5 ms·

I'm curious which is worse, social isolation, or mass consumption of video media. I bet Netflix is worse. The social isolation was bad, no question. But during

I'm curious which is worse, social isolation, or mass consumption of video media. I bet Netflix is worse. The social isolation was bad, no question. But during the early school lockdowns I saw first hand what 12+ hours a day of modern TV does to a person's brain in a short period of time. It's nothing like what TV was like in the 80s when I was a kid. The social isolation gets a lot of air time. I'd guess it's not the worst thing the lock downs did to kids. I bet the loss of education and the overdose of TV are in the top two.

Cerium 4y ago
My parents are teachers and talk about mass consumption of internet media as the largest negative effect of the pandemic on children. Many of them are serious addicts, high school students acting like children at just the thought of their video games and YouTube access missing for minutes.
- corrral 4y ago
  Anecdotal, but my friends who are teachers report a marked decline in student reading ability (vs. even just 20 years ago) in middle and higher grades. The main problem seems to be that kids have trouble parsing sentences that aren't very simple and short, with the result that most of the students—including "advanced" students in accelerated classes—have trouble following the basic narrative, let alone anything deeper, of works that weren't regarded as difficult when they were written. I don't mean Shakespeare or Paradise Lost or something, but works aimed at younger readers from as recently as the late 20th century. They lose track of what's going on by the end of a sentence having more than a small number of clauses. This trend pre-dates the lockdowns. Web-induced changes in reading behavior is my #1 suspect for the culprit, though I'm also suspicious of the YA book genre—I have an unconfirmed hunch that, as it's risen to prominence, it's also chased more and more "palatable", if you will, writing styles, in the name of greater sales.
zarzavat 4y ago
I realize this is not what you intended, but I have learned more (as an adult) from YouTube than I ever did at school. A bad teacher in adolescence can ruin an individual’s appreciation of a subject. Today’s kids are blessed with the best teachers in the world, only a few taps away. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with video content. But perhaps the recommendation algorithms need to be tweaked so that these websites have more social responsibility towards younger users.
mattmcknight 4y ago
While Netflix may be bad, what kids watch on YouTube and TikTok is far worse. Netflix content was at least written by an adult, maybe even edited.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > Netflix content was at least written by an adult, maybe even edited Eh after spending the holidays with siblings around the age targeted by these things, I highly doubt the quality of Netflix material as well. On the other hand, I was impressed by the ability of shows who’s IP is owned by massive corporations pump out material that looked worse than a HS video editing project.
corrral 4y ago
Backing you up that kids' entertainment is next-level bad now, especially on Netflix, which seems to have made it their mission to fund & collect as much absolute trash as they can, when it comes to kids' cartoons. And I think people were a bit correct before, that our cartoons decades ago were largely brain-rotting garbage, but it's got nothing on what kids will end up watching if you set them loose on Netflix, now. YouTube rightly gets shit on for what it considers kid-appropriate, but Netflix is terrible, too, in a different way. Wall-to-wall cotton candy for the brain. Weirdly-and-cheaply-CG-animated junk with the laziest imaginable writing. More than one person could ever consume. And the parental controls aren't sufficient to cut all the garbage out, because much of it is intended for young kids. Since streaming services are all terrible as far as letting you control what kids can watch, we've started just manually curating content for our kids. Took them almost no time to adjust to the new options, while if they were presented alongside Netflix, they almost never chose them. They're just as happy, and the average quality of what they watch is far higher.

Cerium 4y ago

My parents are teachers and talk about mass consumption of internet media as the largest negative effect of the pandemic on children. Many of them are serious addicts, high school students acting like children at just the thought of their video games and YouTube access missing for minutes.

corrral 4y ago
Anecdotal, but my friends who are teachers report a marked decline in student reading ability (vs. even just 20 years ago) in middle and higher grades. The main problem seems to be that kids have trouble parsing sentences that aren't very simple and short, with the result that most of the students—including "advanced" students in accelerated classes—have trouble following the basic narrative, let alone anything deeper, of works that weren't regarded as difficult when they were written. I don't mean Shakespeare or Paradise Lost or something, but works aimed at younger readers from as recently as the late 20th century. They lose track of what's going on by the end of a sentence having more than a small number of clauses. This trend pre-dates the lockdowns. Web-induced changes in reading behavior is my #1 suspect for the culprit, though I'm also suspicious of the YA book genre—I have an unconfirmed hunch that, as it's risen to prominence, it's also chased more and more "palatable", if you will, writing styles, in the name of greater sales.

zarzavat 4y ago

I realize this is not what you intended, but I have learned more (as an adult) from YouTube than I ever did at school. A bad teacher in adolescence can ruin an individual’s appreciation of a subject. Today’s kids are blessed with the best teachers in the world, only a few taps away. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with video content. But perhaps the recommendation algorithms need to be tweaked so that these websites have more social responsibility towards younger users.

mattmcknight 4y ago

While Netflix may be bad, what kids watch on YouTube and TikTok is far worse. Netflix content was at least written by an adult, maybe even edited.

the_only_law 4y ago
> Netflix content was at least written by an adult, maybe even edited Eh after spending the holidays with siblings around the age targeted by these things, I highly doubt the quality of Netflix material as well. On the other hand, I was impressed by the ability of shows who’s IP is owned by massive corporations pump out material that looked worse than a HS video editing project.

corrral 4y ago

Backing you up that kids' entertainment is next-level bad now, especially on Netflix, which seems to have made it their mission to fund & collect as much absolute trash as they can, when it comes to kids' cartoons. And I think people were a bit correct before, that our cartoons decades ago were largely brain-rotting garbage, but it's got nothing on what kids will end up watching if you set them loose on Netflix, now. YouTube rightly gets shit on for what it considers kid-appropriate, but Netflix is terrible, too, in a different way. Wall-to-wall cotton candy for the brain. Weirdly-and-cheaply-CG-animated junk with the laziest imaginable writing. More than one person could ever consume. And the parental controls aren't sufficient to cut all the garbage out, because much of it is intended for young kids. Since streaming services are all terrible as far as letting you control what kids can watch, we've started just manually curating content for our kids. Took them almost no time to adjust to the new options, while if they were presented alongside Netflix, they almost never chose them. They're just as happy, and the average quality of what they watch is far higher.