
A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley - extraterra
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/phones-children-silicon-valley.html
======
Tehchops
I think it's less about the screen time, and more about what's _on_ the
screen.

Echoing some of the existing comments: Games and sites today are _vastly_
different than they were 20 years ago.

Games like Civilization, Quake, Diablo, C&C, Mortal Kombat, Tony Hawk etc...
were definitely addictive.

But modern games like Fortnite and Clash of Clans are not engineered the same
way. They are specifically designed to function like a slot machine.

I was an avid "gamer" growing up. I wasn't always the most responsible with
it. Probably overdid it a lot. But I can see with my own child, this is a
different ball-game altogether.

Not sure what the fix is either, other than ruthless enforcement of quotas.

~~~
kartan
> They are specifically designed to function like a slot machine.

I work in the gambling industry, making literally slot machines.

Slot machines are heavily regulated and there is a lot of "engagement" tricks
that can not be used in the gambling industry. The kind of trick that Candy
Crush will use.

The dangerous side of gambling is for people that think that they can "win
money". But the games themselves are kind of boring by design. Regulations
force us to make them boring. (And that is a good thing, I will not work on
this industry otherwise).

The future of on-line games and mobile games is regulation. Micro-payments,
push-notifications, etc. cannot be used without limits. People have right to
their mental health more than companies have to higher profits.

~~~
danesparza
You've gotten me wondering: Why AREN'T certain games subject to the same
regulations as slot machines?

Is that a state-by-state regulation? A federal regulation? And does the
regulating code specifically mention physical machines?

Thanks in advance for satisfying my curiosity.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _Why AREN 'T certain games subject to the same regulations as slot
> machines?_

Slot machines are regulated because they fall under the category of gambling
and video games don't meet the legal definition of gambling. (Although, I'd
agree that it's starting to seem more and more as if they should.)

There's a pretty good explanation of the criteria at
[https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...](https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1146&context=grrj)
but the brief summary (from the article) is " _Gambling consists of three
elements: consideration, prize and chance. If any one of those three elements
is missing, the game is simply not gambling (Rose, 1986))._ "

By looking at those criteria, there's a lot of ways video game companies can
defend themselves. The strongest one IMO being that, from a legal standpoint,
there is no prize. You "win" things or get drops but the TOS of all games say
that the player does not own them (or anything else in the game) in any legal
sense. The analogy would be more like a carnival ride where you are paying for
the experience rather than the expectation of getting anything material in
return.

~~~
a13n
> the TOS of all games say that the player does not own them

Yet loads of people sell their in-game items (that they got through chance)
for real money. So in a sense, they do own them.

~~~
setr
Usually despite being banned by the TOS, as a black market kind of operation.

More problematicly, im not sure how youd stop it from extending to say WoW
gold-selling, or even cartridges with 100% saves on them.

People will attribute value to anything for any number of reasons, but I’m not
sure you can make regulation on anything beyond “encouraging” such behavior.
(And I would assume these companies already actively discourage it; you’re not
supposed to be able to get money back _out_ of the system!)

~~~
indigochill
This doesn't actually get money out of the system. If I sell you my WoW
account, money has changed hands but none of that money has come from
WoW/Blizzard.

There are some game developers looking at sanctioned RMT right now because it
would be a huge selling point. "Make money playing video games" used to be a
popular slogan on tacky banner ads. That could see a comeback in a different
way.

Sanctioned RMT works through some official marketplace (think Diablo 3's ill-
fated Auction House). Not only does the developer not pay out anything (all
money flowing through the auction house is coming from buyers of items), but
they even take a "transaction fee" cut. All while continuing to own all the
items being traded. There's no downside for the "house".

Except perhaps suddenly running afoul of gambling regulations if they can no
longer argue there's no "prize" element to the gambling?

------
mindslight
Calling it "screen time" is missing the elephant in the room. The largest part
of the problem is that the software we're directly interacting with has been
designed by companies with interests directly contrary to ours!

Social interaction will inherently set off more chemical rewards, but it is
the tuning of the feedback loop (optimizing for micro-interactions) that keeps
us glued.

Emacs/mutt/libreoffice/python/kodi have not been _adversarily_ tuned to fire
off the reward centers of our brains just enough to keep us returning for
more. Whereas on the same exact screen, firefox/chromium are gateways to
madness.

~~~
VectorLock
This is the conclusion that a lot of people on HN seem to be reaching. Now how
do we go about filtering out the 'bad screen' while allowing the 'good
screen?'

~~~
cirgue
I think the easiest heuristic is this: is the platform a delivery mechanism
for advertising? If so, bad screen.

~~~
astrodust
Stack Overflow, hast thou forsaken me?

~~~
cirgue
I wouldn’t characterize stack overflow as a delivery mechanism for ads in the
same way that, say, YouTube is. Content creators on stack overflow aren’t
there to make money by driving page views. (Rather, the mechanism driving page
views is more utility than sensation)

~~~
wutbrodo
I don't know how useful an epicycle in your model this is. Content creators on
Facebook aren't there to make money by driving page views either, and yet I
assume you wouldn't say that Facebook is "good", by the standard were
discussing.

~~~
bobthepanda
At the same time, SO is hardly optimizing for return visits to SO in the same
way that I would assume that Facebook is optimizing their platform for return
visits and engagement to Facebook.

~~~
powercf
On the other hand, every time I go to SO to find a solution to problem ${X}, I
find very interesting (to me) questions on the right, enticing me to waste
time reading them. They are making an effort to keep people on the Stack
Exchange sites.

------
shlant
The organization I work for, Common Sense Media, has done a good bit of
research on screen time, addiction, and it's effect on families.

Here is the report on Technology Addiction:
[https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/technology-
addicti...](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/technology-addiction-
concern-controversy-and-finding-balance)

Here is our other research reports covering a wide range of media/technology
topics effecting children, families and teachers:
[https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research?page=1](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research?page=1)

~~~
corey_moncure
Thank you, Common Sense Media.

Your website helped me get control over what my wife and parents were exposing
my four year old daughter to, by establishing a neutral source of extremely
valuable information. It became very easy to set guidelines thanks to your
rating system and the wide range of titles reviewed.

The new 3D animation style and cutesy animal characters are dangerously
subversive. My mom thought I was being a grinch until I made her read a review
from CSM of the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie she wanted to show my daughter:

"There was a scene where the male Air Marshall (who was following them), woke
up in a drunken haze (yes, there was a scene where shots and drinks were
involved) with 2 new tattoos and in the bedroom or hotel room with another man
(and all that that implied)."

There is just no way this stuff is age appropriate. I don't care how far the
Overton window has shifted.

The Illumination Studios pictures are particularly insidious. I believe their
content is generally inappropriate for young children, deleterious to moral
character, culturally degenerate, etc. The character design aesthetics are
offensive and stupefying. I wasn't surprised to find the same creative
oversight involved in the duff Chipmunks pictures.

Case in point is Sing, which when I looked it up, it turns out the movie is
notorious for culturally stereotyped presentation of Japanese people, and
animal singers who shake their butts around. There's no way young children can
appropriately contextualize either of these things.

~~~
cthalupa
>There was a scene where the male Air Marshall (who was following them), woke
up in a drunken haze (yes, there was a scene where shots and drinks were
involved) with 2 new tattoosand in the bedroom or hotel room with another man
(and all that that implied)."

This appears to be a PG rated movie. This is nothing new. Let's take a step
back nearly 25 years and check out things that happen in 'The Nightmare Before
Christmas', a movie with the same rating:

Finkelstein makes himself a female doll. A detached leg is used to seduce a
villain, whom promptly begins to engage in foot play. There is a torture
chamber crossed with a casino, where the casino games determine the level of
torture inflicted. There's a skinned head, various detached body parts,
brains, etc.

Let's go back farther! Watership Down - 40 years ago.

Doe rabbits fancied by one of the villains are offered up in compensation for
his efforts. References to the needs of doe rabbits to sustain the warren
Various bits of violence/gore with the rabbits, including a rabbit choking on
a snare and coughing up blood Mild profanity - use of 'Damn' and 'Piss', with
Fuck replaced with 'Frisk' in several instances.

>There is just no way this stuff is age appropriate. I don't care how far the
Overton window has shifted.

PG as a rating is specifically not any sort of indication to age
appropriateness. Emotional development of children in the ages in question is
going to vary drastically, and the whole point is that it is then suggested
that the parents, knowing best what content their children will be able to
handle, make the decision. The maturity level of content in PG movies has, if
anything, dropped over the years.

Note that I am not questioning your choices on what you find appropriate for
your children, just your interpretation of what PG means and whether or not
the Overton window has shifted.

~~~
jlawson
Your comparison examples prove the points your arguing against.

Both your examples are about fantastical violence and/or animal predator/prey
violence - things that have little or no connection to a kid's real life
growing up. It's not hard to dissociate real life from a casino torture
chamber and a skinned head. What influence could this have on a child - make
him make his own casino torture chamber?

Grandparent complained about normalization of heavy drinking, tattooing,
casual sex, deviant sex, dangerous sex, and related forms of degenerate
behavior. These are things that kids must deal with growing up, and which they
will be tempted to participate in, to their own detriment. It's totally
different and much more insidious than cartoon or animal predator/prey
violence.

~~~
cthalupa
There's suggestions of casual sex and outright sexual behavior in Nightmare
Before Christmas, and misogyny/rape in Watership Down. Nightmare Before
Christmas includes some suggestions of using alcohol or other drugs on some of
the villains.

What evidence is there that normalizing violence is less problematic to a
child?

>heavy drinking,

Sure, that's not a great thing to normalize.

>tattooing,

What's wrong with tattoos?

>casual sex,

Again, something suggested in other PG movies from farther back. If your kids
can handle it, they can watch it. If not, don't let them. That's what PG has
always meant. It's not graphic, it doesn't show any of the foreplay, therefor
it fits with the standard of PG that has existed forever.

>deviant sex,

Wait, what? Two men having sex is now deviant sex? Uh, yeah, not gonna agree
there.

>dangerous sex,

Again, because it's two men? Where are you going with this?

>and related forms of degenerate behavior.

The only degenerate behavior on this list is the heavy drinking, and even that
is being fairly generous to you - plenty of people have nights where they
drink heavily and aren't degenerate and don't let it impact their life.

>It's totally different and much more insidious than cartoon or animal
predator/prey violence.

You're making pretty huge statements here without any evidence to back it up.
I don't know how much of an impact that the sort of scene in Alvin and the
Chipmunk's would have on a child - I would guess probably not much, as much of
the implications discussed are likely to fly right over their head - but we do
know that violence, even cartoon violence, has an affect on children.
[http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/child-adolescent-
psychiatry/...](http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/child-adolescent-
psychiatry/violence-media-what-effects-behavior)

PG movies have had this sort of content for decades. PG has never meant 'You
can just show any of your young kids this.' \- that is what the G rating is
for. PG has always meant that there are things that you might find
questionable for your child and that your parental discretion should be
exercised. It's not insidious.

~~~
jl6
Just on the tattoos point... tattoos are like starting smoking. Not morally
wrong, but they have permanent consequences that children are ill-equipped to
judge.

(To be honest, I’d go further and claim that a lot of _adults_ don’t grasp the
consequences of tattoos either).

~~~
cthalupa
Sure - kids shouldn't get tattoos.

But kids also shouldn't drive, and no one is calling for movies with people
driving to receive a rating higher than PG ;)

I'm being facetious here, but only a little - the point shouldn't be to
eliminate any behavior we don't want kids to emulate from the media they
consume. It's simply not possible.

------
jimejim
This has always been a form of Luddism. Tech is inevitable.

I view tech similarly to how I view sex-ed in 2018: it's been proven that if
you do abstinence only education then bad things happen (teen pregnancies,
stds, etc...). Your kids are going to grow up to be adults with bad tech
habits if you don't start teaching them how to use it responsibly and protect
themselves early.

Help them find good content. Have days where no tech is allowed on the
weekends, but don't keep them away from it completely. Give them time to
unwind with tech and choose stuff themselves, just as you probably do. Teach
them about privacy and the problems that can come up with tech so they know
how to deal with it themselves. Teach them that too much tech isn't good for
you and you need to do other things too.

Monitor what they're watching and make sure you talk to them when things get
out of hand. Expect to have some occasional issues, and treat them like you
would an adult: are they sad? Is something going on at school? Is the tech
affecting their ability to do other things at the time?

Eventually your kid is going to use tech. Teach them early how to be
responsible with it.

~~~
ip26
_This has always been a form of Luddism. Tech is inevitable._

 _it 's been proven that if you do abstinence only education then bad things
happen_

How about driving technology? Children receive abstinence-only education on
driving until they turn 15 or 16.

There's plenty of precedent for young children being unable to safely &
responsibly handle certain things.

Was it Luddism that I wasn't allowed to operate a table saw when I was eleven?

~~~
nybble41
> Children receive abstinence-only education on driving until they turn 15 or
> 16.

Nonsense. It is commonplace for children to be introduced to driving
gradually, from a young age. They are made familiar with it in an observer
capacity from approximately the time they are born. Children typically learn
to manage unpowered vehicles like tricycles and bicycles within the first few
years of their lives—often as soon as they're physically capable of riding
them. There exist low-powered electric (toy) vehicles specifically designed
for use by young children; for those a few years older, bumper cars and go-
karts are popular amusements. There are even places where one can go (with
parental consent and supervision) to practice driving real vehicles on private
property.

The one thing they aren't permitted before age 15 or 16 is legal permission to
drive proper vehicles on public roads. However, _adults_ who haven't passed
the driving exams are subject to exactly the same restrictions. Those
restrictions are in place not because it is felt that driving is harmful for
children but rather because their lack of experience would pose a safety risk
for other users of the roads.

------
BoiledCabbage
>Technologists building these products and writers observing the tech
revolution were naïve, he said.

>"We thought we could control it,” Mr. Anderson said. “And this is beyond our
power to control. This is going straight to the pleasure centers of the
developing brain. This is beyond our capacity as regular parents to
understand."

A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists.
We all know this.

This larger issue of screen time and tech addiction will only continue to
grow. At some point maybe a decade or two it will be a smaller version of the
concerns about the tobacco industry. But because it's the brain and not the
lungs it will play out differently.

People approach mental and physical health differently. Similarly dopamine
addiction and chemical dependence are also treated differently in people's
minds. One is often viewed as a moral failing the other as more
"uncontrollable".

As much as we want it to be true, technological advancement can never be
separated from social/ethical impact. It's not "just a tool" and never will
be.

~~~
wlesieutre
I see this playing out right now with Apple's phones, which get continuously
bigger and shinier and brighter with every new generation.

Then they give us "Screen Time" and Tim Cook talks about giving people the
tools to be aware of how much they're using their phones and to make their own
decisions about it.

If drug companies said "We're discontinuing Advil for your headaches and
replacing all painkillers with small dosage opiates, but we'll give you an app
to count how much you're taking and you can make your own decisions" we'd
immediately jump down their throats.

Apple discontinues the iPhone SE, standardizes on a comparatively gigantic 6.1
inch screen size for their mainstream phone model, and tells us "It's fine. We
gave people a new app so they won't get addicted to their phones."

I don't think it's fine. Apple's just in denial about it because the design
team likes big shiny things, premium phones print money, and users keep on
buying them because we collectively don't have a grip on the downsides.

Just give me a damn phone that I can call a car or text friends on, I don't
want to or need to spend hours consuming media on a giant shiny screen. But if
I get a giant shiny screen foisted on me, I know it's going to happen.

But like you said, if someone's living on their phone too much, we treat it
like their own moral failing. The manufacturers that made the phones this way
and the software companies that deliberately A/B tested their engagement stats
to death to rope you in as hard as possible and sell more ads? Nah, not their
fault. It's these irresponsible phone users not owning up to their own faults.

~~~
dwighttk
Perhaps I just don’t have smartphone addiction, but (if I do) there is
something different between this “addiction” and others. There are no
withdrawal symptoms for me. I feel the compulsion to pick it up and look at
it, but if I don’t have my phone, after reaching for it in my pocket and not
finding it a few times I just stop. I don’t feel a need to go find a phone or
feel rotten because I don’t have one. And these feelings (that I don’t seem to
have anyway) don’t get stronger and stronger until I get back to my phone.

I’ve felt withdrawal symptoms for caffeine, and I can only imagine it is worse
for stronger drugs. Maybe this addiction is of the same sort but the
withdrawal is so slight that I don’t notice?

~~~
maemilius
I'm in the same boat as you. One thing I've learned over the last few years is
that the problem with "phone addition" has more to do with the lack of boredom
than any physical effects.

The really short version is that there's some science that suggests that
periods of boredom increase creativity. By constantly keeping active with your
phone, we're losing this "boredom time".

Personally, I've made a habit of occasionally just doing nothing every now and
then. Put the phone away; don't listen to anything. It's actually great for my
commute home (I take a bus). I can just sit/stand and not do anything and just
relax for a few minutes on the way home.

Personally, I think the biggest problem here isn't that kids are spending a
lot of time looking at their screens. It's that parents _aren't_ spending a
lot of time engaging with their kids about the content.

When a screen is used to distract a child - or anyone,really - instead of
engage them, that's where the problem arises.

~~~
rleigh
I often wonder how much creativity, thought and self-reflection is missed out
on because the response to boredom or quiet moments is to reach for the phone,
rather than engaging the brain and being alone with one's thoughts for a time.

Not only personal time, but work time as well. How many of us see work
colleagues on their phones or random websites during work time? If that moment
of boredom had been spent thinking about new products, the details of a
customer problem, or something else work-related, that could have produced
something tangible, rather than being wasted. When "slack time" is
automatically used for indulging in phone apps or web surfing, that's
displacing activity which pre-phone-apps and pre-internet, would be much more
likely to have involved alternative productive activity, from future planning
to work-related talk with co-workers, to designing and prototyping
experimental stuff. Now it's self-indulgent skinner boxes compelling us to
fairly fruitless time wasting.

Some people are so focussed on this stuff that it takes priority over actual
face to face conversations, which I personally find intensely rude, and I
don't think I'm wrong in saying this is going to directly affect the
productivity and effectiveness of them as an individual and the team as a
whole. Their focus isn't on the company's business, but on themselves. I don't
find this degree of self-absorption healthy; it's like working with zombies.
In some ways, I preferred my original programming job where we only had a
shelf full of books and dial-up internet, and you actually worked with your
co-workers, talked to your customers on the phone, rather than merely existing
in the same space while their minds are somewhere else. Not that I'm a
Luddite, it's the social changes I abhor, not the technical.

It's weird, and worrying, just how addicted people have become at the expense
of real life in the here and now, and a pushback against it is long overdue.

~~~
dwighttk
There's also a chance that the distraction is dissipating energy spent in
particularly unhelpful endeavors. If that's true, who knows what the ratio
between helpful and unhelpful boredom is?

------
dak1
I have a 2 and a half year old son now. My wife and I have found for us that
the right answer is simply moderation, variety, and supervision.

1\. We moderate how much time is spent on screens. Each day he probably spends
a total of an hour or less in front of any screen (iPad/iPhone/Projector).

2\. He does watch some (highly filtered) educational YouTube content, but we
also make sure he's playing educational and interactive games, like building,
drawing, and learning Chinese (we're a bilingual household). He also has lots
of books and we read to him actively, he participates in sports, we take him
outside to playgrounds and parks, do arts and crafts with him, and he helps us
with chores around the house (in a fun way), etc.

3\. When he is playing a game or watching a video, we're there participating.
We're monitoring and filtering the content he's viewing, and we're actively
adding to the educational experience by talking about the things he's seeing
and doing with him.

Technology is a tool, and how it's used matters. Outright banning it means
we're missing out on its potential benefits, and also we miss the opportunity
to teach him from an early age how to use it properly. I fear a child who
hasn't learned to cope with technology for 13 years and is then suddenly
introduced to it will struggle far more.

It was a little bit of a struggle at first, but now when we tell him it's time
to turn off the iPad, he usually will do it himself without fuss, and he
increasingly will turn it off without even prompting and move on to another
activity like reading or drawing.

~~~
John_KZ
That's a great point. But it takes a lot of time and effort to filter the
content your child consumes. That's because the system is designed so the end
user has almost no control over the information flow. So this will affect the
poor disproportionately (once again). If you don't have time to discover
child-friendly, educational content, no money to buy ad-free movies and games
from trusted companies, you'll just give your child a tablet with a tab open
showing an educational video. What your child will be watching 10 minutes
later is up the the mercy of Google. Whatever it's going to be, I bet it won't
be in the best interests of your child.

~~~
the-pigeon
> But it takes a lot of time and effort to filter the content your child
> consumes.

It really doesn't if you use the tools available.

For instance Amazon FreeTime ([https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-FreeTime-
Unlimited-Monthly-Sub...](https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-FreeTime-Unlimited-
Monthly-Subscription/dp/B01I499BNA)) gives you a curated library that is
appropriate for the age range you set.

There's no microtransaction apps or other nonsense like that.

You can even set limits like "30 minutes app time per day", "30 minutes book
time", "30 minutes video time", etc.

You can also remove or add specific apps you want your kid to have access to.

Honestly it's wonderful to give a young kid that level of autonomy and access
to information. You should still pay attention to what they do. But there's no
need to give them access to the open internet or to curate everything
yourself.

------
e0m
I wish the rhetoric around "screens" was less focused on the delivery
mechanism and instead more focused on the problematic thing behind those
screens.

The issues raised here seem to not be related to glowing LCDs, but rather
particular apps and behaviors in those apps that lead to addictive and
problematic behavior.

"Screens" is even broader than saying things like "the internet is bad". The
latter statement already sounds unhelpful because everyone has a better
understanding of just how diverse of a platform "the internet" is.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
The problem, of course, is that it's really difficult for a parent to
differentiate between the various types of things kids can do on their
screens, especially for someone who is less tech savvy in general. This isn't
to say that it shouldn't be done, just that it's hard.

Personally, if I had to select one "easy avenue" to ban or restrict, it would
be not screens but _internet access_. This has the side effect of putting the
parent in charge of acquiring new content.

------
quabity
“’Cause the technology is just gonna get better and better and it’s gonna get
easier and easier and more and more convenient and more and more pleasurable
to sit alone with images on a screen given to us by people who do not love us
but want our money. And that’s fine in low doses but if it’s the basic main
staple of your diet you’re gonna die. In a meaningful way, you're going to
die.” –David Foster Wallace

~~~
marmaduke
Spot on. Where is that from?

~~~
frereubu
The film "The End Of The Tour" \- there's a transcript with that quote here:
[https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/end-tour-david-foster-
wall...](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/end-tour-david-foster-wallace)

------
borkt
I'd have to say whatever the waldorf schools are doing is working. My father-
in-law's neighbor is an education PhD and her son has been in waldorf schools
from the start. He is the most intelligent, wise, and confident kid I have
possibly ever met, and he takes care of a wide range of animals at home
(horses, chickens, alpaca, pig). He always seems fulfilled and is always
excited to talk about what he is learning in school.

His mom who was previously writing and editing textbooks took a job at a
public school in a lower income area of the county. She couldn't stay for even
a year as she was so upset and dissapointed with the methodology they were
using, heavily relying on screens and allowing kids to get away with
everything.

I know that I will definitely do everything I can if I have children to get
them into the same school.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Have you considered that the kind of parents that raise such children re the
kind of kids to put them into waldorf schools, not that waldorf schools do
something special.

~~~
samatman
(waldorf kid here) while that is an obvious confound, the waldorf pedagogy
strong encourages children not be exposed to any screen time at all. It goes
further: even at the kindergarten level, all toys and costumes are natural
materials, you won't find a single piece of plastic among items intended for a
child's use. Even the crayons are made of beeswax.

~~~
dabernathy89
> It goes further: even at the kindergarten level, all toys and costumes are
> natural materials, you won't find a single piece of plastic among items
> intended for a child's use. Even the crayons are made of beeswax.

I can't possibly imagine the purpose for these restrictions.

~~~
zorak
Waldorf is all about fostering imagination, so they try to limit anything that
comes with a pre-defined set of ideas that tell you how to interact with it. A
plastic firetruck already has an identity; an unfinished wood truck can be
anything.

------
wefarrell
There is always a tendency to blame the addiction on the substance, but it's
usually symptomatic of something deeper.

In this case I think it's happening because parents don't have as much time to
spend with their children as they have in past generations and screens are a
convenient way of keeping a child occupied in a safe way.

~~~
skolos
In past generations parents spent much less time with kids than now. Kids were
mostly roaming streets. Now society frowns upon letting kids be outside
nonsupervised, hence the substitution - screens indoors.

Edit: Today parents spent twice as much time with kids as 50 years ago.
[https://www.economist.com/graphic-
detail/2017/11/27/parents-...](https://www.economist.com/graphic-
detail/2017/11/27/parents-now-spend-twice-as-much-time-with-their-children-
as-50-years-ago)

~~~
brightball
Part of that is that when roaming the streets, you knew the people on your
street and usually had an idea that people were home to be able to call you to
let you know there was a problem. Being at work is different than being
"around and available" at home. Didn't have to be spending time with them
directly to be available.

When I was roaming at as kid it was to my other friends houses in my
neighborhood and everywhere in between. I live in a fairly large neighborhood
now and we only know one other boy in the neighborhood who is my son's age.
It's unfortunate for him.

At the same time, my daughter has several friends in the neighborhood her age
and they play together all the time either at our house or the house of
another parent who works from home.

That said, when I was really little I watched a video of my 4 year old
birthday party so many times I memorized it. My mom called it "the best
babysitter." Even today I can play that video in my head.

------
trynumber9
> There is a looming issue Ms. Stecher sees in the future: Her husband, who is
> 39, loves video games and thinks they can be educational and entertaining.
> She does not.

I'm still peeved so many people hate video games categorically. Age of Empires
& Civilization got me into history as a kid and I checked out dozens of books
as a result. Plus, the reason I ended up wanting to learn more about computers
was to make games myself.

~~~
BoiledCabbage
> I'm still peeved so many people hate video games categorically.

I'm more annoyed that everytime video games come up, someone brings up
Civilization as a strawman to argue.

99% of games aren't Civilization. We all know people are talking about that
99%. The article even calls out that the parents make exceptions for some
educational games/screen time. And yet rather than legitimately engage and
address peoples concerns about video games, it's always the same argument of:
raise the benefits of Civilization, share nostalgia about playing it in the
past and ignore the actual arguments being presented.

This thread is no exception. This is a place of more intelligent discourse -
address the opposition's points, or concede they are valid.

~~~
medobs41
I spent a lot of time playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and The
Legend of Zelda.

I have warm memories of both. But I didn’t learn anything from Zelda- it was
pure entertainment and connection to popular culture. I can still hum the
theme song. I did learn some stuff from Carmen Sandiego.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Zelda games force you to think critically. I wouldn't consider it directly
educational, but it's not mindless either.

------
eddieplan9
The moment that I truly got the idea of "you are the product" is when my
8-year-old complained to me, "I had to watch 10 ads in order to get a gold
coin to feed my fish."

I felt literally repulsive when my sweet kid is part of an army to bump up
someone's ad views. I also felt truly ashamed as a parent and as a tech
worker.

Unfortunately, the most common rule in my kid's circle is that kid can
download any app as long as it's free.

------
pier25
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, are super focused on adding new users and
creating an addiction on a massive scale never seen before. Of course it's bad
for kids.

Social media, smartphones, and tablets, are the new smoking.

~~~
mikepurvis
I've been saying this for a while, particularly with respect to how our kids
and grandkids will view these devices, systems, and patterns of behaviours—
"Oh, there's grandpa, needing to leave the restaurant for a few minutes to get
his social media fix because they've banned screens in here for
privacy/ambiance/preference reasons."

~~~
sleepychu
Gosh I hope not, I can't imagine needing to do this!

~~~
mikepurvis
Really? I can totally picture it. There are already upscale cinemas that ban
phones, for grownups who don't want to look at the movie over a sea of glowing
screens, and are willing to pay a premium price and surrender the use of their
own device for the privilege.

Same goes with restaurants, especially fancy ones, where diners are sick of
having everyone around them snapping pics of their food for instagram.

~~~
krrrh
Or standup comedians requiring people to lock their phones in neoprene bags
before a show. I was at a Dave Chapelle show last year where he did this, and
his surprise guest after the show was Kendrick Lamar. It was actually jarring
to be at a concert for the first time in a decade where there were no phones
up, and people just focused on the performance.

------
mangoman
The headline is chilling, but the actual content of the article boils down to
"Many people in Silicon Valley feel that too much screen time is bad for
kids".

That being said, I found this anecdote to be particularly... unsettling.

> “I try to tell him somebody wrote code to make you feel this way — I’m
> trying to help him understand how things are made, the values that are going
> into things and what people are doing to create that feeling,” Mr. Lilly
> said. “And he’s like, ‘I just want to spend my 20 bucks to get my Fortnite
> skins.’”

It's tough to explain away the emotional desire for something that was
manufactured to be cool and addictive

~~~
humanrebar
Watch the Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine clip.

------
parasubvert
I don’t understand why the extremes some families have had to implement to
curb poor behavior is now some kind of “consensus”. The hell there is
consensus.

The truth is, we are afraid of everything these days.

People don’t send our kids to play outside, someone might hurt or abduct them
(or another parent might Parent Patty us)

People don’t spend time with their kids because they’re so busy at work (but
they hire nanny’s with zero screen contracts to feel good about this)

To me, kids should learn to use screens early and often, and get good at
understanding how they can exploit opportunity and personal advancement with
them (and also how to manage time wasters).

Kids lacking social cues - is it really screens? Or are kids becoming nerdier
and turning more to screens because of it?

We live in an era where comic book movies rule the box office and being a nerd
is celebrated. It’s this strange double standard of how juvenile our adult pop
culture has become, and yet we are flummoxed and finger pointing as to why our
kids are regressing socially?

Active parenting is needed, and it’s tricky to outsource that or blame the
glowing rectangle. This article is about a bunch of rich SV parents that
outsource their parenting to nannies and have no good framework on how to
teach moderation, so they're banning the devices outright. That seems like a
niche situation.

Screens are wonderful, powerful tools - the bicycle for the mind, as Jobs
would say. The world is also a bigger place than screens. Active parenting is
needed to ensure moderation.

Extreme measures may need to be taken in some cases, but the fear is so
overblown it reminds me of the things my parents took away from me for my own
good: my Slayer and Judas Priest albums, my D&D sets, and also my computer
and/or modem for months at a time. Sometimes for the sake of discipline these
actions make sense, but more often they’re a reflection of popular fears.

~~~
pappaSsmurf
serious question: do you have kids?

~~~
parasubvert
Yes, two.

------
SpicyLemonZest
This article doesn’t really explain what the dark consensus _is_ beyond just
“screens bad”. There are certainly some things on modern computers that are
little more than Skinner boxes, but those things aren’t what the parents in
the article are talking about. What makes Fortnite and Youtube videos worse
than Nerf guns and library books?

~~~
shlant
> "What makes Fortnite and Youtube videos worse than Nerf guns and library
> books?"

Well for one, and this is a big one, many games implement specific features
such as character progression, rewards and even loot boxes that are
specifically made to keep you playing. They directly trigger dopamine reward
centers in the brain and are very much tied to addiction. Loot boxes
especially are literally just gambling.

Youtube kids is also all kinds of messed up. Videos created using algorithms
specifically to draw the attention of kids and sometimes contain very
disturbing images and themes.

This article is a good overview of how Youtube is not a good choice for kids:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/17/peppa-
pig...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/17/peppa-pig-youtube-
weird-algorithms-automated-content)

Here is a video on Jake Paul (and many big youtubers) and how he markets HARD
to kids while also having videos containing very inappropriate material:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywcY8TvES6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywcY8TvES6c)

On top of this, in terms of TV/Youtube vs books, there is a big difference in
terms of it's effect on language, communication, and development. Also,
TV/Youtube is a passive form of learning, reading books is active:

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/books-vs-tv-how-they-
stac_b_1...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/books-vs-tv-how-they-
stac_b_10928340)

~~~
nyghtly
YouTube Kids horrifies me. I feel like a curation approach to "kid-approved"
programming would be much better method than YouTube Kids. And when you think
about it, that's how traditional TV programming worked. Seems like a good
model, given how much of an impact media has on child development.

~~~
shlant
highly recommend "Will You Be My Neighbor?" documentary for how to do TV for
kids right from someone who really cares

------
nyghtly
Here's some low hanging fruit to get us started:

1\. Ban gambling in games. That is, if real money is involved in the
transaction, then there should be no element of chance involved. If not that,
at least properly enforce gambling laws to games given that gambling is
illegal for children anyways.

2\. Decouple real money from in-game money. If you can buy something for real
money, you should not be able to acquire it with in game money. If you can
acquire something in game, you should not be able to buy it with real money
instead.

Problem is, policy makers are clueless when it comes to games. These policies
have no chance of passing anytime soon.

~~~
naravara
>2\. Decouple real money from in-game money. If you can buy something for real
money, you should not be able to acquire it with in game money. If you can
acquire something in game, you should not be able to buy it with real money
instead.

So there is a standard argument developers make for this. They're wrong, but
I'll articulate it because I think it's worth articulating.

Some people have more time than money and for other people it's reversed. You
design a game to meter out rewards based on time spent for the former group
and provide a fast-track for the latter group. Allowing people to spend money
to get certain rewards is just a way to allow people who are too busy to sink
that kind of time into the game to also be able to participate. Moreover, if
the desire to buy stuff for real money is there, the market will provide. If
we, the developers, don't build that function in then the niche will be
occupied by dodgy black and gray market deals like those gold farming outfits
in Diablo II and World of Warcraft.

The counterpoint, of course, is that they're designing the games to meter out
"fun" as a function of time spent specifically because they're trying to keep
you stuck in an addiction loop. The "just use real money as a shortcut through
the nonsense" takes Skinner box game design as a given, but the Skinner box is
what we're trying to discourage, not the exchange of money.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I've played mobile games where the option to pay just gets your through the
game faster, and in my experience, if the game is any fun, why would I want to
spend money to be able to play it less? But if people want that, I guess it's
OK.

On the other hand, if the game requires endless grinding, and let's face it, a
lot of these games are really just tedious work with a reward system built in,
with little or no strategy or even decision making (beyond to play or not
play), and you are literally paying to avoid drudgery. I've tried plenty of
games where I soon realized it was nothing more than working towards a reward,
and there was literally no "game" to it.

Well, if playing the game is drudgery, then it's not a good game. At this
point, I would say the market should sort things out, but that doesn't appear
to be working. People are clearly playing these games and getting hooked on
them.

So, yeah, I agree with you... it's the Skinner box we need to discourage, but
that's not always a black-and-white thing, because hard work and
accomplishment, with the rewards that provide, are very similar in many ways.
Ultimately, the Skinner box is an attempt to simulate the process of working
hard to accomplish something and receiving the rewards for it without the
whole "providing an engaging and challenging experience" aspect. It's
exploiting a human instinct and subverting it in a harmful way.

~~~
naravara
>So, yeah, I agree with you... it's the Skinner box we need to discourage, but
that's not always a black-and-white thing, because hard work and
accomplishment, with the rewards that provide, are very similar in many ways.
Ultimately, the Skinner box is an attempt to simulate the process of working
hard to accomplish something and receiving the rewards for it without the
whole "providing an engaging and challenging experience" aspect. It's
exploiting a human instinct and subverting it in a harmful way.

Yeah it's a tough issue to handle. The Spider-Man PS4 game, for example, uses
the "here's a checklist, go do the thing and get a reward" model too. But I
hesitate to call it a "skinner-box" because usually the goal is just an excuse
to have fun web-slinging across the city and to play with the combat, which is
the actual rewarding thing about the game. The gratification, in that case,
comes from performing the task rather than from having finished it.

So it really does come down to how you implement it. Whether the goals and
rewards are there as a framework to have fun in, or whether they're presented
as a barrier you need to clear to find fun on the other side.

------
fhood
Ok, come on. There is way too much "back in my day games weren't that bad" in
this thread. Do you guys remember WoW? And Diablo?!?! Talk about a game
designed to target addiction centers.

The issue is not games like Fortnite. The issue (as you said) is people
letting their kids spend all their time playing Fortnite.

~~~
dxhdr
Older games like Diablo were not engineered to maximize Day 1 / 7 / 28
retention rates. All mobile games today optimize for those metrics.

~~~
astrodust
That didn't stop people from playing it 28 days straight.

~~~
dxhdr
Oh yeah, Diablo was certainly engrossing. However I think there's a
distinction between creating a fun game that happens to be addictive, versus
architecting a game to be as exploitative as possible.

------
thowthisaway
I as a parent am trying to do the best I can with what I can afford. This cost
is both time and money (which honestly is vastly skewed). I learned watching
my parents growing up and that's really what I have to go by.

I spent a lot of time growing up watching TV. It has helped me learn english
(and the proper use of slangs) as well as teaching me some values and cultural
references that I couldn't get from a book. If I was never allowed to watch
TV, I don't know how I would have occupied my time. Libraries were a bus ride
away, there was no local park for me to go to (even if I did, didn't have any
friends to really do anything worthwhile)

So, is it my parent's fault? were they unfit as parents to let me watch
whatever TV I could after doing my homework? would I have been a better person
(whatever that means) if I would have had other after-school activities?

I'm writing this because I'm so sick and tired of people pointing fingers and
speaking as though they have all the answers. If you identified the problem,
you have to give me the solution as well. You can't just say "here's the
problem, now go solve it yourself".

And for you non-parents, you have no idea the types of peer pressure these
kids go through. Don't point fingers and label them as some kind of defects
just because they've been exposed to the scary "screen time". Kids are just
trying to survive, just like the rest of us.

------
fzeroracer
There is unfortunately a lot of anti-tech or anti-science bullshit sentiment
behind the idea of restricting access to phones or screens. It reminds me a
lot of how you would have people in the tech industry peddling fears about
GMOs.

That said, they're not necessarily wrong. They're just missing the forest for
the trees. The issue isn't social media or videos or even video games. It's
advertising. The cold calculating hand of the free market will reach out to
anyone and everyone for the sake of profit, which is why we see a ton of ads,
shitty malware-ridden games and abuses of the system in order to gain a
foothold into using children as weapons in the advertising war. Every click
and every watch is more money, no matter who it is.

In a way it's similar to the way cigarettes were advertised as being for cool
people, resulting in affecting children because it infects them with that
message from an early age. Flintstones ads featuring Winstons Cigarettes being
a great example.

So how do we stop it? You either prevent them from using it, full-stop or you
actually create a walled garden designed to protect them from the exploitative
behaviors of certain youtube content creators and lassiez-faire app stores.

------
donohoe
I'm reminded of this book: "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" by
Nir Eyal (BTW I'm not endorsing this book).

4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon after 1,100 reviews.

From the description:

"... by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the
products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior.
Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of
bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or
aggressive messaging."

Link: [https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-Build-Habit-Forming-
Products/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-Build-Habit-Forming-
Products/dp/1591847788/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=18&tag=readah-20&pd_rd_r=7231f4ca-d944-11e8-bcf9-d56d64501878&pd_rd_w=gPCMl&pd_rd_wg=BZIES&pf_rd_i=desktop-
dp-sims&pf_rd_m=&pf_rd_p=189&pf_rd_r=AEWX&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp)

We build 'addictive' products by design. Our children should be protected. I'm
in the process of saying 'No' to my kids requests for phones and access to
online services.

------
gumby
The screen itself is not the issue, it's toys and games that play with the
child instead of the child playing with them. Imagination and learning to
explore and reason comes from open-ended play ("play" is really just a word
for learning).

People talk of a stick being a sword, a cane, a ruler, etc, but let's not
forget that a stick can also be broken, bent, and manipulated in ways that one
might not be able to with a toy or game that has programmed behavior. A lot
of, perhaps most of, the useful learning come from crossing the "obvious"
boundaries of some design.

This is one reason so many computer gamers from the 80s became interested in
computing -- because it was easier to get "behind the scenes" and poke away at
your machine. Everything's so professionalized and hermetic these days it's
hard for a kid to explore.

Disclaimer: parent of a 20 year old who was not allowed electronics until he
was 10. No calculators, no Star Wars. So I may be biased, but I lived my bias.

------
sys_64738
This is no different than when people were buying TVs for the first time in
1956. Those closest to the tech display the greatest fears.

In the 1980s there was hysteria that video games would turn kids into social
pariahs due to the bad effects from violence and gore. But shooting a cluster
of pixels in 1984 is trivial compared to running the bloods and guts of
realism of a PS4. But not much is said anymore.

I think iPads are bad for kids as they become the subject matter, not that
what they're trying to do. This is why iPads in education are bad IMO. Kids
need to allow their brains to develop the appropriate cognitive functions but
things like instance access to info reduce the ability to think, reduce the
ability to memorize, and reduce the attention span of kids. In adults it's
different as we're already as under/developed as we'll get.

~~~
humanrebar
Keep going back. Novels used to be unhealthy:

[https://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/when-novels-wer...](https://op-
talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/when-novels-were-bad-for-you/)

More recently, parents used to complain about teenage girls locking themselves
in their rooms to talk on the phone with their friends.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
The fact that parents have had somewhat silly concerns about past technologies
does not discount current concerns.

I truly believe that the new crop of "psychologically optimized" mobile games
and apps have crossed a line in this regard. Books, movies, comics etc were of
course designed to be appealing and enjoyable, but were not specifically
designed to consume as much of your time as they possibly could.

------
WalterBright
I was obsessed with pinball (the predecessor to video games) for a while. It
cost a dime for a game, a quarter for three. I had no money, so it was a big
deal to get to play a game. The pinball machine is very set up to give
"rewards" for points scored, such as giving out free games.

One time in the dorm, the coin op broke, and the machine allowed unlimited
games for free. I played, and played, and played, and then something broke in
me. I totally lost interest in pinball, it bored me silly, and in 40 years
that interest never came back.

One of my first jobs was testing video games. That ground to dust any interest
I had in that. It revived briefly when Doom came out, but that didn't last
long.

I suppose I've dodged a bullet with that.

------
sjg007
These stories come out all the time in history. First books, then radio, then
tv, then video games, now screens. Surely there are some translational or
longitudal analyses to see what effect these “distractions” have on “success”.

~~~
Dirlewanger
That's very true. One has to be weary of going too neo-Luddite, but at the
same time, I don't think books and TV (on a mass scale anyway) caused kids to
have less sex and skyrocket their depression and suicide rates.

~~~
ams6110
> I don't think books and TV (on a mass scale anyway) caused kids to have less
> sex and skyrocket their depression and suicide rates.

Um, do we know that? Especially about TV?

------
imranq
I think the key issue for these devices is that they can only give you a
representation of the “real thing”. Kids don’t have much experience of reality
to create natural intuitions about nature, social relationships, and society
and foisting an internet full of other peoples’ opinions to children can
easily distort their perception of what’s healthy and what’s not.

The solution is to limit kids from using internet devices and put them into
environments where it is easy to have rich interactions with nature and with
other people. Examples like Boy Scouts, school clubs, and road trips are good.

------
rayiner
Yawn. When I was six people said video games would rot my brain too. Turns out
I had more to worry from my parents generation wrecking the economy and
destroying our shared institutions. Cue next moral panic.

------
zmmmmm
I'm concerned about my kids screen time, but I'm also concerned that there
seems to be an "anti-screen-time" cult that is operating on virtually no
evidence, yet insists that any form of time with "screens" is bad. Some of the
computer games that my kids play are some of the most cognitively complex and
creative things they do. For one example, Minecraft, has simply no equivalent
"real world" activity that it can be compared to.

The problem with blindly saying all screen time is bad is that it actually
prevents us talking about what is good and what is bad _about_ it, and
therefore actually impedes progress. As a result, we have almost no guidance
to either parents or app developers about what constitutes "good" content,
which actually results in more "bad" content and more kids being exposed to
"bad" content because parents are just operating in a complete blind spot
where they let their kids have small amounts of "screen time" during which
they can do _anything_.

It's like saying "I limit my children's tobacco time to 1 hour per day" \-
which is ludicrous but that is exactly what being promoted currently as "good
practise" for parents to follow.

------
rb808
Looking around nearly all adults are addicted - looking at phones whenever
they can. The issue is should children wait before they get addicted or get
hooked in early.

------
driverdan
To me it seems the focus is wrong. Screens are not the problem. Most people
having kids today grew up with screens. The problem is how the screens are
used. Mobile devices and many apps have been developed to feed dopamine. This
problem isn't isolated to children either.

You can disable or control this addiction pattern. Short, repeating patterns
with rewards are how you feed addiction.

Turn off most or all push notifications. Don't mindlessly use devices in
short, repetitive ways that reward your brain with dopamine (eg checking
social media over and over for new posts). For things like social media, HN,
and reddit have specific times of the day you use them and that's it.

Short cycle games like Fortnite feed this pattern too. Put time limits in
place. This applies to adults too. It's really easy to play one more game.

> “Other parents are like, ‘Aren’t you worried you don’t know where your kids
> are when you can’t find them?’”

If this is you stop. Give your children freedom. You don't need to track them
or know what they're doing 24/7\. Being a helicopter parent will hurt them far
more in the long run than giving them screen time.

------
shanemlk
I feel like a contrarian. After deleting twitter and facebook last week, I'm
jumping off this smart phone train this week. A factory defect emerged in my
smart phone, so I purchased a LTE flip phone. I decided I'm not going back to
the smart phone. I know I'm not the average case, but I don't think quitting a
smart phone has that much of an impact on the functional aspects of life.

------
a-saleh
> “Doing no screen time is almost easier than doing a little,” said Kristin
> Stecher, a former social computing researcher married to a Facebook
> engineer. “If my kids do get it at all, they just want it more.”

I would say that it is better to go the hard route and helping my daughter to
learn to live with screens and some semblance of self-control around them,
rather than enforce complete prohibition.

But from reading the article, most of the "screen-time" seems to have been un-
supervised? That is the thing we are probably trying to avoid the most, with
my daughter we are most of the time in the room, and we did agree on a limit
(most of the time, one sitting is 3 cartoons she chose beforehand).

But I do wonder what I will do, once she is in school, and there is a cool new
game with microtransactions everybody is playing.

I kinda hope I will manage do be the weird dad that persuades her and her
friends to organize a lan-party instead of throwing bucks at $COOL_SKIN in
$POPULAR_GAME :-)

------
lacker
I hate the term "screen time". The screen isn't the important part. Yeah, if
your kid is watching pointless videos, it's not good for them. But at the same
time the educational tools available on iPads are _amazing_ compared to what I
had when I was a kid.

I have a 5-year-old who goes to kindergarten at a great school. But games like
MathTango or Twelve A Dozen are capable of engaging him to a much greater
degree than anything else I have found, and they get him engaged in more
advanced mathematical concepts than either I or his teachers at school can do
alone. When gamification convinces him to just spend a little bit longer
solving a few more math problems to get to the next level, it's a good thing.

Stop thinking in terms of "screen time". It's not the screen that's hurting
your brain, it's stupid apps that make you stupid. Just don't let your kids
use apps that you don't think are good for them.

------
hollerith
I don't have kids, but if I did, I'd probably let even a 6-year-old kid of
mine have pretty much unlimited access to a Linux box connected to an ASCII
terminal instead of a monitor if the box lacked access to the web and to file-
sharing services.

(The purpose of not giving the kid a monitor would be to deny him access to
Linux games with engaging user interfaces.)

My point is that the word "screens" is an imprecise description of the danger.
The danger is restricted to certain platforms.

(Yeah, I realize that it is possible that the kid could get access to stuff I
wouldn't want him to see via the ability to install from a large repository of
Linux packages or via FTP, but as long as I'm occasionally inspecting his
Linux installation, the expected benefits would outweigh the expected risks.
For example, it is very unlikely that any Linux package or ftp repository has
been optimized much for addictiveness.)

------
acd
One thing to bring out the elephant in the room is what technology replaces.
Technology is replacing human to human interaction. Instead of seeing your
friends in real life we may watch their activities on social media. Instead of
going with our friends watching videos together we are watching video on
demand by ourselfes.

That and that online content is made by the producers to be addictive. There
is a competition for consumer attention time. Attention time brings in
advertising money. One should be aware that when the product are free, the
information about us is being sold to advertisers.

Kids should play and learn not be targets for ad revenue by online content
made like dopamine slot machine rewards.

I have an issue with video feeds going to the kids which has dark / violent
content in them. Kids do not have proper developed reality and what is fiction
filters. There is computer programs and there are TV programs.

------
jmartrican
I have been letting my kid use their ipad, iphone, and laptop since they were
2. 10 years later have not had any issues. I have no rules about when the kid
can use their screens. Strong believer in the self-driven approach to
parenting, see link below. When there are kids around, my kid puts the devices
down and gets to playing with the other kids (that also have no rules around
devices) and they all interact pretty normal. I also feel, that restricting
the devices might actually lead to mental fixation on them and could back-
fire.

Its pretty interesting because when my kid was young, my concern was not too
much exposure but not enough.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0797ZV1RJ/ref=oh_aui_d_de...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0797ZV1RJ/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o04_aud_?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

------
apo
I've seen the effects of teenagers + phones in US high schools first hand.
Simply put, kids are distracted and overstimulated. The always connected
nature of the phone ensures that critical planning skills will never be
learned. Never being bored (and the decimation of shop classes) has sapped the
creative impulse from far too many of them.

Contrary to what may be popular belief, many administrations set no guidelines
around phone use in classrooms, leaving it to teachers to fight the never-
ending battle. The lecture becomes hard or boring, and out come the phones.

Getting a kid anything more than a feature phone is pretty much daring the
poor thing to walk tightrope across a canyon without a safety net.

The parents quoted in the article talking about how preschool kids with phones
are no big deal need to spend some time in a typical high school classroom.

------
guelo
I thought the potty with the ipad was a joke, but it is real
[https://www.amazon.com/CTA-Digital-iPotty-Activity-
Seat/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.com/CTA-Digital-iPotty-Activity-
Seat/dp/B00B3G8UGQ)

------
climber604
Not that long ago screen time meant a TV in the living room. Gaming meant a
hardwired console on that same TV, or a computer in the computer room. When
you weren't at home, there was not a screen. In today's World, the screen is
in your pocket wherever you go. Children know this and the temptation is hard
to resist when screen time is so accessible.

Children see a large majority of adults engaged with their screens and think,
if they can do it, why can't I? Next time you're on the bus or subway look
around and try to find the other person doing the same. Practically everyone
is looking down unaware of their surroundings. It's the World we live in today
and our children are following our lead. Parents need to do their best to set
an example.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
From what I understand, people read yellow journalism and newspapers before
phones on public transport. (Also, books were considered similar to phones for
children nowadays.) Phones are definitely a whole new problem, but I don't
think it's correct to describe it as fundamentally different behavior than the
past in any way wrt adult asociality.

------
nraynaud
I’m curious how people invite other kids over for kid parties. That kid can’t
drink soda, this one is forbidden screens, this one is no gluten, that one is
no meat. When you have a baby, does the hospital give you a giant list of
stuff you could forbid them to choose from?

------
crwalker
We need to develop a reflexive (yes, unthinking) ethical response to digital
technology, one that's built from common-sense analysis of the long-term side
effects, and train it into our kids (and others we care about).

As an analogy, "don't eat that: it's dirty" is not a proposition that's meant
to be analyzed on a case by case basis, it's meant to be applied automatically
to the entire world excepting a few very clear circumstances. It's a good
heuristic.

I don't know what the digital equivalents will be, but would love to hear
suggestions.

"Don't follow the likes"

"You're the product"

"Don't post anything unless you want it in the NYT"

"Whose phone is that? (Google's)"

\-- edit (spelling)

------
Mankrik
Grew up as a gamer and general lurker on the internet. Age of 24 and I've
packed most of it in and focusing on the hobbies that I enjoyed that didn't
involve a digital screen like reading and drawing, but still focusing on very
few websites where I can stay up to date on the more educating and hobbiest
content of the internet that's relevant to me and not go down a spiral of
binging on instant gratification that I can't share or express in a meaningful
way with other people I know IRL. Will probably still play games like I still
listen to music and watch movies, but much more selective now than I used to
be

------
DaveSapien
Screen time...what about screen time creating music, art, programming, study,
learning, and so on?

It's the "Ah, you know what I mean." saying.

No actually, we don't "know" what you mean, and that's the really question
that needs answered in the public zeitgeist.

Most here "know" what it means. However, quantifying that into a simple
statement or phrase like "screen time" is not so easy.

Are there any recommendations?

I think something along the lines of "screen farmed", seems to fit. A company
using your time in their site/app to make money. So that company is "Screen
Farming" you.

Thoughts?

------
Tempest1981
To make matters worse, schools are rushing to adopt Chromebooks for every
class. One laptop per child.

Now parents can’t be sure if the kids are working on homework or playing. Or
multitasking.

Instead of teachers grading written homework, kids visit clunky websites
created by textbook manufacturers, and do their homework online. Takes longer,
and can be frustrating, but easier for the teachers. Pearson example:
[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/magazine/mt842499.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/magazine/mt842499.aspx)

------
lifeisstillgood
I still want to build a MOOP - Massive Open Online Psychology. So much of our
lives _can_ be monitored that frankly I think they will be - so we may as well
turn that to a positive.

84% of parents with well-behaved children went for a walk instead of allowing
a second hour of games. Why don't you press this button, it will give a one
minute countdown to all devices in your house.

Your coats are in the hall, apart from Jennifer's who dropped hers in her
room.

63% of parent whose children dropped clothes on their bedroom floor have
successfully used the phrase "Please hang your clothes up dear, the coat fairy
does not visit till next month"

------
woolvalley
How is this effectively different from the cable TV, nintendo, home PCs and
gameboy era of 20 years ago for kids?

Microtransactions? I don't think the existence of microtransactions is what
makes it obviously worse. You could waste your entire childhood in front of
screens back then too, and society quickly came to learn you should reduce
screen time, despite the temptation of the TV babysitter. Those same lessons
apply to the smartphone era of today.

F2P games, like the almost 10 year old farmvillie? That is a bit newer, and I
do agree that has a problem. I don't think that is new although.

------
ggggtez
There is an interesting tinge to this attack on screens, different seemingly
than attacks on TV in the past, which is eliciting opinions from random people
with 6 and 7 figure salaries about how to raise children.

Let's be real: writing a backend data pipeline doesn't teach you anything
about how to raise a child. We all laugh when they talk about kale, or
activating their almonds, but we're supposed to think random CEOs, VPs, and
engineers became experts in developmental psychology simply by being in
proximity to silicon valley.

------
calebm
I think the point of life is to love each other, and that means interacting
with each other. And the best way to do that is face to face. When screens get
in the way of this, that's when they go bad.

I remember back in high school when I wanted to play Diablo 2 LoD more than
anything else. I had a great time, and don't actually regret it, but I think
if I had not been able to break free of that at the proper time, it could have
had bad consequences on my life. "All things in moderation" as they say.

------
marcell
A sidebar on this is why parents put their kids in front of a screen in the
first place. Depending on your child and your childcare arrangements,
sometimes the easiest and cheapest way to get your kids to stop bugging you is
to plop them in front of a screen.

Is your kid whining st a restaurant? Or bugging you while you need to make an
important phone call. It’s easy to calm them down if you hand them an iPhone
with candy crush.

I think many parents are uncomfortable with this use of phones, but reality
forces you to use it.

------
subpixel
I have a 3 month old. The way the television across the room melts her mind is
something to behold. We try to avoid that from happening as much as we can.

I have no delusions about it being easy, but we're going to try very, very
hard to bar interactive screens as long as we can, and keep them to a bare
minimum when we can no longer bar them.

As I've mentioned in other threads, watching people watch their phones on
public transport, like rats in a dopamine experiment, troubles me, a lot.

------
asnowman
I'm worried by how the big market of mobile games with very little discernible
intellectual content are influencing kids. Games are inherently forced to have
some kind of intellectual engagement (though I think we've explored the edge
with cookie clicker) so I'm not that alarmed just yet. But from what I've seen
most of these games don't seem to engage the user in a way that encourages
them to challenge themselves.

------
bjourne
To all the people who don't see the problem, try and stay off the internet for
48 hours. No phone, no email-checking, no HN, no whatever. Try it. I dare you.

------
moneil971
I wouldn't say begins, Silicon Valley execs have been sending their kids to
tech-free schools for years, as the NYTimes reported back in 2011:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-
sch...](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-
silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html)

------
Nasrudith
This brings up a weird tendency of parents to feel obligated to turn into
their antithesis without any shred of self awareness. Elvis was wholesome
despite his hip thrusting and a song about MSM in jail (Jailhouse Rock)
although to be fair the censorship regime was basically enforced naivety while
metal in the same genre is evil incarnate.

All with the usual special pleading about how things were different then.

------
WalterBright
When I was young, it was the TV. My TV watching was severely limited until I
left home, and while at the time I thought it was an atrocity committed
against me, I'm glad of it now. It's too easy to lose a whole day to TV.

As a result I spent time outside, hanging with friends, reading, and building
things.

~~~
WalterBright
These days, I sometimes catch myself worrying about fake "karma" points on
HackerNews or Reddit, and then laugh and forget about it.

------
anigbrowl
_Ms. Stecher, 37, and her husband, Rushabh Doshi, researched screen time and
came to a simple conclusion: they wanted almost none of it in their house._

When you don't want the product anywhere near you but you still want to get
paid for manufacturing the product, you might have an unresolved ethical
dilemma in your life.

------
cabaalis
I have a 6-year-old and worry about this myself. But I'll be honest, I grew up
in front of an NES, TV, cartoons, Sega Genesis, nearly every waking hour. I'm
not a perfect man, but I am a productive member of society. So in my mind,
this is a little overblown.

------
fromMars
I lived without a TV for 10 years.

But, when I got married, I could not convince my spouse that a screen free
environment would be beneficial for our kids.

I also sometimes think I should get rid of my smart phone.

Do I really need it?

But given that I haven't, it is really hard to do one thing and ask my kids to
do another.

------
antpls
I would say, if kids are attracted to screen, there must be a biological
reason to it. It's not like an intake of chemicals like alcohol : the device
and interactions with it actually stimulates their brains. It should be
studied and used in a good way rather than plain banned.

It seems the parents are disallowing devices for other reasons than just "it's
bad". They are privileged people, are they afraid of being spied by the
devices of their kids? Are they afraid that the existence of their privileges
are leaked to a greater population?

Tomorrow's society will be connected, and so will be politic, information, and
learning. But no parent wants to risk it with their own kids, because of fear
of the unknown, or because they don't accept that they will lose control over
their kids sooner than ever.

It's their choices to rise their kids as they want, but they are probably from
the top richest 1% anyway, their kids future is already privileged and
boosted, phone or no phone.

------
kachurovskiy
Got an 8 year old daughter. After trying all those things, here's where we
settled:

\- 2h Netflix time per week

\- Offline phone with audiobooks

\- Offline PS3 with SingStar

\- Occasional music video on parent's smartphone

No free TV usage, no YouTube and no Internet-connected devices. Seems to work
well for now!

------
ineedasername
Dark consensus? More like a handful of amplified voices. I have kids, they're
on screens lots, and somehow manage to do well in school and have rich IRL
friendships. This is just the latest moral panic.

------
C1sc0cat
I bet 40, 50 years ago you could see the same sort of article about Television

------
lunulata
lol kids today should have such an advantage with early exposure to tech but
over-protective parents will fuck up that early advantage for their kids
thinking they know better. Instead of no screens, teach your kids smart
browsing skills like always ad-block, identify sponsored content as the
garbage it is, and see micro-transaction mobile games as the low-quality
content they are. No screen policies leave your kids naive and easily
manipulated once they do get screen time and they will __need__ screen time
and to be savvy with it.

------
carlospwk
I’m far removed from childcare but the number of parents I see raising their
kids with iPads is worrying. Is this the new 21st century version of junk food
that will be affecting poor families more?

------
zzo38computer
I watch don't watch television so much, because I prefer to read a book, write
a book, work on computer, think about mathematics, etc. Sometimes is OK
watching television sometimes though.

------
sonnyblarney
The singularity is not some supercomputer - it's the consciousness that
emerges when we are all tethered at the level of the neuron to each other.
There's no hiding then ...

------
jackcosgrove
I have heard no screens until age three.

Are there phones that allow a parent to remotely shut off WiFi and cellular?
Because if there aren't there should be.

------
ancorevard
There is a reason why Steve Jobs banned iPads for his children.

"They haven't used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home."

------
tomjen3
I don't think the issue is screens. I think the issue is internet
connectivity, more specifically always on internet connectivity.

------
sunstone
I wonder how today's screens compare with the effects of TV on kids growing up
before the internet?

------
faissaloo
This is in part why I plan to raise my kids on open source, ethical software.
I'm not going to force them, but libre software will be the normal in my
house. These black box proprietary systems are predatory and hamper
creativity.

------
keeptrying
Anyone care to share their Screen Time stats from IOS12?

~~~
miker64
Last 7 days: Instagram 5h 32m (insta has a 2 hour custom limit set) twofold 2h
55m (tetris-ish puzzle game) unread 2h 38m (feed reader) maps 1h 59m twitter
1h 15m Safari 1h 13m Spotify 1h 5m

and then it drops off into under 10 minutes on various reference apps.

~~~
miker64
24 pickups per day.

------
intrasight
Please mommy, don't take away my Hacker News!

------
arthurcolle
at some point people need to take responsibility for what they spend their
time on

------
TheMagicHorsey
The same people that buy organic peas also have a paranoia about screens. How
unsurprising.

The article doesn't say there has been any peer-reviewed research to show a
little screen time is harmful. It just says, oh, check it out, here is a grab
bag of assholes, we picked out of a population of like 1 Million engineers,
and THEY DONT LET THEIR KIDS USE SCREENS.

Well guess what. I was a video game engineer for 10 years. Now I work in a
different area of tech. My wife works for a giant tech company too. We let our
2 year old watch cartoons on Netflix on Sunday mornings. She loves it. We
think its cute, because we used to watch Sunday morning cartoons as kids
ourselves. She's one of the most advanced kids in her daycare. She can recite
the alphabet, count to ten, and speaks full sentences, and tells stories in
class. The teachers say she is doing really well.

Whoopity doooo. So what if she knows how to use an iPad.

Please. Stop treating Facebook engineers like they are special snowflakes that
know about everything because they wrote some javascript and html that runs a
social networking website.

~~~
thrmsforbfast
Your methodological criticisms are spot-on.

 _> The same people that buy organic peas also have a paranoia about screens.
How unsurprising._

A lot of parents lack sophistication when it comes to "screen time".

I have multiple in-laws who seem to not understand that it's what is on the
screen that matters. As you predicted, those same people are also prone to
magical thinking about other things: vaccination, fluoride, radio waves, GMOs,
etc.

This has multiple effects. First, they tend to over-limit access to useful
aspects of computers. Second, they tend to allow toxic uses of the screen-time
(allowing an hour of pocket slot machine time each day, which is IMO super
excessive).

A stretched analogy: it's similar to a parent who doesn't understand the
difference between alcohol and water, and therefore limits their children's
access to liquid to a few times a day. However, during those few hours, the
kids get to drink whatever they want out of the liquor cabinet. Obviously, the
cabinet should be off-limits 24/7 but the water faucet should be freely
available.

Similarly, kids should not be allowed to play pocket slot machines or watch
youtube with zero restriction/oversight. But there's nothing wrong with
allowing near-infinite screen time for other uses, because it's not the screen
itself that's the problem.

Concretely, my kids will have unrestricted access to an Apple ][ with an Apple
BASIC interpreter and manual. I doubt that will cause any problems that aren't
also caused by unlimited access to microscopes or pH strips.

Of course, their access to iPad games and Netflix will be moderated in the
same way their access to TV will be moderated.

But a lot of parents -- especially non-tech-literate parents -- lump it all in
as "screentime", which causes them to both under-moderate what's going on when
the screen is on and over-moderate access to the screen for healthy uses.

~~~
crwalker
> "there's nothing wrong with allowing near-infinite screen time ... it's not
> the screen that's the problem"

I beg to differ. Humans aren't built to sit and look at screens 1-2 feet from
their face all day. There aren't infinite hours to choose from. There are 24
today. Every hour spent on the screen incurs a tremendous opportunity cost:
exercise, adventure, socialization, cooking, grooming, sex, sleeping, etc.

Digital and real-world goods _are not fungible_ because humans are embodied.

~~~
thrmsforbfast
That's true. I perhaps should have put "allowing" in italics to emphasize it's
the permission to use, not the actual use, that's unlimited.

No one worries about allowing 24/7 access to a microscope, because although
"microscope addiction" is I suppose possible, it's so bloody unlikely that we
don't worry about it.

I think certain computers are similar to the microscope in this respect (e.g.,
an apple ][ with nothing by apple basic).

Obviously, excessive screen time is always bad. The point is that if you can
limit what's on the screen (e.g., an apple basic interpreter), people
(even/especially children) will self-moderate their screen time, so you don't
have to worry about moderating access to the screen (similar to the
microscope).

Obviously, if my child starts spending 10 hours a day looking through a
microscope, I'm going to intervene. Ditto for BASIC programming. But I don't
feel the need to, a priori, restrict access. The odds of either of those
things happening (esp. in a way that's not healthy/constructive/short-lived)
is so low that I don't worry about it.

------
rdlecler1
The web link isn’t providing a non-paywall alternative?

