> More of "the kids aren't alright!" reporting they love to do to scare parents and elderly folks.
Sadly this is one of those topics, like violence in video games, where we don't get beyond this cycle of "accuse and deny". Which is a shame because IMO there are really important topics here we need to address collectively such as how this connects to addiction http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
The "data point" I've been able to confirm with other parents of small kids (under 10) is there is a connection between extended periods of computer-aided escapism and aggression.
The experiment you can try with most kids is give them a smartphone or iPad for 1-2 hours then take it away again with minimal warning but without using force. Once you've recovered the device, the next 15-30 minutes will typically involve aggressive behaviour; shouting, physical aggression towards siblings, demands to have the device back and something not unlike Gollum desiring his Precious.
Based on my own experiences, adults can exhibit similar behaviour but extremes are dampened by conditioning, so harder to detect e.g it manifests itself in different ways e.g. sadness or depression instead of aggression.
My hypothesis for this is something like 'For every 15 minutes given to a medium capable of 'fully absorbing' human attention (books, computer games VR), 5 minutes of "unconscious recovery time" will be required to re-align the attention to the current "real" reality, during which subjects may display behaviour such as aggression, sadness or general distractedness / fidgeting'
This ratio of 15 to 5 might be different depending on the medium e.g. VR might have a more accentuated ratio than reading a book.
Why this is so I can't say for sure, but it's something like a tax on time spent existing in a disconnected reality vs. the "real reality" our bodies live in.
> What I've seen with my kids (under 10) is when they get an hour of phone or tablet, after they have to give it up again, they become very aggressive and behave in a manner which is comparable to someone with a chemical addiction
This has nothing to do with addiction and everything to do with parental education. You will get the same kind of reaction if you take away a toy that a child is currently having fun with, regardless of whether it's a tablet or not (I bet our parents were having similar concerns decades ago when they turned off the TV on us).
A simple talk such as "You can play with it again tomorrow but if you act like this again when I take it away, they you will never get to play with it again" did wonder with my kids.
> The experiment you can try with most kids is give them a smartphone or iPad for 1-2 hours then take it away again with minimal warning but without using force. Once you've recovered the device, the next 15-30 minutes will typically involve aggressive behaviour; shouting, physical aggression towards siblings, demands to have the device back and something not unlike Gollum desiring his Precious.
Try the same with a book they show interest in, and you'll get the same behaviour. But nobody does that with a book because it's ridiculous, right? But so it is ridiculous to do that with an iPad or a personal computer! I'd say it's a pretty normal reaction of someone who was concentrated and fully engaged in an action, only to be unexpectedly and forcibly interrupred.
> What I've seen with my kids (under 10) is when they get an hour of phone or tablet, after they have to give it up again, they become very aggressive and behave in a manner which is comparable to someone with a chemical addiction.
My kid does that too. She also flips and starts screaming if you try to cut up her food instead of letting her try to eat pizza with a fork. I don't think it means what you think it does.
> The dangers he is referring to include exposure to harmful content like pornography, bullying from other kids, and perhaps worse of all, becoming addicted to their devices, just like their parents.
I threw up a little bit while reading this. Prohibiting rather than engaging in meaningful discussion is a surefire way to cause harm (it's the same thing with alcohol, for instance); bullying is a fact of life, and learning to deal with it is a valuable life lesson. And yes, you can spend too much time on your device. Calling it addiction, with all it entails, is a step I wouldn't make. It's 2014, I thought the sillyness about being addicted to video games and computer was over. Apparently not.
> Basically, they're forced to learn to never immerse themselves in any activity. I'm not sure it's a good thing to ask for.
No, inability to play computer game whole day every day at age of seven will not break your ability to immerse into activity.
Being immersed so much that you don't control yourself and act badly is issue parents need to deal with. If they don't, the older the kid grows the more consequences it has on his or her life. So, yes, it is a good thing.
Even if we are assuming there will be no long term consequences, if the toy causes enough bullshit for the rest familly, parents are entitled to limit it for their own or siblings sake.
I wish I could agree with you, but I cannot. Industries are hiring psychologists in order to increase the addiction of software (especially videogames) -- perfecting just the right amount of time before a reward is given, tuning the sounds to be "just so", etc. It's hard enough for an adult to resist, with years of defense mechanisms established, in places like Casinos or video games. But now that same degree of subterfuge is being employed for iPad games targeted at toddlers. What can an unprepared child do to resist? A: very little.
It is parent vs. corporation, now, in a battle for the child's mind.
> But why do devices suck them in so easily if I don't direct or enforce their behavior?
Advertising had nothing to do with my addiction to gaming.
When I was a kid I played games nonstop on atari before I got an apple ][. Then I played games on that until I got a nintendo, then a PC clone, then a sega genesis, then PS2, and then at some point I had to cut myself off. Cold turkey. I would honestly play the dumbest simple game for hours and hours. I'd beat the same game over and over sometimes.
Young children don't understand moderation. They will eat a bag of cookies or play on a tablet for hours at a time without guidance.
You must direct them and always have an activity at the ready. Set an old school egg timer for say 60 minutes and when it goes off, go shut off the game, take away the tablet/phone, and suggest their next task. Don't wait for them to save the game or fall for the "I'm almost done with the level" nonsense.
This seems extreme. The idea generally talked about is "we're not yet sure about the effects of prolonged phone use on development of social skills and mental health, and related impacts on physical development. What's more, we know that adults are finding themselves with hard-to-break negative habits surrounding their phone use. And we know that app companies are A/B testing to the nth degree in an attempt to drive engagement ever higher. So caution is indicated here, even if we don't yet know precisely how much is warranted"
That doesn't seem in the least "preposterous" to me. And your sample size is tiny, and you don't have a control group: who knows what your family dynamic would be like if your kids had boundaries around their usage of devices?
As others have said, this is fundamentally different to the moral panics of the past. Back then, it was "kids are doing X, which I didn't do, and X is therefore bad." Now it is vastly more "I am realising that Y is bad for me, and I'm a full-grown adult. Perhaps I shouldn't let my kids run free with Y either".
This isn't "novels are corrupting our girls", it's much closer to "hang on, this smoking business may not actually be improving our health and vitality, and we might consider only letting little Jimmy have 20 a day. Yes, yes, even though we have no issue running in the park with him, or doing family things together, or etc etc etc"
> should be regulated in some way, at least up until a certain age.
Its called proper parenting. As a father of little 2 miracles, I can clearly see how easily they get addicted to basically everything-screen, and many more things like junk food. And its 1-way road.
The hard part is going into full relentless battle with your own children who will use various psychological tricks, just like adult addicts, to get their kicks. Almost nothing is off the table. So you often end up with verbal contracts like you are buying next twitter to have some rule of sanity, but kids tend to ignore it anyway.
We personally are +- not there yet, so its relatively easy to manage 1 and 3 year olds for screens. But we see lost battles all around us, kids small and big glued to phones, tablets, tvs, just that parents can have some time off. Not everybody fails, but we see success mostly with parents that simply dont have tv at home and use (rarely) phones more like old nokias (with attached camera) rather than smart phones. You can't expect kids to respect prohobition when parents are clearly ignoring it.
Proper parenting these days is hard, I guess also due to higher bar for parenting success than just 'kids are alive when entering adulthood'.
> ...especially in our formative years can have dramatically negative effects on brain development.
I personally believe it is a parent's responsibility to monitor their children and ensure that they have the best chance they can get at adequate cognitive development, even if that means monitoring their use of "screen time."
When I was young (and no doubt many of you), it was cartoons. Now it's Internet or game-related stuff.
> In any case, I don't really like the idea that those people would been useless anyway as if it were in their nature to be unmotivated.
I didn't suggest they're useless. I stated they were unmotivated and that such lack of motivation is unlikely to change no matter what the distraction. 20 years ago, it might have been soap operas. Today it's the Internet. Removing any distraction in particular for someone with a great deal if idle time who is unlikely to be motivated to "learn" something isn't going to change their motivation. That was essentially the crux of my point.
> I think the fact that people have literally died from screen overuse lends credence to the idea that there is some danger to integrating computers...
And what about those of us who use them daily with (seemingly) no ill effects, because it's what we do for a living and for much of our hobbyist use? Of the circumstances I'm aware of where people have died from sitting in front of a computer too long, it's been due in part to video game abuse. Playing StarCraft for 48+ hours in a single stretch without eating or drinking is the sign of an addiction, not necessarily the fault of StarCraft itself.
I think this effectively boils down to the fact that the problem is not with technology. The problem is with people.
> > we're basically ensuring that the socioeconomic divide is going to turn into a chasm
Yes I think that positive feedback cycle is already well established.
> Depends on what's the alternative for all that screen time.
I'm pretty convinced that the extra presence of screen time
at the lower socioeconomic scale is a consequence of parents' lack
of time,
What is "lack of time"? A careless reader would assume you meant they
are busy working [1]. No. The parents are on their phones. From birth all
these kids see is mum's face lit from below with a blue light.
To start with, the kids try to break through neglect and inattention
by calling "mum" mum!" and trying ever more naughty things to get
attention. Eventually they are given a phone of their own (aged 2 is
the youngest I have seen) as a pacifier. The parents give their kids
the same digital drugs to be free of their "disruption" so they can
indulge their own addictions.
> So, the actual alternatives to screen time might likely be worse
.... early exposure to adult world
I know what you meant (sex, violence, alcohol...), but the stark
reality is that the "adult world" is staring into a 6 inch screen for
12 hours. Adults don't have time for anything else nowadays. These
pacifiers work for all ages. It's natural that children want to copy
what they see adults doing.
[1] It's actually when the parents are working that these digital
orphans get better childcare, as they're usually at school or with an
adult caregiver who has them in mind.
> At a certain point it's a parent's duty to limit destructive addictions. And these social media networks and games are made to be extremely addictive, companies spend billions of dollars on this goal.
Yes, I agree. I actually typed out a bit about my own experience with playing Gameboy at 10 and comparing it to drinking and partying at 21, but I didn't end up appending it to my comment.
It's one of those things that parents don't get--modern stuff (video games, social media) is like heroin for kids. You can't just give them "an hour of heroin time" per week and then expect them to think about anything else for the periods of time you suspend them from it.
When I was younger, I could think about playing Donkey Kong Country for literal days at a time. I'd imagine levels in my head, draw pictures, stare at old video game ads, hum the music to myself, and once I made a cardboard Gameboy and pretended to play it to scratch the itch. My life was measured as blocks of time in between playing DKC. My parents didn't get how single-minded I was and thought that by "restricting it" they could redirect my attention to other, more wholesome things. Impossible. I am so thankful I didn't have unlimited internet access or Fortnite when I was younger.
>If a child developed a stron[g] attachment to a jumper would you prevent them wearing it? //
I've prevented one of my children from wearing a favourite jumper (well, hoodie), either because it needed washing or was inappropriate. He likes to wear his hood up all the time and I require him to take it down rather than indulge his desire to not confront his surroundings - namely communicate with other people. He is like I was, afraid to initiate communication and willing to 'hide' to avoid it. But I was always far more fulfilled when I was unable to avoid other people and "forced" to make the effort to communicate; it seems the same with him.
Someone said 'call obsession "passion" and see how it fits now'. Would you call staying up all night, missing work, feeling terrible, ruining your sleep patterns "passion". That's more akin to addiction: I've been on a Minecraft binge recently. My analysis is that it allows me to escape the real world and control my interactions; it's definitely escapism for me. Yes, Minecraft has a lot of potential educational value but I'm very cautious as my personal history with computer games - and other things - has been one of unhealthy obsession.
Veg out with the computer? Well I'll allow that for a short time but to me real world interaction is also far more valuable; I can appreciate the position that sdegustis appears to be presenting. I'll let my kids play for an extended time on the computer/console with a friend, for example, but not by themselves.
It's interesting that the reactions here are similar to the reactions we had when we quit having a television. We have reneged, we now have non-broadcast TV: in part I see that as a failure.
I notice you've set noprocrast on ... a little like denying a child a favourite thing for a while ...?!
This stuff isn't just harmful to your wallet, it's harmful to your
child's health [1,2]. You may as well be encouraging her to smoke
cigarettes.
You're the adult in charge. Remove the demand by learning about
the many harms of exploitative online digital products for children,
the depression and mental illness, loss of focus, irritability, poor
socialisation...
Figure out how you're going to pass positive life-stance changes to
your kid. Explain to her what the glut of phones and tablets are doing
to the planet. Wean her gently off the addiction that is probably
already taking hold.
Go riding bikes, flying kites and looking at nature.
Then, slowly reintroduce technology as a useful tool under close
supervision.
>> These people prey on the irrational behavior of parents scared for their children and try to convince them that things like addiction to a website on a screen is possible.
Saying that addiction to a website isn't possible is unfounded.
People get addicted to online gambling. That's just "a website on a screen." It's clearly possible and it clearly happens.
To play the devil's advocate, isn't technological "addiction" the inevitable future, so why even fight it? The more engaging technology becomes, the more people will naturally(and perhaps rightfully) choose it over reality. Isn't trying to curb the addiction merely an attempt to postpone the future?
tbh once they are it's already over anyway, you're just holding back the tide at that point. Need strict supervision to protect them from online dangers and there is nothing you can do to prevent the dopamine addiction.
It's no coincidence many of the people who create this hardware/software and networks don't let their own children anywhere near them.
showing signs of decreasing attention spans and cognitive abilities [1]. This may be misdiagnosed as ADHD and then medicated. Yeah, they're fine, you guess. I'll cite you the next time someone brings it up to assure them the kids are fine.
> Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits.
Some do, some don't. My 2nd grader is happy to self regulate. My 4th grader will however spend 12-14 hours/day online and as the screentime accrues, become more likely to annoy, torment, and eventually act violently in response to perceived transgressions.
We're otherwise a no tv, no videogame console, no tablets house. Not because we've decided not to have these things, but because a half-a-day binge has resulted in a kiddo rage-destroying the device at some point and not having the broken device any longer is a natural consequence to that behaviour.
So no, I dont think all kiddos can typically learn to self regulate. The existence of some kiddos self regulating is not evidence that all of them can or that even the ones who can't are somehow "broken." Screens are a new tech and we're still learning the cultural-social technologies to interact with them healthily.
Sadly this is one of those topics, like violence in video games, where we don't get beyond this cycle of "accuse and deny". Which is a shame because IMO there are really important topics here we need to address collectively such as how this connects to addiction http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
The "data point" I've been able to confirm with other parents of small kids (under 10) is there is a connection between extended periods of computer-aided escapism and aggression.
The experiment you can try with most kids is give them a smartphone or iPad for 1-2 hours then take it away again with minimal warning but without using force. Once you've recovered the device, the next 15-30 minutes will typically involve aggressive behaviour; shouting, physical aggression towards siblings, demands to have the device back and something not unlike Gollum desiring his Precious.
Based on my own experiences, adults can exhibit similar behaviour but extremes are dampened by conditioning, so harder to detect e.g it manifests itself in different ways e.g. sadness or depression instead of aggression.
My hypothesis for this is something like 'For every 15 minutes given to a medium capable of 'fully absorbing' human attention (books, computer games VR), 5 minutes of "unconscious recovery time" will be required to re-align the attention to the current "real" reality, during which subjects may display behaviour such as aggression, sadness or general distractedness / fidgeting'
This ratio of 15 to 5 might be different depending on the medium e.g. VR might have a more accentuated ratio than reading a book.
Why this is so I can't say for sure, but it's something like a tax on time spent existing in a disconnected reality vs. the "real reality" our bodies live in.
reply