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> Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evid

• abledon 5y ago
  whenever the power goes off in my house for long periods, its as if some super power hits and i can read books with a new found attention span
  • sascha_sl 5y ago
    That wouldn't work with ADHD. You'd probably sit down and think about all the things you could do with that time without actually doing them while continuously scolding yourself for not doing them, and then get up 5 hours later, 3 of which you felt hungry and 2 of which you felt like going to the toilet.
  • wott 5y ago
    Yeah, when we are lucky to have a several days long Internet breakage at home (we don't use cellular Internet), all of a sudden things which had been 'not possible' or 'so hard' or 'so tiring' for months or years suddenly become possible or normal or even obvious. We even manage to do things together with family members. Imagine!
    • watwut 5y ago
      Is that really so? Because I do find myself at situations when I don't turn on internet and none of that happens. Books are as boring as with internet, I just don't like them anymore. I don't end up doing something all that great as a result.
      • freedom2099 5y ago
        TheN you are probably reading the wrong books!
• batch12 5y ago
  Respectfully, these examples- radio and TV aren't even in the same league as the manipulation and engagement that comes from the algorithmic feedback loop that backs these services. The comparison is dangerously dismissive.
  • micromacrofoot 5y ago
    Right, I think addiction is probably the bigger story rather than attention.
    • batch12 5y ago
      Yes, though these are linked. Attention is the goal while addiction is the means.
    • freeflight 5y ago
      I'm not sure how much that actually changes about the discussion, for the better. If this is an addiction, then it will be one that's gonna be very difficult to break for most people. In most places it's nowadays near impossible to go about your day without some kind of online activity or interaction. Especially as during this pandemic a lot of "in person" alternatives for it have been phased out of use. So in practice the addicts are regularly forced to interact with their source of addiction. How are we supposed to fix that?
      • micromacrofoot 5y ago
        More transparency around algorithmically prioritized newsfeeds seem like an obvious place to start. According to what little insight we have they’re mostly prioritized for “engagement” which in some cases has intentionally come at the cost of people’s moods (according facebook’s own internal reporting). Large companies have psychology/sociology experts working on this stuff in favor of the respective companies, but any consumer advocacy on the same level is hampered by lack of access and lack of funding.
        • Nextgrid 5y ago
• nabla9 5y ago
  > but it's always the same story. This is the reverse slippery slope fallacy. There is no threshold, no effect size where this tuns net negative, etc. We took these 10 steps, were worried and nothing happened, we can do more steps.
  • ModernMech 5y ago
    Does this fallacy have a name? The rough incline fallacy?
    • ropeladder 5y ago
      The "there is no cliff" fallacy?
  • slibhb 5y ago
    Fair point, it may turn negative at some point but we're not there yet. It's a moral panic. We're not talking about war or genocide, we're talking about the young people staring at their phones too much.
    • nabla9 5y ago
      That's another type of fallacy. If there is no obviously horrific consequences, there is nothing. Either/Or Reasoning. My position is that we don't know yet. Some harms may be transitory and people adult. Making arguments for or against without good data and reasoning is not helping. Making your mind up prematurely makes it harder to change the opinion when the evidence comes in.
      • Mezzie 5y ago
        What drives me nuts personally is how nobody is asking the adults that ALREADY grew up online as kids what impact it has. This is hardly the first time we've had a panic about kids on the internet; the first one I remember is the freak out that led to COPPA in the late 90s. At the time, perhaps people could be forgiven for not asking us since we were the first generation of kids who had unrestricted Internet access and we were still kids (nobody wants children's opinions), but now there are plenty of formerly Too Online Children that are adults. If having unrestricted information/internet access at an early age does change your brain, why aren't we comparing people in their 30s who grew up online with people in their 30s who didn't? That would be super interesting, and there are many aspects of growing up online that definitely did change my experience. (E.G. being able to pretend to be an adult and be addressed as an equal based on my ideas online made it very hard to function in the real world where acting like an adult's equal was inappropriate, I had access to information that many adults did not and that caused problems, I had access to information that my local culture considered 'inappropriate' but was acceptable online [information about female puberty is one], etc.) Lots of people deciding what our experiences did to us without asking us.
• sascha_sl 5y ago
  It's less about entertaining, and more about interesting, which is how I know you completely misunderstood ADHD. Discipline can only compensate shitty neurotransmitter levels for so long, eventually it becomes painful to even start trying to focus and it'll even cut into your productivity with things where you'd usually get hyperfocus without issues. I really hate how contentious and polarizing ADHD is. Reminds me of being trans. There are people who benefit greatly from being medicated, much more than the risk they take. That should really be the end of it.
• fullshark 5y ago
  Another possibility: the moral panic about comic books / rap music / low brow culture was justified and its ubiquity has done active harm to our society.
  • Apocryphon 5y ago
    Certainly without comic books, comic book movies wouldn’t have eaten Hollywood
    • fullshark 5y ago
      I don't necessarily mean a problem as a matter of taste, more a destruction of shared cultural values, in particular those that are good for "society" like a belief in the value of work, family unit, deeper concerns than material wealth (e.g. god/spirituality) etc at least in the west / America.
      • Apocryphon 5y ago
        The spread of low brow culture might potentially come at the expense of traditional local cultures, but any cultural expansion means the creation of a new shared culture, no? In which case the issue then becomes what the values does this culture valorize.
        • fullshark 5y ago
          Yeah and it's not all bad for sure, I think the general acceptance of homosexuality has been a good thing and large cultural shifts certainly made it happen. I do wonder if these shifts are universally good or a mix of positive and negative developments, and the people warning us years ago had some good points.
      • andrewzah 5y ago
        I will never understand how people can suggest a specific musical genre or a medium is responsible for ruining society or "destroying values like the value of work" with a straight face. When I ask for empirical proof of such things, there never is any, just anecdotal statements. As if country music never touched upon these sorts of topics. Or books. Or ... Moral panics come from old people who don't like anything that's different from their youth. "Kids these days!" And in America, especially so if that thing happens to be dominated by black people.
• trwhite 5y ago
  Video games are immensely addictive. The burst of adrenaline some of the recent online FPS' give me doesn't compare to any other feeling or experience I've had as a human being. They didn't just happen to be this way. They have been designed to be so thrilling that normal life cannot compete.
  • kqr 5y ago
    Is adrenaline really involved significantly in addiction, other than in specific people who enjoy that sort of thrill? As far as my own experience goes, adrenaline is uncomfortable and something I avoid all else equal.
  • pietrovismara 5y ago
    Isn't for a game to be thrilling usually the ultimate goal? I'm not concerned about games being fun to play, that's what they are for. I'm more concerned about the dopamine exploiting patterns implemented in modern games, especially those targeted at younger gamers.
    • freedom2099 5y ago
      I think it depends on the person. I am an avid gamer (have all consoles and a high end Pc) but despise all multiplayer games! I love RPG and strategy games… the less frenetic the gameplay the better! For me it’s all about the story, the immersion in a new world and the mental challenge! I don’t understand how people can waste time shooting around at random people!
      • trwhite 5y ago
        I find the online games very addictive but for a lot of the time they aren't very enjoyable and then for a brief period they are very exciting (the adrenaline I'm speaking about). The game that resonated with me most emotionally was The Last of Us: Part 2 but I couldn't play it regularly or I think it would lose its charm. I generally feel quite conflicted about gaming because of this: there are games (like TLOU) that I'm glad to have experienced, but the ones that I spend the most time playing are only enjoyable some of the time (usually when I win). I think this is what I define as my own addiction: continuing to do something that doesn't bring me pleasure.
• zippystrider 5y ago
  The ease of access of today's distractions leads me to disagree. It's so easy to take out your phone to check a social media app, or open a tab on your laptop to a social media website like Reddit, versus turning on a radio or getting up to turn on the TV. A comic book doesn't fit in your front pocket, but a phone does; there's just so much less friction for distraction today.
  • watwut 5y ago
    And still, very few people read social media till they sleep deprived themselves. Very few people end up yelling at everyone around when something does not work out in game. Both of these are fairly common for gamers, but computer games are always defended here. So yeah, it is pure moral panic, except about something average HN commenter does not think he do.
    • cma 5y ago
      > Very few people end up yelling at everyone around when something does not work out in game. I remember growing up many people's parents getting mad for weeks over football game outcomes they had no control over.
    • Apocryphon 5y ago
      Computer games have had a counter-backlash for the past few decades against moral panics such as they cause violence. But with the advent of loot boxes and the like, the new angle of addiction and games might turn that tide. The old inapplicable moral panic has come and gone, and one based on more easily-quantifiable reality will give way to a more broadly acceptable moral panic. As for your point on social media, the past year’s spate of articles on revenge sleep procrastination would seem to refute that suggestion.
    • estaseuropano 5y ago
      Tiktok is the most accessed web resource in 2022, with only a small number of people using it. Worst of all, it is the teenagers that lose their lives there. A grandma playing candy crush - sad but not a societal problem. Teenagers that miss out on school, or young moms that don't anymore look at their kids, or young workers that can't focus - enormous societal problem.
• wwweston 5y ago
  > One reason so many people think they have ADHD is because they make that mistake. Speaking of which: has anyone had the experience where they sought to be evaluated for ADHD and the professional they went to said "nope, this doesn't look like ADHD"? I'm wondering if there are criteria people use to exclude ADHD as a diagnosis, or if the assumption is that if people are seeking diagnosis/treatment that they're experiencing something enough like it and should be given ADHD interventions (and of course, the incentive under fee-for-service would be to provide the intervention for a fee).
  • travisjungroth 5y ago
    Yeah, usually people who lack the executive function navigate the healthcare system. It’s like they have a lack of focus pathology, so they can’t get an ADHD diagnoses. https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/168201153351/have-you-looked-into-adhd-your-posts-from https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/168201153351/have-yo...
    • sascha_sl 5y ago
      Can confirm. Lost every single object I could lose, dropped out of school, forgot I had prescriptions to pick up for a year, constant messy room, spent an entire year literally doing nothing and still feeling nervous every day, failed jobs where I couldn't cherry pick interesting things out of JIRA and then spent 2 hours in hyperfocus, followed by 6 hours of faking being busy because I simply couldn't focus anymore (but in practice, nobody minded, and I was considered to be overperforming. getting paid based on hours sucks for me). My job turned from amazing with coding every day to maintaining broken things last year (mostly black boxes others left behind). It got substantially worse. I can't remember the last time I managed to enter hyperfocus. So I've made a new-years resolution and made an appointment online (thanks, low friction tech) this week. It'll only be... 9 months until I figure out which side of the ADHD battle this doctor is on. (I've had bad experiences getting trans healthcare, and only got treatment through a lucky incident, so my expectations are rather low). I've known for years that this is likely what it is, but only doing it when absolutely neccessary is on brand for it too I guess.
• coffeefirst 5y ago
  Both of these things can be true. What if this is a moral panic like prohibition or the red scare more than like comic books. Was American drinking culture in the early 1900s insane and were there soviet spies in the 1950s? Actually yes, and that doesn't justify McCarthy or make Prohibition a good idea. And this is the challenge. How do we respond proportionately without going "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN" or blending the actual problems with our other phobias?
• bnralt 5y ago
  I think many of your examples are of times we failed to counter problematic tendencies as a society, gave up, and then even worse (in this case, more addictive time consuming activities) things come along. It's basically the realization of a slippery slope, where failure to stop one problematic trend is used to justify an even worse trend. Society can survive with bad tendencies. Think about 50 years ago when American restaurants were full of cigarette smoke, and rivers would get so polluted they'd catch on fire. People still survived, even thrived. If we had ignored those problems, probably someone today would be saying "Opiates? Global warming? Just more moral panics, the way a few decades ago everyone was worried about the environment and smoking." The dangerous thing is that once these trends become part of your society, it's hard to imagine the world without them, and hard to see why people make such a fuss about them because they can become an immutable part of your reality. You become blind to them. I'm sure, given enough time, we'll become blind to new negative trends in society just as we've become blind to previous negative trends. But that's not a good thing.
  • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "it's hard to imagine the world without them" There is soviet sci-fi novel that features a distopian society where people a killed before they become frail and become a burdain, and its considered an honour. They can't imagine the world otherwise.
    • greggman3 5y ago
      Sounds similar to Logan's Run
    • rkk3 5y ago
      "Carrousel" from Logan's Run, is the western equivalent.
    • throwawayboise 5y ago
      I think that was also a storyline in a Twilight Zone episode.
    • int_19h 5y ago
• SavantIdiot 5y ago
  > Those anxieties were right and wrong. This opinion is respectful of nuance. Multiple social changes are converging, it is not just one the scapegoat of screen proliferation among toddlers, it is a re-examination of existential pillars unlike anything I've seen in my 50+ years (e.g., what is work? what is authority? what is worthy of protecting? what should one believe? how does one believe?). I wonder if the new Satanic Panic of ADHD/OCD/Screens/Internet is a reflection of how children (hell, and adults) are internalizing the shakiness of what we had been taking for granted for so long. This proposal fits the reams of anecdotal reports from parents and teachers about kids becoming more difficult than they were in the past decades (and it also fits the past decade of bizarre social and political shifts across the globe). Ironically, we won't be around for the historical analysis of WTF is actually going on because it'll take generations to parse it, distill it, and make a narrative out of it. Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau all saw the French revolution coming. In hindsight that is survivor-bias because we don't read the works of people who were wrong about the political state of France in the 18th century! So we can't even look around today and say: who's right? It has to happen before we can judge it. Of course, that's not to say we should throw moderation and discipline to the wind when it comes to child-rearing. Seems like the age-old cure of moderation is all we have: if you only do something occasionally, how can it cause long-term negative consequences (barring meth, of course)? Any better ideas?
• 29athrowaway 5y ago
  Please take with a grain of salt because I am no expert here: IIRC, ADHD is caused by brains that have too many dopamine transporters, resulting in dopamine being transported faster than normal, causing increased anxiety and impulsivity. But then there's addiction, which can hijack one of your brain systems like your dopamine or endorphine systems. In the case of internet addiction disorder, reading endless feeds must be related to dopamine for sure.
• selfhifive 5y ago
  Except every UX decision in every big social media app is research backed attention harvesting. Interactivity changes the equation. Limitless options change the equation. Radio and TV couldn't tailor themselves to an audience of one, your ML powered social media feed can.
• woolion 5y ago
  Anecdotal evidence etc. I have been having a feeling that my attention span is generally lower than before. I don't have a smartphone, no TV since more than 10 years ago, but there's the internet. Unfortunately working as a programmer requires constant connection (at least to be available to colleagues on chat, even non-remote). We've been experimenting with cutting off internet entirely for some days (e.g. yesterday), and I feel much better already. It's really magical how the nagging compulsion to check notifications disappears. No need to do any complex software setup, you go to the router and turn it off. So I think that quite clearly even with some mental fortitude and knowledge of the issue, you cannot really be immune to the attention-lowering effect.
• jrochkind1 5y ago
  > Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. Except some of the past moral panics were about reading books, they worried that kids were reading the wrong books, voraciously! Reading popular fiction didn't used to be considered something that took discipline, it used to be considered escapist entertainment, people did it because it was entertaining. Millions read books and newspapers (not sure if that's what you meant by 'papers'), only a couple decades ago. On the subway in NYC for instance, you would be surrounded by people reading both paperbacks and newspapers. Not very long-ago, in the adulthood of people currently middle-aged! It's not true at all that this was a rare thing undertaken only by people applying discipline. It might be no big deal that this attention has shifted to social media, just another shift in the particular mediums used for cultural production and consumption. Without even getting into that debate -- just the fact that you believe that reading things on paper is something that takes discipline that few have ever developed -- is astonishing to me. It has definitely not always been that way. It was not that way literally only 20 years ago, not very long ago at all -- it is remarkable that things have shifted so quickly you now believe reading books has always been a thing only for those with discipline, to be done distastefully like eating your veggies. (It could just be a shift in mediums, but the essay tries to illustrate the deleterious effects on our lives of the new mediums, which I recognize from personal experience and observation, myself).
• xg15 5y ago
  This is basically echoing the "you just need to be more disciplined" argument from the article.
  • slibhb 5y ago
    The ability to make yourself do something that you consider good but yields no immediate pleasure is real, useful, and can be cultivated.
    • xg15 5y ago
      No one denies that. The article argues that current "attention economy" tech is actively making this harder or even impossible.
      • slibhb 5y ago
        Saying it's impossible is denying it...
        • xg15 5y ago
          No, he is saying, it's becoming impossible - and he goes on to argue why this is the case. That's pretty much the main point of the article. What's your counter-argument?
          • slibhb 5y ago
            I find this incredible unless the Evil Social Media Companies reach into my brain and remove my capacity for practical free will.
• speby 5y ago
  Yep, agree. And as an example, things shift (i.e. transfer attention from one "account" to another another "account") such as TV consumption: https://www.statista.com/statistics/186833/average-television-use-per-person-in-the-us-since-2002/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/186833/average-televisio... tldr: It's down. But why? Did everyone wise up and decide watching as much television was not good for them so they started to do more productive things? No, of course not. Time was simply shifted to other entertainment mediums, like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, and so on. In another 10 or 20 years, it wills surely shift several more times, too. And so it goes...
• rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
  I’m pasting the last lines of that exact same paragraph for the people who will not read the article before commenting, as so many have admitted before in other similar discussions about attention: > If the people warning about the effects on our attention turn out to be wrong, and we still do what they suggest, what will be the cost? We will spend less time being harassed by our bosses, and we’ll be tracked and manipulated less by technology – along with lots of other improvements in our lives that are desirable in any case. But if they turn out to be right, and we don’t do what they say, what’s the cost? We will have – as the former Google engineer Tristan Harris told me – downgraded humanity, stripping us of our attention at the very time when we face big collective crises that require it more than ever.
• RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
  Tv and radio couldn't provide you with a constant stream of curated likes and messages. By social factor alone, this on a whole different level.
• mmarq 5y ago
  I agree and I’d add that until 20-30 years ago having an attention disorder wouldn’t prevent somebody from having a normal life, so, I think, many cases went undiagnosed. Today, almost everywhere in the West, you need a professional job to have a decent lifestyle, and these jobs require some minimal capacity to concentrate that the average man doesn’t have and never had.
• LightG 5y ago
  BS. Billions of pounds are pumped into light and dark methods of taking our attention. Or do you think those billions are for charity?