alt Hacker NewsI find all this anti-screen stuff kinda weird. Why avoid screens one day week? Do you also avoid electricity? Running water and sanitation? Refuse to use a wheel or mechanical advantage? It's almost Amish to me. Where do you draw the line, and why? Why a screens but not e.g. electromagnetism?
I have young kids. There is A LOT of this sort of pressure and sentiment - that using a computer/tablet/phone is somehow inherently bad and harmful. My kids love watching TV but I am fortunate that they also love imaginative play with traditional toys (teddy bears, Lego, cardboard boxes etc) more and they only watch shows maybe 1 or 2 hours a month. I think it is because we don't have a physical TV in the house - there is no looming huge black rectangle in the corner reminding them all their waking time (we adults just watch netflix/whatever on a laptop after bedtime for the kids).
I think this is part of the problem. It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.
Just turn notifications off. Just don't look at twitter/Facebook/tiktok. It's not hard to just not use the brain rot stuff. I get it you are addicted - I guess just be thankful it's not alcohol or cigarettes. Get help for your addiction.
But I do not understand why on earth you would not use these amazing, life-improving, wondrous tools? Like if you needed to hammer in a nail you refuse to use a metal hammer "because technology" and what? you just bludgeon it in with your fists instead? I do not understand this rejection of hugely beneficial tools and technology that has made our lives so much easier.
Replies
Because what works for you does not work for everybody, and different people may have different propensities, impulses etc.
You put some spatial restrictions (no tv screen visibly standing permanently in the house). Some people put time restrictions because that works for their case. It does not mean that they do not want to use these "wondrous technologies", they just want to spend some amount of their time doing something else. Saying "this works for me, everybody should do that" is absurd, something that works for you could work for some, but there is no reason to think it may work for everybody. And you just overlook how certain stuff are built to be addictive/attention grabbing, through A/B testing and research and tons of high-end specialised human capital in order to increase profit from advertising.
The mere presence of a smartphone impairs basal attentional performance
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4
The mere presence of one's own smartphone impairs cognitive capacity
People have different ways of dealing with overuse of technology. For some, one day a week off works for some notification off, for some using dumb phones. It is perfectly normal for people to tryout and share anything that works. And it is also perfectly normal to ignore it.
> There is A LOT of this sort of pressure and sentiment.
There’s absolutely no pressure that can’t be ignored. Just because you feel the pressure there’s no need to call everyone else’s way of dealing with overuse nonsensical.
> It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.
“Medium is the message” is a highly recommended reading.
Why do you need to hammer that nail in every moment of downtime? If someone close to me pulled out a hammer to hammer in nails 5 hours a day with no visible beneficial result I would be worried that this person is pretending not to have an addiction
1. Maybe because making life easier isn't always a good thing? That there are certain things which benefit from being difficult, or at least not as easy as possible. Especially for children.
2. There aren't billion-dollar corporations, staffed with teams of PhDs in psychology, whose sole purpose 24/7 is to get me to use a hammer more. That's a false analogy.
Why don’t you buy a TV and put it in your kids’ bedroom then? It might alert them before a natural disaster happens or something — it’s useful technology, after all.
His house (website), his rules. They can be weird but as he doesn’t hurt anyone, it is his choice.
Well, I don’t get why I can’t discover his writings if I have still Saturday :) but it is his website not mine… so if he wants me to visit it on Monday to Saturday his time, I will. Or will not…
You just pick a place and draw it. Being anti-screen and taking a recurring break are not the same thing. You don't have to go full Amish. It's like the weekend. It gives you time and space to do other things, and encourages variation in how you interact with other humans and yourself. We picked Friday evenings to Saturday afternoons, not even a full day, and have been doing it for about 10 years. Easily one of the best quality of life choices we made as a family.
I have never understood addiction either. My whole life I’ve been told that I am addicted to “computers” or video games, because I spent so much time on it. But frankly there wasn’t much better to do and it’s just a hobby, passion that now pays my bills…
Only until I started smoking cigarettes and later stopped I realised what addiction really means, and how hard it is to kick it.
My kid is in primary school, and there is one parent who did not give their child a mobile phone. In the WhatsApp group, they also keep promoting books and videos about how others also should do the same. The thing is, my kid doesn't seem to have the propensity to abuse their mobile phone and I bet most don't.
Essentially what you’re saying is “if you’re addicted, why not choose to not be addicted?” and… yeah…
Personally my biggest complaint is not necessarily screen time in itself, it’s that the tech giants are dedicated to maximising your (and your children’s) watch time by showing a stream of addictive slop.
It’s a shame, there’s good content for kids on YouTube but the algorithm always biased towards addictive crap. And they’re cornering the market to the extent that other operators producing good kid-friendly content (like the BBC in the UK) get sidelined.
> It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.
Congrats on being a good parent, but there's a lot of people out there who put much less conscious effort into it than you apparently do.
Read some of the news URLs about "AI slop children's videos" for example, and try to imagine what happens when people give a 3 to 6 year old a tablet and unrestricted use of youtube to keep clicking on recommendations.
https://www.google.com/search?&q=ai+slop+children%27s+videos...
I'm not saying that having a day without screens or going completely no-screen is the best and absolute solution, but that it's a very real category of problem to grapple with and decide for yourself what's most appropriate.
This is an incoherent mess of statements. I don't understand the point you are trying trying to make.
> My kids love watching TV...we don't have a physical TV in the house
What do they watch "TV" on? Or do you mean they watch their shows on your laptop? Their tablets? What are the black rectangles that show them the shows? Without this it's hard to understand why you are patting yourself on the back so much about the lack of a TV. If the solution is to give the kids tablets 24/7, then the looming black rectangle with parental control might be preferable. If you're showing them the shows on your laptop and taking it away later; congratulations, you are just "taking technology away".
> there is no looming huge black rectangle in the corner reminding them all their waking time (we adults just watch netflix/whatever on a laptop after bedtime for the kids)...I think this is part of the problem.
What is part of the problem? That there is no looming black rectangle? There is no obvious phrase that corresponds to "part of the problem".
> Get help for your addiction...I do not understand this rejection of hugely beneficial tools and technology that has made our lives so much easier.
You are acknowledging that there is addiction, but then saying you don't understand why people would choose to "get help" for it by avoiding said technology 1/7th of their week (incidentally on a rest day when they get to decide what they do)?
It's not heroin that's bad, it's what you do with it and how you use it
>Just turn notifications off. Just don't look at twitter/Facebook/tiktok. It's not hard to just not use the brain rot stuff. I get it you are addicted - I guess just be thankful it's not alcohol or cigarettes. Get help for your addiction.
That part is precisely the problem. "Just get help for your addiction" is not how anything works.
It's incredibly hard for an addict to stop using the brain rot stuff. A lot of very smart people make a lot of money making it as hard as possible.