I am from Eastern Europe and I’ve been living for many years in Western Europe. Where I come from, kids get their first phones when they start school at 6 (there’s a pre-school year) simply because every other kid has one. I keep coming back in my mind to two examples from my birth country: a friend’s kid carrying an 8 inch smartphone in his hand everywhere because the phone was as big as half his thigh and would have to carry a bag for it. The second one was on a visit at the zoo, I was on a bench and a family with two young children with them, in a cart. And both children, couldn’t have been older than 4 or 5, were scrolling TikTok, that was showing them children content!

In contrast, in Western Europe, my son is now in the sixth grade, more than half his class doesn’t have phones, phones are absolutely forbidden on school grounds and at school activities, and they are now doing a class trip where they were told that there’s a pay phone at the hotel, in case they want to call the parents - our son promptly informed us that he’ll rather buy a pack of Pokémon cards than call us and 3 days is not so much anyway.

And it is not only at school, he travels for tournaments with his team every other week and mobile phones are absolutely forbidden on the team bus. Children read, play games (including chess on a magnetic board), sing and change stories for hours at a time

It's not so easy, they need phones and social media to communicate with their friends. They also need to fit in and find an identity. The algorithms basically all engagement engines have is harmful for humanity as a whole. They are marketed as recommendation engines but it's 100% about engagement and that is why the content you see is mostly creating dopamine from it being fun or rage for it being provocative. It's built to serve one purpose, to keep people using the platform as much as possible. Not because the platform is good, but because it serves content that maximizes engagement.

I read a post about someone saying his wife worked for a snack company. They used MRI scans to see how much salt (or sugar) they should have in the snacks to maximize the response in the brain. Sounds disturbing right.

Well engagement engines are the same thing. It's artificial intelligence optimized to get people to react and stay addicted. Basically AI doing harm. It's not what is best for the individual in terms of health. It's what generates most money to the owner of the platform.

It should not be allowed to build a business around something that exploits humans brains. Basically biohacking our brains for profit.

Apparently parents are spending more time with their children than ever. Dads especially. Paradoxically, there is what you're addressing.

Personally, I think some parents are afraid of their children growing to resent them for infringing upon their "freedom" in ways that keeping them away from the dangers that social media and other technologies present.

> the responsibility of a parent to protect their children from harm

I agree with you, but only in theory. Because that's where we are now and it does not seem to work that well.

Maybe through more education? But then again I think reducing addictive tactics like endless scrolling could be part of a 2 prong attack.

With alcohol we have education on what happens, but we also have laws that regulate it.

Replace TikTok with cigarettes, and it'll hopefully make sense to you. There was a time when people had no idea that smoking was bad for you, which is where we are now with these apps.

And since they're addictive, kids will find a way to get them even if their parents don't allow it. That's why it's most effective to require ID when you're buying cigarettes than it is to shame people for not being perfectly vigilant parents.

BTW, I'm not saying age verification is the solution here. IMO, we should instead ban addictive social media completely. Eg, target specific design patterns/features, require companies to disclose how their algorithms work to regulators, etc.

When it works.

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