[zhivota]

We recently had some behavior issues with our kids - they didn't want to do activities outside the house, they hated reading, they hated anything that required even the slightest discomfort or effort.

We decided to cut device usage way down - they get 1 hour in the morning to play whatever games they want on computer, tablet, console. Then they get 1 hour before bed to watch TV. The rest of the day, no devices. We are homeschooled so this is a LOT of free time.

After a few weeks, they're now: blasting through books daily (to the point where they forgot their own TV time, which used to be sacred), playing board games with us more frequently, asking to do things outside like learning to ride bikes (which they've previously shied away from), writing their own comic books and board games on paper, and overall just being creative through the day and entertaining themselves.

It's such a huge difference. It is the devices. It's 100% the devices.

[kuerbel]

It depends on what they are doing on the device, 100%. When I was a kid I got a GameBoy, one of those old red ones, played tetris or Mario Land for an hour and after that it was boring and I did something else. Got an N64 which was already way more engaging, but even then after an hour or two I was done.

It just got worse the more sophisticated games became. And now we have infinite videos and content, infinite scrolling and such. How is a child supposed to withstand this onslaught? I only managed this by uninstalling YouTube and all apps with shorts.

[originalvichy]

This sort of analysis can help find a healthy level of gaming or computer use. I spent hours reading Microsoft’s offline encyclopedia on the family PC, and playing games like Age of Empires which taught me history on the side.

Take control of what your kids play, and you can help them find more beneficial uses of electronics which is not an endless loop of bite sized low quality entertainment! :)

[thatguy0900]

I think at the minumim you should be avoiding any games studios that hire behavioral psychologists and optimize for addiction loops. So most every triple A game is immediately out

[kouteiheika]

> It just got worse the more sophisticated games became.

I feel like it got worse not because games became more sophisticated, but because they got dumber and require less and less brainpower.

I spent my childhood playing ridiculous amount of video games, probably same amount or more as kids nowadays do. I had literally hundreds of Playstation games back in the day. And I turned out fine. But the difference was that I was playing a ton of games that required you to put some thought into them, and weren't easy, and often were story-heavy (e.g. JRPGs in particular; being from a non English-speaking country that's how I actually learned English!).

[j4102_]

Played Pokemon back in my day and even now I keep seeing how "dumbed" down it gets in some ways. The game has become more and more hand-held. Don't know if it's a trend across the entire industry though or if it's just me seeing it as an adult. I can't really say

[_345]

Just you as an adult. It's always been that infantile

[superxpro12]

There's some real value in playing older video games precisely because they were developed before immoral engineers got involved and focused on creating engagement solely to be engaging. Prior to this, games were good because of story or challenge, and the engagement naturally followed.

Today, you can see the engagement engineering everywhere. ESPECIALLY IN MOBILE... omg the FOMO, flash colors, 3 second screen transitions, gambling mechanics. It's an addicts nightmare.

[S_Bear]

I've been replaying some of the games of my youth, and they are either super easy or don't take very much time (I remember the original Final Fantasy being this vast epic tale; it took me 9-ish hours to beat as an adult. My Punch-Out reflexes didn't die, and I made it to re-skinned Mike Tyson on my first go.) A third of a game of Civ V takes longer than any of the NES and Genesis games I played as a kid.

[pipes]

Yep both the snes and N64 definitely negatively affected my attainment in school. It's an uncomfortable truth that in hindsight games did negatively affect me.

Now I waste time reading about how those old games were made!

[hylaride]

With real-time telemetry and feedback, companies now know what keeps people "engaged" and "hooked". It's god-awful for brains that are still developing.

[bawolff]

I think the internet is the real problem. Infinite choices, and sites designed specificly to keep you hooked. I feel like addictivity falls a lot when you are stuck with just offline things.

[cobertos]

I think so too. The restrictions of offline software means it has less ability to nag you or pull you in a specific direction. The software you have at any given time is what you've got.

Same sort of theme I've being going for in my personal intranet. It's calmer offline.

[superxpro12]

the internet isnt the problem, its the focus on artificial engagement. It's found everywhere now, and its toxic.

[jrflo]

It's not even just kids, this is true for all people to be honest. Not saying we should go back to an agrarian society but maybe unrestricted access to dopamine slot machines isn't a good idea for your brain.

[madaxe_again]

I had a really effective inoculation against the Skinner box 20+ years ago, when I became addicted to an MMO. It took my life utterly turning to shit and barely escaping being kicked out of university for me to wake up.

Since, I’ve always been aware of and wary of the possibility of this kind of dopamine cycling.

I see it in others. My wife discovered YouTube shorts a year or so ago, and now she’ll lose entire days to watching 20 second clips of reality TV.

Thing is, with a grown ass adult you can’t limit their screen time. You have to let them dig to the bottom of the pit all by themselves, and only when they ask for help to get out of it can you help - otherwise nothing is learned.

It’s honestly not at all dissimilar to friends who I’ve seen fuck their existences up with drugs. They’ve had to hit rock bottom before they quit - or they died. Can’t think of anyone who just went “actually, today I won’t have any heroin”.

[bcjdjsndon]

Yet you're still sat writing mini essays to strangers because of the dopamine hit....

[jrflo]

I think drugs is an apt analogy. Hackernews is like alcohol, it definitely can be addicting but generally most people dont have a problem with it. Short form video is like meth

[j4102_]

Just because you're aware of it doesn't make you any better

[kuerbel]

20 years ago? Aahh, good old World of Warcraft is my guess. Played far too much far too long myself.

[madaxe_again]

Anarchy Online of all bloody things.

[simoncion]

> World of Warcraft

I was lucky(?) enough to have played enough RPG video games that had good stories and combat to be completely unimpressed with WoW when it came along. I got to level three or five or something, said to myself "Shit, this is boring." and never looked back.

That said, I put a ton of time into Guild Wars 2, so don't misinterpret this comment as me sneering at folks who did (or do) put a ton of time into WoW.

[21asdffdsa12]

https://www.alibaba.com/signal-jammer-suppliers.html

Yes, yes you can..

[cucumber3732842]

Feds will shoot your dog for that.

And the exact same people complaining about the screens and saying that something must be done will cheer because "we live in a society" or whatever.

[gonzo41]

This is why i have an xbox and not a gaming pc. Can't have a crack dealer in the house.

[bdangubic]

you don’t need a crack dealer when you are providing heroin and a needle

[blahaj]

I don't know how old your kids are and if they play video games with friends, so maybe they're too young for this to begin with.

Do you give them some kind of additional time budget that they can manage themselves over a longer period? There are things that you can do on a screen that just take more time than one hour at once, especially when you're playing with friends (or even learning something by programming etc.).

[jackp96]

Absolutely. I was homeschooled growing up, and my parents were fairly strict about screentime. We read anything we could get our hands on, and I feel like I'm a happier, healthier adult today because of it.

While I'm now on my phone too much, and I don't read fiction as much as I used to, I'm grateful for those foundations.

The friction and discomfort that come from reading/exercising/learning/growing is so important, and I hope we can find a healthier balance for the next generation.

[bcjdjsndon]

You're on a screen right now. I like how all these parents decrying the evils of screentime dont think they should get off it themselves.

I watched Harvey price, a fairly famous autistic person in the UK edit his own video on an iPad, adding sounds etc. I think that's fantastic self directed learning and it came from, shock horror, a screen. I think this anti-screen sentiment is hysteria, plain and simple.

[blks]

It’s devices but also parents. If parents don’t read books everyday, kids won’t either.

[bcjdjsndon]

Why can't you read from a screen instead? Why do all the benefits of reading seemingly disappear when read from a display screen?

[blahaj]

Most screens have distractions just one tap away.

Personally I also like the physics of a book a lot more for reading. Every book is a physically different object. You physically turn the page. You can physically see how far you are in the book. It's just all much less abstract and tangible.

[tartoran]

It’s a different experience but E-readers come close. Screens’ UIs are too interactive for a proper lecture.

[buellerbueller]

every screen, even the majority of e-readers, now has advertising, which is designed to distract and incept.

[losvedir]

How old are the kids? Honestly two hours of screens and devices seems like a lot to me, so I'm surprised that's where you cut down to. How much were they using them before? But my kids are young, so it's probably different if you're talking about like teens or something.

[beezlewax]

You may have noticed the same behavioural issues amongst your adult friends or at times in yourself. I know I have. Anytime I give up doom scrolling for a week or two I feel instantly less anxious about the world and everything going on around me.

Social media is a plague and will likely be looked on by the psychiatric/medical professional as extremely harmful in years to come. Something akin to smoking.

[bcjdjsndon]

> Social media is a plague and will likely be looked on by the psychiatric/medical professional as extremely harmful in years to come.

Not only will it not, autism will not last more than 25 years in it's current form. I bet money on both of those

[ayatollah]

Thanks for your input, I find this take intriguing. Could you elaborate on the link you see between social media and Autism?

[jhedwards]

Just for some perspective, my kids get about 1 hour of screen time a day, and a lot of my friends are shocked at how much they watch. I'm glad you made this change and saw the positive effect, especially to the extent that they started choosing other activities over screen time, but I can't image how much they were watching before you "cut down" to 2 hours a day, and how you could have felt that that was OK for children?

[ido]

They didn't write how old the kids were, there's a big difference between a 3 year old and a 12 year old.

[Ntrails]

> It is the devices. It's 100% the devices.

That anyone is pretending otherwise is mind boggling to me.

[JimsonYang]

It is the phones fault and it affects more than kids. You see too many parents and grandparents buried on the phones. At least with boomers the tech adoption isnt as high

We should recognize its not a generational issue but something that affects us all-young and old

[Frieren]

> It is the phones fault and it affects more than kids.

It is the business model. There is an incentive to make games addictive. Like arcade games the goal is to keep kids as much time on the machine as possible. But now the arcade is in your pocket 24/7.

Even worse, there is an incentive even to just open the app as it is an opportunity to show you an Ad. Notifications, and periodical rewards make sure that there is a constant need to interact with the phone.

Unregulated markets will always end up in scams and addiction. Because both are the fastest and more reliable way of getting money.

[svelle]

> There is an incentive to make games addictive.

It's not just games though, it's pretty much every digital service now.

Virtually every website has infinite scrolling and algorithms that tailor the feed directly to what "appeals" to the user now. It's all just drip-feeding dopamine to the user base so they stay engaged for the longest possible time.

[seanmcdirmid]

Yes. The hardest part about telling my kid to get off his device is setting a good example by getting off mine.

[kakacik]

Kids do what parents do, and what parents allow them to do. Allowing X hours daily gaming/screens is already bad parenting (depending on age but we talk about kids here), like it or not ask psychologists. At the end its just same genes & upbringing from the same genes (or failure to do so and ie nanny picks up).

Everything else is just an empty blah. Every single time there is unruly kid, I look at parental behaviors and its pretty obvious. Reverse is also true - every properly caring involved parent has much better behaving kid(s) around.

[ivell]

There are kids with autism and ADHD that you may have not considered.

[bcjdjsndon]

> asking to do things outside like learning to ride bikes

They sound deprived, why haven't you got them a bike if you're complaining about screen time?

> It's such a huge difference. It is the devices. It's 100% the devices.

You sound like you're convincing yourself here.