I’m sure this is probably a thing overall, but I also distinctly remember some extremely tech savvy friends, people making their livings in tech from the 90’s, using iPhone with games and YouTube as an opium stick whenever their 7-10 year olds wouldn’t sit still in public.
They fought about it, so maybe it was a cultural thing, but it definitely wasn’t because they didn’t understand the mechanics of adtech.
I also have super techno-illiterate friends whose teenage son spends maybe an hour a day online.
I don’t pretend to know the parenting solution but my anecdata suggests the tech-savvy parents are not automatically better at this than their less-teched counterparts.
If it's flashy, exciting, looks cool - other children are going to want to have the same thing too.
In a situation like that, even if your own preference is to have a quiet, slow existence for your family -- and even if that's what other families want too -- the environment has been altered by this external factor.
Adults aren't immune to these kind of peer effects either, to be honest - but it's particularly pathetic for multi-billion dollar companies to intentionally market towards children with the hope of holding on to their attention and customer data.
This is an important factor that extends into all aspects of tech that I've worked around. Us tech savvy people take a staggering amount of knowledge for granted, I think - partially due to how technical knowledge can compound and transfer so well.
People use the term whitelist - why not supervise kids with a whitelist? I understand that idea (I've written the behaviour into software), and I'd even seek it out if I wanted to protect my kids. But to some people, this concept won't make sense at all. They'll ask things like "Why does the phone know what my kid can see?" or "How can the phone know what each app/website is?" – questions that almost make no sense if you know how these things work. But, that's the world we live in. I personally think it's my responsibility as someone privileged enough to be technical to help those who don't understand. Whether it's my kids or their grandma or the people I work with. Most people learn these concepts readily, but they have no idea where to start or what to look for to learn. It's not really their fault (not that you or anyone suggested it is).
> games that you purchase vs games that are free don't have anywhere close to the same tilt toward addiction, ad feeds, timed rewards, etc
Absolutely, it seems analogous to watching a movie vs watching T.V.
> Social stuff though...zero chance. None. It's a disease.
100%