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“No smartphone” is a boundary, and U.S. parents are often raised not to set boundaries under threat of mental, emotional, and/or physical abuse. So it makes per

“No smartphone” is a boundary, and U.S. parents are often raised not to set boundaries under threat of mental, emotional, and/or physical abuse. So it makes perfect sense that we have now-parents completely unable to define and discuss boundaries with their children. Far better to capitulate in the face of an uncertain and not life-threatening risk than to allow their child to ever think that boundaries are healthy, etc. For the unfamiliar, here is a good starting point for understanding the generational cognitive dissonance in play: https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/contradictory-beliefs.html https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/contradicto...

j45 10mo ago
It's starting to change in places, including in the US. The reality is it's not the smartphone, but the slot machine type software running on it. There's more than enough science that placing this kind of content in front of humans before their prefrontal cortex is fully formed at age 25-26 leads them to leaning on the pre-frontal context of the adults around them, and missing that, whatever they're spending the most time with that's then possibly raising them. Screens at lower resolutions and quality didn't seem to be as much of an issue compared to the hyper saturated motion with sound effects that are consciously chosen to keep eyeballs. Like anything, digital can be used for good, or bad, and in lieu of good, the other can to happen and become more of a default.
- godelski 10mo ago
  I agree but it is much harder to stop people from building slot machines than to stop children from using them. Even easier than telling people to stop using them. And hey, maybe if we actually take some autonomy and remove that market from actors who don't want to build the things the market is requesting then they'll actually build the things the market is requesting... it's easy to say we want something but no one listens when we still buy the thing we say we hate. Maybe it's addiction but it's still hard to fight against. (Though we could still do better by accommodating those who are trying to break the network effects. You can complain how hard it is to get off Facebook but if you're not going to make the minuscule extra effort to accommodate those who do leave then how can you expect the ground to be laid for you to?) At the end of the day though, with kids, the OP's argument fails because it either assumes smartphones are an inevitability or that the benefits outweigh the costs. It's a bad argument.
  - j45 10mo ago
    The market isn't always requesting thing, viral consumer loops are used to form addictive habits to get a market to request things. That being said, it could be used for more positive things too, beyond attention farming and resale to ads alone.
b00ty4breakfast 10mo ago
Even the most Laissez-faire of parenting has boundaries; no reasonable adult is allowing their teenager to experiment with heroin or giving their 12 year old permission to drive their car down the freeway. The problem is that smartphone access isn't seen in the same category of danger that recreational opiates and unlicensed driving are in.
- binary132 10mo ago
  “Reasonable” is a lynchpin bearing an awful lot of load here. Most people unfortunately aren’t very reasonable.
  - godelski 10mo ago
    It's a pretty generalized phenomena too. Few people actually think about the assumptions their arguments rely upon. It makes actual discussions difficult to have and leads to more arguing than problem solving
  - Dylan16807 10mo ago
    > “Reasonable” is a lynchpin bearing an awful lot of load here. No it's not. I could imagine sentences where it would be, but not this sentence. Here, watch me replace the word: "99% of adults are not allowing their teenager to to experiment with heroin or giving their 12 year old permission to drive their car down the freeway." Even if most people aren't ""reasonable"", they are whatever adjective that sentence describes.
    - altairprime 10mo ago
      “Over half of U.S. adults surveyed said that it’s very inappropriate, somewhat appropriate, or were uncertain whether it’s appropriate for their child to set boundaries for their interactions” is a reasonable-sounding statement, too; it’s plausible, applies to children of all ages (below or beyond age 25!), and is demonstrably an aspect of culture represented by media and other ephemera. The position itself is, of course, completely unreasonable — boundaries are never inappropriate to consider (and to contrast with the parent’s boundaries about immediate versus deferred conversations in unsafe circumstances, the child’s age and cognitive ability to assess risk, and so on), no matter how uncomfortable it is to teach a child about boundaries by honoring one they’ve presented one! — but that intolerance is presented in such a reasonable guise, with a tone of majority support to quash any brief qualms, that it causes many to overlook its true nature. See also “pleasant”, as in “Pleasantville”.

j45 10mo ago

It's starting to change in places, including in the US. The reality is it's not the smartphone, but the slot machine type software running on it. There's more than enough science that placing this kind of content in front of humans before their prefrontal cortex is fully formed at age 25-26 leads them to leaning on the pre-frontal context of the adults around them, and missing that, whatever they're spending the most time with that's then possibly raising them. Screens at lower resolutions and quality didn't seem to be as much of an issue compared to the hyper saturated motion with sound effects that are consciously chosen to keep eyeballs. Like anything, digital can be used for good, or bad, and in lieu of good, the other can to happen and become more of a default.

godelski 10mo ago
I agree but it is much harder to stop people from building slot machines than to stop children from using them. Even easier than telling people to stop using them. And hey, maybe if we actually take some autonomy and remove that market from actors who don't want to build the things the market is requesting then they'll actually build the things the market is requesting... it's easy to say we want something but no one listens when we still buy the thing we say we hate. Maybe it's addiction but it's still hard to fight against. (Though we could still do better by accommodating those who are trying to break the network effects. You can complain how hard it is to get off Facebook but if you're not going to make the minuscule extra effort to accommodate those who do leave then how can you expect the ground to be laid for you to?) At the end of the day though, with kids, the OP's argument fails because it either assumes smartphones are an inevitability or that the benefits outweigh the costs. It's a bad argument.
- j45 10mo ago
  The market isn't always requesting thing, viral consumer loops are used to form addictive habits to get a market to request things. That being said, it could be used for more positive things too, beyond attention farming and resale to ads alone.

b00ty4breakfast 10mo ago

Even the most Laissez-faire of parenting has boundaries; no reasonable adult is allowing their teenager to experiment with heroin or giving their 12 year old permission to drive their car down the freeway. The problem is that smartphone access isn't seen in the same category of danger that recreational opiates and unlicensed driving are in.

binary132 10mo ago
“Reasonable” is a lynchpin bearing an awful lot of load here. Most people unfortunately aren’t very reasonable.
- godelski 10mo ago
  It's a pretty generalized phenomena too. Few people actually think about the assumptions their arguments rely upon. It makes actual discussions difficult to have and leads to more arguing than problem solving
- Dylan16807 10mo ago
  > “Reasonable” is a lynchpin bearing an awful lot of load here. No it's not. I could imagine sentences where it would be, but not this sentence. Here, watch me replace the word: "99% of adults are not allowing their teenager to to experiment with heroin or giving their 12 year old permission to drive their car down the freeway." Even if most people aren't ""reasonable"", they are whatever adjective that sentence describes.
  - altairprime 10mo ago
    “Over half of U.S. adults surveyed said that it’s very inappropriate, somewhat appropriate, or were uncertain whether it’s appropriate for their child to set boundaries for their interactions” is a reasonable-sounding statement, too; it’s plausible, applies to children of all ages (below or beyond age 25!), and is demonstrably an aspect of culture represented by media and other ephemera. The position itself is, of course, completely unreasonable — boundaries are never inappropriate to consider (and to contrast with the parent’s boundaries about immediate versus deferred conversations in unsafe circumstances, the child’s age and cognitive ability to assess risk, and so on), no matter how uncomfortable it is to teach a child about boundaries by honoring one they’ve presented one! — but that intolerance is presented in such a reasonable guise, with a tone of majority support to quash any brief qualms, that it causes many to overlook its true nature. See also “pleasant”, as in “Pleasantville”.