, is a very bad situation for everyone involved. A piece of cloth over their face may be a symbol for "better than nothing" solution, but it is a very problematic starting point for a discussion regarding pandemics.

The best solution to this problem in general is social welfare. One such choice that countries did during the pandemic was to encourage or force work-from-home, and reducing the economical friction of sick leave. When the situation is so bad that people have to choose between externalities and major negative personal impact, society can help by stepping in by pushing the right choice while at the same time reducing that negative personal impact. It is a social solution to a social issue.

People as a group can be good and evil, just as an individual. Society can choose to ignore citizens logistical and financial problems while at the same time expect people to act altruistic. A major reason for that will coincidental also be the logistical and financial situation of that country, so they may as an alternative choose an better than nothing solution to it. Sub-optimal as it is.

[dimgl]

I think this view sucks. A core part of being a functioning human being is being able to interact with others whose views differ from your own.

The core problem is the ostracization of opinion on social media. It also doesn't play very well when social isolation has had other consequences, such as the proliferation of viruses and the broad economic impact. Plus, COVID is now integrated in our society, thus giving more ammunition to those who thought that social isolation was pointless (even if it wasn't at the time).

We need to move on from the isolationism and vitriol of others with differing opinions.

[tsukikage]

Personally, I think gp's "If you stay home and others don't, it doesn't affect you" sucks, but YMMV.

[triceratops]

You're responding to GP.

[intended]

There are 2 contexts for speech, and within each different forces change the outcome of the same conversation. This is why I can say your analysis is resulting in erroneous outputs.

For arguments sake, let’s call it - individual only scenarios vs collective scenarios.

Individual only: What thoughts you say at home in the privacy of your house.

Collective: The vote.

In collective scenarios, the median/average choice dominate.

Eg: The chemical expert knows that chemical X is going to kill humans and avoids it.

The collective votes Yes to elect a representative who advocates for chemical X to be added to all food packaging.

——-

This is a very common trick question where Free Speech argument proponents falter.

Free Speech is a principle for ordering the world. With the internet, this principle needs to be applied to people who would skew or influence collective decisions.

[evilduck]

Brandolini's Law also comes to mind. Countering bullshit takes more effort than creating it. It's an understandable self-defense mechanism for an individual or even a community to just isolate and quarantine the source of a problem than to engage with them in earnest discourse. Trolling, astroturfing, and propaganda are real things, no amount of engagement will sway the opinion of bad-faith actors.

[dimgl]

This is still too cynical. A large majority of people are not bad-faith actors but rather normal people who simply want to live their lives.

To be clear, I'm not arguing whether the lockdowns were good or bad. I do think they were necessary. I'm more arguing that we shouldn't suppress and ostracize people who disagreed with them. It's okay for people to disagree.

[pokerface_86]

i think THIS view sucks. some things are objectively true. why should we have to tolerate people who literally don’t understand basic statistics and harm reduction? at all?

[whstl]

> If you're isolated and safe, why would you care if others go out and do what they want?

To answer this question:

Because almost nobody was isolated. Most people couldn't stay at home exclusively and indefinitely. You gotta get groceries, lots of people have to go to work, lots of people have partners and family members that can't work from home, you gotta receive parcels, you had to receive food deliveries, and some people had to be the ones delivering parcels and food, some people could get OTHER diseases. The list goes on.

[mbesto]

> I'm annoyed mainly because people around me make bad decisions that have an influence on my own life.

So, like smoking in restaurants?

[lynx23]

You mean that "expert advice" which is increasingly questioned with passing time, and happened to change every Monday and Saturday? That expert advice which at least for Germany is now revealed to have been ordered by political forces, not based on scientific evidence? C'mon. Waving about with the pandemic as a good example is getting hilarious.

[Propelloni]

Except that nothing has been revealed. The blackened protocols of the crisis meetings of the Roland-Koch-Institut (the public health organization funded by the FRG) are incomplete and the alleged political meddling is an insinuation by "alternative facts" journalists. Let's wait and see what happens when the full protocols are released. IIRC, there is a review board for Corona measures anyway and the journalists are sueing for a full release, too.

It is shameful that citizens had to sue for the release of the partial protocols in the first place, for sure, but the conclusions are more than hasty. Anyhow, you seem to have made up your mind, so I'm leaving you to it.

[ripe]

This sounds like post-facto justification for following rumors and disinformation during the pandemic.

Yes, expert opinions do change as new data comes in, and yes, public policy is as much influenced by politics as by science. But during the beginning of the pandemic, the OP is absolutely correct that a shocking number of people showed very poor judgment based on social media.

And this has not changed. Social media continues to be a cesspool of conspiracy theorists and deliberately provocative content that increases "engagement". Please don't dismiss this point by putting "expert advice" in quotes.

[batch12]

A problem is people who are confidently wrong and hide behind science as a religion. If we were to admit a level of, I don't know, this is the best we've got right now, there would be more trust in expert advice. During the pandemic, this expert advice was abused to exercise control over some and not others which helped cast doubt over all information. For instance, political leaders hanging out in public restaurants without masks while others were directed to huddle in their homes made some wonder if this thing was as bad as those 'leaders' claimed.

[lynx23]

I would agree with your take if we had a solution for the "who watches the watchers" problem. Since we don't, blanket criticism of critical thinking doesn't go down with me since I watched the pandemic unfold. Our state-controlled local media said 3 days after the first lockdown that we are supposed to only listen to them, and ignore every other media outlet because they are going to lie. This in a democratic country. I was schocked, and what followed didn't make me any more trusting in the powers that be. We tell our kids if they keep lying, nobody will believe them. This is what happened during the pandemic. And claiming experts are cool just because, doesn't make that deeply rooted distrust go away. We tell our kids they are not supposed to lie because after a while, nobody will believe them. But if we're being subjected to improsionment at home based on vague "scientific" experts who turn out to have followed orders from politiccians, we are supposed to forget all about it and more on? Nope, sorry. Trust has eroded, and just saying so will not reestablish it.

[watwut]

Replacing "watchers the watchers" by the sociopaths that knowingly spew lies and made up crap just to get what they want is not exactly a win.

[winstonprivacy]

> The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn't even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.

The amount of dumb, educated people that blindly accepted everything that was fed to them during the fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall.

"Just two weeks to flatten the curve!"