Boy, Disconnected | Hacker News Reader

Boy, Disconnected

nytimes.com

43 pointscgoodmac15 comments

> Mostly he sold ads on his Instagram to other teenagers looking to promote their own pages, apps or online storefronts.

This is so MLM-esque. You can get big because I got big and if you follow me and do what I do, you'll get big like me too.

Meanwhile, exactly no value is being created. We need value creation not ... piggy backing? What is it? You might learn how to persuade people or know what people will click on or generate ad revenue, but what are you creating? What are you doing that makes the world a better place?

What practical skills are you improving or sharing or developing that will move the world forward?

The value appears to be merely convincing someone that something without value has actual value.

He wanted the clout to convince people of something that people shouldn't be convinced of. Don't go to college and get an education, because you can make 10k a month regurgitating someone else's meme photos.

Frankly, I don't understand it. I don't think it's good. Yes, in the article, there was mention of someone who appreciated what he was doing because it made them feel better, but so would developing a skill and being a productive member of society.

I can't see how the instagramification of the world is a good thing.

We were at Thanksgiving dinner and my friend's 8 year old was glued to his iPhone. He had almost zero interaction with anyone except to say, "I turned it down!" after he was finally called out at the dinner table for a super loud music video that started playing and the old folks around the table could recognize the song. It was ironic because finally those without a phone could connect to him by the sounds that had the prior part of the evening been distracting noise. We couldn't talk to each other because we were so aggravated by the phone.

You can't even get away from the internet when you aren't on a computer anymore. It's infiltrated every aspect of life. People don't share their lives in person anymore. If you ask how someone is doing, they say, "Didn't you read my feed?"

No. I didn't read your feed. I want to connect with you in real life. I want to create something with you if it's only a conversation.

I don't know what to do or where to go to change, but I fear the opportunities to rectify this bad direction are diminishing.

And yet that 8 year old child was left with a phone. At some point the adults in the room need to take some responsibility. It’s okay to tell your friends that you think it’s inappropriate for an 8 year old to be left alone with a phone at a social gathering.

I recently sent a postcard to a friend. She posted about it on Instagram (which I rarely check), but I didn’t get a personal message from her letting me know that she had received it. When I saw her in person I joked about her Instagram addiction, and told her how it made me feel. She’s a good friend, she understood, problem resolved.

There’s always been corporations fighting to take as much as they can from us, whether it’s by selling us cigarettes, trying to scam us on the phone, or presenting us with dopaminergic ad feeds. That’s what they are meant to do, by design.

We share the responsibility to educate our children, family, friends, push for new legislation, create new social taboos. The opportunities to rectify this bad direction won’t be handed to us; we have to create them. Complaining about the good old days is easy but accomplishes nothing (and they weren’t nearly as good as we think to begin with).

I recently read and enjoyed Cal Newport’s “Digital Minimalism.”

After reading it I locked Safari and Mail off my phone — those are the two that distract me constantly. I also deleted my Facebook account and removed the Twitter app from my phone.

I haven’t missed any of that, it’s been really liberating actually.

The next step, which was a bit harder, is I starter politely asking the people around me to put their phones away when we’re together. At work I ask my coworkers to close their laptops in meetings.

It’s kind of weird. Nobody has ever said no, and while one or two have found it a funny request, it has consistently led to much nicer meetings and social time. Some people have even thanked me for this.

Honestly I think it’s that simple.

As for the kid in your story, I don’t know. I have young kids and I don’t plan to let them have phones, and I don’t really let them have a lot of screen time. It’s a bit hard for me as I was that kid glued to the green and black computer screen learning by hacking... so instinctively I want them to have that same experience, but I’ve come to realize it just isn’t the same at all.

One day, when they’re a little bigger, I’m hoping I can interest them in building an 8 bit computer together, programming Pong on it, things like that. I don’t know if that’ll work, but I hope so.

I’ve kind of resigned myself that if I can’t get them interested in simpler / retro / hacker tech, that I’d rather they not use tech much at all than be digital zombies. :/

> I’d rather they not use tech much at all than be digital zombies

At one of my kids schools, tablets were mandatory so that the kids could develop "technology skills". ipads no less.

Give me a break. Tablets and so on took off because they are so frigging easy to use. Being able to use a tablet says exactly zero about your tech skills.

If you want kids to learn tech skills, then make them use a Raspberry Pi, or an 8 bit computer etc., and do some programming.

Otherwise, they should spend their youth running around outside, learning IRL social skills, and then come back at age 14 or 15 and spend a couple of hours getting their tech skills up to their peers level.

Is it acceptable to ask people to put away their phones? Anyone have ideas on how to do this diplomatically?

It seems to be acceptable when I do it. I just say something like, “Hey would you mind if we all put our phones away for the afternoon so we won’t be distracted by them?” Or going into a meeting I’ll say “hey can we all keep our laptops closed to avoid distraction, please?”

Nobody has ever gotten upset, or said no for that matter.

The MLM point is good but not quite right. It's not like his whole audience is there mainly to try to be an "influencer" like him. Some are probably just more passive readers.

I certainly share all your views about real human connection, and I especially hate the ad-driven economy described in the story.

We want to have curation as a specialization. There's value in that. We don't want it merely algorithmic or wisdom-of-crowds only. So, it's complex and I see points in defense of this stuff.

But the constant newness, quantities of daily updates… that stuff is where I feel this is most destructive. It plays into addiction on all sides and has no healthy balance.

Getting away from social media is relatively easy. Just delete your accounts. People who warn you about how you’ll miss out etc. are very rarely those who have actually deleted them. You’ll have more time, feel better about not supporting Facebook and other awful companies, and likely have improved mental health. Deleted Facebook a longtime ago and I’ve had to say “I don’t use it” when someone wanted to connect only twice since then. Anyone still worried about it. Just disable or delete your account without telling anyone - take a download of your data first if you like - you can always go back if you miss it.

Hacker news is a social network too. I think it's unfair to demonize young people's memes, it's just different. I've learnt a lot from young people's take on things than some old bitter oldfag.

tldr: 15yo boy has a FB account with 1.2M followers, which he fills with 100 posts a day. He makes $10k/month. Instagram shut down the account without warning or reasoning.

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Reported months ago in this article in Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/insta...

It notes that "More meme accounts than ever are monetizing, and memes have become the default way many young people consume news information on the platform" ... and notes that: “Curation is a kind of creation. Within the right bounds, there can be a lot of value in finding gems and sharing them...”

We changed the linkbait title to what seems to be the most representative sentence from the article.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(Edit: the sentence was "What Rowan wanted was clout". Since changed.)

FWIW there’s a footnote at the end of the article mentioning the print title of the article: “Boy, Disconnected”.

Good catch! let's go with that.

And not one mention of the ethics of the unattributed monetization of content other people spend their time and energy creating, likely for and without any payoff.

Then taking whatever money was coming from that and utilizing the schemes /biz/ discovers (bot purchases for high demand goods, drop shipping).

Zero value created, ethics trampled and yet his depression is over his lack of importance in the lives of transient internet celebrities.

One to watch, for sure.

Please do better than dyspeptic rants and personal attacks in comments here. As the site guidelines explain, we want curious conversation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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