So you assume social media is required for a successful life? I bet there were people that would have argued in the ‘50s and ‘60s that the social aspect of smoking was helpful to having a successful life back then too. Never mind the cancer and all being popular with your peers is what’s important.
No, nothing in my post assumed or even suggested that. Recall the discussion was whether smartphones and tablets have any more utility than nicotine. Let's forget social media for a moment, then, since it's a red herring here. I can, and do, capably use both devices without needing to use social media.
Yes, being able to use a smartphone or tablet is likely required for many successful careers, and likely more in the future. If someone looking for a job can only use a phone or tablet as well as my grandma can use a mouse, that unfortunately rules out some career options. The story is the same for me: Had I no access to computers or technology until I was an adult, I would have a totally different career path and life. Not sure I'd be as happy in that case as I am now.
I don't like how "devices" are replacing full-fledged computers (maybe it's the old man in me), but that only portends more hardship for people handicapped in "on-device computing".
I merely made the further connection that smoking had a social connection too and was yet another rotten thing we did to ourselves and kids once upon a time.
Frankly, I’d also suggest to your point that devices, computer, and coding skills are going to be less important in the future. I think coding and SW dev will become less and less a human endeavor and more a product of AI practically eliminating the vocation, but that’s not what this thread is about and I am sure not what folks on HN will want to hear. People will also manage to figure out how to utilize the tech of their time, they won’t need to be exposed to it as children. I know I wasn’t, and my nearly 90 year old mother manages to use a smartphone and tablet just fine and she didn’t even have indoor plumbing when she grew up.
I can, and do, capably use both tablets (and smartphones!) without needing to use social media, and we have no indication that the child in question used social media. So, let's forget social media for a moment, then, since it's a red herring here. Let's return to topic: whether the story of child tablet usage which spawned this thread is "akin to" child nicotine consumption.
I appreciate your point about deep computer knowledge being less useful as HCI approaches a conversation, and can see that being a possible future as well.
Even at the height of smoking, around half of the population were nonsmokers.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/184418/percentage-of-cig...
How many high school kids don't have a smartphone, especially outside the poorest areas? One in thirty?
Socially, it is very different being part of half of the population, and a tiny minority of the population, doubly so if it restricts your communication capabilities and you are left out of all common activities of your peers.
The situation can be fixed, but a critical mass of people willing to change their current ways must gather and be willing to sacrifice some efficiency and comfort for the sake of personal contact.
I see this a lot where "${thing} is bad" leads to people saying "we should stop letting people have ${thing}" and trying to raise kids as if ${thing} doesn't exist or as if they can choose to not be addicted / influenced by ${thing}, regardless of how realistic that is. Pick your vice, sex, drugs, guns, rock and roll, pop music, movies, TV, the internet at large, social media, communism, capitalism, socialism, fascism, power tools, knives, etc. And it seems to me, more often than not, heavily "abstinence only" treatment of ${thing} results in far more harm than in trying to model ways to healthily deal with the fact that ${thing} exists and may vary well be something you have to deal with.
I think of it like an immune system response. Your body needs to encounter pathogens in order to learn how to deal with them. Sure it would be ideal if you never ever got sick at all. But since that's basically impossible, and we know that trying to do that often results in unintended side effects, it's better instead to teach people (and their immune systems) how to deal with things. People get taught to wash their hands, cover their mouths, and immune systems get vaccines, and exposure to pathogens by not keeping our kids in hermetically sealed environments. Should you go out an intentionally get your kid sick? No, generally speaking you shouldn't. But that's exactly the goal of a vaccine. Get your body a little sick, so that it's better prepared to deal with the real thing when it gets there. Or see also chicken pox parties (though I don't know if that's still a thing or even recommended anymore)
I love my kids more than life, but I find a lot of dog training stuff crosses over very well. I taught them "come" command from an early age - and they know to come immediately, without question. The idea being if they are in a dangerous situation, like in the middle of a street or about to be hit by a bike or something, that this is how I will get them out of it. I don't use the command very often, but damn if those kids don't come running! It makes me feel so much safer.
Them: "How'd you get $oneYearOld to do $that?"
Me: [Explains]
Them: "That's clever"
Me (unguardedly): "Yeah, it's basically like dog-training - [more or less what you said]."
Them: [Dirty look]
A year on I don't think they've started another conversation with me. Lol. I have the "bad parent" rep, but everyone likes our kid, so I really, really don't care.
[Edit: It's all positive reinforcement, mind. I'm not yelling or beating the kid, or anything like that. The objection is to a mental association between the child and an animal. My wife initially had the same.
No. It's the result of you having time to spend with her instead of working 2 or 3 back-breaking jobs like many parents have to, and her having a safe and stable material livelihood so she doesn't constantly desire escape.
What really makes me sad is when I'm at a restaurant or shop or similar and there is a parent with a small child getting restless and they pacify them by sticking a phone with Youtube in their face.
Of course anyone can be a bad parent, but being a good parent might require having a certain amount of material security and wealth. Not such a crazy idea if you think about it.
You need a support system to be able to model good behavior. If you barely have energy to make it to bed at night then you definitely won't have energy to entertain a hyperactive toddler. Things like having grandparents help raise kids and spend time with them instead of turning on YouTube can help.
This is a key part. As a parent it’s hard to distinguish between parent guidance and the way the kid would be even without our intervention. In any case, Haidt’s argument is one of public health. The claim is that many/most parents don’t know how to provide that teaching even if they were of a mind to be intentional about parenting.
> like somehow their child will magically manifest all the skills they need to deal . . . once they turn 18
There are so many things like this. Fortunately one’s offspring need not get cut off at 18. The challenge is progressively cutting apron strings so any particular threshold isn’t a cliff.
> This is the result of my international teaching of my daughter about how we interact with devices.
Do you mean like exposure to how different cultures live with technology?
If it’s parents and teachers vs legions of well-funded PhDs at Meta and TikTok, I know who I would bet on winning…
Millions of dollars of research goes into making Doritos and Coca Cola hyper palatable yet it's been 5 years since I tasted either of them.
It's more holistic than just telling your kids to not eat Doritos. You have to inculcate skills and decision making. Such as the ability to cook delicious food. The ability to meal plan and shop accordingly. If you have no idea how to cook, no cultural norms about eating out only once in a while as a treat rather than a habit, then when you're hungry you'll jump for the packet of chips.
Unfortunately not only are we slowly forgetting these skills, we also come up with galaxy brained theories about why that's a good thing.
I think his takes are pretty accurate.
The problem is with a society where we deprive minors of their freedom and independence because we refuse to pay for basic public safety and basic public transportation. Instead, we make helicopter parenting into the norm and then blame the one domain (the internet) where they are capable of experiencing some freedom for the problems caused by a lack of freedom. If we actually want to fix the youth mental health problem, we need to ensure that kids can safely go outside and play or go places without parents having to follow them 24/7 like they could in past generations.
Where in the world is it unsafe for children to play outside? As far as I can see children don't play outside simply because they are not encouraged to.
https://www.nydailynews.com/2014/09/17/neighbor-calls-cops-c...
https://reason.com/2023/03/09/teaneck-new-jersey-arrest-kids...
My daughter has had access to a tablet since she was 12 months old. She's 5 currently, but she's not a tablet zombie as I so commonly see reported of toddlers with free access to phones. Just yesterday, my daughter freely, without my intervention, put away her tablet to play with a child who happened into the room we were in. She never touched it again until we were bad into the car and begged me to leave and play with her new friend outside instead of ask for another set of headphones for the friend.
This is the result of my international teaching of my daughter about how we interact with devices. As someone who grew up with the internet in elementary school, I feel extremely confident, I can keep this up even as my preschooler turns into a kid into a teen.
I just think it's a shame that I'm surrounded by parents with intention of teaching her kids about how to responsibly use their devices or they want to deny their kid access at all like somehow their child will magically manifest all the skills they need to deal with infinite stroll once they turn 18.