We should recognize its not a generational issue but something that affects us all-young and old

It is the business model. There is an incentive to make games addictive. Like arcade games the goal is to keep kids as much time on the machine as possible. But now the arcade is in your pocket 24/7.

Even worse, there is an incentive even to just open the app as it is an opportunity to show you an Ad. Notifications, and periodical rewards make sure that there is a constant need to interact with the phone.

Unregulated markets will always end up in scams and addiction. Because both are the fastest and more reliable way of getting money.

It's not just games though, it's pretty much every digital service now.

Virtually every website has infinite scrolling and algorithms that tailor the feed directly to what "appeals" to the user now. It's all just drip-feeding dopamine to the user base so they stay engaged for the longest possible time.

Since, I’ve always been aware of and wary of the possibility of this kind of dopamine cycling.

I see it in others. My wife discovered YouTube shorts a year or so ago, and now she’ll lose entire days to watching 20 second clips of reality TV.

Thing is, with a grown ass adult you can’t limit their screen time. You have to let them dig to the bottom of the pit all by themselves, and only when they ask for help to get out of it can you help - otherwise nothing is learned.

It’s honestly not at all dissimilar to friends who I’ve seen fuck their existences up with drugs. They’ve had to hit rock bottom before they quit - or they died. Can’t think of anyone who just went “actually, today I won’t have any heroin”.

Yes, yes you can..

And the exact same people complaining about the screens and saying that something must be done will cheer because "we live in a society" or whatever.

I was lucky(?) enough to have played enough RPG video games that had good stories and combat to be completely unimpressed with WoW when it came along. I got to level three or five or something, said to myself "Shit, this is boring." and never looked back.

That said, I put a ton of time into Guild Wars 2, so don't misinterpret this comment as me sneering at folks who did (or do) put a ton of time into WoW.

Everything else is just an empty blah. Every single time there is unruly kid, I look at parental behaviors and its pretty obvious. Reverse is also true - every properly caring involved parent has much better behaving kid(s) around.

Personally I also like the physics of a book a lot more for reading. Every book is a physically different object. You physically turn the page. You can physically see how far you are in the book. It's just all much less abstract and tangible.

What? I guess you mean the mobile and tablet world... And even then I'm pretty sure that's bullshit, there is surely a pdf viewer without adverts

Social media is a plague and will likely be looked on by the psychiatric/medical professional as extremely harmful in years to come. Something akin to smoking.

Not only will it not, autism will not last more than 25 years in it's current form. I bet money on both of those

While I'm now on my phone too much, and I don't read fiction as much as I used to, I'm grateful for those foundations.

The friction and discomfort that come from reading/exercising/learning/growing is so important, and I hope we can find a healthier balance for the next generation.

I watched Harvey price, a fairly famous autistic person in the UK edit his own video on an iPad, adding sounds etc. I think that's fantastic self directed learning and it came from, shock horror, a screen. I think this anti-screen sentiment is hysteria, plain and simple.

They sound deprived, why haven't you got them a bike if you're complaining about screen time?

> It's such a huge difference. It is the devices. It's 100% the devices.

You sound like you're convincing yourself here.

It just got worse the more sophisticated games became. And now we have infinite videos and content, infinite scrolling and such. How is a child supposed to withstand this onslaught? I only managed this by uninstalling YouTube and all apps with shorts.

Take control of what your kids play, and you can help them find more beneficial uses of electronics which is not an endless loop of bite sized low quality entertainment! :)

Today, you can see the engagement engineering everywhere. ESPECIALLY IN MOBILE... omg the FOMO, flash colors, 3 second screen transitions, gambling mechanics. It's an addicts nightmare.

Same sort of theme I've being going for in my personal intranet. It's calmer offline.

Now I waste time reading about how those old games were made!

I feel like it got worse not because games became more sophisticated, but because they got dumber and require less and less brainpower.

I spent my childhood playing ridiculous amount of video games, probably same amount or more as kids nowadays do. I had literally hundreds of Playstation games back in the day. And I turned out fine. But the difference was that I was playing a ton of games that required you to put some thought into them, and weren't easy, and often were story-heavy (e.g. JRPGs in particular; being from a non English-speaking country that's how I actually learned English!).

Do you give them some kind of additional time budget that they can manage themselves over a longer period? There are things that you can do on a screen that just take more time than one hour at once, especially when you're playing with friends (or even learning something by programming etc.).

That anyone is pretending otherwise is mind boggling to me.