13 ms·

The tech industry's use of persuasive techniques on children

203 points by seanhandley 8y ago

yehosef 8y ago
And adults are safe?
- izzydata 8y ago
  But think of the children.
  - uRreading2slow 8y ago
    If you have issues with protecting children from harm by predators, apart from that kind of being a red flag, I would rest assured that any kids ideally will be adults one day, with their potential heavily influenced by what they went through as "mere kids". Think of it as a really cheap way of helping adults.
malvosenior 8y ago
People have been saying this about video games, heavy metal, tv, rock-n-roll... for 70+ years. Older generations fear new technology/social change. That's well documented. It's interesting to hear about phone obsession and compare it with video footage of The Beatles landing in the US for the first time with hundreds of fans screaming to the point of delerium. Is there even anything that powerful that exists in our culture today? EDIT: Could someone please explain why this is flagged? If you disagree with my statement, I'd love to hear why.
- uRreading2slow 8y ago
  > People have been saying this What is "this", in this context? The article isn't 1% as shallow as your pre-emptive dismissal of it.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I think the articles subtitle sums it up: > How psychology is being used as a weapon against children My dismissal isn't pre-emptive btw, I read the article (and many others like it). I stand by my original comment.
    - uRreading2slow 8y ago
      It's pre-emptive in that it doesn't address any of it, you just says that "this" has been said about other things, supposedly implying that since this somehow refutes even one sentence in the article, making all discussion of any details in it superfluous. But you don't even have the courtesy to say that, just leave it implied, and then paper that over with some fluff about the Beatles as if that could distract from that. So you "stand behind" stating a triviality and then not saying what you cannot directly defend. About "older generations rejecting change", that old, dank chestnut... conveniently ignoring all the changes welcomed with open arms by older generations, too, and all the young people who think this stuff stinks. It's a fake narrative to skirt actual argumentation. More importantly, resistance against these methods, as well as the people who rationalize them, is just as much "progress" as is inventing and employing them.
      - malvosenior 8y ago
        So you don't think what I said is true? That every form of entertainment targeted toward young people for the past half a century has had the same rhetoric attached to it? Were you alive in the 80s? Do you remember that D&D was accused of causing Satanism and causing teens to commit human sacrifice? I'm seriously not making that up, it happened. The entire thesis of the blog post is that tech companies are "ruining" our children by employing psychologically manipulative product development. My argument is that this has been happening for ages and people continue to grow up as regular human beings.
        rosser 8y ago
        Of course it's true that most forms of media and entertainment have been subject to, "Won't someone THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!" responses from busy-bodies, fear-mongers, and others. That in no way mitigates the fact that this medium is categorically different. None of newspapers, comics, D&D, TV, or any of those other things had immediate, real-time feedback adapted specifically to the individual user, and designed to weaponize the amygdala and dopamine responses to maximize engagement, at the cost of basically everything else. Interactive tech brings a sea change in this phenomenon and its effectiveness. You can't meaningfully dismiss that, because it's predicated on the paltry shadow of what happened with non-interactive media. EDIT: Consider, for example, the cohort of children whose early development screen time correlates profoundly strongly with their inability to hold a pencil. That's new. TV didn't do that. D&D didn't do that. Screens did.
- matt_s 8y ago
  I think the big difference is you didn't hear of heavy metal or rock bands hiring psychologists to engineer their product. There was an element of TV and advertising to sell you a physical product. What is different with tech is the stimulation of the brain that it accomplished something or makes you feel good about something (likes on a social media pic). Game and social media companies aren't just grabbing your attention to show you a cool new toy. They are grabbing your attention by hiring psychologists to help engineer their product (game, social media) so you don't want to put it down. Many mobile games are engineered like a heroin dealer - first one's free, you get to a certain level/time played and you have to pay to get ahead. That is much different than seeing a commercial for a new Star Wars toy. And much more different than an older person not relating to new technology.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I would argue that psychological manipulation is at the heart of all 20th century media and advertising. If you haven't seen it, check out The Century Of Self. It covers the roots of 20th century marketing and individualism (psychology). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self Bands may not have hired psychologists but record labels were definitely manipulative to fans and artists alike.
    - ska 8y ago
      Of course it is. Advertising and it's sibling propaganda have always been about psychological manipulation, at least in part. The main difference in the cell phone era is access and engagement. It's an interesting question, I think, as to whether this constitutes merely a difference of degree or a fundamental shift.
    - imron 8y ago
      > I would argue that psychological manipulation is at the heart of all 20th century media and advertising. The difference here is the incredibly tight feedback loop and a unique, detailed psychologial profile of each user to work with.
- loriverkutya 8y ago
  Nobody said that heavy metal, tv or rock-n-roll is using very sophisticated method based on human psychology to make people addicted to their product.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I said it and it's definitely true. TV has been doing this forever. Laugh tracks are a psychological trick. As are cliffhangers... Television is designed to be addictive and sell ads, just like apps.
- SmirkingRevenge 8y ago
  And they've generally been right, to some extent or another - many social ills can probably be linked (by varying degrees), to commercial (and political) psychological manipulation through media and culture. Even though the sky hasn't fallen, its definitely something we should be concerned about and understand. Today, such influencers are often working with unprecedented levels of personal data (much of it freely-given) that can be used to manipulate people.
- sulam 8y ago
  Companies talk about viral loops, positive reinforcement and variable rewards. These are literally weaponized psychology used to generate revenue. If you don't see how that's different from music and TV, I got nothing for you. As an aside, games have mostly been taken over by this mentality, so I'm removing them from your list -- but the Tipper Gore era video games were a joke compared to modern games.
- duckworth 8y ago
  The difference is all of those supercomputers, machine learning algorithms and engineers on the other side of the screen working with massive amounts of data points about every single interaction across networks and applications tuned down to the individual level. Never before in history has this been possible.
guessthejuice 8y ago
As opposed to Disney's or Coca Cola's or Mattel's psychological war on kids? Hollywood's psychological war on kids? Is it only a war on kids if tech does it or is it just another clickbait ( medium's psychological war on parents' for ad money )? It's ironic that an entity dependent on ad money would create such a title.
- zenbob 8y ago
  Perhaps there is disproportionate negative attention placed on the tech industry these days, but it is still reasonable to write an in-depth article like this that only focuses on one specific offending industry.
  - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
    Tech is more deeply ingrained in people's lives than hollywood or any of the other examples ever were.
  - duskhen 8y ago
    The trouble with this article is that’s not an “in-depth”. It is not based on scientific rigor, but rather on a certain assumption backed by the boasting of a certain B.J.Fogg. Moreover, the observed behavior is certainly not something new to our present time. If anecdotal evidences are of any use, then I can relate my own childhood experience. I was truly obsessed with computers in my teens, and avoided talking to my parents. The only difference is that this happened 25 years ago in post-Soviet Russia.
- uRreading2slow 8y ago
  It's nauseating that an important topic like this one gets headed of with cutesy deflection from someone with a nick that's a homophone of "gas the jews".
- fipple 8y ago
  Ask any kid with a phone whether they’d rather lose their Disney, Coke, Mattel, or their phone.
- 8y ago
r00fus 8y ago
Is it me or does this rant sound like "bad stuff happened but a phone was involved so it's the phone manufacturer's problem". Our kids get into an agitated state when their devices have to be taken away but why is the fault of "tech industry"? IN the past it wouldve been "video games" or "TV" or "D&D"... just whatever the scapegoat du jour.
- allcentury 8y ago
  Somewhat - parents want to act and help but it's hard when the technology geared towards kids is creating problems parents don't yet know how to face. This is new grounds so I wouldn't dismiss the problem as simple scapegoating but rather parents need to understand why and how this technology is affecting their kids.
allcentury 8y ago
> I also see far too many boys whose gaming obsessions lead them to forgo interest in school, extracurricular activities, and anything else productive. Some of these boys, as they reach their later teens, use their large bodies to terrorize parents who attempt to set gaming limits. A common thread running through many of these cases is parent guilt, as so many are certain they did something to put their kids on a destructive path. This was me. I was 14, my parents just divorced and I got hooked on Starcraft in 1999. I would play until the sun came up, go to school and sleep through class. I did it for 3 years straight, with varying levels of addiction. At some point, my mom wanted me to see a pyschologist but I tried to show her I wasn't addicted. I took the cd out of the computer, cut it up and glued it to a piece of paper. I hung that paper on the corkboard for all to see, then, not 5 days later I bought another cd and started the cycle again. I don't know if I was reeling with teenager angst or overloaded emotions because of the divorce but I needed help and my parents didn't know what to do. I nearly didn't finish high school because of it. Now, with a son of my own - I am constantly thinking about how in the world do I expose my son to technology but also teach him moderation. I don't want to have a fight about how much time is too much, I simply want the technology to be useful to solve a problem and not something my son feels compelled to use all day long.
- castlecrasher2 8y ago
  >Now, with a son of my own - I am constantly thinking about how in the world do I expose my son to technology but also teach him moderation. Same boat here, same-ish history as you. My theory is that having kids use technology is as essential as setting limits and discussing with them the lessons we've learned as adults. I largely gave up video games just a few weeks ago and understanding the effect of those thousands of hours if committed to better things like physical recreation, reading, programming, or something else has given me the perspective to handle it effectively (not getting angry or condescending) when my kids push back on going out or getting off the computer.
- analyst74 8y ago
  I've been addicted to games and now addicted to playing soccer, albeit less so probably due to being older with more responsibilities. And I see lots of similarities between the two very different kinds of games and the "addictions" to them. Even health-wise, it's hard to say if playing games all day is worse than getting tackled into hospital. I've met many people who were going for pro-sports when they were younger that destroyed their health and/or hurt their career prospects and had to re-invent themselves. How do we distinguish what is a healthy hobby/persuasion, and what is an addiction?
jayjayok 8y ago
I don't get it. Why did Kelly's parents not just stop paying her phone bills and change the Wifi password? Heck, why not just take the phone away and replace it with a flip-phone? How hard can it be to nip these kinds of issues in the butt with simple pragmatic solutions? This is not a rhetorical question. I will be parent soon and stories like these, terrify me.
- latortuga 8y ago
  Classic instance of a technical solution to a people problem. Even if you change the WIFI password, most phone plans come with a data plan. Trying to engineer a technical solution just punts the people problem down the road - you have to address it at some point. And in the article, they mention that the defining event was when the parents went to take the phone away. So they did try to take the phone away.
  - jayjayok 8y ago
    Fair enough. I was almost going to suggest signal jammers from China or Faraday cage wallpapers but then I remembered that taking the phone away might have done the trick as well ;)
- allcentury 8y ago
  You're missing the point - it's not the physical device that the parents are fighting, it's what the device is doing to the child. They took it away and she threatened to kill herself. This story, for you (as a soon to be parent) and for me (a new parent) might be great timing - it certainly makes me never want to get my child a cell phone that could even start them down this path.
  - jayjayok 8y ago
    I agree, that this was not the point of the article. Nonetheless if a child doesn't have access to a phone/the internet that child won't have access to all these Skinner boxes and whatnot. I guess the bigger picture I'm trying to paint is that parents don't seem to be doing their job. >"Here honey, here's your phone back. Please don't kill yourself. We cool?" Mother/father of the year award right there.
rndmize 8y ago
I saw a headline a few weeks ago that American fast food had spread to <location> half a decade or a decade ago, and now obesity rates were way up in the past few years. There shouldn't be anything surprising about this - fast food is engineered and optimized to be as appealing/addictive as possible so that people come back for more, and likely breaks natural systems of recognizing fullness in the process. (Further side effects - zero optimization for human health; likely leads to pickier eaters, etc.) In much the same way, tech optimizes for eyeballs and attention. Kids learning how to interact socially in person? Irrelevant. Constant advertising and status comparison driving users to depression? Doesn't matter, or can even be a positive if it drives engagement. There was an article on here just yesterday ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17745630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17745630 ) about how people spend so much time trying to one-up each other on social media, endlessly trying to make it look like their life is better or more fun than it actually is. And of course, even if it sucks a lot of the joy out of doing things, this is exactly what social media companies want. This isn't a problem with psychology or tech, phones or apps. It'd a core feature of the capitalistic system we operate in, and it warps everything within it.
- Animats 8y ago
  Yes, and the industry fought opposition by making "fat shaming" a form of oppression. In 1960, fat-shaming was national policy.[1] US annual deaths from obesity: 300,000. US annual deaths from anorexia: 10-1000, depending on source. [1] https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/9s-yJbLYuUyLS7_xlNTuLw.aspx https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/9s-yJbLYuUyLS7_xlNTu...
  - dbatten 8y ago
    Source for industry making fat shaming bad? I'm willing to listen if there's evidence, but this doesn't pass the sniff test for me...
    - Animats 8y ago
      Brochure on corporate sponsorship for a pro-fat group.[1] CBS documentary.[2] [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gikpfrH9MPPNZs_fD6ZT9i-cb4Tr4fwJ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gikpfrH9MPPNZs_fD6ZT9i-cb4T... [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/documentary-fed-up-with-rising-childhood-obesity/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/documentary-fed-up-with-rising-...
MrStonedOne 8y ago
It boils down to a war on attention. These companies want your attention, they use abusive notifications, gamification, and the like to try and get that initial eyeball, than everything from there is about minimizing boredom, and maximizing interest and attention. "Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit" (https://xkcd.com/915/ https://xkcd.com/915/) Everything about the modern app is designed from the ground up to be interesting in some way or another, to avoid becoming boring after long use. But overuse is messing up how we frame what is really boring, kinda boring, sorta interesting, etc. The sad truth is the answer is very likely regular periodical boredom, keep the brains auto scale system in check. I wonder how effective just explaining this concept to kids or young adults would be at minimizing this.
lsmarigo 8y ago
One of the most pervasive problems of modern tech - discouraging but at this point not surprising to see people dismissively brushing this off in this thread. This is the kind of community end up with when you phantom delete and 'ninja bury' any posts or comments that dare question the ethical and societal implications of the shit going on in SV.
- jstarfish 8y ago
  I get where you're coming from but understand that with any such topic, you're going to find a lot of people responsible for contributing to the headlining problem participating in the thread itself. It's not a "this community" issue-- dismissal of consequences is the Schroedinger's Cat of psychological support animals, to help engineers cope with their lack of a conscience. If you refuse to believe there are consequences for your actions, then there simply are none, and you can go back to your job developing child-exploiting apps and self-driving Zyklon-dispensing deathwagons without having to question your impact on the world.
  - lsmarigo 8y ago
    > It's not a "this community" issue I disagree, by actively censoring and ninja burying important issues that don't reflect well on Silicon Valley the admins of Hn have cultivated an echo chamber of SV Brotopia, these are the fruits of that labor.
robotracers 8y ago
my little brother and ex also went through an addiction phase of video games but I would like to say it had a positive impact for both of them and heres why: 1. When my parents (mom and stepdad) went through an almost and very rough divorce, my mom was an alcoholic and my stepdad traveled all of the time. My mom couldn't be bothered to pay much attention to my little brother and I was taking all AP classes buried in homework, but I did what I could. With all of the fighting and lack of attention my little brother got, he turned to video games instead of getting involved with bad kids at school or staying out/getting into trouble with girls etc. 2. My ex was as only child with a widowed mother who worked all the item. He played MMOs has is to this day over a decade later still friends with many of the friends he made from these games and sees them in person now. Alot of these discussions center around the assumption there is this loving supportive family there, or a rich social life these kids would have to engage in, but video games is destroying their life. Many times is precisely the opposite, and kids turn to video games because their parents arent there, they don't have friends at school, and in many cases before video games they might turn to other alternatives that are objectively more dangerous. Furthermore, video games can develop good habits, and some of the smartest people I know spent as children an immense amount of time playing video games, and still do from time to time. I think for smart people who like to be constantly engaged in interesting work, video games provides that level of intense focus while also allowing the mind to relax during "down" time. That is a bit of a tangent, but I would argue in some cases video games can be therapeutic for children, and perhaps parents should take ownership of the fact that perhaps the "terror" in the childs life is coming from them, and video games are an escape. Of course no parent wants to admit or acknowledge that, but plenty of them passively do by not being around and having video games be the best alternative babysitter that they arent buying for their kids anyways.
- bittercynic 8y ago
  >the "terror" in the childs life is coming from them, and video games are an escape. I think this kind of story may be present near the beginning of many addictions, painful as it is to consider. On the other hand, there is plenty of additional harm due to the effectiveness of manipulative techniques on the part of tech companies and advertisers.
pnathan 8y ago
the addiction design is the aspect to highlight. most of us here were, I think, fascinated by this new toy and we loved to program it and "play" with the code or hardware. very similar to gearheads and cars, or other hobbyist types. but the design for "persuasion" or addiction is really a big deal.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > but the design for "persuasion" or addiction is really a big deal. And remember, the actual term of the art here is "engagement". Every time you see it, think of "getting people hooked on your dope".
  - pnathan 8y ago
    engagement is slightly weaselly and covers both addictive behaviors and useful behaviors. if your app provides a service that is useful frequently throughout the day - say, a local news app for the sake of argument, high engagement should suggest that your app is useful. no one wants to build a useless app, and often we like knowing what's happening around us. but addiction is ... overuse. pushing people to use it, although there's no real benefit to be gained by the user. I liken it to alcohol. One glass a night isn't generally a problem (0.1 is actually more or less better). It's when you have, say, 6+ drinks (using the usual units) per night that it's a problem. and when you design for addiction in your engagement strategy, and target children... well... I would frankly suggest that there should be criminal liability involved.
bcheung 8y ago
Playing video games as a kid is what got me started programming at a very early age. Of course there was no social media and heaven for bid you communicated with someone through a computer you were ridiculed in school as a nerd. Times have certainly changed.
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acd 8y ago
The touch interfaces of smart phones enhance the dopamine feed back loop from a sense of touch. Touching something releases Oxycontin which is a bonding hormone. Couple that with slot machine random push notifications triggering dopamine that are there to capture ones attention. I think smart phones are strongly addictive. Peoples attention span is the new currency. Big data analytics are used to maximize user retention and user attention. I personally found that if I use "smart phone" too much it is shortening my attention span, I could no longer read long text like manual pages without getting distracted. Why is it called "smart phone" when it is addictive and makes people who use social media to much more depressed? Ponder if one is addicted to likes on Hacker News? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hands_on_research https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hands_on_resea... Smart phone addiction the slot machine in your pocket https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/smartphone-addiction-slot-machine-your-pocket https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/smartphone-addiction-slo...
- soared 8y ago
  By that logic everything you physically touch has potential for addiction? So like.. using a hand rail on the stairs releases more oxycontin than not using the hand rail? I'll be happier if I touch more stuff?
  - onemoresoop 8y ago
    The hand rail doesn't give you bonus points (with sounds) when you touch it. Games are designed to get your attention and excite you
- derptron 8y ago
  I'm sorry, but did you mean Oxytocin when you said Oxycontin?
zackmorris 8y ago
One thing to consider is that a larger percentage of data normally stored in our brains is now being stored digitally than ever before. In a very real sense, part of the child's "self" in this article is only accessible via technology. Not just her memories and the deep thinking part of our brains we would call the "zone", but her senses as well - new stimuli like being pinged by someone or having a constant data feed that works a bit like hearing, alerting us to new developments. I grew up playing Atari at a family friend's house, and saw my first real computer (a Mac Plus) around age 8 or 9 which I feel was maybe my first transcendental experience with technology (drawing with the mouse in MacPaint). I can't even imagine what effect a fully-connected smart tablet would have had on my intellectual and emotional development. I'm just going to throw this out there, that we shouldn't be thinking of this as internet addiction, but more like, I dunno, asking a kid who grew up in space to live with gravity. Old folks like me (gen x) see kids on tablets and feel this understandable sense of concern, but forget that they are dabbling in their own little infinite universes just like we did. That doesn't release companies from their ethical responsibility of treating children with utmost concern though.
- soared 8y ago
  I was an assistant for a study that tested people's memory and 'digital memory'. We showed people info on a computer and said they'd need to recall it. Half of those people were told they'd have access to the computer to reference it. Sometimes we changed the location of the data so they'd look where it is but it was gone. I don't remember the exact set up, but the result was effectively that people remembered where the info was stored, rather than the info itself. So like you explained, the computer is just external memory. It would make sense that its also external inputs, outputs, etc.
  - nrhk 8y ago
    We store information all over the place, on paper, in other people's brains and now on our digital devices. When we need to handle more information about the world the last thing I want to store in my brain is someone's cell phone number. I'm sure you ask your family members, roomates, work peers similar questions over and over because you know they are the keeper of that answer, they essentially act as off site storage for your brain. Now we're just taking that concept and strapping it onto a rocket but it's probably the only thing keeping us from information overload.
excalibur 8y ago
> “Never before in history have basically 50 mostly men, mostly 20–35, mostly white engineer designer types within 50 miles of where we are right now [Silicon Valley], had control of what a billion people think and do.” Hey, is this right place to contact those 50 guys? We're having this little problem where society is becoming increasingly polarized and fractured into camps, which are attacking one another with greater and greater ferocity. Like, I know you like money, but could you maybe use your influence to prevent societal collapse and/or nuclear war? Survival is actually in your interest too.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > We're having this little problem where society is becoming increasingly polarized and fractured into camps, which are attacking one another with greater and greater ferocity. Like, e.g.: “Never before in history have basically 50 mostly men, mostly 20–35, mostly white engineer designer types within 50 miles of where we are right now [Silicon Valley], had control of what a billion people think and do.”? So sure, some people mostly from SV control the company that sort-of makes the OS used on the phones. Phones made by (and having their OS further altered by) companies predominantly in Asia. Sold with extra crap from companies all over the world. All to facilitate dysfunctional behaviours engineered by ad-tech industry that's, again, everywhere from SV to Tel Aviv to Berlin. I'm all for criticizing SV for what it does wrong, but let's not overdo this.
  - excalibur 8y ago
    > I'm all for criticizing SV for what it does wrong, but let's not overdo this. I'm actually less interesed in criticism than it may have appeared. I'm far more interested in finding ways to harness the machinery built for generating revenue and refocus it to discourage the type of angry tribalism that's putting us all in danger. Sure, there are parts of it that are highly decentralized and difficult to influence in this way, but there are other parts that are more easily manipulated, eg. the content of a user's news feed. I'm trying to make the argument that it makes sense for Facebook et al to show users content that's less divisive even if it means less profit in the short term, as it helps to ensure that there will still be people around to use their platforms in 10 years.
40acres 8y ago
I was born in 91, so for the first half of childhood (0 - 9) there were no tablets or smartphones or smart TVs around. During the latter part of my childhood (10 - 17) these things started to propagate but we were still in the initial phases of smartphones and social networks. We had game consoles growing up but they were not as networked as they are now. Watching my goddaughter (age 3) is pretty terrifying, she knows how to operate Netflix and has seen some movies dozens of times, she spends a lot of time on tablets and smartphones and is already conditioned to them. It's difficult for me to see parents capitulate to their younger kids outbursts and simply hand them a phone to placate them, I'm not a parent yet but given everything I know about the companies behind big tech I don't feel comfortable giving my child access to a phone until high school. If I was able to survive w/o one I'm sure they can too.
- jstarfish 8y ago
  Some things are subjectively "better" than they used to be though. My kids may spend too much time watching Netflix, but at least for every 30 minutes of screen time, they're getting 30 minutes of pure edu/entertainment and not dividing their attention 50% between filler content and commercials. For better or worse, they have no patience for ads. > I don't feel comfortable giving my child access to a phone until high school. Good luck with that. I said the same, and by the time my oldest hit middle school all her friends already had iPhones themselves, which led to teasing and exclusion for those in the clique that didn't. The worst part is the lack of visibility. Everything happens in private, on encrypted devices wielded by immature humans you are legally and morally responsible for. If someone's grooming or harassing your kid, this pattern of circumstances ensures you may never know until it's too late.
WalterBright 8y ago
I worked for a while in college as a tester for video games. That cured me of interest in video games, and it never returned.
jriot 8y ago
My daughters keep asking me for a phone (smart phone as I have a flip phone). I informed them, they can have a phone when they are able to read a physical copy of the Wall Street Journal understand everything. This provides an assurance to my wife and I that they are able to understand real information, before handing them a device with a constant stream of information.

203 points by seanhandley 8y ago

yehosef 8y ago

And adults are safe?

izzydata 8y ago
But think of the children.
- uRreading2slow 8y ago
  If you have issues with protecting children from harm by predators, apart from that kind of being a red flag, I would rest assured that any kids ideally will be adults one day, with their potential heavily influenced by what they went through as "mere kids". Think of it as a really cheap way of helping adults.

malvosenior 8y ago

People have been saying this about video games, heavy metal, tv, rock-n-roll... for 70+ years. Older generations fear new technology/social change. That's well documented. It's interesting to hear about phone obsession and compare it with video footage of The Beatles landing in the US for the first time with hundreds of fans screaming to the point of delerium. Is there even anything that powerful that exists in our culture today? EDIT: Could someone please explain why this is flagged? If you disagree with my statement, I'd love to hear why.

uRreading2slow 8y ago
> People have been saying this What is "this", in this context? The article isn't 1% as shallow as your pre-emptive dismissal of it.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  I think the articles subtitle sums it up: > How psychology is being used as a weapon against children My dismissal isn't pre-emptive btw, I read the article (and many others like it). I stand by my original comment.
  - uRreading2slow 8y ago
    It's pre-emptive in that it doesn't address any of it, you just says that "this" has been said about other things, supposedly implying that since this somehow refutes even one sentence in the article, making all discussion of any details in it superfluous. But you don't even have the courtesy to say that, just leave it implied, and then paper that over with some fluff about the Beatles as if that could distract from that. So you "stand behind" stating a triviality and then not saying what you cannot directly defend. About "older generations rejecting change", that old, dank chestnut... conveniently ignoring all the changes welcomed with open arms by older generations, too, and all the young people who think this stuff stinks. It's a fake narrative to skirt actual argumentation. More importantly, resistance against these methods, as well as the people who rationalize them, is just as much "progress" as is inventing and employing them.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      So you don't think what I said is true? That every form of entertainment targeted toward young people for the past half a century has had the same rhetoric attached to it? Were you alive in the 80s? Do you remember that D&D was accused of causing Satanism and causing teens to commit human sacrifice? I'm seriously not making that up, it happened. The entire thesis of the blog post is that tech companies are "ruining" our children by employing psychologically manipulative product development. My argument is that this has been happening for ages and people continue to grow up as regular human beings.
      - rosser 8y ago
        Of course it's true that most forms of media and entertainment have been subject to, "Won't someone THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!" responses from busy-bodies, fear-mongers, and others. That in no way mitigates the fact that this medium is categorically different. None of newspapers, comics, D&D, TV, or any of those other things had immediate, real-time feedback adapted specifically to the individual user, and designed to weaponize the amygdala and dopamine responses to maximize engagement, at the cost of basically everything else. Interactive tech brings a sea change in this phenomenon and its effectiveness. You can't meaningfully dismiss that, because it's predicated on the paltry shadow of what happened with non-interactive media. EDIT: Consider, for example, the cohort of children whose early development screen time correlates profoundly strongly with their inability to hold a pencil. That's new. TV didn't do that. D&D didn't do that. Screens did.
matt_s 8y ago
I think the big difference is you didn't hear of heavy metal or rock bands hiring psychologists to engineer their product. There was an element of TV and advertising to sell you a physical product. What is different with tech is the stimulation of the brain that it accomplished something or makes you feel good about something (likes on a social media pic). Game and social media companies aren't just grabbing your attention to show you a cool new toy. They are grabbing your attention by hiring psychologists to help engineer their product (game, social media) so you don't want to put it down. Many mobile games are engineered like a heroin dealer - first one's free, you get to a certain level/time played and you have to pay to get ahead. That is much different than seeing a commercial for a new Star Wars toy. And much more different than an older person not relating to new technology.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  I would argue that psychological manipulation is at the heart of all 20th century media and advertising. If you haven't seen it, check out The Century Of Self. It covers the roots of 20th century marketing and individualism (psychology). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self Bands may not have hired psychologists but record labels were definitely manipulative to fans and artists alike.
  - ska 8y ago
    Of course it is. Advertising and it's sibling propaganda have always been about psychological manipulation, at least in part. The main difference in the cell phone era is access and engagement. It's an interesting question, I think, as to whether this constitutes merely a difference of degree or a fundamental shift.
  - imron 8y ago
    > I would argue that psychological manipulation is at the heart of all 20th century media and advertising. The difference here is the incredibly tight feedback loop and a unique, detailed psychologial profile of each user to work with.
loriverkutya 8y ago
Nobody said that heavy metal, tv or rock-n-roll is using very sophisticated method based on human psychology to make people addicted to their product.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  I said it and it's definitely true. TV has been doing this forever. Laugh tracks are a psychological trick. As are cliffhangers... Television is designed to be addictive and sell ads, just like apps.
SmirkingRevenge 8y ago
And they've generally been right, to some extent or another - many social ills can probably be linked (by varying degrees), to commercial (and political) psychological manipulation through media and culture. Even though the sky hasn't fallen, its definitely something we should be concerned about and understand. Today, such influencers are often working with unprecedented levels of personal data (much of it freely-given) that can be used to manipulate people.
sulam 8y ago
Companies talk about viral loops, positive reinforcement and variable rewards. These are literally weaponized psychology used to generate revenue. If you don't see how that's different from music and TV, I got nothing for you. As an aside, games have mostly been taken over by this mentality, so I'm removing them from your list -- but the Tipper Gore era video games were a joke compared to modern games.
duckworth 8y ago
The difference is all of those supercomputers, machine learning algorithms and engineers on the other side of the screen working with massive amounts of data points about every single interaction across networks and applications tuned down to the individual level. Never before in history has this been possible.

guessthejuice 8y ago

As opposed to Disney's or Coca Cola's or Mattel's psychological war on kids? Hollywood's psychological war on kids? Is it only a war on kids if tech does it or is it just another clickbait ( medium's psychological war on parents' for ad money )? It's ironic that an entity dependent on ad money would create such a title.

zenbob 8y ago
Perhaps there is disproportionate negative attention placed on the tech industry these days, but it is still reasonable to write an in-depth article like this that only focuses on one specific offending industry.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  Tech is more deeply ingrained in people's lives than hollywood or any of the other examples ever were.
- duskhen 8y ago
  The trouble with this article is that’s not an “in-depth”. It is not based on scientific rigor, but rather on a certain assumption backed by the boasting of a certain B.J.Fogg. Moreover, the observed behavior is certainly not something new to our present time. If anecdotal evidences are of any use, then I can relate my own childhood experience. I was truly obsessed with computers in my teens, and avoided talking to my parents. The only difference is that this happened 25 years ago in post-Soviet Russia.
uRreading2slow 8y ago
It's nauseating that an important topic like this one gets headed of with cutesy deflection from someone with a nick that's a homophone of "gas the jews".
fipple 8y ago
Ask any kid with a phone whether they’d rather lose their Disney, Coke, Mattel, or their phone.
8y ago

r00fus 8y ago

Is it me or does this rant sound like "bad stuff happened but a phone was involved so it's the phone manufacturer's problem". Our kids get into an agitated state when their devices have to be taken away but why is the fault of "tech industry"? IN the past it wouldve been "video games" or "TV" or "D&D"... just whatever the scapegoat du jour.

allcentury 8y ago
Somewhat - parents want to act and help but it's hard when the technology geared towards kids is creating problems parents don't yet know how to face. This is new grounds so I wouldn't dismiss the problem as simple scapegoating but rather parents need to understand why and how this technology is affecting their kids.

allcentury 8y ago

> I also see far too many boys whose gaming obsessions lead them to forgo interest in school, extracurricular activities, and anything else productive. Some of these boys, as they reach their later teens, use their large bodies to terrorize parents who attempt to set gaming limits. A common thread running through many of these cases is parent guilt, as so many are certain they did something to put their kids on a destructive path. This was me. I was 14, my parents just divorced and I got hooked on Starcraft in 1999. I would play until the sun came up, go to school and sleep through class. I did it for 3 years straight, with varying levels of addiction. At some point, my mom wanted me to see a pyschologist but I tried to show her I wasn't addicted. I took the cd out of the computer, cut it up and glued it to a piece of paper. I hung that paper on the corkboard for all to see, then, not 5 days later I bought another cd and started the cycle again. I don't know if I was reeling with teenager angst or overloaded emotions because of the divorce but I needed help and my parents didn't know what to do. I nearly didn't finish high school because of it. Now, with a son of my own - I am constantly thinking about how in the world do I expose my son to technology but also teach him moderation. I don't want to have a fight about how much time is too much, I simply want the technology to be useful to solve a problem and not something my son feels compelled to use all day long.

castlecrasher2 8y ago
>Now, with a son of my own - I am constantly thinking about how in the world do I expose my son to technology but also teach him moderation. Same boat here, same-ish history as you. My theory is that having kids use technology is as essential as setting limits and discussing with them the lessons we've learned as adults. I largely gave up video games just a few weeks ago and understanding the effect of those thousands of hours if committed to better things like physical recreation, reading, programming, or something else has given me the perspective to handle it effectively (not getting angry or condescending) when my kids push back on going out or getting off the computer.
analyst74 8y ago
I've been addicted to games and now addicted to playing soccer, albeit less so probably due to being older with more responsibilities. And I see lots of similarities between the two very different kinds of games and the "addictions" to them. Even health-wise, it's hard to say if playing games all day is worse than getting tackled into hospital. I've met many people who were going for pro-sports when they were younger that destroyed their health and/or hurt their career prospects and had to re-invent themselves. How do we distinguish what is a healthy hobby/persuasion, and what is an addiction?

jayjayok 8y ago

I don't get it. Why did Kelly's parents not just stop paying her phone bills and change the Wifi password? Heck, why not just take the phone away and replace it with a flip-phone? How hard can it be to nip these kinds of issues in the butt with simple pragmatic solutions? This is not a rhetorical question. I will be parent soon and stories like these, terrify me.

latortuga 8y ago
Classic instance of a technical solution to a people problem. Even if you change the WIFI password, most phone plans come with a data plan. Trying to engineer a technical solution just punts the people problem down the road - you have to address it at some point. And in the article, they mention that the defining event was when the parents went to take the phone away. So they did try to take the phone away.
- jayjayok 8y ago
  Fair enough. I was almost going to suggest signal jammers from China or Faraday cage wallpapers but then I remembered that taking the phone away might have done the trick as well ;)
allcentury 8y ago
You're missing the point - it's not the physical device that the parents are fighting, it's what the device is doing to the child. They took it away and she threatened to kill herself. This story, for you (as a soon to be parent) and for me (a new parent) might be great timing - it certainly makes me never want to get my child a cell phone that could even start them down this path.
- jayjayok 8y ago
  I agree, that this was not the point of the article. Nonetheless if a child doesn't have access to a phone/the internet that child won't have access to all these Skinner boxes and whatnot. I guess the bigger picture I'm trying to paint is that parents don't seem to be doing their job. >"Here honey, here's your phone back. Please don't kill yourself. We cool?" Mother/father of the year award right there.

rndmize 8y ago

I saw a headline a few weeks ago that American fast food had spread to <location> half a decade or a decade ago, and now obesity rates were way up in the past few years. There shouldn't be anything surprising about this - fast food is engineered and optimized to be as appealing/addictive as possible so that people come back for more, and likely breaks natural systems of recognizing fullness in the process. (Further side effects - zero optimization for human health; likely leads to pickier eaters, etc.) In much the same way, tech optimizes for eyeballs and attention. Kids learning how to interact socially in person? Irrelevant. Constant advertising and status comparison driving users to depression? Doesn't matter, or can even be a positive if it drives engagement. There was an article on here just yesterday ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17745630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17745630 ) about how people spend so much time trying to one-up each other on social media, endlessly trying to make it look like their life is better or more fun than it actually is. And of course, even if it sucks a lot of the joy out of doing things, this is exactly what social media companies want. This isn't a problem with psychology or tech, phones or apps. It'd a core feature of the capitalistic system we operate in, and it warps everything within it.

Animats 8y ago
Yes, and the industry fought opposition by making "fat shaming" a form of oppression. In 1960, fat-shaming was national policy.[1] US annual deaths from obesity: 300,000. US annual deaths from anorexia: 10-1000, depending on source. [1] https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/9s-yJbLYuUyLS7_xlNTuLw.aspx https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/9s-yJbLYuUyLS7_xlNTu...
- dbatten 8y ago
  Source for industry making fat shaming bad? I'm willing to listen if there's evidence, but this doesn't pass the sniff test for me...
  - Animats 8y ago
    Brochure on corporate sponsorship for a pro-fat group.[1] CBS documentary.[2] [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gikpfrH9MPPNZs_fD6ZT9i-cb4Tr4fwJ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gikpfrH9MPPNZs_fD6ZT9i-cb4T... [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/documentary-fed-up-with-rising-childhood-obesity/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/documentary-fed-up-with-rising-...

MrStonedOne 8y ago

It boils down to a war on attention. These companies want your attention, they use abusive notifications, gamification, and the like to try and get that initial eyeball, than everything from there is about minimizing boredom, and maximizing interest and attention. "Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit" (https://xkcd.com/915/ https://xkcd.com/915/) Everything about the modern app is designed from the ground up to be interesting in some way or another, to avoid becoming boring after long use. But overuse is messing up how we frame what is really boring, kinda boring, sorta interesting, etc. The sad truth is the answer is very likely regular periodical boredom, keep the brains auto scale system in check. I wonder how effective just explaining this concept to kids or young adults would be at minimizing this.

lsmarigo 8y ago

One of the most pervasive problems of modern tech - discouraging but at this point not surprising to see people dismissively brushing this off in this thread. This is the kind of community end up with when you phantom delete and 'ninja bury' any posts or comments that dare question the ethical and societal implications of the shit going on in SV.

jstarfish 8y ago
I get where you're coming from but understand that with any such topic, you're going to find a lot of people responsible for contributing to the headlining problem participating in the thread itself. It's not a "this community" issue-- dismissal of consequences is the Schroedinger's Cat of psychological support animals, to help engineers cope with their lack of a conscience. If you refuse to believe there are consequences for your actions, then there simply are none, and you can go back to your job developing child-exploiting apps and self-driving Zyklon-dispensing deathwagons without having to question your impact on the world.
- lsmarigo 8y ago
  > It's not a "this community" issue I disagree, by actively censoring and ninja burying important issues that don't reflect well on Silicon Valley the admins of Hn have cultivated an echo chamber of SV Brotopia, these are the fruits of that labor.

robotracers 8y ago

my little brother and ex also went through an addiction phase of video games but I would like to say it had a positive impact for both of them and heres why: 1. When my parents (mom and stepdad) went through an almost and very rough divorce, my mom was an alcoholic and my stepdad traveled all of the time. My mom couldn't be bothered to pay much attention to my little brother and I was taking all AP classes buried in homework, but I did what I could. With all of the fighting and lack of attention my little brother got, he turned to video games instead of getting involved with bad kids at school or staying out/getting into trouble with girls etc. 2. My ex was as only child with a widowed mother who worked all the item. He played MMOs has is to this day over a decade later still friends with many of the friends he made from these games and sees them in person now. Alot of these discussions center around the assumption there is this loving supportive family there, or a rich social life these kids would have to engage in, but video games is destroying their life. Many times is precisely the opposite, and kids turn to video games because their parents arent there, they don't have friends at school, and in many cases before video games they might turn to other alternatives that are objectively more dangerous. Furthermore, video games can develop good habits, and some of the smartest people I know spent as children an immense amount of time playing video games, and still do from time to time. I think for smart people who like to be constantly engaged in interesting work, video games provides that level of intense focus while also allowing the mind to relax during "down" time. That is a bit of a tangent, but I would argue in some cases video games can be therapeutic for children, and perhaps parents should take ownership of the fact that perhaps the "terror" in the childs life is coming from them, and video games are an escape. Of course no parent wants to admit or acknowledge that, but plenty of them passively do by not being around and having video games be the best alternative babysitter that they arent buying for their kids anyways.

bittercynic 8y ago
>the "terror" in the childs life is coming from them, and video games are an escape. I think this kind of story may be present near the beginning of many addictions, painful as it is to consider. On the other hand, there is plenty of additional harm due to the effectiveness of manipulative techniques on the part of tech companies and advertisers.

pnathan 8y ago

the addiction design is the aspect to highlight. most of us here were, I think, fascinated by this new toy and we loved to program it and "play" with the code or hardware. very similar to gearheads and cars, or other hobbyist types. but the design for "persuasion" or addiction is really a big deal.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> but the design for "persuasion" or addiction is really a big deal. And remember, the actual term of the art here is "engagement". Every time you see it, think of "getting people hooked on your dope".
- pnathan 8y ago
  engagement is slightly weaselly and covers both addictive behaviors and useful behaviors. if your app provides a service that is useful frequently throughout the day - say, a local news app for the sake of argument, high engagement should suggest that your app is useful. no one wants to build a useless app, and often we like knowing what's happening around us. but addiction is ... overuse. pushing people to use it, although there's no real benefit to be gained by the user. I liken it to alcohol. One glass a night isn't generally a problem (0.1 is actually more or less better). It's when you have, say, 6+ drinks (using the usual units) per night that it's a problem. and when you design for addiction in your engagement strategy, and target children... well... I would frankly suggest that there should be criminal liability involved.

bcheung 8y ago

Playing video games as a kid is what got me started programming at a very early age. Of course there was no social media and heaven for bid you communicated with someone through a computer you were ridiculed in school as a nerd. Times have certainly changed.

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acd 8y ago

The touch interfaces of smart phones enhance the dopamine feed back loop from a sense of touch. Touching something releases Oxycontin which is a bonding hormone. Couple that with slot machine random push notifications triggering dopamine that are there to capture ones attention. I think smart phones are strongly addictive. Peoples attention span is the new currency. Big data analytics are used to maximize user retention and user attention. I personally found that if I use "smart phone" too much it is shortening my attention span, I could no longer read long text like manual pages without getting distracted. Why is it called "smart phone" when it is addictive and makes people who use social media to much more depressed? Ponder if one is addicted to likes on Hacker News? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hands_on_research https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hands_on_resea... Smart phone addiction the slot machine in your pocket https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/smartphone-addiction-slot-machine-your-pocket https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/smartphone-addiction-slo...

soared 8y ago
By that logic everything you physically touch has potential for addiction? So like.. using a hand rail on the stairs releases more oxycontin than not using the hand rail? I'll be happier if I touch more stuff?
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  The hand rail doesn't give you bonus points (with sounds) when you touch it. Games are designed to get your attention and excite you
derptron 8y ago
I'm sorry, but did you mean Oxytocin when you said Oxycontin?

zackmorris 8y ago

One thing to consider is that a larger percentage of data normally stored in our brains is now being stored digitally than ever before. In a very real sense, part of the child's "self" in this article is only accessible via technology. Not just her memories and the deep thinking part of our brains we would call the "zone", but her senses as well - new stimuli like being pinged by someone or having a constant data feed that works a bit like hearing, alerting us to new developments. I grew up playing Atari at a family friend's house, and saw my first real computer (a Mac Plus) around age 8 or 9 which I feel was maybe my first transcendental experience with technology (drawing with the mouse in MacPaint). I can't even imagine what effect a fully-connected smart tablet would have had on my intellectual and emotional development. I'm just going to throw this out there, that we shouldn't be thinking of this as internet addiction, but more like, I dunno, asking a kid who grew up in space to live with gravity. Old folks like me (gen x) see kids on tablets and feel this understandable sense of concern, but forget that they are dabbling in their own little infinite universes just like we did. That doesn't release companies from their ethical responsibility of treating children with utmost concern though.

soared 8y ago
I was an assistant for a study that tested people's memory and 'digital memory'. We showed people info on a computer and said they'd need to recall it. Half of those people were told they'd have access to the computer to reference it. Sometimes we changed the location of the data so they'd look where it is but it was gone. I don't remember the exact set up, but the result was effectively that people remembered where the info was stored, rather than the info itself. So like you explained, the computer is just external memory. It would make sense that its also external inputs, outputs, etc.
- nrhk 8y ago
  We store information all over the place, on paper, in other people's brains and now on our digital devices. When we need to handle more information about the world the last thing I want to store in my brain is someone's cell phone number. I'm sure you ask your family members, roomates, work peers similar questions over and over because you know they are the keeper of that answer, they essentially act as off site storage for your brain. Now we're just taking that concept and strapping it onto a rocket but it's probably the only thing keeping us from information overload.

excalibur 8y ago

> “Never before in history have basically 50 mostly men, mostly 20–35, mostly white engineer designer types within 50 miles of where we are right now [Silicon Valley], had control of what a billion people think and do.” Hey, is this right place to contact those 50 guys? We're having this little problem where society is becoming increasingly polarized and fractured into camps, which are attacking one another with greater and greater ferocity. Like, I know you like money, but could you maybe use your influence to prevent societal collapse and/or nuclear war? Survival is actually in your interest too.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> We're having this little problem where society is becoming increasingly polarized and fractured into camps, which are attacking one another with greater and greater ferocity. Like, e.g.: “Never before in history have basically 50 mostly men, mostly 20–35, mostly white engineer designer types within 50 miles of where we are right now [Silicon Valley], had control of what a billion people think and do.”? So sure, some people mostly from SV control the company that sort-of makes the OS used on the phones. Phones made by (and having their OS further altered by) companies predominantly in Asia. Sold with extra crap from companies all over the world. All to facilitate dysfunctional behaviours engineered by ad-tech industry that's, again, everywhere from SV to Tel Aviv to Berlin. I'm all for criticizing SV for what it does wrong, but let's not overdo this.
- excalibur 8y ago
  > I'm all for criticizing SV for what it does wrong, but let's not overdo this. I'm actually less interesed in criticism than it may have appeared. I'm far more interested in finding ways to harness the machinery built for generating revenue and refocus it to discourage the type of angry tribalism that's putting us all in danger. Sure, there are parts of it that are highly decentralized and difficult to influence in this way, but there are other parts that are more easily manipulated, eg. the content of a user's news feed. I'm trying to make the argument that it makes sense for Facebook et al to show users content that's less divisive even if it means less profit in the short term, as it helps to ensure that there will still be people around to use their platforms in 10 years.

40acres 8y ago

I was born in 91, so for the first half of childhood (0 - 9) there were no tablets or smartphones or smart TVs around. During the latter part of my childhood (10 - 17) these things started to propagate but we were still in the initial phases of smartphones and social networks. We had game consoles growing up but they were not as networked as they are now. Watching my goddaughter (age 3) is pretty terrifying, she knows how to operate Netflix and has seen some movies dozens of times, she spends a lot of time on tablets and smartphones and is already conditioned to them. It's difficult for me to see parents capitulate to their younger kids outbursts and simply hand them a phone to placate them, I'm not a parent yet but given everything I know about the companies behind big tech I don't feel comfortable giving my child access to a phone until high school. If I was able to survive w/o one I'm sure they can too.

jstarfish 8y ago
Some things are subjectively "better" than they used to be though. My kids may spend too much time watching Netflix, but at least for every 30 minutes of screen time, they're getting 30 minutes of pure edu/entertainment and not dividing their attention 50% between filler content and commercials. For better or worse, they have no patience for ads. > I don't feel comfortable giving my child access to a phone until high school. Good luck with that. I said the same, and by the time my oldest hit middle school all her friends already had iPhones themselves, which led to teasing and exclusion for those in the clique that didn't. The worst part is the lack of visibility. Everything happens in private, on encrypted devices wielded by immature humans you are legally and morally responsible for. If someone's grooming or harassing your kid, this pattern of circumstances ensures you may never know until it's too late.

WalterBright 8y ago

I worked for a while in college as a tester for video games. That cured me of interest in video games, and it never returned.

jriot 8y ago

My daughters keep asking me for a phone (smart phone as I have a flip phone). I informed them, they can have a phone when they are able to read a physical copy of the Wall Street Journal understand everything. This provides an assurance to my wife and I that they are able to understand real information, before handing them a device with a constant stream of information.