How is this that much different to similar "concerns" about kids watching to much tv back in the 60's 70's etc.
Big TV’s goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible material to a general audience. This is broad and therefore not very addictive / effective.
Big Tech’s goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible material to an individual. This is specific and therefore very addictive / effective.
Regardless that the goal is the same, one is a heavier hitter, and we should have regulations to protect people against the bigger punches.
Books < TV < Video Games <= Social Media
The rankings are potentially different per individual and each information source effects people in different ways. This is my mental model of different user engagement sources. The hard part is where to draw the line and the inevitable fact that pandora is already out of the box.
That may have been true once, but since then TV distilled down the patterns for maximizing addiction across the biggest segment of the population - that's why most TV is so mind-dumbing that you can almost feel your brain being sucked out of your skull when watching.
But I agree that Internet media are much more focused and much heavier hitters.
Habits we develop as children tend to persist through our lives. People who grew up very active tend to stay at least a little active, people who grew up eating healthy diets will tend to continue to eat well. The opposite also tends to be true.
We have record levels of obesity in many developed nations now. There's a lot to blame for that, but surely our sedentary lifestyles is a factor. That includes watching too much TV.
...more or less a humanitarian catastrophe
If TV was generally bad (as Postman argues) then video-based social media is awful, and worse than Postman ever predicted.
how has it NOT been harmful?
I'm more inclined to believe my parents did the right thing by limiting TV time and commenting that most of it was rubbish. And I presume like many parents in Silicon Valley, I'm going to fight tooth and nail to keep advertising and most of this stuff from my kids.
The funny thing is, if you're not brought up around it, if you learn some math and statistics, and then you suddenly go somewhere exposure is considered normal, you almost have a physical or psychological revulsion to it.
Ads become frustrating and unacceptable intrusions. casino floors are sad, boring, pathetic and dystopian. mobile games look like drugs foistered upon an underclass, etc.
At least with big TV at the time, programming was so limited (at least in my country), you had maybe 2 to 3 hours per week of anything that would fit a genre worth watching. But even with that restriction, I know a large number of people who deem that the TV should be on even if there's "nothing to watch". I just can't write that sort of behaviour off as not being dysfunctional, it's just that we've culturally got a general acceptance of very specific types of dysfunction...
And what about rates of obesity? I'm not saying TV is solely to blame, but are we going to pretend that screen time and such programming (on demand or otherwise) is a blameless part of our culture?
Upthread there's a comment on how someone's kid is being made fun of for not purchasing custom skins to use in Fortnight, and I almost commented something about how to me, there's always something been something weirdly uncomfortable about people who choose to spend money on arbitrarily customizing something. I'm glad I didn't, because thinking about it, I am the weird one. Most people are quite happy to "waste" time and money in this way. I'm not one of the kids (or adults) who grew up like this their whole life.
Lest this comment come across as me saying I'm the one sane person in a crazy world, I should add that I'm certainly affected by this when it comes to the Internet. Although I haven't seen more than an ad or two in years (thanks ad blockers), I'm still affected by the addiction-promotion used by websites to keep you there so you (theoretically) see those ads. I caught myself spending hours a day scrolling through Twitter. I'm trying to kick the habit, but it is a habit. Maybe I'm just in a better position to recognize it because I see the damage too much TV did to others.
My point is that children are being told stories that we wouldn’t consider for children all the time. And that isn’t even considering fairytales.
https://www.theverge.com/culture/2017/11/21/16685874/kids-yo...
The difference between brothers Grimm or old Disney films and this is coherence, and possibly motive. At the very least they are trying to tell a story of some kind. But this stuff is closer to porn (except its surreal? instead of titillating), and the motive is unknown.
It's totally different and a new thing compared to the 60s/70s/80s kids argument.
For instance, television screen time is correlated with increased obesity.
Want a non-conspiracy example? Search "obama is gone" on youtube then on DuckDuckGo. Even a stupid crab rave meme is buried, presumably for the purposes of preventing Obama related conspiracy theories from emerging.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=obama+is+gone https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obama+is+gone+site%3Ayoutube.com
I'd still never park my kid on Youtube but things aren't like they were pre-adpocalypse.
One evening of video surfing and you'll practically trip over them. I have no idea how it is one could never notice this stuff. I clear cookies and have no account.
The difference I see is that I have an account with subscriptions and years of activity data. I guess the algorithm knows I don't click on that stuff so they stopped trying to show it to me. I'm very surprised to learn they are giving users these recommendations by default.