
A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley - rbanffy
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/phones-children-silicon-valley.html
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thendrill
I have friends with kids on all side of this coin:

Group A is tech parents with screen time control ( uses parental controls)

Group B non tech parents with physical screen time ( takes phones away)

Group C parents that let the child decide ( kids have full control over own
devices)

And without a doubt one can notice developmental diviations in the children av
group c. They are not very active, hard to socialize etc.

Group bs children are usually way more phydicsl about things.

But bottom line is that tech is negatively impacting children if left
unsupervised.

And i honestly think much of that comes down to design patterns in apps. We
make stupid apps be addictive to adults to optimize engagement and these same
physiological hooks work on children except way more potent.

~~~
skissane
From personal experience as a parent, I've learnt that withdrawing
computer/tablet/YouTube access is a good strategy to improve behaviour. Our
seven year old went from almost being thrown out of swimming lessons due to
naughtiness, to near perfect behaviour, once we started saying "if you don't
behave at swimming you are having no computer for the rest of the day" and it
became clear that we really meant it.

Similarly, he kept on being sent home from school early for misbehaviour. The
school introduced this system where the teachers give him "thumbs up" for
being behaved and "thumbs down" for not. We told him that he has to come home
every school day with at least five thumbs up and no thumbs down to get his
computer, and we demonstrated to him that we meant it. And since then, every
day he gets at least five thumbs up and no thumbs down. (We have to ask the
staff when we pick him up, because we know otherwise he'll just claim to get
five thumbs up even if he didn't.)

~~~
op00to
The kid isn’t learning to not act up at swimming, it’s learning not to act up
in front of you.

~~~
watwut
The other kids at swimming lessons, other kids at school, instructor and
teachers all likely appreciate not-perfectly-self-motivated improvement in
behavior all the same.

It definitely is much better the the kid who misbehaves regardless of whether
someone is looking or not.

Because this way, swimming lesson continue and they can enjoy swimming. School
goes on and they don't have to sit and wait till teacher deals with this one
kid.

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spking
This article focuses exclusively on tech yuppies and their neurotic
overanalyzing about "screen time".

For everyone else, there has never been a better time for children of any
income level or location in the world to access high-quality education and
content for free (Khan Academy Kids, PBS Kids, etc.)

That's the real power of tech: the great equalizer of access to information.
Now we have it and apparently some people want to go back to what, buying
expensive sets of encyclopedias?

~~~
Barrin92
>That's the real power of tech: the great equalizer of access to information.

access to information isn't relevant. If you don't believe that ask a few
people if they'd rather want the MIT degree without having any of the
education or the education without the degree.

Information on its own is useless without any capital or network to turn that
information into something tangible, in that way it's like oil. And that's
also why the more information dependent our society is the more centralized it
is, as a small amount of players can leverage information to create outsized
returns on capital.

~~~
saurik
Let's ask a more legitimate question, without the fancy and highly specific
"MIT" modifier, and without shifting to highly optional education (I have a
college degree, I went to grad school, I continue to live next to and
participate in an academic university ecosystem... I can easily sympathize
with how useless the whole thing is): "how many people would prefer to have a
high school education without a high school diploma over having a high school
diploma without a high school education?" <\- the answer to this one is
probably "almost everyone".

~~~
perl4ever
That seems ambiguous and non-obvious to me. A very underdetermined question.

Without the diploma, are you locked out of any job that requires it? Are you
assuming that a GED is available? Do you realize some jobs that pay
incrementally more than minimum wage in fact require you to prove you
graduated high school even if it was, like 30 years ago and you've been in the
workforce since?

Conversely, does "without a high school education" mean never having gone to
high school classes, or does it mean being completely ignorant of everything
those classes would have taught?

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detaro
(2018)

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woodandsteel
This is behind a paywall and so I can't read it.

I think HN should have a rule that any link that is behind a paywall cannot be
posted unless a way around the paywall is provided.

------
vanusa
[2018] please

------
notsureaboutpg
If anyone here has been around kids around the age of 7-11 years old recently
then they know exactly why this consensus is emerging.

The internet isn't built for parental guidance, and parents don't know how to
lock their kids devices down. Now, because of Covid I am living in a big joint
family again and my 7 year old niece has been caught watching male strip
teases on YouTube.

These devices and the content on them (much like television) is designed to be
addicting and to appeal to all the immediate gratification systems in our
body. Lots of adults are addicted to the internet, and it's not surprising
that parents want to take steps to keep their kids from being so too.

But now with stay-at-home and online learning, kids have an excuse to be
online all day. On a tablet or some similar system, and most parents have no
idea how to track what their kids are doing or block bad websites etc.

Not to mention kids who download video game apps and then charge their parents
cards with $100s in microtransactions.

Most people don't want to reckon with how much these devices shape our
worldview and the way we live, but when we see it happening to a child, it
begins to dawn on us that we've maybe bought in too much on technology.

I don't know the way forward. Devices have been an equalizer. That's true. But
it's also true that their purpose is to divert our attention from important
things to advertising. Their purpose is to be a mini TV that we carry with us
everywhere. And who can blame parents for being unsure which side of that they
want to stand on?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
There's no denying that kids can do things on an iPad you don't want them
doing. But for of those of us who mostly grew up with the Internet, "screen
time" is just a very strange category. From my perspective, it's like noticing
that kids who start reading from a young age often skip homework to read or
read dirty fanfics you can't approve of, and arriving at a dark consensus
about books.

~~~
watwut
It is strange untill you actually have to deal with kids long term. Then it
starts to make sense.

Also, kids who read a lot tend to be the ones who also do homework. Yet also,
today's kids who engage in reading a lot tend to be the ones who have "screen
time" policed.

When kids spend too much time reading, parent do treat that as issue too.
There just is no peer pressure currently to read, reading is less addictive
and people tend to rage less while reading or post reading.

