14 ms·

A majority of US teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use

218 points by dgudkov 8y ago

ddingus 8y ago
I found it notable the "Ready Player One" movie, featured the group decision to close "The Oasis" on Tuesdays and Thursdays. -->Because reality is real.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  I found that irritating. I mean, what if Tuesday and Thursday are my only days off?
  - ddingus 8y ago
    Right? As executed, it is irritating. And broken in ways several mentioned here up thread.
- rayalez 8y ago
  That was the most annoying part of the movie for me. The whole movie(and a book) was about using this amazing virtual world as the only escape from the shitty horrible reality. It wasn't just entertainment - people go to school there, people have friends there, for many it's the only source of happiness. And that's what it was for the protagonist, he understands this better than anyone. But the moment he becomes a billionaire and gets a hot girlfriend, he goes "reality is awesome guys, you should go out more!" While nothing has changed for most people. Fuck you, Wade! It's like the dumbest cheapest way to add a "moral" to the movie, completely out of character, he'd never do something like this.
  - XorNot 8y ago
    Iain M. Banks had a much more nuanced take on this in A Few Notes on the Culture [http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm] (free to read online), where his general point was that things like the Culture's drug glands should be taken as contraindicators by the government that they're messing up in reality and need to do better. Ready Player One's problem as a movie/book is really that its not interested in exploring too much detail about how this world came to be, so you get fairly trite morals like that. Like you could imagine a much longer epilogue where the protagonist uses his wealth to improve society, reduce poverty, advocate for governmental change, provide refuge for domestic abuse victims, and uses individual participation rates in the Oasis as a barometer for his success. Which wold be a real interesting moral for a mainstream movie to include.
    - ddingus 8y ago
      It would, and that work you linked is new to me. Thanks. Great, thought provoking read.
  - saiya-jin 8y ago
    Haven't read the book, but the movie was disappointing for me, even as a Spielberg and overall shallow popcorn fun lover. It felt like a typical family movie which is for everybody who doesn't look for any cinematic quality, cheap moral statements forcefully inserted here & there. Maybe I was not in a mood for it back then and should re-watch it, but the story really felt cheap and characters shallow.
    - ddingus 8y ago
      It is. I consider it a quick romp, and a bit forward looking, in terms of what rip, mix, burn sourced from more recent culture might look like. Definitely need the right mood.
  - fabricexpert 8y ago
    Agree - the entire movie made no sense. "The Oasis" would be one of many competing worlds, if it's worth trillions of dollars why wouldn't someone make a competitor? The challenges would have been solved in a day, the characters act like they see, feel and hear everything in VR but really the experience would never be the same as RL. Why would you wear a haptic suit if it can hurt you when you get punched? None of it made any sense. But it had some references to back to the future and other "geek" stuff, so everyone loved it.
  - ddingus 8y ago
    Great take! Yeah, that would be a very common sentiment. Just the idea of the escape not really being one when the real suck so hard is all I was getting at. Two, odd day closures would prove to be no salve. The link up thread, on "the culture" is new to me. Great read, and thought provoking. Worth the effort of this brief chat for sure.
newfocogi 8y ago
Believing something is bad for you and actually successfully changing it are two very different things.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  This reminds me a little of obesity. A lot of people have recognized the problem and are doing something but in the end the average still gets fatter and fatter.
  - adventured 8y ago
    That's not correct however. Recognition can and often does lead to correction. In the US, the percentage of children five years of age and under that were obese, dropped from 14% to 10% over ten years (2004-2014). That's due to first recognizing a terrible problem and then acting against it. US obesity rates have stabilized. [1] I think we can be fairly certain that's in no small part due to increased knowledge and awareness of the problem over the last decade. The next step is to begin moving the needle the other direction, even if it's a slow process. People think obesity in the US is a very old problem, when in fact it started just 30 years ago and wasn't a serious issue until the late 1990s. In 1985 no state had an obesity level over 15%. Today, 46 states exceed 25% obesity. I doubt the US will ever go back to 1985 obesity levels, however if it can change negatively that much in less than two decades, then you can plainly see meaningful improvements in a similar amount of time. [1] https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/articles-and-news/2017/08/new-report-finds-progress-to-prevent-obesity-at-risk.html https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/articles-and-news/2017/08/ne...
    - saiya-jin 8y ago
      Very true, this can be often seen in older photos or videos, ie 60s hippies, or any odd-fashion-70s or most 80s. Very slim people everywhere, like whole nation went to gym or for a run every single day.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  Especially when game theory or whatnot is involved. Being the first person in your group of friends to get off Facebook might just make you the one person that never gets invited to anything anymore. Even the thought of that is probably a deterrent to discontinue playing.
vinceguidry 8y ago
It's important for people to remember that humans are still intelligent creatures that are capable of recognizing, eventually, what's good for them and what isn't. How many of you guys remember the 70s and 80s, when TV and video games were supposed to turn us all into zombies? What happened? We eventually learned how to see these things as the tools that they are. Humans get fascinated by the new and shiny. This fascination may become unhealthy and provide grist for scam artists. Then they wise up. It's the way of the world. I'd be flat out surprised if books didn't have their detractors back in the day.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Books, of course have been thought of as subversive in earlier times. Even not that long ago. Book burnings, calls to ban particular books, all have occurred in living memory. Literacy itself has been seen as a threat.
  - mc32 8y ago
    Were not detractors of books usually unlearned people; people who didn't base their opinions on studies of the effects, but rather based on their feels? On the other hand studies can be flawed and can be purposefully biased, so we have to watch for that. But if we have credible studies indicating harm from all the ways content producers and other want to retain eyeballs, then that's different, I think.
    - evincarofautumn 8y ago
      Usually, perhaps, but learned people had their objections to reading & writing as well. This one’s pretty well known, although couched in a few layers of rhetoric that mean it’s usually presented without context (and misattributed to Socrates). In Phaedrus, written by Plato around 370 BC, the character of Socrates tells how when the Egyptian god Theuth gave the gift of writing to King Thamus, Thamus replied: “…this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”
misterbowfinger 8y ago
Original study: http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/08/22/how-teens-and-parents-navigate-screen-time-and-device-distractions/ http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/08/22/how-teens-and-parents-...
misterbowfinger 8y ago
Uhhhh... what? This particular survey featured interviews with 1,058 parents who belong to the panel and have a teen ages 13 to 17, as well as interviews with 743 teens Link: http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/08/22/teens-and-screen-time-methodology/ http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/08/22/teens-and-screen-time-... I get that surveys are really hard, but.... 743 seems like a ridiculously low number. Looks like the surveys are through the "NORC AmeriSpeak panel". Pew links to this about AmeriSpeak: http://www.norc.org/PDFs/AmeriSpeak%20Technical%20Overview%202015%2011%2025.pdf http://www.norc.org/PDFs/AmeriSpeak%20Technical%20Overview%2... I don't know.... maybe someone who understands surveying & statistics can validate these numbers & their significance better than me?
- hammock 8y ago
  Something like this, any sample size 300 or above (assuming it was drawn in a representative way) is generally regarded as legit. Source: I run and analyze surveys for a living
  - misterbowfinger 8y ago
    Thanks for correcting! Good to know! AmeriSpeak seems to have national representation, so I can only assume it was drawn randomly throughout the nation.
  - buntress 8y ago
    300 is kind of a paltry number. One high school’s population, for a medium sized town. Look at one high school, then another. Take each high school from opposite ends of the country. Same results? Not sure about that. But hey, magic number says we’re all good. Run the article, right?
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      I'm sure that the results hold up reasonably well if they're taken randomly (whether the survey actually is random is another story, though).
    - 8y ago
coffeeandjunk 8y ago
A majority, 54% of teens, said they spend too much time on their phone, and nearly that many – 52% – said they are trying to limit their phone use in various ways. Knowing is one thing and actually getting rid of it is a completely different ball game. There's a gulf between the planner and the doer. The far-sighted "planner" in us knows that social media/Netflix/cigarettes are bad for us. When you conduct a survey, we are conscious and reasonable people who know what is good from what is bad and hence 54% of use agrees that we spend too much time on useless stuff. But when it actually comes to doing, the myopic "doer" part of us keeps on snoozing that alarm clock in the morning and goes to Facebook to check the number of likes & comments received every five minutes.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  Maybe, maybe no longer so. The social media experiment is quite old now - old enough to make quite a few people disillusioned about what it actually does to you in a deeper way, and not to feel the urge anymore. The bigger problem is that FB actually replaced not only discussion forums but also mailing lists for non-technical people, so very often you have no option other than to join a particular FB group if you want to participate in offline events. But even this might change with time.
- afarrell 8y ago
  The best way to approach this is to start by mechanically removing the possibility of doing the thing you wish to avoid. In the cases you mention: - An alarm clock without a snooze button: https://www.amazon.com/Travelwey-Clock-Outlet-Powered-Operation-Brightness/dp/B01CEGW56O?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_3 https://www.amazon.com/Travelwey-Clock-Outlet-Powered-Operat... - An app that you can use to block facebook and other sites from your phone: https://freedom.to/ https://freedom.to/ There are people who claim that this sort of thing is 'a crutch'. These same people probably would not encourage a dieter to keep a packet of cookies on their desk though. Regardless, crutches are useful whether you've broken your ankle or your mindfulness. You can and should build more active mindfulness practices on top of this.
  - JansjoFromIkea 8y ago
electic 8y ago
I am not surprised. One thing that I have noticed about myself is I ask myself after a session on Instagram, "What did I get from that?" and the answer is usually nothing. Did it help my career? No. Did it make me smarter? No. Did it help me make friends? No. It didn't improve my life in any way. The instant I asked and answered that a few times, I started cutting down my usage dramatically.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  > "What did I get from that?" and the answer is usually nothing. Did it help my career? No. Did it make me smarter? No. Did it help me make friends? No. By no means I want to defend current social media fads (never had instagram/snapchat, removed facebook from phone 2 years ago), but that's not how humans work. You don't go for a beer with a friend to gain something, you go to enjoy it/him/her, have a social interaction and overall great time, and level of friendship usually just stays the same. Nothing learned and no career progress is still a perfectly fine result. Same can be said about going for movies or billions of other activities that don't move you anywhere else in life, they just help you wind down. The problem is, these social media with all of their unrealistic perspectives of real life don't help us, they frustrate us. Sad thing is, they are somehow mentally addictive and too easy to reach.
  - afarrell 8y ago
    > Nothing learned and no career progress is still a perfectly fine result. This is a hard lesson to learn, especially if you were good at school growing up. I find it helpful to, after/while hanging out with friends or walking in the park, make a conscious effort to reflect on and appreciate the feeling of fulfillment that comes from it. There's something healthiness-reenforcing for me about looking around, breathing deeply, and saying 'this is nice'
  - leesec 8y ago
    Just tacking on to this, I'd also be careful to attempt to quantify what we gained by an experience, just because of the limitations of our words or thoughts. Just because there is 'nothing learned' or something doesn't seem beneficial, does not mean it did not have benefits that often can't be labeled. Also there's no goal to life, just a reminder. There's no like progress bar you fill up to 100% and then you win. You don't have to stay 'productive'.
Osmanthus 8y ago
Or are they just bored with it, or the current fad is over, or they realized how stupid what they wrote is?
konart 8y ago
Create the problem. Then fight it.
platz 8y ago
> were built by young men who couldn’t conceive of all the ways things could go wrong False. They knew exactly what they were doing. I know because Jaron Lanier and Sean Parker were there.
weliketocode 8y ago
This underscores why I'm almost inherently biased against most regulations. In a lot (not saying all) of cases, we figure out what's bad for us and make decisions to help solve it. Social, legal, and economic issues in our society often appear to work themselves out when left to their own devices. Yet, so many have the opposite gut reaction: Teens using too much social media? Regulate the industry! Tax them! Take away their phones! I'm glad to see things working themselves out with social media usage and hope its successes help increase our ability to avoid expensive and fruitless regulations in the future.
- alanbernstein 8y ago
  I understand your general point, but I have never heard of a suggestion to regulate teenage phone use. Have you ever heard someone actually suggest this?
  - weliketocode 8y ago
    Yeah. There was just discussion here on hn recently of schools banning cell phones. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17671176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17671176
    - alanbernstein 8y ago
      As a US citizen, "regulations" has the connotation of federal- or state-level; that's what I meant to ask about. I realize now it's not clear what the commenter I responded to meant, but that was my assumption.
- burkaman 8y ago
  I genuinely don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest teenage phone use should be regulated. Generally regulations are suggested when bad actors are blatantly unwilling or unable to regulate themselves.
  - slx26 8y ago
m3mpp 8y ago
> 57% say they’re trying to limit social media usage and 58% are trying to limit video games. I think 98% of US teens are trolling polls...
stephengillie 8y ago
Similar topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17866030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17866030 Is today the "Submarine Ad" day for "Kids aren't using social media"? If so, who makes money from us knowing that young people don't use social media? What are they trying to sell to us?
dfxm12 8y ago
Headline: A majority of U.S. teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use The study: 52% – said they are trying to limit their phone use in various ways. Addicts will often lie about trying to get clean. "Trying to do" something is also not the same as "doing" something something. I'm not saying that teens aren't taking concrete steps to reduce smartphone and social media use, and after all, the first step to getting clean is admitting you have a problem, something their parents can't do. I'm just saying it's irresponsible for TechCrunch to jump to this conclusion, and this headline is amounts to clickbait.
- mc32 8y ago
  What you say is true, but, importantly, recognition of an issue can be the first step in a sometimes long process of managing an issue properly. So, succinctly, it’s a start. Industry should take note and steps to de-“gamify” the whole industry before the gov comes down or people rebel.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- sampl 8y ago
  I think it's fair to say "taking steps". As you say, admitting the problem is literally the first step in 12-step programs like AA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program
- lalos 8y ago
  A first step is acknowledging the problem or being aware that there is room for improvement. Even if they just think about it, that's how trends start. Headline: 'taking steps' Study: 'said they are trying'
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
40acres 8y ago
I'm 27 and never signed up for Facebook, something about it did not really appeal to me. Mainly because I hate taking / posting pictures and don't really care for posting status updates to friends. I also like to keep my real life social networks disconnected from each other. I like having "work friends" and "friends from school" and don't care for them to intersect. Out of the social networks I've tried I liked Twitter the most. I did not post often but it was great to peek into the conversations of interesting people. I think today's generation is open to social networks but maybe the photo posting / status update nature of today's networks just don't appeal. Maybe a more creative social network where more users are creating content than consuming it would appeal.
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
I just bought a Nokia 3310 3G and plan to curb my smartphone use completely. I'm sick to death of looking at my phone being the only thing I do. I used to do things at night, projects, hobbies, meeting people, and going places. I drive places now via GPS and have no recollection of how I got there. Driving without GPS makes you actually look at your surroundings and enjoy them and start making mental maps again. That all stopped as smartphones took over my life. It almost feels like schizophrenia being connected at all times to all things, all people, and all information. It reminds me of the Black Shakes (Nerve Attenuation Syndrome) disorder from Johnny Mnemonic. I have received the phone but can't use it yet because my sim hasn't come in the mail. It's tantalizing to not be able to turn off my smartphone just yet. But I can feel the freedom when I hold that dumbphone Nokia. https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-3310-3g https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-3310-3g
- jstanley 8y ago
  You might not actually need to carry a phone around with you at all. I don't.
  - PyroLagus 8y ago
    Until you need to call an ambulance.
- s3r3nity 8y ago
  I would LOVE to go back to a dumb phone like this, but three use cases really prevent me from doing so at the moment: 1) GPS / Maps for navigation: I agree with your sentiment, but I find that I"m _more_ likely to travel or take adventures when I know I can fall back to Google / Apple Maps as a safeguard for getting me from A-to-B, or finding new places around me. 2) Uber / Lyft / Ride Sharing: I can already use Siri on Apple Watch to say "Hey Siri, get me an Uber," so why can't I text a service like that? Or maybe a dumb phone with Google Assistant installed that could aid with those types of tasks? [Disclaimer: a service or phone like that _might_ exist, but in my limited time searching I haven't found one I like nor trust just yet.] 3) Photography: I'm no pro, but I do enjoy taking very good quality pictures at the fraction of the cost of a bulky thousand dollar camera, alongside the auto-backups and location-data stored alongside.
mindcrime 8y ago
Man, when did TC decide to go full-on yellow journalism? Today’s internet can be a toxic place, and not one where people should spend large amounts of time. But many of these networks were built by young men who couldn’t conceive of all the ways things could go wrong. ... and even dopamine drug dealers like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have begun to ... Thankfully, as this study shows, there’s growing awareness of this among younger users, and maybe, some of them will even do something about it in the future – when they’re the bosses, the parents, and the engineers, they can craft new work/life policies, make new house rules, and write better code. Yep, every group of teenagers thinks exactly the same thing. "Our parents fucked things up, but when we're in charge, we'll fix it all". Sadly the real world does not make it easy to effect such change on a large scale. But hey, now that my generation (Gen-X) occupies many key positions of influence, maybe we can finally get it right...
adiusmus 8y ago
Good. Most social networks are bad for you. They’re deliberately designed to be addictive in pointless ways. I’d prefer teenagers to be tech savvy individuals who have plenty of face to face skills like conversational skills, curiosity, travel, ability to think, work, play, and plenty of other practical skills such as woodworking etc. Technology as tool but not as a bubble to live in.
modells 8y ago
Turn off some notifications. Limit motion effects / animation. Enable grayscale filter. Don't whip out the phone every 10 seconds or around other people. ^- problem (somewhat) solved

218 points by dgudkov 8y ago

I found it notable the "Ready Player One" movie, featured the group decision to close "The Oasis" on Tuesdays and Thursdays. -->Because reality is real.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
I found that irritating. I mean, what if Tuesday and Thursday are my only days off?
- ddingus 8y ago
  Right? As executed, it is irritating. And broken in ways several mentioned here up thread.
rayalez 8y ago
That was the most annoying part of the movie for me. The whole movie(and a book) was about using this amazing virtual world as the only escape from the shitty horrible reality. It wasn't just entertainment - people go to school there, people have friends there, for many it's the only source of happiness. And that's what it was for the protagonist, he understands this better than anyone. But the moment he becomes a billionaire and gets a hot girlfriend, he goes "reality is awesome guys, you should go out more!" While nothing has changed for most people. Fuck you, Wade! It's like the dumbest cheapest way to add a "moral" to the movie, completely out of character, he'd never do something like this.
- XorNot 8y ago
  Iain M. Banks had a much more nuanced take on this in A Few Notes on the Culture [http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm] (free to read online), where his general point was that things like the Culture's drug glands should be taken as contraindicators by the government that they're messing up in reality and need to do better. Ready Player One's problem as a movie/book is really that its not interested in exploring too much detail about how this world came to be, so you get fairly trite morals like that. Like you could imagine a much longer epilogue where the protagonist uses his wealth to improve society, reduce poverty, advocate for governmental change, provide refuge for domestic abuse victims, and uses individual participation rates in the Oasis as a barometer for his success. Which wold be a real interesting moral for a mainstream movie to include.
  - ddingus 8y ago
    It would, and that work you linked is new to me. Thanks. Great, thought provoking read.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  Haven't read the book, but the movie was disappointing for me, even as a Spielberg and overall shallow popcorn fun lover. It felt like a typical family movie which is for everybody who doesn't look for any cinematic quality, cheap moral statements forcefully inserted here & there. Maybe I was not in a mood for it back then and should re-watch it, but the story really felt cheap and characters shallow.
  - ddingus 8y ago
    It is. I consider it a quick romp, and a bit forward looking, in terms of what rip, mix, burn sourced from more recent culture might look like. Definitely need the right mood.
- fabricexpert 8y ago
  Agree - the entire movie made no sense. "The Oasis" would be one of many competing worlds, if it's worth trillions of dollars why wouldn't someone make a competitor? The challenges would have been solved in a day, the characters act like they see, feel and hear everything in VR but really the experience would never be the same as RL. Why would you wear a haptic suit if it can hurt you when you get punched? None of it made any sense. But it had some references to back to the future and other "geek" stuff, so everyone loved it.
- ddingus 8y ago
  Great take! Yeah, that would be a very common sentiment. Just the idea of the escape not really being one when the real suck so hard is all I was getting at. Two, odd day closures would prove to be no salve. The link up thread, on "the culture" is new to me. Great read, and thought provoking. Worth the effort of this brief chat for sure.

newfocogi 8y ago

Believing something is bad for you and actually successfully changing it are two very different things.

maxxxxx 8y ago
This reminds me a little of obesity. A lot of people have recognized the problem and are doing something but in the end the average still gets fatter and fatter.
- adventured 8y ago
  That's not correct however. Recognition can and often does lead to correction. In the US, the percentage of children five years of age and under that were obese, dropped from 14% to 10% over ten years (2004-2014). That's due to first recognizing a terrible problem and then acting against it. US obesity rates have stabilized. [1] I think we can be fairly certain that's in no small part due to increased knowledge and awareness of the problem over the last decade. The next step is to begin moving the needle the other direction, even if it's a slow process. People think obesity in the US is a very old problem, when in fact it started just 30 years ago and wasn't a serious issue until the late 1990s. In 1985 no state had an obesity level over 15%. Today, 46 states exceed 25% obesity. I doubt the US will ever go back to 1985 obesity levels, however if it can change negatively that much in less than two decades, then you can plainly see meaningful improvements in a similar amount of time. [1] https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/articles-and-news/2017/08/new-report-finds-progress-to-prevent-obesity-at-risk.html https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/articles-and-news/2017/08/ne...
  - saiya-jin 8y ago
    Very true, this can be often seen in older photos or videos, ie 60s hippies, or any odd-fashion-70s or most 80s. Very slim people everywhere, like whole nation went to gym or for a run every single day.
Waterluvian 8y ago
Especially when game theory or whatnot is involved. Being the first person in your group of friends to get off Facebook might just make you the one person that never gets invited to anything anymore. Even the thought of that is probably a deterrent to discontinue playing.

vinceguidry 8y ago

It's important for people to remember that humans are still intelligent creatures that are capable of recognizing, eventually, what's good for them and what isn't. How many of you guys remember the 70s and 80s, when TV and video games were supposed to turn us all into zombies? What happened? We eventually learned how to see these things as the tools that they are. Humans get fascinated by the new and shiny. This fascination may become unhealthy and provide grist for scam artists. Then they wise up. It's the way of the world. I'd be flat out surprised if books didn't have their detractors back in the day.

ams6110 8y ago
Books, of course have been thought of as subversive in earlier times. Even not that long ago. Book burnings, calls to ban particular books, all have occurred in living memory. Literacy itself has been seen as a threat.
- mc32 8y ago
  Were not detractors of books usually unlearned people; people who didn't base their opinions on studies of the effects, but rather based on their feels? On the other hand studies can be flawed and can be purposefully biased, so we have to watch for that. But if we have credible studies indicating harm from all the ways content producers and other want to retain eyeballs, then that's different, I think.
  - evincarofautumn 8y ago
    Usually, perhaps, but learned people had their objections to reading & writing as well. This one’s pretty well known, although couched in a few layers of rhetoric that mean it’s usually presented without context (and misattributed to Socrates). In Phaedrus, written by Plato around 370 BC, the character of Socrates tells how when the Egyptian god Theuth gave the gift of writing to King Thamus, Thamus replied: “…this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”

misterbowfinger 8y ago

Original study: http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/08/22/how-teens-and-parents-navigate-screen-time-and-device-distractions/ http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/08/22/how-teens-and-parents-...

misterbowfinger 8y ago

Uhhhh... what? This particular survey featured interviews with 1,058 parents who belong to the panel and have a teen ages 13 to 17, as well as interviews with 743 teens Link: http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/08/22/teens-and-screen-time-methodology/ http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/08/22/teens-and-screen-time-... I get that surveys are really hard, but.... 743 seems like a ridiculously low number. Looks like the surveys are through the "NORC AmeriSpeak panel". Pew links to this about AmeriSpeak: http://www.norc.org/PDFs/AmeriSpeak%20Technical%20Overview%202015%2011%2025.pdf http://www.norc.org/PDFs/AmeriSpeak%20Technical%20Overview%2... I don't know.... maybe someone who understands surveying & statistics can validate these numbers & their significance better than me?

hammock 8y ago
Something like this, any sample size 300 or above (assuming it was drawn in a representative way) is generally regarded as legit. Source: I run and analyze surveys for a living
- misterbowfinger 8y ago
  Thanks for correcting! Good to know! AmeriSpeak seems to have national representation, so I can only assume it was drawn randomly throughout the nation.
- buntress 8y ago
  300 is kind of a paltry number. One high school’s population, for a medium sized town. Look at one high school, then another. Take each high school from opposite ends of the country. Same results? Not sure about that. But hey, magic number says we’re all good. Run the article, right?
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    I'm sure that the results hold up reasonably well if they're taken randomly (whether the survey actually is random is another story, though).
  - 8y ago

coffeeandjunk 8y ago

A majority, 54% of teens, said they spend too much time on their phone, and nearly that many – 52% – said they are trying to limit their phone use in various ways. Knowing is one thing and actually getting rid of it is a completely different ball game. There's a gulf between the planner and the doer. The far-sighted "planner" in us knows that social media/Netflix/cigarettes are bad for us. When you conduct a survey, we are conscious and reasonable people who know what is good from what is bad and hence 54% of use agrees that we spend too much time on useless stuff. But when it actually comes to doing, the myopic "doer" part of us keeps on snoozing that alarm clock in the morning and goes to Facebook to check the number of likes & comments received every five minutes.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
Maybe, maybe no longer so. The social media experiment is quite old now - old enough to make quite a few people disillusioned about what it actually does to you in a deeper way, and not to feel the urge anymore. The bigger problem is that FB actually replaced not only discussion forums but also mailing lists for non-technical people, so very often you have no option other than to join a particular FB group if you want to participate in offline events. But even this might change with time.
afarrell 8y ago
The best way to approach this is to start by mechanically removing the possibility of doing the thing you wish to avoid. In the cases you mention: - An alarm clock without a snooze button: https://www.amazon.com/Travelwey-Clock-Outlet-Powered-Operation-Brightness/dp/B01CEGW56O?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_3 https://www.amazon.com/Travelwey-Clock-Outlet-Powered-Operat... - An app that you can use to block facebook and other sites from your phone: https://freedom.to/ https://freedom.to/ There are people who claim that this sort of thing is 'a crutch'. These same people probably would not encourage a dieter to keep a packet of cookies on their desk though. Regardless, crutches are useful whether you've broken your ankle or your mindfulness. You can and should build more active mindfulness practices on top of this.
- JansjoFromIkea 8y ago

electic 8y ago

I am not surprised. One thing that I have noticed about myself is I ask myself after a session on Instagram, "What did I get from that?" and the answer is usually nothing. Did it help my career? No. Did it make me smarter? No. Did it help me make friends? No. It didn't improve my life in any way. The instant I asked and answered that a few times, I started cutting down my usage dramatically.

saiya-jin 8y ago
> "What did I get from that?" and the answer is usually nothing. Did it help my career? No. Did it make me smarter? No. Did it help me make friends? No. By no means I want to defend current social media fads (never had instagram/snapchat, removed facebook from phone 2 years ago), but that's not how humans work. You don't go for a beer with a friend to gain something, you go to enjoy it/him/her, have a social interaction and overall great time, and level of friendship usually just stays the same. Nothing learned and no career progress is still a perfectly fine result. Same can be said about going for movies or billions of other activities that don't move you anywhere else in life, they just help you wind down. The problem is, these social media with all of their unrealistic perspectives of real life don't help us, they frustrate us. Sad thing is, they are somehow mentally addictive and too easy to reach.
- afarrell 8y ago
  > Nothing learned and no career progress is still a perfectly fine result. This is a hard lesson to learn, especially if you were good at school growing up. I find it helpful to, after/while hanging out with friends or walking in the park, make a conscious effort to reflect on and appreciate the feeling of fulfillment that comes from it. There's something healthiness-reenforcing for me about looking around, breathing deeply, and saying 'this is nice'
- leesec 8y ago
  Just tacking on to this, I'd also be careful to attempt to quantify what we gained by an experience, just because of the limitations of our words or thoughts. Just because there is 'nothing learned' or something doesn't seem beneficial, does not mean it did not have benefits that often can't be labeled. Also there's no goal to life, just a reminder. There's no like progress bar you fill up to 100% and then you win. You don't have to stay 'productive'.

Osmanthus 8y ago

Or are they just bored with it, or the current fad is over, or they realized how stupid what they wrote is?

konart 8y ago

Create the problem. Then fight it.

platz 8y ago

> were built by young men who couldn’t conceive of all the ways things could go wrong False. They knew exactly what they were doing. I know because Jaron Lanier and Sean Parker were there.

weliketocode 8y ago

This underscores why I'm almost inherently biased against most regulations. In a lot (not saying all) of cases, we figure out what's bad for us and make decisions to help solve it. Social, legal, and economic issues in our society often appear to work themselves out when left to their own devices. Yet, so many have the opposite gut reaction: Teens using too much social media? Regulate the industry! Tax them! Take away their phones! I'm glad to see things working themselves out with social media usage and hope its successes help increase our ability to avoid expensive and fruitless regulations in the future.

alanbernstein 8y ago
I understand your general point, but I have never heard of a suggestion to regulate teenage phone use. Have you ever heard someone actually suggest this?
- weliketocode 8y ago
  Yeah. There was just discussion here on hn recently of schools banning cell phones. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17671176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17671176
  - alanbernstein 8y ago
    As a US citizen, "regulations" has the connotation of federal- or state-level; that's what I meant to ask about. I realize now it's not clear what the commenter I responded to meant, but that was my assumption.
burkaman 8y ago
I genuinely don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest teenage phone use should be regulated. Generally regulations are suggested when bad actors are blatantly unwilling or unable to regulate themselves.
- slx26 8y ago

m3mpp 8y ago

> 57% say they’re trying to limit social media usage and 58% are trying to limit video games. I think 98% of US teens are trolling polls...

stephengillie 8y ago

Similar topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17866030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17866030 Is today the "Submarine Ad" day for "Kids aren't using social media"? If so, who makes money from us knowing that young people don't use social media? What are they trying to sell to us?

dfxm12 8y ago

Headline: A majority of U.S. teens are taking steps to limit smartphone and social media use The study: 52% – said they are trying to limit their phone use in various ways. Addicts will often lie about trying to get clean. "Trying to do" something is also not the same as "doing" something something. I'm not saying that teens aren't taking concrete steps to reduce smartphone and social media use, and after all, the first step to getting clean is admitting you have a problem, something their parents can't do. I'm just saying it's irresponsible for TechCrunch to jump to this conclusion, and this headline is amounts to clickbait.

mc32 8y ago
What you say is true, but, importantly, recognition of an issue can be the first step in a sometimes long process of managing an issue properly. So, succinctly, it’s a start. Industry should take note and steps to de-“gamify” the whole industry before the gov comes down or people rebel.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
sampl 8y ago
I think it's fair to say "taking steps". As you say, admitting the problem is literally the first step in 12-step programs like AA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program
lalos 8y ago
A first step is acknowledging the problem or being aware that there is room for improvement. Even if they just think about it, that's how trends start. Headline: 'taking steps' Study: 'said they are trying'
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

40acres 8y ago

I'm 27 and never signed up for Facebook, something about it did not really appeal to me. Mainly because I hate taking / posting pictures and don't really care for posting status updates to friends. I also like to keep my real life social networks disconnected from each other. I like having "work friends" and "friends from school" and don't care for them to intersect. Out of the social networks I've tried I liked Twitter the most. I did not post often but it was great to peek into the conversations of interesting people. I think today's generation is open to social networks but maybe the photo posting / status update nature of today's networks just don't appeal. Maybe a more creative social network where more users are creating content than consuming it would appeal.

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

I just bought a Nokia 3310 3G and plan to curb my smartphone use completely. I'm sick to death of looking at my phone being the only thing I do. I used to do things at night, projects, hobbies, meeting people, and going places. I drive places now via GPS and have no recollection of how I got there. Driving without GPS makes you actually look at your surroundings and enjoy them and start making mental maps again. That all stopped as smartphones took over my life. It almost feels like schizophrenia being connected at all times to all things, all people, and all information. It reminds me of the Black Shakes (Nerve Attenuation Syndrome) disorder from Johnny Mnemonic. I have received the phone but can't use it yet because my sim hasn't come in the mail. It's tantalizing to not be able to turn off my smartphone just yet. But I can feel the freedom when I hold that dumbphone Nokia. https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-3310-3g https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-3310-3g

jstanley 8y ago
You might not actually need to carry a phone around with you at all. I don't.
- PyroLagus 8y ago
  Until you need to call an ambulance.
s3r3nity 8y ago
I would LOVE to go back to a dumb phone like this, but three use cases really prevent me from doing so at the moment: 1) GPS / Maps for navigation: I agree with your sentiment, but I find that I"m _more_ likely to travel or take adventures when I know I can fall back to Google / Apple Maps as a safeguard for getting me from A-to-B, or finding new places around me. 2) Uber / Lyft / Ride Sharing: I can already use Siri on Apple Watch to say "Hey Siri, get me an Uber," so why can't I text a service like that? Or maybe a dumb phone with Google Assistant installed that could aid with those types of tasks? [Disclaimer: a service or phone like that _might_ exist, but in my limited time searching I haven't found one I like nor trust just yet.] 3) Photography: I'm no pro, but I do enjoy taking very good quality pictures at the fraction of the cost of a bulky thousand dollar camera, alongside the auto-backups and location-data stored alongside.

mindcrime 8y ago

Man, when did TC decide to go full-on yellow journalism? Today’s internet can be a toxic place, and not one where people should spend large amounts of time. But many of these networks were built by young men who couldn’t conceive of all the ways things could go wrong. ... and even dopamine drug dealers like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have begun to ... Thankfully, as this study shows, there’s growing awareness of this among younger users, and maybe, some of them will even do something about it in the future – when they’re the bosses, the parents, and the engineers, they can craft new work/life policies, make new house rules, and write better code. Yep, every group of teenagers thinks exactly the same thing. "Our parents fucked things up, but when we're in charge, we'll fix it all". Sadly the real world does not make it easy to effect such change on a large scale. But hey, now that my generation (Gen-X) occupies many key positions of influence, maybe we can finally get it right...

adiusmus 8y ago

Good. Most social networks are bad for you. They’re deliberately designed to be addictive in pointless ways. I’d prefer teenagers to be tech savvy individuals who have plenty of face to face skills like conversational skills, curiosity, travel, ability to think, work, play, and plenty of other practical skills such as woodworking etc. Technology as tool but not as a bubble to live in.

modells 8y ago

Turn off some notifications. Limit motion effects / animation. Enable grayscale filter. Don't whip out the phone every 10 seconds or around other people. ^- problem (somewhat) solved