2 ms·

How about require that parents not provide a cell phone to a child before a certain age?

• falcolas 4y ago
  I have to ask, how is it better to restrict children (not everything you can do with a smartphone is tied to social media) than the corporations that target them, that intentionally create addictive experiences?
  • dahdum 4y ago
    Could you define addictive experience? When does an experience cross that (apparently bright?) line? I ask because it looks to me like every restaurant, bar, food producer, video game company, social media company, hotel, cinematic universe, book series author, and basically any consumer product or service is optimizing for repeat business.
    • falcolas 4y ago
      You're not wrong. Lots of companies do such optimizations. And some of them are creating virtually identical problems for parents and children. But one way to tell they're going too far is when they explicitly call out these actions on investor calls, on official blog posts, ex-employees speaking out... https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-documents-reveal-company-targeted-children-young-6-rcna4021 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-documents... https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28051930 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28051930 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-addictive-as-cigarettes-former-executive-says/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-addictive-as-cigarette...
• prawn 4y ago
  Kids are using phones and tablets as part of school learning programmes/homework. Additionally, my children (under 10yo) use them for educational apps, language lessons, reading library ebooks and doing word puzzles like Quordle. Because they're different ages and with different interests, they often use them in place of TV also when they can't agree on what to watch.