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Before the pandemic, we carefully limited device time. My kids only got an hour and it was easy to keep that limit. There weren't arguments about it. During th

by xrd 4y ago

Before the pandemic, we carefully limited device time. My kids only got an hour and it was easy to keep that limit. There weren't arguments about it. During the pandemic, the combination of our own struggles to find time to work, our own issues with depression, and the fact that the kids were often trapped inside without access to friends, meant their screen time exploded. My kids don't have phones but even access to iPads, television connected to Netflix and a PC with Minecraft installed makes me worry. To be sure, there are good things like prodigy for math and i like the problem solving of Minecraft. But, there are so many leaky gaps where other things sneak in. It's a terrible battle. It feels like there aren't options. Going cold turkey feels like the only workable option but even that sounds incredibly hard. I'm at a complete loss and feel like I'm watching my kids fall prey to some really awful predators that are commonly known as big tech.

ksec 4y ago
I have no problem if they were playing Minecraft, Civ, Sim City or heck even Switch or Zelda. I have problems with Smartphone Games that are built with 2 min Game play and 1 min of Ads. Or Games that tricks you into micro payments. In a perfectly curated App Store by a company that in the recent years claims to be so righteous. ( Sorry I cant resist ) Broadcast TV have some regulations on content so you know fairly well within certain time zone kids get their TV screen time without much problem. On Youtube and TikTok, even with Kids filter it is still an algorithmic brainwash machine. I rather expose them to Anime. Oh and the fight against iPad and Gaming usage due to their peer pressure. >I'm at a complete loss and feel like I'm watching my kids fall prey to some really awful predators that are commonly known as big tech. In the old days, at least Steve Job's Apple would try to improve or solve real user's problem. Larry page while not exactly a Saint that does no evil or a product person, had the decency to say no to certain things. But both Founders are either gone or no longer in control. Apple and Google are now run by managers who has zero product sensibility. "If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. "So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product."
dsadsadsaddsa 4y ago
It used to be heresy to suggest that Big Tech and Big Pharma were conspiring to make the absolute most of Covid. Now, not so much. I genuinely feel bad for parents who have had to make choices like this, against their will, as life had become unbearably difficult. One thing that made lockdowns hardest for me was my refusal to give any of my kids (now 1 and 3) any tech as a babysitting device. Once I had made that choice, the sheer inhumanity of what we were being asked to do became apparent.

by xrd 4y ago

ksec 4y ago

I have no problem if they were playing Minecraft, Civ, Sim City or heck even Switch or Zelda. I have problems with Smartphone Games that are built with 2 min Game play and 1 min of Ads. Or Games that tricks you into micro payments. In a perfectly curated App Store by a company that in the recent years claims to be so righteous. ( Sorry I cant resist ) Broadcast TV have some regulations on content so you know fairly well within certain time zone kids get their TV screen time without much problem. On Youtube and TikTok, even with Kids filter it is still an algorithmic brainwash machine. I rather expose them to Anime. Oh and the fight against iPad and Gaming usage due to their peer pressure. >I'm at a complete loss and feel like I'm watching my kids fall prey to some really awful predators that are commonly known as big tech. In the old days, at least Steve Job's Apple would try to improve or solve real user's problem. Larry page while not exactly a Saint that does no evil or a product person, had the decency to say no to certain things. But both Founders are either gone or no longer in control. Apple and Google are now run by managers who has zero product sensibility. "If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. "So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product."

dsadsadsaddsa 4y ago

It used to be heresy to suggest that Big Tech and Big Pharma were conspiring to make the absolute most of Covid. Now, not so much. I genuinely feel bad for parents who have had to make choices like this, against their will, as life had become unbearably difficult. One thing that made lockdowns hardest for me was my refusal to give any of my kids (now 1 and 3) any tech as a babysitting device. Once I had made that choice, the sheer inhumanity of what we were being asked to do became apparent.