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I couldn't disagree more. Children don't need 24/7 unfettered access to intensely dopaminergic mental stimulation that is equivalent to junk food. They need foc

I couldn't disagree more. Children don't need 24/7 unfettered access to intensely dopaminergic mental stimulation that is equivalent to junk food. They need focused minds, not the constantly searching monkey mind that is amplified by having a phone in your pocket from age 13.

superkuh 2y ago
>intensely dopaminergic mental stimulation Adults need to stop regurgitating 1970s era neuroscience tropes long proven false as if they were facts. You come off like someone pointing at their monitor declaring the internet is broken because the monitor is set to the wrong display input. Not even wrong. These extremely scientificially incorrect memes re: "dopamine" and "screens" are far more dangerous to society than looking at screens ever could be because they're used to justify use of physical force against human persons in contexts where there is no force or coercion or fraud.
- Kiln6125 2y ago
  There are quite a few of these studies from the modern era about the effect that these devices have on children. They posit the exact opposite of what you're saying here, and have data to back it up. I presume that these are what you're referring to as "non-scientific" here and have specific issues with their methodology, and not just disliking the concept that phone/social media could be bad in some fashion. Can you explain why they are all false?
  - superkuh 2y ago
    I'll put in as much effort in my rebutal as was shown in the initial false statement (very little). In the 60/70s there was this idea that dopaminergic populations of neurons (of which there are many with different roles, but here lets simply talk about the mesolimbic populations in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc). Early electrophysiological studies found that activiating these populations could lead to animal models doing whatever was necessary to get them stimulated again. This lead to the idea of dopamine as the "pleasure chemical". But since then it's been found that in the VTA and (shell of) the NAc the dopaminergic populations don't actually encode for pleasure or reward at all. The reward/pleasure is mediated almost entirely by glutamergic neurons in the NAc, and the dopaminergic projections there from the VTA encode for belief in possible future reward, not reward itself. Dopamine is wanting (prediction of liking), not liking. Furthermore, the idea that screens are a special type of stimuli that can directly bypass the senses and act like a dopaminergic drug to increase incentive salience (wanting) without there being intrinsic pleasure to the stimuli is absurd and unsupported magical thinking. It needs no special disproval; the burden of proof is on such a wild unphysical claim. Screens are not, and cannot be "addictive". That word has a medical meaning and it does not cover screens. You may object and say, "But what of gambling?" to which I respond, the DSM5+ and ICD10 both have it as "gambling disorder" because it's not an addiction and it's a grandfathered in disorder at that; all by itself. Additionally, the DSM spent the last decade addressing the potential issue of "screens" and each commitee returned with the same conclusion: not enough evidence for inclusion (latest was 2022). If you really do want to learn the nitty gritty details and see the references I suggest starting with Kent Berridge's lab on affective neuroscience and his review papers, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/berridge-lab/publications/ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/berridge-lab/publications/
    - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
      I don't think anyone is claiming this: > Furthermore, the idea that screens are a special type of stimuli that can directly bypass the senses and act like a dopaminergic drug to increase incentive salience (wanting) without there being intrinsic pleasure to the stimuli is absurd and unsupported magical thinking. Or at least it's not the damning point you're making it out to be. I think there is an issue with smartphones, attention, and development, but I don't claim that screens are anything other than an audiovisual medium. Nor do I think they need to increase specifically "incentive salience without intrinsic pleasure" to be a problem. Do you not see gambling addiction as an issue in real life? Do you not see massively decreased attention statistics as an issue in real life? It feels like you're arguing against a position that is both incorrect and irrelevant, when the rest of us are talking about things that are obviously an issue in real life, regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with this approach. Do you not struggle with anything like what is being discussed here, or see it in others?
      - superkuh 2y ago
        No one is claiming it, true. They don't understand their claims stem entirely from this position and only make any sort of sense if they claim it. But they don't have the background knowledge to work out the foundations of their statement. My personal experience and emotional response has no relevance to the neuroscience involved. As for your continued use of "gambling addiction": There is no such thing as gambling addiction medically as I explained. It's a social meme without basis that is overloading the word mostly for profit in non-medical "addiction" treatment centers. This is far more dangerous than the very gambling disorder it hopes to mitigate.
        Kiln6125 2y ago
        The issue is that the claims do not in any way stem from the concept that screens are the issue. Everyone else is talking about how the usage and content delivered through the screens are the issue. What you're describing seems to be semantics at best. It's akin to people talking about not going to strip clubs, and you saying "what's wrong with stages?".
- cooper_ganglia 2y ago
  I've never once looked at a study, nor could I possibly care less what some numbers on a paper say when I've got evidence in front of my own eyes. I'm speaking from experience, kids today are smooth-brained idiots that don't understand how to do some of the most basic things in life, nor do they have any desire to learn. I'm not some screeching, out of touch boomer, I'm someone who is in my mid-20s who has grown up floating in this shit-tank, and I'm so tied of watching people around me being preyed on by predatory algorithms. This is not some "Oh, curse these wretched novels, polluting the minds of our children with fiction!" This is the recognition that we have released a technology with an addiction cycle that has been intentionally built and tweaked to engage users and keep them on their platform as long as possible, and the human brain is not evolutionarily equipped to deal with that, least of all the developing mind of a child. They have neither the self-control nor the awareness of what's going on to determine that they're feeding an addiction that their parents enabled. Getting Entertainment Boxes™ out of places of education is a great first step in that direction.
  - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
    > I'm speaking from experience, kids today are smooth-brained idiots that don't understand how to do some of the most basic things in life, nor do they have any desire to learn. I'm not some screeching, out of touch boomer, I'm someone who is in my mid-20s who has grown up floating in this shit-tank, and I'm so tied of watching people around me being preyed on by predatory algorithms. Well said, and I concur. I think we are precisely the right age to have seen a decent amount of the transition, too.
- DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  But there is a lot of modern research towards these questions. But more importantly: most of us see and feel and experience the challenges of inattention and screen time in our real lives. Do you not have those same experiences?
- EasyMark 2y ago
  If you’re at school, you’re there for learning activities, not phone activities. I don’t think you’ll find too many people on HN that think all digital entertainment is bad, we’re just saying kids need guardrails and limits, and there is little practical use for cell phones at school vs the damage they do to the learning experience.
JohnMakin 2y ago
Where in what I said says they do?

superkuh 2y ago

>intensely dopaminergic mental stimulation Adults need to stop regurgitating 1970s era neuroscience tropes long proven false as if they were facts. You come off like someone pointing at their monitor declaring the internet is broken because the monitor is set to the wrong display input. Not even wrong. These extremely scientificially incorrect memes re: "dopamine" and "screens" are far more dangerous to society than looking at screens ever could be because they're used to justify use of physical force against human persons in contexts where there is no force or coercion or fraud.

Kiln6125 2y ago
There are quite a few of these studies from the modern era about the effect that these devices have on children. They posit the exact opposite of what you're saying here, and have data to back it up. I presume that these are what you're referring to as "non-scientific" here and have specific issues with their methodology, and not just disliking the concept that phone/social media could be bad in some fashion. Can you explain why they are all false?
- superkuh 2y ago
  I'll put in as much effort in my rebutal as was shown in the initial false statement (very little). In the 60/70s there was this idea that dopaminergic populations of neurons (of which there are many with different roles, but here lets simply talk about the mesolimbic populations in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc). Early electrophysiological studies found that activiating these populations could lead to animal models doing whatever was necessary to get them stimulated again. This lead to the idea of dopamine as the "pleasure chemical". But since then it's been found that in the VTA and (shell of) the NAc the dopaminergic populations don't actually encode for pleasure or reward at all. The reward/pleasure is mediated almost entirely by glutamergic neurons in the NAc, and the dopaminergic projections there from the VTA encode for belief in possible future reward, not reward itself. Dopamine is wanting (prediction of liking), not liking. Furthermore, the idea that screens are a special type of stimuli that can directly bypass the senses and act like a dopaminergic drug to increase incentive salience (wanting) without there being intrinsic pleasure to the stimuli is absurd and unsupported magical thinking. It needs no special disproval; the burden of proof is on such a wild unphysical claim. Screens are not, and cannot be "addictive". That word has a medical meaning and it does not cover screens. You may object and say, "But what of gambling?" to which I respond, the DSM5+ and ICD10 both have it as "gambling disorder" because it's not an addiction and it's a grandfathered in disorder at that; all by itself. Additionally, the DSM spent the last decade addressing the potential issue of "screens" and each commitee returned with the same conclusion: not enough evidence for inclusion (latest was 2022). If you really do want to learn the nitty gritty details and see the references I suggest starting with Kent Berridge's lab on affective neuroscience and his review papers, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/berridge-lab/publications/ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/berridge-lab/publications/
  - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
    I don't think anyone is claiming this: > Furthermore, the idea that screens are a special type of stimuli that can directly bypass the senses and act like a dopaminergic drug to increase incentive salience (wanting) without there being intrinsic pleasure to the stimuli is absurd and unsupported magical thinking. Or at least it's not the damning point you're making it out to be. I think there is an issue with smartphones, attention, and development, but I don't claim that screens are anything other than an audiovisual medium. Nor do I think they need to increase specifically "incentive salience without intrinsic pleasure" to be a problem. Do you not see gambling addiction as an issue in real life? Do you not see massively decreased attention statistics as an issue in real life? It feels like you're arguing against a position that is both incorrect and irrelevant, when the rest of us are talking about things that are obviously an issue in real life, regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with this approach. Do you not struggle with anything like what is being discussed here, or see it in others?
    - superkuh 2y ago
      No one is claiming it, true. They don't understand their claims stem entirely from this position and only make any sort of sense if they claim it. But they don't have the background knowledge to work out the foundations of their statement. My personal experience and emotional response has no relevance to the neuroscience involved. As for your continued use of "gambling addiction": There is no such thing as gambling addiction medically as I explained. It's a social meme without basis that is overloading the word mostly for profit in non-medical "addiction" treatment centers. This is far more dangerous than the very gambling disorder it hopes to mitigate.
      - Kiln6125 2y ago
        The issue is that the claims do not in any way stem from the concept that screens are the issue. Everyone else is talking about how the usage and content delivered through the screens are the issue. What you're describing seems to be semantics at best. It's akin to people talking about not going to strip clubs, and you saying "what's wrong with stages?".
cooper_ganglia 2y ago
I've never once looked at a study, nor could I possibly care less what some numbers on a paper say when I've got evidence in front of my own eyes. I'm speaking from experience, kids today are smooth-brained idiots that don't understand how to do some of the most basic things in life, nor do they have any desire to learn. I'm not some screeching, out of touch boomer, I'm someone who is in my mid-20s who has grown up floating in this shit-tank, and I'm so tied of watching people around me being preyed on by predatory algorithms. This is not some "Oh, curse these wretched novels, polluting the minds of our children with fiction!" This is the recognition that we have released a technology with an addiction cycle that has been intentionally built and tweaked to engage users and keep them on their platform as long as possible, and the human brain is not evolutionarily equipped to deal with that, least of all the developing mind of a child. They have neither the self-control nor the awareness of what's going on to determine that they're feeding an addiction that their parents enabled. Getting Entertainment Boxes™ out of places of education is a great first step in that direction.
- DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  > I'm speaking from experience, kids today are smooth-brained idiots that don't understand how to do some of the most basic things in life, nor do they have any desire to learn. I'm not some screeching, out of touch boomer, I'm someone who is in my mid-20s who has grown up floating in this shit-tank, and I'm so tied of watching people around me being preyed on by predatory algorithms. Well said, and I concur. I think we are precisely the right age to have seen a decent amount of the transition, too.
DiggyJohnson 2y ago
But there is a lot of modern research towards these questions. But more importantly: most of us see and feel and experience the challenges of inattention and screen time in our real lives. Do you not have those same experiences?
EasyMark 2y ago
If you’re at school, you’re there for learning activities, not phone activities. I don’t think you’ll find too many people on HN that think all digital entertainment is bad, we’re just saying kids need guardrails and limits, and there is little practical use for cell phones at school vs the damage they do to the learning experience.

JohnMakin 2y ago

Where in what I said says they do?