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This is a nice post to read but it's utter nonsense. > anywhere near as addictive for me as the crack cocaine of smart phone apps. There's a big difference be

This is a nice post to read but it's utter nonsense. > anywhere near as addictive for me as the crack cocaine of smart phone apps. There's a big difference between smart phone apps and screens, you've just said it yourself. I don't think there's any argument that modern apps are destructive to many people, but the rest of your post is really just not understanding how anyone can have a view point that isn't yours. > For the first time, it's possible to imagine a human who never discovers any of the basic things about life; who lives from cradle to grave being shown images of kangaroos and dolphins, watching shows about lovers and wars, without ever actually experiencing any of them, Complete rubbish. Books have been giving that experience for generations. TV shows have been providing that experience for 50+ years. > Rock and roll never robbed anyone of authentic experience. Neither did reading a book. As much as you think this is a unique thought, this is what your parents generation thought about the decisions you made. Nonsense like what you're claiming here has been spouted about music, video games,TV shows, movies, dancing, music, etc.

noduerme 5y ago
> As much as you think this is a unique thought, this is what your parents generation thought about the decisions you made. Nonsense like what you're claiming here has been spouted about music, video games,TV shows, movies, dancing, music, etc. No, I maintain that there's a qualitative difference between screens and books. "Screens" includes video games. Which are a model that encourages one person to sacrifice their life and time trying to decipher someone else's creation. RPGs are the same way. Yes, books can be treated this way, but only by zealots. The average person did not spend 8-12 hours a day reading books as an escape, at any time in history. That wouldn't be considered healthy. Screens can deliver good things -- they actually did, when they were liberated for content in the 90s and weren't just feeding distraction to the masses. That's long gone. You think you see what I'm saying because you've been told that any attack on the media environment you're accustomed to is just a reactionary howl like older generations always have. But I have no primary issue with Tiktok or Instagram. I have a problem with what I've literally witnessed them do to people's minds. And I have 40+ years of firsthand data collected as to how absolutely fucking melted people have become as the juggernaut of mass-social-media and smartphones has progressed to become a constant habit. All you have is an objection on the grounds that every generation thinks things were better before. But you have no proof (and can't prove) that the time you're living in is not intellectually inferior. You would have had to actually been alive before to know that.
- maccard 5y ago
  > The average person did not spend 8-12 hours a day reading books as an escape, at any time in history. That wouldn't be considered healthy. You've pulled numbers out of the air, and conflated the topics _again_. Taking your number at face value, that screen time generally includes work time, and doubles up on time (internet plus TV). It's also not an average person spending 8 hours a day as an escape. Finally, I think you're misremembering the past here, at least my experience was that people _did_ read and watch TV for the majority of their leisure time. I can't speak for a time before TV unfortunately. Yet again, you're conflating screens and social media apps. You say screens are unhealthy (well, the modern kinds, not the kinds that you had in the 90s), but only talk about TikTok, and not youtube channels like JustinGuitar, This Old House, Serious Eats, etc etc. I don't think anyone here (and I certainly am not) is claiming that the amount of time spent on Instagram/Snapchat/TikTok is healthy (who knows, I might be eating those words in 10 years), but this fear mongering is _exactly_ the same as the video game propaganda that came out 30 years ago. Unfortunately, I'm finding google hard to wrangle today on this topic, but here's an argument from 12 years ago [0] that pretty much makes the same complaints about video games that you're making about TikTok here. > And I have 40+ years of firsthand data ... You would have had to actually been alive before to know that. 1) You're assuming my age here. 2) Your argument boils down to the same argument that has been made by every generation for 2000 years. "Your elders know better because of experience, so trust me" _My_ experience with people who play this card play it because it's their only card. And after all, I should know, I have 30+ years of experience of people telling me that. [0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/duncan-smith-games-are-destroying-innocence-of-children https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/duncan-smith-games-ar...
  - noduerme 5y ago
    >> Unfortunately, I'm finding google hard to wrangle today on this topic That's because Google sucks now, and the web sucks, and the entire ecosystem has quietly morphed from what it was 15 years ago into a dead botnet flying through space, populated by zombies. But based on your argument, that's just my nostalgia talking. Your 30+ years means you were 14 when the iphone came out. I was 24. Although I wholly embraced the coolness of the technology, my thoughts, opinions and habits for conversing with other humans had already been fully formed. When I was 14, I was the only kid in my class who owned a modem. Can't you kind of see that it's unusual, unprecedented, for all communication to suddenly flow through a new wall-to-wall ecosystem, mostly privately owned, (including the screens) going from nothing to full saturation within 10 years? It's not the same argument as every generation. It's not about the fashion, style, sound, art, literature (fuck, I wish there was literature). What has been lost to people born since ~1990 and definitely since 2000 is, essentially, the ability to conduct themselves in any fashion outside of a machine-mediated setting. If that's not unprecedented, I don't know what is.

noduerme 5y ago

> As much as you think this is a unique thought, this is what your parents generation thought about the decisions you made. Nonsense like what you're claiming here has been spouted about music, video games,TV shows, movies, dancing, music, etc. No, I maintain that there's a qualitative difference between screens and books. "Screens" includes video games. Which are a model that encourages one person to sacrifice their life and time trying to decipher someone else's creation. RPGs are the same way. Yes, books can be treated this way, but only by zealots. The average person did not spend 8-12 hours a day reading books as an escape, at any time in history. That wouldn't be considered healthy. Screens can deliver good things -- they actually did, when they were liberated for content in the 90s and weren't just feeding distraction to the masses. That's long gone. You think you see what I'm saying because you've been told that any attack on the media environment you're accustomed to is just a reactionary howl like older generations always have. But I have no primary issue with Tiktok or Instagram. I have a problem with what I've literally witnessed them do to people's minds. And I have 40+ years of firsthand data collected as to how absolutely fucking melted people have become as the juggernaut of mass-social-media and smartphones has progressed to become a constant habit. All you have is an objection on the grounds that every generation thinks things were better before. But you have no proof (and can't prove) that the time you're living in is not intellectually inferior. You would have had to actually been alive before to know that.

maccard 5y ago
> The average person did not spend 8-12 hours a day reading books as an escape, at any time in history. That wouldn't be considered healthy. You've pulled numbers out of the air, and conflated the topics _again_. Taking your number at face value, that screen time generally includes work time, and doubles up on time (internet plus TV). It's also not an average person spending 8 hours a day as an escape. Finally, I think you're misremembering the past here, at least my experience was that people _did_ read and watch TV for the majority of their leisure time. I can't speak for a time before TV unfortunately. Yet again, you're conflating screens and social media apps. You say screens are unhealthy (well, the modern kinds, not the kinds that you had in the 90s), but only talk about TikTok, and not youtube channels like JustinGuitar, This Old House, Serious Eats, etc etc. I don't think anyone here (and I certainly am not) is claiming that the amount of time spent on Instagram/Snapchat/TikTok is healthy (who knows, I might be eating those words in 10 years), but this fear mongering is _exactly_ the same as the video game propaganda that came out 30 years ago. Unfortunately, I'm finding google hard to wrangle today on this topic, but here's an argument from 12 years ago [0] that pretty much makes the same complaints about video games that you're making about TikTok here. > And I have 40+ years of firsthand data ... You would have had to actually been alive before to know that. 1) You're assuming my age here. 2) Your argument boils down to the same argument that has been made by every generation for 2000 years. "Your elders know better because of experience, so trust me" _My_ experience with people who play this card play it because it's their only card. And after all, I should know, I have 30+ years of experience of people telling me that. [0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/duncan-smith-games-are-destroying-innocence-of-children https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/duncan-smith-games-ar...
- noduerme 5y ago
  >> Unfortunately, I'm finding google hard to wrangle today on this topic That's because Google sucks now, and the web sucks, and the entire ecosystem has quietly morphed from what it was 15 years ago into a dead botnet flying through space, populated by zombies. But based on your argument, that's just my nostalgia talking. Your 30+ years means you were 14 when the iphone came out. I was 24. Although I wholly embraced the coolness of the technology, my thoughts, opinions and habits for conversing with other humans had already been fully formed. When I was 14, I was the only kid in my class who owned a modem. Can't you kind of see that it's unusual, unprecedented, for all communication to suddenly flow through a new wall-to-wall ecosystem, mostly privately owned, (including the screens) going from nothing to full saturation within 10 years? It's not the same argument as every generation. It's not about the fashion, style, sound, art, literature (fuck, I wish there was literature). What has been lost to people born since ~1990 and definitely since 2000 is, essentially, the ability to conduct themselves in any fashion outside of a machine-mediated setting. If that's not unprecedented, I don't know what is.