6 ms·

I always thought it was pretty obvious when YouTube rolled out screen time reminders. It had nothing to do with anything but minimizing liability in case the g

I always thought it was pretty obvious when YouTube rolled out screen time reminders. It had nothing to do with anything but minimizing liability in case the general public ever catches on to what they are doing to kids mental health. What’s hilarious is they probably have some “data retention policy” and will get away with it. I guess it’s why SV engineers want to care about social issues so much. When you’re up in your $300k+ a year ivory tower built on something you know is dirty, you are exactly the type of person to be angry and project frustration. I saw on Reddit a screenshot of AOC dogging on old people in Congress for not understanding digital. She listed a bunch of modern day issues and this wasn’t one of them. If even she doesn’t know, we really are screwed.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago
How is this that much different to similar "concerns" about kids watching to much tv back in the 60's 70's etc.
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y ago
  You make a great and difficult point. I’ll try to answer as best I can at least how I see it. Big TV’s goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible material to a general audience. This is broad and therefore not very addictive / effective. Big Tech’s goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible material to an individual. This is specific and therefore very addictive / effective. Regardless that the goal is the same, one is a heavier hitter, and we should have regulations to protect people against the bigger punches.
  - zests 6y ago
    Here is a rough ranking of information sources by amount of "user engagement". Books < TV < Video Games <= Social Media The rankings are potentially different per individual and each information source effects people in different ways. This is my mental model of different user engagement sources. The hard part is where to draw the line and the inevitable fact that pandora is already out of the box.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > Big TV’s goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible material to a general audience. This is broad and therefore not very addictive. That may have been true once, but since then TV distilled down the patterns for maximizing addiction across the biggest segment of the population - that's why most TV is so mind-dumbing that you can almost feel your brain being sucked out of your skull when watching. But I agree that Internet media are much more focused and much heavier hitters.
- slothtrop 6y ago
  With youtube you're one "recommended" video away from both morally dubious content targeting kids, and qanon conspiracy content.
  - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
    I think that's more a problem for the grandparents and parents
    - slothtrop 6y ago
      Sure, but you still can't police the content your kids watch there passively, while conversely with Netflix or cable you can set it and forget it.
      - Minor49er 6y ago
        If parents are relying on "setting it and forgetting it", that's not policing at all. Youtube Kids was supposed to be a solution like this where the site would offer filtered videos for children, but it quickly resulted in the so-called Elsagate scandal where children were targeted with videos depicting things like violence, drug use, and sexual activity
    - delecti 6y ago
      It's definitely a problem for both. Lots of kids are getting radicalized too, along with the Fox News generation.
    - SethMurphy 6y ago
      While not related to TV (but possibly radio), My political radicalism probably peaked in 4th grade due to my surroundings. Young minds can be very easily influenced before they fully develop critical thinking.
  - ohdannyboy 6y ago
    Is that actually your experience on YouTube or is this just something people say to encourage deplatforming? I don't think I've seen anything at the level of flat earth or Q on my related videos since like 2017... I've even attempted to seek out some of these videos just to see the claims and it was difficult to maneuver past Youtubes search redirections. Want a non-conspiracy example? Search "obama is gone" on youtube then on DuckDuckGo. Even a stupid crab rave meme is buried, presumably for the purposes of preventing Obama related conspiracy theories from emerging. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=obama+is+gone https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=obama+is+gone https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obama+is+gone+site%3Ayoutube.com https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obama+is+gone+site%3Ayoutube.com I'd still never park my kid on Youtube but things aren't like they were pre-adpocalypse.
- macNchz 6y ago
  The type of content is certainly different, since anyone can upload videos to YouTube. The TV that kids were watching “too much” of was super bland, mainstream stuff, for better or worse. There certainly weren’t organizations bulk generating thousands of hours worth of creepy and bizarre videos featuring kids’ favorite characters, for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate
- bluefirebrand 6y ago
  You scoff, but would you honestly say those concerns were entirely unfounded? Habits we develop as children tend to persist through our lives. People who grew up very active tend to stay at least a little active, people who grew up eating healthy diets will tend to continue to eat well. The opposite also tends to be true. We have record levels of obesity in many developed nations now. There's a lot to blame for that, but surely our sedentary lifestyles is a factor. That includes watching too much TV.
  - soledades 6y ago
    >In 2017, an average U.S. consumer spent 238 minutes (3h 58min) daily watching TV. ...more or less a humanitarian catastrophe
  - thundergolfer 6y ago
    Neil Postman’s argument about the “now this” incoherence of television also applies doubly to today’s tech like TikTok and Reddit. If TV was generally bad (as Postman argues) then video-based social media is awful, and worse than Postman ever predicted.
- loveistheanswer 6y ago
  We know that both of those things can have negative effects when taken to the extreme. Anything people find addicting can be harmful. For instance, television screen time is correlated with increased obesity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4555288/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4555288/
- tomc1985 6y ago
  Have you seen the content that inevitably ends up in kids autoplay video feeds? Weird doesn't even begin to describe it. Some of it would give HBO pause.
  - tomjen3 6y ago
    Almost every Disney movie have the childrens parents being killed, the Swedish childrens author Astrid Lindgren (very popular in Europe, I don’t know about the US) wrote a story called The Brothers Lionheart where the young brother is dying from an incurable respiratory disease and (spoilers) his brother dies saving him from a house fire. The he dies from the respiratory disease. My point is that children are being told stories that we wouldn’t consider for children all the time. And that isn’t even considering fairytales.
    - anticristi 6y ago
      I recently got a book with the full collection of the Grimm brothers' fairytales. I don't get how those authors got marketed as kids story writers. Some of the stories make it feel like reading Terminator for bedtime is harmless.
    - tomc1985 6y ago
      You're missing my point. There are people sneaking downright weird shit into kids' feeds on Youtube. https://www.theverge.com/culture/2017/11/21/16685874/kids-youtube-video-elsagate-creepiness-psychology https://www.theverge.com/culture/2017/11/21/16685874/kids-yo... The difference between brothers Grimm or old Disney films and this is coherence, and possibly motive. At the very least they are trying to tell a story of some kind. But this stuff is closer to porn (except its surreal? instead of titillating), and the motive is unknown. It's totally different and a new thing compared to the 60s/70s/80s kids argument.
- ACow_Adonis 6y ago
  Well, what happened to those kids? The kids grew up and now spend the majority of their time working in advertising, supplying games, creating endless streams of new media, etc. how has it NOT been harmful? I'm more inclined to believe my parents did the right thing by limiting TV time and commenting that most of it was rubbish. And I presume like many parents in Silicon Valley, I'm going to fight tooth and nail to keep advertising and most of this stuff from my kids. The funny thing is, if you're not brought up around it, if you learn some math and statistics, and then you suddenly go somewhere exposure is considered normal, you almost have a physical or psychological revulsion to it. Ads become frustrating and unacceptable intrusions. casino floors are sad, boring, pathetic and dystopian. mobile games look like drugs foistered upon an underclass, etc. At least with big TV at the time, programming was so limited (at least in my country), you had maybe 2 to 3 hours per week of anything that would fit a genre worth watching. But even with that restriction, I know a large number of people who deem that the TV should be on even if there's "nothing to watch". I just can't write that sort of behaviour off as not being dysfunctional, it's just that we've culturally got a general acceptance of very specific types of dysfunction... And what about rates of obesity? I'm not saying TV is solely to blame, but are we going to pretend that screen time and such programming (on demand or otherwise) is a blameless part of our culture?
  - bscphil 6y ago
    Well said. Whenever I have to turn on the TV (which actually requires plugging in the cable box, because I simply don't use it, and also because it's crappily designed and causes buzzing in my speakers when plugged in), I'm always shocked by how blatantly ideological the advertising is. Upthread there's a comment on how someone's kid is being made fun of for not purchasing custom skins to use in Fortnight, and I almost commented something about how to me, there's always something been something weirdly uncomfortable about people who choose to spend money on arbitrarily customizing something. I'm glad I didn't, because thinking about it, I am the weird one. Most people are quite happy to "waste" time and money in this way. I'm not one of the kids (or adults) who grew up like this their whole life. Lest this comment come across as me saying I'm the one sane person in a crazy world, I should add that I'm certainly affected by this when it comes to the Internet. Although I haven't seen more than an ad or two in years (thanks ad blockers), I'm still affected by the addiction-promotion used by websites to keep you there so you (theoretically) see those ads. I caught myself spending hours a day scrolling through Twitter. I'm trying to kick the habit, but it is a habit. Maybe I'm just in a better position to recognize it because I see the damage too much TV did to others.
flavius29663 6y ago
to be honest, AOC doesn't seem very knowledgeable in general, IMO she's just a trump (a less successful one), but on the left.
- bustin 6y ago
  Trump was a beast for the ages. AOC is closer to a regular ol' populist. Note how she and Cruz were the first to join the ranks of angry people online in lambasting Robinhood before they could explain themselves in the GME debacle.
- bscphil 6y ago
  Even granting that AOC isn't "very knowledgeable in general", that's hardly the most important of Trump's qualities. Surely there are more important standards to judge a leader by than their intelligence. Kim Jong-un might be a brilliant man for all I know, but I don't think anyone should be emulating him. So no, I don't think you can say she's "a Trump".
  - flavius29663 6y ago
    I meant not very smart, but narcissistic and populist. Trump is also quite a psychopath, but he held a lot of power, we won't know if AOC would be like that or not until she has that kind of power (like a billionaire or president) exhibit A for narcissism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9uTH0iprVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9uTH0iprVQ
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      That's an exhibit in narcissism? I was genuinely curious what you would produce. Let me tell you, that ain't it.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago

How is this that much different to similar "concerns" about kids watching to much tv back in the 60's 70's etc.

WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y ago
You make a great and difficult point. I’ll try to answer as best I can at least how I see it. Big TV’s goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible material to a general audience. This is broad and therefore not very addictive / effective. Big Tech’s goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible material to an individual. This is specific and therefore very addictive / effective. Regardless that the goal is the same, one is a heavier hitter, and we should have regulations to protect people against the bigger punches.
- zests 6y ago
  Here is a rough ranking of information sources by amount of "user engagement". Books < TV < Video Games <= Social Media The rankings are potentially different per individual and each information source effects people in different ways. This is my mental model of different user engagement sources. The hard part is where to draw the line and the inevitable fact that pandora is already out of the box.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Big TV’s goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible material to a general audience. This is broad and therefore not very addictive. That may have been true once, but since then TV distilled down the patterns for maximizing addiction across the biggest segment of the population - that's why most TV is so mind-dumbing that you can almost feel your brain being sucked out of your skull when watching. But I agree that Internet media are much more focused and much heavier hitters.
slothtrop 6y ago
With youtube you're one "recommended" video away from both morally dubious content targeting kids, and qanon conspiracy content.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  I think that's more a problem for the grandparents and parents
  - slothtrop 6y ago
    Sure, but you still can't police the content your kids watch there passively, while conversely with Netflix or cable you can set it and forget it.
    - Minor49er 6y ago
      If parents are relying on "setting it and forgetting it", that's not policing at all. Youtube Kids was supposed to be a solution like this where the site would offer filtered videos for children, but it quickly resulted in the so-called Elsagate scandal where children were targeted with videos depicting things like violence, drug use, and sexual activity
  - delecti 6y ago
    It's definitely a problem for both. Lots of kids are getting radicalized too, along with the Fox News generation.
  - SethMurphy 6y ago
    While not related to TV (but possibly radio), My political radicalism probably peaked in 4th grade due to my surroundings. Young minds can be very easily influenced before they fully develop critical thinking.
- ohdannyboy 6y ago
  Is that actually your experience on YouTube or is this just something people say to encourage deplatforming? I don't think I've seen anything at the level of flat earth or Q on my related videos since like 2017... I've even attempted to seek out some of these videos just to see the claims and it was difficult to maneuver past Youtubes search redirections. Want a non-conspiracy example? Search "obama is gone" on youtube then on DuckDuckGo. Even a stupid crab rave meme is buried, presumably for the purposes of preventing Obama related conspiracy theories from emerging. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=obama+is+gone https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=obama+is+gone https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obama+is+gone+site%3Ayoutube.com https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obama+is+gone+site%3Ayoutube.com I'd still never park my kid on Youtube but things aren't like they were pre-adpocalypse.
macNchz 6y ago
The type of content is certainly different, since anyone can upload videos to YouTube. The TV that kids were watching “too much” of was super bland, mainstream stuff, for better or worse. There certainly weren’t organizations bulk generating thousands of hours worth of creepy and bizarre videos featuring kids’ favorite characters, for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate
bluefirebrand 6y ago
You scoff, but would you honestly say those concerns were entirely unfounded? Habits we develop as children tend to persist through our lives. People who grew up very active tend to stay at least a little active, people who grew up eating healthy diets will tend to continue to eat well. The opposite also tends to be true. We have record levels of obesity in many developed nations now. There's a lot to blame for that, but surely our sedentary lifestyles is a factor. That includes watching too much TV.
- soledades 6y ago
  >In 2017, an average U.S. consumer spent 238 minutes (3h 58min) daily watching TV. ...more or less a humanitarian catastrophe
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  Neil Postman’s argument about the “now this” incoherence of television also applies doubly to today’s tech like TikTok and Reddit. If TV was generally bad (as Postman argues) then video-based social media is awful, and worse than Postman ever predicted.
loveistheanswer 6y ago
We know that both of those things can have negative effects when taken to the extreme. Anything people find addicting can be harmful. For instance, television screen time is correlated with increased obesity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4555288/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4555288/
tomc1985 6y ago
Have you seen the content that inevitably ends up in kids autoplay video feeds? Weird doesn't even begin to describe it. Some of it would give HBO pause.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  Almost every Disney movie have the childrens parents being killed, the Swedish childrens author Astrid Lindgren (very popular in Europe, I don’t know about the US) wrote a story called The Brothers Lionheart where the young brother is dying from an incurable respiratory disease and (spoilers) his brother dies saving him from a house fire. The he dies from the respiratory disease. My point is that children are being told stories that we wouldn’t consider for children all the time. And that isn’t even considering fairytales.
  - anticristi 6y ago
    I recently got a book with the full collection of the Grimm brothers' fairytales. I don't get how those authors got marketed as kids story writers. Some of the stories make it feel like reading Terminator for bedtime is harmless.
  - tomc1985 6y ago
    You're missing my point. There are people sneaking downright weird shit into kids' feeds on Youtube. https://www.theverge.com/culture/2017/11/21/16685874/kids-youtube-video-elsagate-creepiness-psychology https://www.theverge.com/culture/2017/11/21/16685874/kids-yo... The difference between brothers Grimm or old Disney films and this is coherence, and possibly motive. At the very least they are trying to tell a story of some kind. But this stuff is closer to porn (except its surreal? instead of titillating), and the motive is unknown. It's totally different and a new thing compared to the 60s/70s/80s kids argument.
ACow_Adonis 6y ago
Well, what happened to those kids? The kids grew up and now spend the majority of their time working in advertising, supplying games, creating endless streams of new media, etc. how has it NOT been harmful? I'm more inclined to believe my parents did the right thing by limiting TV time and commenting that most of it was rubbish. And I presume like many parents in Silicon Valley, I'm going to fight tooth and nail to keep advertising and most of this stuff from my kids. The funny thing is, if you're not brought up around it, if you learn some math and statistics, and then you suddenly go somewhere exposure is considered normal, you almost have a physical or psychological revulsion to it. Ads become frustrating and unacceptable intrusions. casino floors are sad, boring, pathetic and dystopian. mobile games look like drugs foistered upon an underclass, etc. At least with big TV at the time, programming was so limited (at least in my country), you had maybe 2 to 3 hours per week of anything that would fit a genre worth watching. But even with that restriction, I know a large number of people who deem that the TV should be on even if there's "nothing to watch". I just can't write that sort of behaviour off as not being dysfunctional, it's just that we've culturally got a general acceptance of very specific types of dysfunction... And what about rates of obesity? I'm not saying TV is solely to blame, but are we going to pretend that screen time and such programming (on demand or otherwise) is a blameless part of our culture?
- bscphil 6y ago
  Well said. Whenever I have to turn on the TV (which actually requires plugging in the cable box, because I simply don't use it, and also because it's crappily designed and causes buzzing in my speakers when plugged in), I'm always shocked by how blatantly ideological the advertising is. Upthread there's a comment on how someone's kid is being made fun of for not purchasing custom skins to use in Fortnight, and I almost commented something about how to me, there's always something been something weirdly uncomfortable about people who choose to spend money on arbitrarily customizing something. I'm glad I didn't, because thinking about it, I am the weird one. Most people are quite happy to "waste" time and money in this way. I'm not one of the kids (or adults) who grew up like this their whole life. Lest this comment come across as me saying I'm the one sane person in a crazy world, I should add that I'm certainly affected by this when it comes to the Internet. Although I haven't seen more than an ad or two in years (thanks ad blockers), I'm still affected by the addiction-promotion used by websites to keep you there so you (theoretically) see those ads. I caught myself spending hours a day scrolling through Twitter. I'm trying to kick the habit, but it is a habit. Maybe I'm just in a better position to recognize it because I see the damage too much TV did to others.

flavius29663 6y ago

to be honest, AOC doesn't seem very knowledgeable in general, IMO she's just a trump (a less successful one), but on the left.

bustin 6y ago
Trump was a beast for the ages. AOC is closer to a regular ol' populist. Note how she and Cruz were the first to join the ranks of angry people online in lambasting Robinhood before they could explain themselves in the GME debacle.
bscphil 6y ago
Even granting that AOC isn't "very knowledgeable in general", that's hardly the most important of Trump's qualities. Surely there are more important standards to judge a leader by than their intelligence. Kim Jong-un might be a brilliant man for all I know, but I don't think anyone should be emulating him. So no, I don't think you can say she's "a Trump".
- flavius29663 6y ago
  I meant not very smart, but narcissistic and populist. Trump is also quite a psychopath, but he held a lot of power, we won't know if AOC would be like that or not until she has that kind of power (like a billionaire or president) exhibit A for narcissism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9uTH0iprVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9uTH0iprVQ
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    That's an exhibit in narcissism? I was genuinely curious what you would produce. Let me tell you, that ain't it.