Hacker News Reader

Comment by malvosenior | Hacker News Reader

People have been saying this about video games, heavy metal, tv, rock-n-roll... for 70+ years. Older generations fear new technology/social change. That's well documented.

It's interesting to hear about phone obsession and compare it with video footage of The Beatles landing in the US for the first time with hundreds of fans screaming to the point of delerium. Is there even anything that powerful that exists in our culture today?

EDIT: Could someone please explain why this is flagged? If you disagree with my statement, I'd love to hear why.

View on HN

I think the big difference is you didn't hear of heavy metal or rock bands hiring psychologists to engineer their product.

There was an element of TV and advertising to sell you a physical product. What is different with tech is the stimulation of the brain that it accomplished something or makes you feel good about something (likes on a social media pic).

Game and social media companies aren't just grabbing your attention to show you a cool new toy. They are grabbing your attention by hiring psychologists to help engineer their product (game, social media) so you don't want to put it down. Many mobile games are engineered like a heroin dealer - first one's free, you get to a certain level/time played and you have to pay to get ahead.

That is much different than seeing a commercial for a new Star Wars toy. And much more different than an older person not relating to new technology.

I would argue that psychological manipulation is at the heart of all 20th century media and advertising. If you haven't seen it, check out The Century Of Self. It covers the roots of 20th century marketing and individualism (psychology).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

Bands may not have hired psychologists but record labels were definitely manipulative to fans and artists alike.

> I would argue that psychological manipulation is at the heart of all 20th century media and advertising.

The difference here is the incredibly tight feedback loop and a unique, detailed psychologial profile of each user to work with.

Of course it is. Advertising and it's sibling propaganda have always been about psychological manipulation, at least in part.

The main difference in the cell phone era is access and engagement. It's an interesting question, I think, as to whether this constitutes merely a difference of degree or a fundamental shift.

Companies talk about viral loops, positive reinforcement and variable rewards. These are literally weaponized psychology used to generate revenue. If you don't see how that's different from music and TV, I got nothing for you. As an aside, games have mostly been taken over by this mentality, so I'm removing them from your list -- but the Tipper Gore era video games were a joke compared to modern games.

And they've generally been right, to some extent or another - many social ills can probably be linked (by varying degrees), to commercial (and political) psychological manipulation through media and culture.

Even though the sky hasn't fallen, its definitely something we should be concerned about and understand. Today, such influencers are often working with unprecedented levels of personal data (much of it freely-given) that can be used to manipulate people.

The difference is all of those supercomputers, machine learning algorithms and engineers on the other side of the screen working with massive amounts of data points about every single interaction across networks and applications tuned down to the individual level. Never before in history has this been possible.

Nobody said that heavy metal, tv or rock-n-roll is using very sophisticated method based on human psychology to make people addicted to their product.

I said it and it's definitely true. TV has been doing this forever. Laugh tracks are a psychological trick. As are cliffhangers... Television is designed to be addictive and sell ads, just like apps.

> People have been saying this

What is "this", in this context? The article isn't 1% as shallow as your pre-emptive dismissal of it.

I think the articles subtitle sums it up:

> How psychology is being used as a weapon against children

My dismissal isn't pre-emptive btw, I read the article (and many others like it). I stand by my original comment.

It's pre-emptive in that it doesn't address any of it, you just says that "this" has been said about other things, supposedly implying that since this somehow refutes even one sentence in the article, making all discussion of any details in it superfluous.

But you don't even have the courtesy to say that, just leave it implied, and then paper that over with some fluff about the Beatles as if that could distract from that. So you "stand behind" stating a triviality and then not saying what you cannot directly defend.

About "older generations rejecting change", that old, dank chestnut... conveniently ignoring all the changes welcomed with open arms by older generations, too, and all the young people who think this stuff stinks. It's a fake narrative to skirt actual argumentation. More importantly, resistance against these methods, as well as the people who rationalize them, is just as much "progress" as is inventing and employing them.

So you don't think what I said is true? That every form of entertainment targeted toward young people for the past half a century has had the same rhetoric attached to it? Were you alive in the 80s? Do you remember that D&D was accused of causing Satanism and causing teens to commit human sacrifice? I'm seriously not making that up, it happened.

The entire thesis of the blog post is that tech companies are "ruining" our children by employing psychologically manipulative product development. My argument is that this has been happening for ages and people continue to grow up as regular human beings.

Of course it's true that most forms of media and entertainment have been subject to, "Won't someone THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!" responses from busy-bodies, fear-mongers, and others.

That in no way mitigates the fact that this medium is categorically different. None of newspapers, comics, D&D, TV, or any of those other things had immediate, real-time feedback adapted specifically to the individual user, and designed to weaponize the amygdala and dopamine responses to maximize engagement, at the cost of basically everything else.

Interactive tech brings a sea change in this phenomenon and its effectiveness. You can't meaningfully dismiss that, because it's predicated on the paltry shadow of what happened with non-interactive media.

EDIT: Consider, for example, the cohort of children whose early development screen time correlates profoundly strongly with their inability to hold a pencil. That's new. TV didn't do that. D&D didn't do that. Screens did.

I beg to differ. I think you're definitely overestimating the importance of individualization. TV has been doing all of these things for half a century. People will literally watch it all day and definitely become addicted.

Advertising has been "weaponizing the amygdala" for a century. It's designed to instill insecurity and envy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com