> I also see far too many boys whose gaming obsessions lead them to forgo interest in school, extracurricular activities, and anything else productive. Some of these boys, as they reach their later teens, use their large bodies to terrorize parents who attempt to set gaming limits. A common thread running through many of these cases is parent guilt, as so many are certain they did something to put their kids on a destructive path.<p>This was me. I was 14, my parents just divorced and I got hooked on Starcraft in 1999. I would play until the sun came up, go to school and sleep through class. I did it for 3 years straight, with varying levels of addiction.<p>At some point, my mom wanted me to see a pyschologist but I tried to show her I wasn't addicted. I took the cd out of the computer, cut it up and glued it to a piece of paper. I hung that paper on the corkboard for all to see, then, not 5 days later I bought another cd and started the cycle again.<p>I don't know if I was reeling with teenager angst or overloaded emotions because of the divorce but I needed help and my parents didn't know what to do. I nearly didn't finish high school because of it.<p>Now, with a son of my own - I am constantly thinking about how in the world do I expose my son to technology but also teach him moderation. I don't want to have a fight about how much time is too much, I simply want the technology to be useful to solve a problem and not something my son feels compelled to use all day long.
One thing to consider is that a larger percentage of data normally stored in our brains is now being stored digitally than ever before. In a very real sense, part of the child's "self" in this article is only accessible via technology. Not just her memories and the deep thinking part of our brains we would call the "zone", but her senses as well - new stimuli like being pinged by someone or having a constant data feed that works a bit like hearing, alerting us to new developments.<p>I grew up playing Atari at a family friend's house, and saw my first real computer (a Mac Plus) around age 8 or 9 which I feel was maybe my first transcendental experience with technology (drawing with the mouse in MacPaint). I can't even imagine what effect a fully-connected smart tablet would have had on my intellectual and emotional development.<p>I'm just going to throw this out there, that we shouldn't be thinking of this as internet addiction, but more like, I dunno, asking a kid who grew up in space to live with gravity. Old folks like me (gen x) see kids on tablets and feel this understandable sense of concern, but forget that they are dabbling in their own little infinite universes just like we did. That doesn't release companies from their ethical responsibility of treating children with utmost concern though.
One of the most pervasive problems of modern tech - discouraging but at this point not surprising to see people dismissively brushing this off in this thread. This is the kind of community end up with when you phantom delete and 'ninja bury' any posts or comments that dare question the ethical and societal implications of the shit going on in SV.
my little brother and ex also went through an addiction phase of video games but I would like to say it had a positive impact for both of them and heres why:<p>1. When my parents (mom and stepdad) went through an almost and very rough divorce, my mom was an alcoholic and my stepdad traveled all of the time. My mom couldn't be bothered to pay much attention to my little brother and I was taking all AP classes buried in homework, but I did what I could. With all of the fighting and lack of attention my little brother got, he turned to video games instead of getting involved with bad kids at school or staying out/getting into trouble with girls etc.<p>2. My ex was as only child with a widowed mother who worked all the item. He played MMOs has is to this day over a decade later still friends with many of the friends he made from these games and sees them in person now.<p>Alot of these discussions center around the assumption there is this loving supportive family there, or a rich social life these kids would have to engage in, but video games is destroying their life. Many times is precisely the opposite, and kids turn to video games because their parents arent there, they don't have friends at school, and in many cases before video games they might turn to other alternatives that are objectively more dangerous.<p>Furthermore, video games can develop good habits, and some of the smartest people I know spent as children an immense amount of time playing video games, and still do from time to time. I think for smart people who like to be constantly engaged in interesting work, video games provides that level of intense focus while also allowing the mind to relax during "down" time. That is a bit of a tangent, but I would argue in some cases video games can be therapeutic for children, and perhaps parents should take ownership of the fact that perhaps the "terror" in the childs life is coming from them, and video games are an escape.<p>Of course no parent wants to admit or acknowledge that, but plenty of them passively do by not being around and having video games be the best alternative babysitter that they arent buying for their kids anyways.
The touch interfaces of smart phones enhance the dopamine feed back loop from a sense of touch. Touching something releases Oxycontin which is a bonding hormone. Couple that with slot machine random push notifications triggering dopamine that are there to capture ones attention. I think smart phones are strongly addictive.<p>Peoples attention span is the new currency. Big data analytics are used to maximize user retention and user attention.<p>I personally found that if I use "smart phone" too much it is shortening my attention span, I could no longer read long text like manual pages without getting distracted. Why is it called "smart phone" when it is addictive and makes people who use social media to much more depressed?<p>Ponder if one is addicted to likes on Hacker News?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin</a>
<a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hands_on_research" rel="nofollow">https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hands_on_resea...</a><p>Smart phone addiction the slot machine in your pocket
<a href="https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/smartphone-addiction-slot-machine-your-pocket" rel="nofollow">https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/smartphone-addiction-slo...</a>
I don't get it. Why did Kelly's parents not just stop paying her phone bills and change the Wifi password? Heck, why not just take the phone away and replace it with a flip-phone? How hard can it be to nip these kinds of issues in the butt with simple pragmatic solutions? This is not a rhetorical question. I will be parent soon and stories like these, terrify me.
I was born in 91, so for the first half of childhood (0 - 9) there were no tablets or smartphones or smart TVs around. During the latter part of my childhood (10 - 17) these things started to propagate but we were still in the initial phases of smartphones and social networks. We had game consoles growing up but they were not as networked as they are now.<p>Watching my goddaughter (age 3) is pretty terrifying, she knows how to operate Netflix and has seen some movies dozens of times, she spends a lot of time on tablets and smartphones and is already conditioned to them.<p>It's difficult for me to see parents capitulate to their younger kids outbursts and simply hand them a phone to placate them, I'm not a parent yet but given everything I know about the companies behind big tech I don't feel comfortable giving my child access to a phone until high school. If I was able to survive w/o one I'm sure they can too.
Playing video games as a kid is what got me started programming at a very early age. Of course there was no social media and heaven for bid you communicated with someone through a computer you were ridiculed in school as a nerd. Times have certainly changed.
the addiction design is the aspect to highlight.<p>most of us here were, I think, fascinated by this new toy and we loved to program it and "play" with the code or hardware. very similar to gearheads and cars, or other hobbyist types.<p>but the design for "persuasion" or addiction is really a big deal.
> “Never before in history have basically 50 mostly men, mostly 20–35, mostly white engineer designer types within 50 miles of where we are right now [Silicon Valley], had control of what a billion people think and do.”<p>Hey, is this right place to contact those 50 guys? We're having this little problem where society is becoming increasingly polarized and fractured into camps, which are attacking one another with greater and greater ferocity. Like, I know you like money, but could you maybe use your influence to prevent societal collapse and/or nuclear war? Survival is actually in your interest too.
I saw a headline a few weeks ago that American fast food had spread to <location> half a decade or a decade ago, and now obesity rates were way up in the past few years. There shouldn't be anything surprising about this - fast food is engineered and optimized to be as appealing/addictive as possible so that people come back for more, and likely breaks natural systems of recognizing fullness in the process. (Further side effects - zero optimization for human health; likely leads to pickier eaters, etc.)<p>In much the same way, tech optimizes for eyeballs and attention. Kids learning how to interact socially in person? Irrelevant. Constant advertising and status comparison driving users to depression? Doesn't matter, or can even be a positive if it drives engagement. There was an article on here just yesterday ( <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17745630" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17745630</a> ) about how people spend so much time trying to one-up each other on social media, endlessly trying to make it look like their life is better or more fun than it actually is. And of course, even if it sucks a lot of the joy out of doing things, this is exactly what social media companies want.<p>This isn't a problem with psychology or tech, phones or apps. It'd a core feature of the capitalistic system we operate in, and it warps everything within it.
My daughters keep asking me for a phone (smart phone as I have a flip phone). I informed them, they can have a phone when they are able to read a physical copy of the Wall Street Journal understand everything. This provides an assurance to my wife and I that they are able to understand real information, before handing them a device with a constant stream of information.
It boils down to a war on attention.<p>These companies want your attention, they use abusive notifications, gamification, and the like to try and get that initial eyeball, than everything from there is about minimizing boredom, and maximizing interest and attention.<p>"Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit" (<a href="https://xkcd.com/915/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/915/</a>)<p>Everything about the modern app is designed from the ground up to be interesting in some way or another, to avoid becoming boring after long use. But overuse is messing up how we frame what is really boring, kinda boring, sorta interesting, etc.<p>The sad truth is the answer is very likely regular periodical boredom, keep the brains auto scale system in check.<p>I wonder how effective just explaining this concept to kids or young adults would be at minimizing this.
As opposed to Disney's or Coca Cola's or Mattel's psychological war on kids? Hollywood's psychological war on kids? Is it only a war on kids if tech does it or is it just another clickbait ( medium's psychological war on parents' for ad money )? It's ironic that an entity dependent on ad money would create such a title.
People have been saying this about video games, heavy metal, tv, rock-n-roll... for 70+ years. Older generations fear new technology/social change. That's well documented.<p>It's interesting to hear about phone obsession and compare it with video footage of The Beatles landing in the US for the first time with hundreds of fans screaming to the point of delerium. Is there even anything that powerful that exists in our culture today?<p>EDIT: Could someone please explain why this is flagged? If you disagree with my statement, I'd love to hear why.
Is it me or does this rant sound like "bad stuff happened but a phone was involved so it's the phone manufacturer's problem".<p>Our kids get into an agitated state when their devices have to be taken away but why is the fault of "tech industry"? IN the past it wouldve been "video games" or "TV" or "D&D"... just whatever the scapegoat du jour.