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"Bad parent" can be applied to anything that goes wrong, and is an empty assertion. And it seems to be asymmetrically applied to mothers, not fathers.

Also, one of the first rules of parenting is, never show any sign of weakness in public, or you will be attacked ruthlessly. It's a variant on the old saying, "Never let them see you sweat."

This bias in the literature makes it look like there are some brilliant parents out there, who have found the secret for success that the rest of us can "just" follow. There are of course parallels in the business literature.

The best formula I have observed is that obedient, self disciplined children tend to have obedient, self disciplined parents.

I overheard a discussion between two friends about the effects of TV on behavior. One friend's argument: "Of course commercial TV affects behavior. That's its purpose." This stuff is designed to manipulate us. Maybe that's possible with books too, but books have just not risen to that level of sophistication.

It's kind of comforting that the ad industry has thrown billions of dollars into trying to mind-control people, and conversion rates are still super low. Maybe we got lucky; maybe on another planet somewhere, intelligent life is 1000x more susceptible to ads.

It's a zero sum game, no matter how much money you put into it, the result is always gonna be the same.

> Also, one of the first rules of parenting is, never show any sign of weakness in public, or you will be attacked ruthlessly. It's a variant on the old saying, "Never let them see you sweat."

I agree with everything you say except for this. We have friends (2 kids now) where mom is like that. On first glance all is perfect, she is perfect mom that manages to do so many things, all is great etc. Apart from actual reality once you know them better and you know where to look. At the end they are no better than rest of us, in some aspects far from it (this kind of behavior stems from some deeper issue(s), which tend to manifest in various ways). And all this charade starts to look pathetic pretty quickly.

Be honest, open, laugh at your fails, we all went through it, its normal. It will get you further with almost everybody including yourself. Definitely with me.

/ If I misunderstood what you meant then sorry for the preaching.

Ah, but do you have kids? Because whooboy, lemme tell ya... Speaking as a parent, I can honestly say there is nobody more judgemental than other parents. I can't tell you how many times I've heard parents criticize other people's parenting.

Parenting is a thankless job is fraught with insecurity and doubt, and every parent thinks they are not doing good enough, and constantly comparing themselves to other parents. Seeing a parent who shows weakness, who is not doing a good job, is a vindication for parents. "Hey, look, I'm not as bad as HIM/HER". You don't want other parents to think that about you, so you make sure you never EVER allow parents to see you make a mistake because you know the first thing that will happen is they will go home and talk about it with their parent/parent/friend/whoever.

Parenting is just like any other job. You can be an employee, but if people think you're a screw up don't expect to be invited to any social functions. Except in this case it's not just you who is getting excluded... It's your child and the rest of your family.

> The best formula I have observed is that obedient, self disciplined children tend to have obedient, self disciplined parents.

I agree and hope people don't take this in a defeatist way. I've found that the biggest impact you can have on anyone's behavior (adult or child) is to set the example. Kids can smell hypocrisy a mile away, and besides, they only know how to act the way the see. Work on yourself, and your kids will follow.

> I've found that the biggest impact you can have on anyone's behavior (adult or child) is to set the example.

I agree in principle, but I find that that doesn't map very well to the digital world.

This past Saturday, I spent about six hours staring at a screen. My kids did too. I was making music, an act I find creative, meaningful, and intellectually stimulating. They were mostly watching YouTube videos of people playing Minecraft.

At the primitive monkey brain level where "setting an example" kicks in, all my kids saw was that I was staring at a screen so they did too.

Learning to play Minecraft seems like a meaningful activity. It's essentially digital Legos, not to different perhaps from the way you compose music on your digital canvas.

Is there something else you would rather your kids be doing?

Go outside. Explore the neighborhood. Ride your bike. Read a book. Practice your cello. Tinker in the basement.

I may be old fashioned, but Minecraft strikes me as faux-creative. It's not something you get "better" at. That's just my reaction, having watched it done. It puts you in a state of flow without actually flowing anywhere.

My question was intended as a direct question to parent poster. If that's what you want your kids to be doing, then that's what you should be doing. Your kid wants to be just like you. They watch everything you do, and they will find their own way to do what they think you are doing.

So, want your kids to go outside? Go outside. Want them to read? Read. Want them to practice cello? Practice cello.

Want them to learn how to build digital creative? Let them see you building your own digital creations.

I did all of those things.

From my experience and observation of other parents and kids, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes they want to be like you, sometimes the opposite.

There's certainly many factors involved (age is a huge one), and it's important to remember that you cannot control or change other people. You can only influence them to change. I believe that is just as true of children as any other human.

By doing the activity yourself, you expose the child to it, and they may decide to take part. Over time, they will almost certainly take interest. That doesn't mean you read a book one day and get frustrated because they are playing video games. You read a book every weekend because you want to, and over time, it influences how your child perceives best use of free time, demonstrates discipline, and showcases a non video game activity.

Ok, so why did you not make music together with your children if you don't want them to watch Minecraft videos? It feels like you wasted an opportunity there. Blaming your kids for not knowing how to make music is pretty weird.

Yeah. Every time I hear someone blamed for bad parenting, I think about how Abraham Lincoln's father used to beat him for reading. Let's all try to raise little Lincolns, then?

I was 100% convinced my kids won't get these devices until their very late teens, when I saw how my less than 1 year old reacted to the phones my wife and I use. Because his reaction is pure instinct, the dopamine response just to the colors and brightness was shocking.

We now have to work HARD to keep these devices away from him. Part of it, of course, is he observes how much attention we pay them but his eyes definitely light up differently when they are turned on. And that's without the manipulative, 1000-engineers-optimizing-for-your-addiction software built into them.

I honestly find it harder and harder to believe these things do anything positive for us. I 100% believe they can I just think we've turned them into something ugly, right now.

I've babysat for friends with a 3 and 5 yr old, and it is phenomenal how you could grab their attention (and distract from any ailment they had a second earlier) by showing them youtube videos of fire engines with sirens.

Although we occasionally resort to Cocomelon in desperation - the absolute trance it induces is the stuff of dystopian nightmares.

I agree with you - when a book is down, a TV is off or a console is off, it doesn't ping you and light up to gain your attention. Sure, as kids we watched a lot of TV, but when it was time to turn it off we didn't get a sound to tell us someone "Liked" your photo. As you said, these aren't bi-directional.

I think the hardest thing for this parent was balancing what was right for their child (and they seemed to be confident in their opinion) and what would hold them back socially at school. It's hard to say no to a child that says "Everyone else has an iPhone" because we all remember being that kid left out from something when we were young.

IDK. I mean you're right, of course, but I remember getting engrossed in books to the point where I lost sleep, or delayed doing other important things because I either could not put it down or I was drawn back to it. This happened as a teen and as a young adult, not so much lately but I really don't read books nearly as much as I used to.

I was also an avid reader growing up and spent many nights under the covers with a flashlight.

I think the big difference is the adaptivity of the phone. Books don't figure out what personally engrosses you and tweak the rest of the book so you can't put it down. That feels too powerful IMO.

Also, at some point you finish the story. There's a natural stopping point and conclusion that makes it easier to out the book down and spend time doing something else before picking up the next one.

Contrast that with so many apps whose main feed uses some sort of infinite scroll.

> when a book is down, a TV is off or a console is off, it doesn't ping you and light up to gain your attention.

There's DND (Do Not Disturb) mode for this. It's just a button click away on all phones.

>unlike TV and books, this is an interactive device explicitly designed to manipulate our psychology into using it more

I think the TV, film, and print media attempted to do the same, they were/are just much less effective at it. For example, watch a "slow burn" movie like Alien. Most modern movies, by comparison, seem to be edited to keep our short attention span tuned in. Same with the old adage "sex sells"...we've always been trying to hijack human attention we're just so good about it now it's essentially been weaponized.

> Books never had thousands of engineers observing realtime metrics to make small tweaks to make you use something just a little bit longer

Books and other forms of media have been optimised to be addictive to read/watch for decades. It might not happen at the same scale, but the increase in scale also means that the mediums get less personal. I think that balances things out in some ways.

It really does not seem different to me.

> thousands of engineers observing realtime metrics to make small tweaks to make you use something just a little bit longer.

As one of the thousands of engineers dedicated to making you use your consumer electronics a little bit more: it's really easy to defeat my work. You make a conscious decision not to use the product, you catch yourself using it, you stop. Do it for about a month and you've broken the habit. That's why we look at metrics like MAUs and L28s. There is basically nothing I can do about a user who actively doesn't want to use the product; we basically throw up our hands and say "Not our target market."

The reason my job exists is because hundreds of millions of people don't think like that, and don't have any conscious opinion one way or another about my product. It's those users we're trying to influence, the ones who are basically ambivalent, allocate their time based on emotion, and don't have any strong beliefs one way or another about what they should be spending their time on or how they want their life to look. There are enough of them that this market is worth billions, but everything I do - all the engagement work and instant gratification and positioning subtle hints in the UI - is about influencing the people who don't care one way or another. If that is not you - if you have actively made a conscious choice what you want to spend your time on, and it's not watching TV more - you won't even see my product. (It was actually pretty awkward when I took my job, because I work on TVs but watch basically none and didn't even own a TV beforehand.)

Here is a little exercise: imagine yourself being a drug dealer, and read your own comment out loud. It rings perfectly, and it is no coincidence, proportions aside.

You cannot absolve yourself from responsibility just because your target audience 'had a choice'.

FWIW I think drugs should be legal too (though I won't go near them myself), and the rest of the country is gradually coming around to that realization.

The analogy is for opioids, cocaine etc which are highly destructive, not recreational/medicinal drugs.

I think most of America would put TV to the "less harmful" side of marijuana use rather than comparing it to cocaine or opioids.

And they would be very, very wrong :)

> You make a conscious decision not to use the product

I feel like I've heard this before, re: alcoholism, obesity, etc... It's true that if you just decide to stop the behavior you don't like, you're cured. But it is so far from easy that it's a lifelong journey for many people.

Your job is not just to compete for a limited number of zombies, but to keep as many people that actually do care from climbing out of the hole. People are not binary between zombie/not zombie, they're on a spectrum, and I think it's naive to think that anyone with the slightest desire to not use your product can just close it & quit.