On the Rise of Digital Addiction Activism | Hacker News Reader

On the Rise of Digital Addiction Activism

calnewport.com

36 pointswslh15 comments

I agree that Apple is the wrong target. So is social media.

I am not a doctor, but I am a parent. I think the problem is that kids cannot learn to cope with their problems and anxieties when they have zero idle time. Kids need time in the day to face and mentally process the social and hormonal challenges that they experience in everyday life. They simply cannot do this when all of their "boring" down-time is consumed with the distraction of devices. Youtube, chat, news, games, you name it.

Kids fill their idle time with all of this interactivity which keeps them entirely distracted from life's challenges, blocking them from achieving critical mental skills.

I also think this is why we are seeing the rise of so many "fidget" toys. Take away the phones and kids are desperate for some other form of distraction. Sure, some kids are natural fidgeters. But most are simply looking for another distraction from life's challenges.

Please correct me, but it appears you're suggesting that the onus is on the kids to get better - not the adults or multi-billion dollar corporations.

I interpreted his message more as the onus is on us as the adults, together society, to help children (also ourselves) to cope, deal with, face, and process life's many challenges.

> Kids fill their idle time with all of this interactivity which keeps them entirely distracted from life's challenges

Looking at my current situation (mental and otherwise), I'd say it's not limited to kids.

What I find funny: us "nerds" were addicted to computers long before everybody else, and now we are surprised/shocked that the general population is becoming addicted too :)

I also struggle with this dichotomy.

I have definitely used computers (and especially video games) as a means to avoid confronting personal emotional challenges, but that is not the whole picture for me.

For me, computers are an empowering tool, an extension of my arms and fingers and my mind, with which I can express myself creatively.

If children were spending all their time expressing themselves creatively through computers/phones/etc, then we would see this all very differently.

Are you not expressing yourself creatively by screwing around and playing in a game? Maybe that's not as possible with the digital slot machine games that seem to be all mobile devices these days can support.

I think the whole creation vs consumption thing is overblown, personally. You're not going to create things that are any good without first being a consumer of them. I would have never been interested in programming if I wasn't a PC gamer first, and dipped my toes in the water in my teens with modding.

Maybe it's time to break that down into "creation" and "consumption" based technology activities? This way we can co-opt the inevitable rise of technology and teach kids to add value.

> The addiction ensnaring children is not some master plan secretly hatched at Apple, but is instead the spawn of attention economy conglomerates like Facebook, who, unlike Apple, directly profit from compulsive use, and leverage the iPhone merely as a convenient platform.

It's simply not true. Apple directly profits from compulsive use - each app or in-app purchase means income for Apple. It's not a secret plan, it's a part of Apple's business model.

I bought two of Cal Newports books - I like his thoughts on mastering skills and digital life. He is spot on that children should be severely limited in the amount of time they can use digital devices.

I worry about digital addiction myself: yesterday, after a long day at work (coding and running some ML jobs), I had dinner and a Blu-ray movie-dinner with my wife, then spent almost two hours studying for an online class I am taking. That gave me over ten hours in front of a computer.

One thing that I try to do on my iPhone is to spend more time reading digital books or listening to audio books than surfing social media.

I would consider that an addiction as much as I would consider a carpenter to be addicted to a hammer. At least for the scenarios you have described. If you can't stop using those tools for no other reason that you don't feel capable of stopping using them, then yes, you are addicted. But if you need them (because there aren't other alternatives available like an in-person course) or it's more comfortable using them (for example, avoiding the annoyance to go the cinema to watch a movie with the queues and all that), then it's not an addiction.

A lot of people say apple is the wrong target, but their app ecosystem and device use model rewards these sorts of behaviors and discourages community maintained software (which I would argue is often more likely to serve the needs of the user rather than just the authors.)

> The iPhone was not designed to be addictive. [...] The addiction ensnaring children is not some master plan secretly hatched at Apple, but is instead the spawn of attention economy conglomerates like Facebook, who, unlike Apple, directly profit from compulsive use, and leverage the iPhone merely as a convenient platform.

Apple makes quite a bit of money on app store sales[1]. We well know how the "free" to play market works[2]. It arguably thrives by triggering the same mechanisms as social media applications.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/apple-generated-a-record-300...

[2] http://toucharcade.com/2015/09/16/we-own-you-confessions-of-...

Apple isn't really the right target if we are looking for someone to blame, but placing blame is a lot less useful than seeking solutions. I suspect that a company could make a lot of money by marketing a device with the features of things like https://freedom.to/ built-in to the device.

- A notification and calling API which can be set to "I'm driving" or "I'm focusing" mode.

- Scheduling certain websites or apps to be cut off from the internet at certain points of the day, without the ability to unset this when a focus session has started.

If an Apple investor sees a market need for this, why not push Apple to build it?

More selfies and animogie. No they are not the target. They just make big profits on target.

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