Reply to A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

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Reply to "A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Have you seen this nytimes article? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/phones-children-silicon-valley.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

"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.”

He has five children and 12 tech rules. They include: no phones until the summer before high school, no screens in bedrooms, network-level content blocking, no social media until age 13, no iPads at all and screen time schedules enforced by Google Wifi that he controls from his phone. Bad behavior? The child goes offline for 24 hours."

Wondering if you all severely restrict screen time? Kinda scary that the makers of this tech are afraid of it for their own children  :-o [/quote]

Used to live in Silicon Valley, and yes. The makers of these things know firsthand that they are designed to waste hours of your life. Of course they don't want their kids on them. [/b]In their minds, there are the people who create and make money, and the ones who buy into it.[b]

Also, I think those rules sound pretty minimal. I do not intend to allow social media at 13. Too early. Our five year old gets basically zero screentime, only when traveling. [/quote]

This is [b]kind of creepy.[/b]  I am one of the ones who “buys into it?”  And I am exposing my kids to it?  I don’t know why, but this makes me feel kind of sick.  Like that scene on Erin Brokovitch where the lady looks out at her kids swimming in the pool.  [/quote]

I'm PP. Yes, it's very creepy. Read the recent exposes of people quitting Google and Facebook, who say they are afraid they didn't know what they were doing and that they might have "broken democracy" by messing with people's willpower and attention. Social media and other technology are designed to be maximally addictive in order to increase ad revenue. The more time you spend scrolling, the more money they make.

In any case, I don't feel my kids will be missing out on anything. Who knows what the technology will be in 10, 15 years -- certainly nothing like what we have today. For me the most important thing is to raise grounded kids with social-emotional skills, who are empowered with curiosity about the actual world and how things work. The way things are trending they will really need to develop a thick skin against the daily bombardment of information, ads, addictive interfaces, etc. and focus on what matters.

A few things that might influence my view, aside from my time in Silicon Valley: 1) I was raised in the 80s with zero TV. I think we maybe watched a show or two on the weekend. We spent most of our time playing outside, swimming, learning music and creative writing and things like that. It was fun, albeit more effort for my parents to limit. 2) I work in a university and have seen so many young people addicted to technology. Technology addiction causes all kinds of mental health issues. Gaming and social media are huge problems that no one is addressing. What a shame to lose a formative decade of your life to something more addictive than a drug.

More than ever, what you pay attention to is what you value. It's getting harder and harder to free your mind, even if you're an adult. Why would you possibly want to burden your children with an addiction? [/quote]

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