blindsight @ blindsight @beehaw.org

Posts

7

Comments

1,079

Joined

2 yr. ago

My children are both, and I'm one of those.

There's no moral panic in my concerns about cell phones, just evidence about their detrimental effects on mental health.

Could you please be more clear? As a concerned father and educator, I strongly agree with Haidt's broad argument and I am very worried for Gen Alpha coming of age with addiction machines on them 24/7. I'd like to hear more about what possible "sinister true motivations" might be aligning with my concern for youth mental health.

Non-algorithmic websites aren't a problem in the same way and can be accessed from a home computer or tablet. Chat rooms and web forums are generally really wholesome spaces, at least if they're moderated. There are lots of amazing spaces for 2SLGBTQ+ and neurospicy youth to connect outside of for-profit, maximize-engagement, addiction services.

Part of the reason to ban smart phones is notification anxiety, btw. The constant barrage of notifications scoring youth on their value as a person ("likes") is addictive and incredibly toxic. Removing constant distraction from notifications in their pockets at all times alone is a huge benefit, and there is strong research supporting that. (Like the study that showed even having a switched off phone in the room impacts the ability to focus, with increasing effects of the phone is in their pocket but off, increasing again if it's on but silent).

I strongly, vehemently reject that limiting smart phone access will hurt 2SLGBTQ+ and neurospicy kiddos from finding connection as there are many better ways of accessing safer online spaces than what phone apps. (My favourite example is the "autism" Minecraft server moderated by dads of autistic kiddos—what an amazing, wholesome project!)

You're also right, of course, but children (with a developing prefrontal cortex) are particularly vulnerable, and that's borne out by magnified mental health effects from social media use. Restricting social media would have big, positive effects.

The reason for age 16 being proposed is that this gives a couple of years for parents to help support youth with managing access to social media, for example by having supportive conversations about how to manage toxic content and people.

Snapchat in particular (but TikTok and Instagram, too) is absolutely toxic for children and should be illegal, imho. This legislation is a step in the right direction, but we'll need to educate parents to move the needle even further if we want to see major mental health gains.

If you're a parent reading this, please consider getting your child a dumb phone instead of a smartphone! A tablet at home is fine—not having notifications 24/7, and being in a semi-monitored space (with no social media apps installed) will make a big difference.

FYI: My understanding is that smart phones make school shootings more deadly, as they start misinformation, panic, and help shooters find targeted individuals. But school shootings aren't a major concern where I used to teach (not the US), so I never looked into whether this is sorted by research, it was just the explanation we were given as teachers for our lockdown procedures.

So glad to hear that more districts are following the evidence on the toxicity of cell phones on youth mental health. As a former secondary teacher, I've been following this very closely, and it's good to see politicians actually doing the right thing in increasing numbers globally, finally. If only we could get more parents on board with banning social media access for their children (until age ~16) in the first place!!

To be clear, there's very little evidence that having dumb phones are a problem. Phone calls are great, and simple SMS/MMS texting is largely used by students effectively for communication and to build connections. And, obviously, are more than sufficient for parents to keep in contact with their children.

The problem is smart phones, especially "social media" apps, but, more generally, with addictive and deceptive dark patterns in most popular apps and, increasingly, websites.

For example, within minutes with a fresh account on TikTok, Instagram, or SnapChat shorts, teenage girls will be shown content promoting self harm/suicide and encouraging disordered eating. Teenage boys will be shown misogynistic "manosphere" and racist content just as quickly. It's incredibly toxic.

I've already written too much for an Internet comment, but if you want to learn more, Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation" is a great, recent popular press book that explains this in detail. The only big criticism I've heard is that he does the Malcolm Gladwell thing where he jumps a bit farther than the evidence supports, but the book is otherwise very sound, well explained, and well researched. And, even if his conclusions aren't the ideal solution (as sorted by evidence), it's still grounded in reality and much better than the status quo, so I think this criticism is overstated.

Not parent poster, but I use AutoHotkey on my Windows machine. I use it all the time when grading math work, especially, since I have macros set up for all the most common math symbols (exponents, common fractions, ≠≈π√×÷¢–— etc.) I also have macros set up for common links I send out, an ISO date for today (mostly for naming files), and key sequences for some repetitive workflows.

The em dash was one of my first macros—and rightly so!

Eh... I was also going to say Heroes, but I think it jumped the shark partway through season 1.

The "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World" story arc is some of the best television ever, but it rapidly goes downhill from there. Then in season 2, they tried to get fan involvement in the story and, predictably, it was terrible.

But for anyone who hasn't seen it, you'll know the story arc I'm talking about, and it's obvious when it ends. Well worth watching up to that point!

Right, but if the beans they roast come through the US, then locally roasted beans will still have American tariffs applied, and it's often not worth applying to get a refund. The goods were not for final sale in the US, the tariffs don't apply, but the paperwork is more onerous than the refund, for smaller businesses. That's the point.

Yeah, it's owned by Burger King, and the new owners accelerated the reduction in quality that had started a decade before the buyout.

The reason for my particular gripes with Tim Horton's is their over-the-top Canadian branding of an American company. It should be illegal, as clearly false marketing.

They're also franchises, and are notorious for most franchise owners being borderline abusive to their largely teenage and immigrant staff, who may not know better or have the resources to fight back against illegal labour practices.

And the food is terrible, and the coffee is the second worst in the Canadian fast food industry (after A&W).

What is there not to hate about Tom Horton's?

In a just society, there can be no tolerance for intolerance.

Eh, for most things, sure. I'm right with you for most media, but there's a lot to be said for confining content when it's part of the cultural zeitgeist. Ain't nobody talking about Game of Thrones now, and it's only 6 years old, not even a decade.

With any sort of piracy setup, almost all mainstream media is incredibly easy to get within a few hours of release, and most "Long Tail" content can be found pretty easily, too. If it's so obscure that you still can't find it, then that's likely a good indication that you're solidly pushing into indie content that hardly earns any income, so they could really benefit from us paying for their content.

We do try to make sure indie content creators get paid, though. For example, Kindle Unlimited is pretty amazing for us. My wife and I share an account, and we read so voraciously that authors get paid out about 10× what we pay for the service. Maths out roughly like this: ~30 books/month, on average, at ~1¢/page (actual pages, not Kindle standardized e-reader pages, which are only half a page), at ~250-300 pages/book is $75-90/mo, and we pay for 2 years in advance at I think $7ish/mo.

But I'm totally with you on games. I spend lots on videogames, but almost entirely for indie game bundles at $1-2/game, typically. I have literally thousands of games I'd love to play going back decades, so I don't need the latest releases unless it's a game I'm super excited for.

Which ones? It's pretty easy to pass Strong Integrity.

With a web browser and user agent spoofing, that's basically how it works. I don't want any Facebook/Meta apps on my phone, so I use a desktop Google Chrome rule for all Meta URLs in my browser and user the web versions. Mobile is slowly taking over, but most things have a web version.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work for everything. The Quest 3 requires an Android or iOS device to set up. At least an old cell phone on a throwaway Google account works for most of these, since they don't need to be used often.

With Star Wars, they didn't even do the main film franchise well. Episode 7 was okay, but 8 was such hot garbage I read up on why and found out there was no overarching plan for the trilogy, and different directors for each. No wonder they pulled a J.K. Rowling to completely change the rules of their own systems to meet the needs of the (bad) plot, and shit all over their own franchise. Skywalker might as well have been given a Super Time Turner to save the day in 8.

Disney Star Wars films are bad fan fiction, not canon.

I'm surprised it's only 33%. Even ignoring the 51st state threats of annexation, ICE is arbitrarily holding Canadians in inhumane conditions with absolutely no due process or judicial oversight. People in ICE detention centres, right now, are being given aluminum foil for blankets to sleep on concrete floors, while being given literally moldy food. A (Caucasian) Canadian died in ICE detention already this year, likely from being denied access to essential medications (anti-seizure meds, iirc?)

Who the hell are the 67% that are still continuing to travel to the US? Are they clueless, or do they assume they'll be fine since they're white?

Fair enough! Thanks for correcting me. That does sound like a very well designed study.

Exactly. Studies like these are great, but this doesn't mean veganism reduces cancer risk at all. It could be, for example, that vegans tend to be careful about their intake of macro- and micronutrients, and/or that vegans tend to exercise more, and/or that vegans tend to eat less fast food/processed food, and/or that vegans tend to be more affluent and thus seek/get better medical care, and/or (etc.)

It's most definitely not as simple as "but consuming any animal products makes you ¼ less likely to get cancer." It could even be the opposite effect, although that's unlikely, of course. But this result doesn't rule out that other lifestyle choices made by vegans have, say, 30% benefits that more than "counteract" the –6% harm that comes from avoiding fish protein/fats or whatever.

For me, it completely messed up my whole-word and multi-word reading by shape. Like, I don't read by syllable because I'm not pronouncing the words, I'm just reading the meaning of the whole word directly from the shape of the whole word (or several words), if that makes sense?

Like, when I'm reading, my inner monologue is only "saying" a handful of key words in each sentence, as it fluidity skips over "mentally pronouncing" all the filler/context words.

This completely breaks that. It splits each word into two chunks, neither of which is the word, so I need to show down to "mentally say" both chunks of each word to read them. Like, it's still fast, I guess, but I'd estimate it slows me down by ⅓-½ish and disrupts my reading comprehension significantly.

I assume that if I read like that for a few hours, I'd likely get used to it, but why bother?

On the other hand, I think that could be a great reading tool, I imagine especially for people with dyslexia, but probably most fluent but slow readers.