What if we talked about over-60s’ screen time as we talk about young people’s? | Hacker News Reader

What if we talked about over-60s’ screen time as we talk about young people’s?

webdevlaw.uk

430 pointsokasaki449 comments

My wife and I are over 70. We live in the UK.

It's fun to generalise, but not always helpful. No, we don't watch anything like 6 hours of TV a day. We have our evening meal, like every meal, at a table. We mostly watch one thing a day on streaming, usually well made fiction. We read news on our phones but never watch it on TV because of all the uninformed comment.

Maybe we are not typical, but we do exist.

Rock on! Glad you're enjoying hacker news too :)

Thanks. When you retire your old job is not far away.

Consider that for every older person like OP who watches less than 6 hours, someone else is watching more

Are they really watching, or is the TV just on in the background while they do other stuff?

At 42+ hours a week I'm no longer sure it matters.

I think for retired people, there mostly isn't all that much other stuff to do.

There used to be

There still is.

http://bowlingalone.com/

I am not retired, but my wife is. She does watch TV, an hour or two at night. She gardens and volunteers. Various acquaintances who have retired engage in volunteer activities: helping other seniors during health-plan "open season"; organizing free dental clinics in poor counties in Virginia; teaching and tutoring; even making sure that there are bags available for dog-walkers.

I would hope to be like that myself, but looking at my parents they did basically nothing after retirement (especially my father, my mother kept an active social life).

Why is this top comment? You cannot criticize generalization and at the same time be culprit of it. You are generalizing your personal experience.

This article doesn't claim that all over-60 do this, it very rightfully talks about the average, which captures cases like yours and also cases where people watch TV 18 hours a day.

65. I went from 1975 through to 2010 not owning a TV. Not even one.

In 2010 we bought a 55" HDTV (but no cable service), a BluRay player, and a Nintendo Wii. We also got a Netflix DVD subscription. We had three young kids at the time. I carved a 16 foot by 16 foot square of space out of the basement, floored with resilient foam tiles, hung the screen on the wall, added some inexpensive Ikea chairs, and the kids would jump around playing Wii games, often times with their friends over, and the whole family would share a movie on occasion. Two years later we added a Roku streaming box. Still no cable service.

My wife streams something from roku, netflix or prime, while she folds laundry (she does laundry, I do most all of the cooking and dish washing). I rarely watch the screen for entertainment at all. I sit in front of a screen for work, eight or nine hours a day, for the last thirty eight years. I don't need to see more glowing pixels than that.

I know my wife and I are outliers. She sees maybe four hours of TV streaming a week. I average maybe two hours a month, only because on occasion we will sit and watch a movie together.

The question is not now much time you spend at a screen, but who is on the other side of it.

Much of the conversation so far concerns time, and the virtues or vices of how we spend it. Not all pastimes are equal. Knitting a jumper, taking a hike, or skateboarding are actions one performs on or in the world. Reading a book is more of an action that the world (the author especially) performs upon you. It is a different frame. Movies and video gaming are somewhere in the middle. Some media forms, such as daytime trash-TV and TiKTok are at the extreme of the passive/receptive frame. It is a pipeline of affect directly to your hypothalamus. Any discussion of harms or benefits must be understood in that light.

I’ve been pondering a bit in this area, especially around things that are addictive harmful. It seems like things that give a pleasure reward for little or no work, and aren’t furthering relationships, are dangerous. They sap motivations (no need to work hard when your feel-good choice is so close). This seems to cover social media/doom-scrolling, porn, drugs and alcohol (at various levels and circumstances), easy hookups(?), constant TV, etc. Still working on the idea…

These aren't all inherently bad things when consumed in moderation, and over the course of a lifetime. Sometimes we just need those quick hits of artificially-induced dopamine to give us the drive to push through the responsibilities and pressures of adult life.

The problem isn't that the content is itself dangerous, it's that it's being mainlined by [adults and children alike]. Absolutely nothing in life is safe to consume this way-- the sort of drugs that otherwise provide these effects are classified as class-II controlled substances.

Ponder this modern classic, something I throw at everyone who will listen: https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/supernormal-stimuli/

Or how NOT to spend it.

Before the smartphone, a significant amount of time per day was spent on nothing. Could be staring out the window during a commute, an actual break at work, waiting for somebody or something.

We mostly lost that. Zero rest for our brains, it's bombarded with information relentlessly.

It's Monday, and a school holiday. It rained in the morning, but now it's just cold and overcast. It's quiet in the living room. You know the phone isn't going to ring, because who would call? You could walk to the library or a used bookstore. You could go to the 7-Eleven around the corner if you had any money, which you don't, and you haven't had for some time. You could walk the river path again. There's a TV, but it's only got 2.5 channels, and you don't like to watch Donahue or Days of Our Lives. You can hear the clock ticking, and each grain of dust falling to the floor.

Poetry from simpler times, which I'm glad I experienced.

Where is this from?

My memories of the late 80s and early 90s.

They will make a game where you do that now.

My great grandma played solitaire to while the hours away. With actual cards.

Not sure if that's a case for or against screen time.

Indeed. It sounds soul-crushingly boring to me. She worked in a sweatshop, back when that was legal in the US. She couldn't afford the entertainment that's been available to me for my entire life. Used paperbacks were always affordable, even on my preteen allowance; it wasn't until adulthood that I learned that I was taking my comparative wealth for granted. When she could afford yarn or string, she'd crochet or tat... but she claimed to actually enjoy the solitaire. To me, it seems to be a monastic, meditative passtime. There's virtue in enjoying simple pleasures... but I'd probably lose it.

My grandma cheated at solitaire.

I did too if I was losing.

I’ve started taking saunas every day as part of my gym routine. It’s been a nice side effect that for at least 15 minutes a weekday I am not reading, watching, or listening to anything. I believe it’s a big part of why I’ve felt more refreshed after exercising of late.

People had radios in the background (at work, at home) for that.

In what way is watching a movie more "active" than reading a book?

I don't support the argument necessarily, but a movie is (can) be a collective experience witnessed simultaneously with others.

Books, as fantastic as they are in all regards, do not offer that trait.

True - watching a comedy movie with close friends in your living room is quite different than watching a drama by yourself.

Some music is for contemplation, other music is for dancing.

I suppose the media format isn't what determines whether the work is an active or passive experience. And the more I think about it, the more I think passive experiences can be greatly valuable.

It's just that a life comprised entirely of passive consumption is destined to be unfulfilling, and doubly so if you're consuming the low-quality, low-effort, junk food type stuff.

Book clubs

Secondary reactions; you're not reading aloud in a group of people but comparing experiences. Films/tv offer a firsthand initial experience; there is no denyinghe presentation but the time to internalize and process is limited in the 2d format, as opposed to written.

Reading can be a communal and simultaneous activity. Through most of history people (well, at least I know about Europe) did not read silently.

And Reading aloud clubs exist too. Really fun actually!

You can read a book aloud to another person, as parents do of course with their children but what sometimes couples do with each other.

I've thought a lot about my hobbies as consumption vs. creation. For me, the more time I spend creating things and changing/improving the world around me (or myself, or my relationships), the happier I am. And the more time I spend passively consuming things that others have created, the less happy I am.

> Movies and video gaming are somewhere in the middle.

I get how video games are something in the middle: because they're an interactive medium, they require a bit of thought and action from the engager, but that person's actions are neither creating nor changing anything in the actual world.

I don't get why you consider movies in the middle, however. I would rate movies as even more passive than books. When I'm reading a book, I can control the pace, I can stop and think about something for a moment, I can refer back an earlier passage, I can look up something in the dictionary, etc. Fiction novels force me to use my imagination to visualize scenes, and model the mental states of others as I'm reading their internal monologues.

But a film is something that just washes over you. I love them dearly, but I don't understand how they couldn't be seen as anything other than passive consumption.

True with one caveat - despite being a passive experience, your choices of media are still limited and therefore the way you pick and choose and explore what you consume is still an active form of skill you develop. Watching things that pique your interests, especially in niches without that many viewers, gives a sense of your experience being valuable and interesting - and crucially, something to talk about and share. It becomes fuel for writing and philosophizing, and a great conversation piece to navigate complex issues with friends and family. e.g. Someone may get just as much joy and sense of accomplishment from sharing their obsession with Quentin Tarantino movies as they would from their oil paintings. (Even though both are in a sense unlikely to matter much in any economic or social sense beyond - does it make you happy)

Personally I think just "do what's interesting to you" is a good rule, and I think it can navigate the transition between filling up on passive entertainment (e.g. playing every factory/crafting-themed video game) and actively building (e.g. making your own game!). Sometimes you just need to load up on what's been done already in a genre, and sometimes you just need to say "fuck it" and start making something without being intimidated.

Geek - obsessive consumer

Nerd - obsessive creator

I must have heard this somewhere but I can’t recall where. In any event, I think most of us are a bit of both but personally I strive to be more of the latter.

My father used to read the dead-tree newspapers every morning. I'm now reading them online. Is it fair to count that time as an increase of my screen time?

I guess there are some similar examples, like looking for cooking recipes in a book vs online, or paper-encyclopedia vs wikipedia.

Sad to break it to you, but the quality of these has decayed quite a bit.

I do think there are a couple big differences between physical newspapers and digital news: endless scrolling feeds and algorithmic recommendations can make digital news much more addicting.

Newspapers have a definite beginning and end, and they're easier to browse. Each section starts with a big, high-level snapshot of its contents, and it's easy to zoom in on the bits that interest you and disregard the rest.

I agree. You can't believe how many linkbait titles the digital edition has!

Anyway, I'm some of the journalist have a daily column that is usualy good, and I try to stick to them (but after them, I must confess that I read some silly linkbait articles.)

It's as fair as any other use of the entirely bogus concept of "screen time", yes.

Obviously it counts as 'screen time', as you're using a screen.

But 'screen time' is not the right statistic for each question.

"Does screen time affect eyesight?" Yes, this counts as screen time.

"Is this generation more/less informed about what's going on in the world?" Screen time is not the right stat, the data should be 'does this generation read news papers' and both you and your father can answer with a yes.

FYI, I read a dead-tree newspaper during my breakfast. Primarily because I don't want to be staring at a screen while having food with my kids, but for some reason I'm okay with staring at a dead-tree during breakfast.

I haven’t hit my sixties yet, but it won’t be long now.

Youth is ignorance, and the only cure is getting older. When that happens you will marvel at how much you thought you knew and understood. You will listen or read the next generation making preposterous proclamations about older people and the older generations. Laughable in their certainty. Judging older people and finding them unworthy. Especially family. You may try to convey to the younger generation how you were just like them once, trying to shortcut the wisdom of age for them.

But there are no shortcuts. There is no easy way. So we can watch and reflect, those older than us probably have the same thoughts about us. Those ignorant 60 year olds think they know everything. Wait till they hit 90.

Yeah I'm in my 60s and... not too impressed by the supposed wisdom of my fellow Boomers.

There is wisdom is what you are saying, as I have seen it myself over the years from my younger days to my current age. But there is something that needs to be said, so badly, that I made this account despite swearing off HN commenting for good; or so I thought. (Sorry Dang if this breaks a rule, but this comment really needs to be made.)

Here it is: Age in and of itself, does not equal wisdom. One can be wise through long life, yes; but experience is why. If one does not live an experienced life, they will still be just as unwise and potentially as dumb as those who are younger than them. Likewise, someone who has lived a rich and fulfilling life no matter how those events play out, can be just as wise if not wiser than those older than them.

So while youth can be ignorance, so too can the egotism of age. This will continue to be a problem in society until the day when everyone can come to agree that our lives are not equal, and never will be; because we cannot experience everything the same way across the world. It is that diversity in experience which is why it is so important that we learn to listen to each other, even if we don't like what they have to say. To expect obedience from anyone due to age alone is just a form of authoritarianism which has no right to exist; especially when the evidence shows abundantly that the older generations didn't get everything right either. Just like how no one in their right mind expects the younger to get everything right as well.

It is only the daft and delusional that think they have gotten everything right.

And from the looks of things out there in society, we have much more of that going on, than we have any wisdom being shared.

As a final word.

If you found this wise, consider this. I'm turning 34 soon.

And with that said, this is the last any of you will hear from me. This is all I have to say.

Yeah you can tell dumb people from smart people, dumb people, when they are older, think they know a thing to two by virtue of being older, while smart people recognize other smart people regardless of age.

Well, that’s one way that’s relevant to the discussion anyway.

Hopefully you start noticing this by your 30s ?

Though supposedly it hits diminishing returns soon after that..?

And I don't want to spend my life constantly regretting choices made a few years before !

And yet, society advances as people holding backward views die off (not actually from people changing their minds). Has always been that way and always will be. If people lived twice as long you could imagine that inequality would be at least twice as bad and that society’s views would evolve slower than they do today.

My grandfather’s dying wisdom of loudly refusing the care of Black nursing staff cured me of the ignorance of trusting his balanced wisdom.

It's the circle of life.

Teenagers are idiots. They think they know everything but know little to nothing. They loudly reject and rebel against the legacy world.

Around their 30s, they dial it back significantly. Understand they were wrong, their ideas stupid and unhinged, and perhaps regret some style and music choices of their teenage years. Which will be total fun for this generation, the internet is forever. This is also the point where they get skin in the game of The System.

Rather than overthrow the system, they'll work it to their personal benefit because that's what adulthood requires. The more successful they are at it, the more they become the system.

New teenagers emerge which are now found annoying, and wrong. Cycle completed.

Which generation of rebellious youngsters became the ultimate neoliberal capitalists?

...HIPPIES!

> Teenagers are idiots. They think they know everything but know little to nothing. They loudly reject and rebel against the legacy world.

They also know what things did absolutely fucking nothing for them growing up and feel viscerally the harm that the previous generation caused them, and set out in their lives to live in a way that reduces that harm.

Boomers grew up being wild individualists having been raised by a generation of relatively sadistic collectivists. Millenials realize the downfall of unrestrained narcissism and tend towards more tolerant collectivism.

Gen Z was raised by a generation that valued emotional openness but couldn’t attain it in healthy way. They’re really into boundaries and prevention of emotional harm.

All this is basically what you said but without the value judgement.

In my country of birth, the 60+-year-old generation has managed to get the country into a war against half of the world. Please tell me more about their wisdom.

Unless you are under 20, you are just as responsible as any random 60+ year old.

Tell us more about the culpable 22 year olds

The ones not voting and the ones not engaging civically?

I don't know which country you had in mind, but I was talking about Russia. Voting and "civic engagement" have ceased to mean anything there long before this year.

My parents are close to 70 and they are dumb as fuck.

I'm interested in how the over-60s' TV time is being measured.

Why - I know a number of older folks who live alone, and claim that they leave the TV on all day - not to watch it, but as a source of "color noise", giving them a comforting illusion of not being at home all alone.

That's a good point, I also do this as it brings some amount of comfort vs being alone with complete silence.

This is a great point! I think a lot of people, myself included, do the same thing with YouTube videos or even long Netflix shows; it's playing, I'm half-listening to it, but I'm also accomplishing some annoying or semi-mechanical task. If you asked how much video content I consume, you might be shocked at the answer, but I wonder if we should count that as "wasting time".

During my childhood, my mother would do that with The Weather Channel. It was, at least at the time, devoid of anything political, and no sex or violence, though the coverage of severe weather could be a bit anxiety inducing. But even running in the background, I'm sure we still absorbed the messaging of commercials to some extent. It's not quite the same thing as actively watching but probably still imparts some degree of impact.

While I disliked the tone of the piece, I mostly agree with the sentiment. But this (very bitter) part just made me laugh:

> But please, yes, tell me again about young people and screen time and content and moral decay, and how the mobiles they’re engaging with are somehow a greater risk to their character than their own parents and their own grandparents and the family traditions they hold so dear, such as laughing in your face when you suggest shared family mealtimes around a table, a suggestion which might lead to talking to each other, listening to each other, and being present in that shared moment with each other. Tell me all about it.

This sounds like something my parents would have said. We ate our meal at a table in a room without screens. Nonetheless, my spouse describes the meals I had with my family when we all lived together as “psychological warfare,” and I can’t disagree. When my parents tried to force us all to come together for anything, we laughed in their faces because we hated being together. If that’s the reaction you get from your children, look inward. And if your spouse won’t help you figure it out, then you have at least a partial answer. To this day I avoid interacting with my family as much as possible because my parents couldn’t keep the household under control. They were arbitrary with their punishments, and untrustworthy as far as confiding them with thoughts and feelings. At best nothing would be done about it. At worst, it would come back to bite you later. I didn’t want to talk to people in my family because the result was guaranteed to be extremely painful. I suspect it was the same with the author’s children and husband. It sounds like she did the right thing by getting out.

You really can't fake genuine emotional engagement and secure attachment, and when those aren't there there are absolutely no way to "force" it to happen. If your child doesn't feel safe telling you about their hopes and dreams and their social lives, forcing them to sit quietly at a dinner table is not going to make those things happen, it will teach them instead to both dread time with you and also to learn how to filter everything they care about.

That's a great explanation of an experience I think many of us share. Family members insisting we spend time together out of some deference to tradition, in spite of the fact that there is a proven and undeniable hostility between these people that are being forced to spend time together. I don't particularly like doing anything just for the sake of tradition, let alone activities that cause obvious psychological stress and harm!

The “boob tube” was common parlance back in the day, so all those olds got it then.

But we during commute, work and school all day we did not have a phone in front of our face for 8 hours. I was watching a roofing crew awhile back and the number of times someone pulled their phone out was startling.

That said, here is a free YC startup idea: tiktok for olds. Scrape all those old shows and build memes.

That could work but what is the main dance move on Tiktok Classic? With current Tiktok, it's that move where it looks like your elbowing people next to you on either side while lip syncing. Silent movies also didn't have actual speech so those could work. Or mute The 3 Stooges and play the voiceover of some current superhero movie. And it has to loop.

> the number of times someone pulled their phone out was startling

What about it did you find startling?

Roofing is dangerous enough. My crew boss would have smacked me in the head back in the day. Nail gun in one hand and phone in the other on slippery rain shield…

Handling a nail gun while distracted is definitely unsafe. Workplace injuries in construction have fallen consistently for decades though so I can't imagine this is a new generalizable safety concern among young people.

Scrape all those old shows

How did you miss this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPwxmrNVKKE

I don't know what a meme is so I can't help you there.

My children are adults now, but when they were growing up we wanted them to pursue productive creative endeavours so that they could learn life skills and figure out what they want to do with their lives. Our goal was to help them achieve self-sufficiency so that they could move out and feed themselves.

I'm not 65 yet, but once I am I hope that others will recognize my productive achievements and will leave me the hell alone to do whatever I want to with the rest of my limited time here on earth. If that means sitting on my ass doing nothing - that's my choice and my right.

It's not hypocrisy. A child and a retiree are not even remotely comparable. One is accountable to their parents, the other has likely worked their ass off for decades to earn a bit of down time.

I do agree that they are difficult to compare directly as the scenarios are quite different. I can also say that your attitude towards raising children is the minority, most parents will let a tv or tablet babysit for them unfortunately.

It's hard not to interpret this as a kind of "youth is wasted on the young" sentiment - that children shouldn't be allowed to do things they enjoy if those things are seen as wasteful, but that retirees should. I'd submit that society might be better off if we only required people to work to a degree reasonable for their mental and physical health, and didn't frame our entire lives around "getting somewhere" so we could finally be left alone. That might mean profits stop growing quite as quickly, but I think that's a fair trade for people actually being happier.

Better yet, why not snuff people when they get to 30?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film)

I think the same thing. The concept of retiring early has never made sense to me - but I enjoy writing software, and building things, and learning things, etc. Financial independence does make sense to me, but only in-so-much that I want to be able to generally provide for my family, and have enough slight cushion to be able to take drastic creative risks and not have to starve to do so.

I don't mind if I'm working when I'm 70/80 (as long as I'm physically capable to) - I do mind if I'm slogging 60hr weeks, doing things I'm not interested in, at those ages however.

I'm "retired," but that's mostly because I ran into a bunch of the types of folks that have been adding to the comments on this story, and gave up on looking for work.

I won't go, where I'm not wanted.

Best damn thing that ever happened to me. I "retired" at 55, and have been more productive, in the last five years, than I probably was, in the previous 20. It's amazing what happens when you don't have clueless, jargon-addled middle managers, interfering with the projects, and destroying work productivity.

The coroner is gonna need to rub "YTЯƎWϘ" off my cheek.

There is a huge difference between "working because you need money" and "working because you want money/something to do/achieve a higher calling", to the point that it's not really fair to compare the two. The latter is better for society as whole, in my opinion.

And the tragic thing is that we could probably achieve a society where that second mode of work is available to everyone, with enough capital investment. Many jobs that people work out of necessity could be automated completely, with today's technology (forget any bleeding-edge AI stuff, I'm talking Robotics 101). Jobs that remain could be made immeasurably less unpleasant. It would just take a restucturing of society around minimizing human suffering, rather than maximizing the wealth that can be accrued by a ruling class.

> It's hard not to interpret this as a kind of "youth is wasted on the young" sentiment - that children shouldn't be allowed to do things they enjoy if those things are seen as wasteful, but that retirees should.

This seems like a motivated conclusion. Children and retirees are not the same. Children are flexible and lack life experience. Small events leave large imprints on children. Older folks tend to get less flexible with age and have lots of life experience, so an understanding of what they do and do not enjoy. While there's definitely similarities (we're all human after all), I don't see this conclusion following at all.

That doesn't mean that retirees should simply passively consume low-complexity content or anything. More that older folk will generally understand themselves, their habits, and importantly their weaknesses better than children. Many "retirees" spend their days doing their best work unencumbered by the self-doubt and expectations they had of themselves when they were young.

> Children are flexible and lack life experience. Small events leave large imprints on children.

> Older folks tend to get less flexible with age and have lots of life experience, so an understanding of what they do and do not enjoy

I believe Children are an opressed group, just like ethnic minorities were at a time. In my life I have personally witnessed dozens of children who were forced into careers and lifepaths based of false pre-conseptions that were formed by older people 40 years ago. The world has moved on, the older people responsible have declined in both mental facoulties and income, and the young people are stuck eith life choice that were made for them, their lives bent out of shape.

The media constantly treat young peolle with derision, mockery and disrespect. No political party represent interest of young people under 25. Their life opportunitues, social mobility and the chance to own a home are all declining. The age of lawmakers is climbing every year.

The disenfranchisement of young people in the west will be our downfall

> I believe Children are an opressed group, just like ethnic minorities were at a time.

That's very strong language but I can generally get behind the idea that children need some work on their rights in the West given the changes of the last 50-80 years in society. This is orthogonal to the above point that retirees are not children. Children are not retirees and their rights will reflect this truth. The rights and expectations of children will have to reflect what it means to be a child and likewise with retirees.

> In my life I have personally witnessed dozens of children who were forced into careers and lifepaths based of false pre-conseptions that were formed by older people 40 years ago. The world has moved on, the older people responsible have declined in both mental facoulties and income, and the young people are stuck eith life choice that were made for them, their lives bent out of shape.

This is heavily, heavily steeped in your own anecdata. I haven't witnessed children under any such parental force, but I've heard other people talk about this. They all had shared upper-middle class suburban upbringings with parents who were trying to force them into elite schools and elite careers. This personality is replete in American tech companies. If this is the background with which you bring this up, remember that this is hardly universal.

I grew up in an immigrant ghetto. Kids were left to do whatever they wanted as early as was feasible. The kids I knew roamed the streets, got into gangs, drugs, and all forms of unfulfilling sex. There were few jobs in the community and the kids had no direction. If anything the kids I witnessed suffered because their parents gave them no help; no parents to talk to the kids about hard conversations, nobody to help find jobs or careers, nobody to even teach the kids about how to modulate their own emotions, often saddled with the debt their parents placed on them through gambling or other poor decisions. The anecdata of my life would cause me to be impassioned about very different set of dangers for children. I saw more lives ruined through minor marijuana possession than through pushy parents.

> The media constantly treat young peolle with derision, mockery and disrespect. No political party represent interest of young people under 25. Their life opportunitues, social mobility and the chance to own a home are all declining. The age of lawmakers is climbing every year.

I haven't seen "derision, mockery, and disrespect". Political parties don't represent the interests of young people because they don't vote. It's pretty simple. Getting young people to vote is the hard part. The aging cohort of lawmakers is a separate, and yes deeply troubling, issue.

> The disenfranchisement of young people in the west will be our downfall

Wait until you realize what it's like to be young in Asia.

I think in both cases, children need to feel psychologically safe confiding mistakes in parents, and neither neglected (emotionally and educationally) and unsupported, nor receive conditional love and be punished when they fail to earn achievements to their parents' satisfaction.

I agree. Supporting children in society and government is hard. I just don't think getting riled up over one's anecdata is a good way to do it.

People can already choose to work less for mental and physical health reasons. Just move to a low cost area and do the bare minimum work to obtain necessities.

But people who want a nice large house, luxury cars, new electronics, and fancy vacations are going to have to work harder in ways that might not be optimal for health. Most middle class people seem to be voluntarily willing to make that trade, and you're not going to convince them otherwise.

For society as a whole, growing profits represent an overall increase in living standards (although the benefits are unevenly distributed). If we were to collectively decide that current living standards are sufficient and stop trying to grow then we might have easy, pleasant lives for a couple generations but would eventually be overrun by more growth-oriented foreign societies. Life is a competitive sport and we ignore that reality at our peril. There are more important things than happiness.

I honestly can't tell if this is serious or satire.

100% serious

What are the things more important than happiness?

Building things of lasting value. Raising children. Leaving the world a better place than you found it.

You can get really happy by taking opioids, if you consider happiness to be of primary importance. But happiness alone is empty and not something that we should consider important by itself.

If you don't derive happiness from lasting value, why build it?

If you don't derive happiness from raising children, why have them?

These things aren't intrinsically valuable. You may derive happiness from them, and that's perfectly fine. Or you may derive happiness from rigidly following some moral code, and that's fine also. But there's no "we" when it comes to what one considers most important by itself.

"Seen as wasteful" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Spending 6+ hours a day watching TV is seen as wasteful, heroin addiction is seen as wasteful, becoming a musician is seen as wasteful, dropping out of a law degree to start a company is seen as wasteful. The first two are different from the last two, though.

I think watching 6+ hours of TV a day isn't just seen as wasteful, it's seen as actively harmful, and therefore as falling under the moral and legal duty of care adults have to protect children. In contrast, a mentally sound retiree is an adult. Adults are allowed to hurt themselves.

Is 6hrs a day of reading wasteful and harmful? That's how doctors and lawyers and engineers are made.

Reading requires active engagement in a way that makes it inherently healthier than TV (though perhaps not than games).

For me, yeah. I probably spent about that long reading on most school days as a kid, including hiding books in my pencil case, walking the dog while reading, riding a bike while reading, reading on the bus, reading during recess and lunch, reading in front of the TV, reading on the toilet, reading when I was meant to be asleep, and reading during family dinners.

I absolutely should have stopped reading so much during family dinners, during classes I struggled in, when I was meant to be asleep, and during recess and lunch.

There's also something childlike about elders as they experience mental decline. There's a reason we try to protect people from "elder scams." Personally I hope if I'm found in front of the TV absorbing conspiracy theories for hours a day somebody clocks me on the head and drags me to safety.

Especially as more "elder scams" resort to tapping into their loneliness to encourage action, it's important families and communities pay more attention to this growing problem of elders attached to their screens.

There aren’t more scams of that nature…they’ve been around forever. You’re just more aware of them, there are more elderly around and it is easier for anonymous scammers to target the elderly with today’s IT. Protecting the elderly is an IT problem worth working on. I hear there are several thousand FAANG types at loose ends at the moment…

When every major mobile or desktop OS update comes with compulsory interface changes, hiding some routine action, it breaks down many users’ faith in themselves to figure out how to do things on their computers or phones, making them more susceptible to tech support scams and other online malice, but especially older users who patiently wrote down the steps for important but infrequent operations.

I think this misses the productivity aspect of the parent's comment. Conceivably, there is a bigger productivity hit with young people since the assumption may be that retired people's most productive years are behind them *

* I do recognize all the problems with this assumption, like the fact that older people can continue to be productive in retirement, even if it's not necessarily economically productive. I also cringe at the idea that a society is always hyper-focused on productivity. Despite all that, I also know it's a common viewpoint.

To some degree, we kind of caused this, because we’ve structured work society where we essentially burn out by the time we’re 65.

Before the advent of old age systems like pensions or Social Security elders mostly suffered through high elderly poverty rates. The current system is certainly better, because elders are not starving or forcing themselves into sex work to pay for food and medical bills [1] but now it turns out being too idle might also be problematic.

I know in Japan, there are attempts to address this with organizations that hire seniors to do part time jobs like sweeping and cleaning. It mostly serves as an optional supplement to income and it gets them out of the house if they’re alone. But the way we run cleaning operations in the US is also to run people down to the bone.

[1] - This is a thing in South Korea where elder poverty is much higher than the rest of the OECD due to a very bare social net. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacchus_Ladies

In know this may be an unpopular take, but some of it comes across to me as an entitlement mindset. Retirement is viewed as something expected and a debt owed by society, rather than something prudently planned for.

I’m in favor of a strong social safety net, but geared towards helping low-probability or unforeseen circumstances, not for avoiding a completely visible and very slowly approaching cliff.

How many hours a day do you spend on various social media being manipulated by dark patterning, agitprop and echo chambers…eh, Sonny? :-) Are you sure you’re staying balanced and objective?

Just easier to ID manipulative media when you aren’t the target demographic (and it isn’t your flavor of conspiracy). It’s not necessarily age-driven, but you’re right that the isolation of age and the relative lack of trusted feedback makes it worse.

Please post your viewing habits so the Elders can assess whether they should send someone to perform preventive percussive maintenance on your skull. :-)

Yeah they really need to tune out those mainstay news channels! Oh wait, that's not what you meant is it... :p

I find the view that productive achievements are a chore, a thing, that once accomplished, thankfully we never have to do again, kind of sad.

What's the point of living if not to interact with the world?

How about raising children with the stated goal of having them move out?

I'm not sure what you are trying to say. I'm not suggesting you should do the same productive achievement all your life. Life changes and so should your goals as time moves on.

Also, why are you having children if your only goal is to get rid of them? Yes, part of having children is hoping and preparing for them to eventually be independent adults, but that's hardly the only thing raising children is about.

I disagree that consuming media and participating online is not "interacting with the world". I spend a lot of my free time reading Wikipedia, watching YouTube, and playing games. This content comes from "the world". At my job I sit in front of a computer and interact with people via text and voice call. This is interacting with "the world".

I don't understand why we fetishize in-person interaction as being "the world" and virtual interaction as "not the world".

What about reading books? Would you criticize someone for reading too many books? Does that person not have a "point in living" in your opinion?

In my opinion, this is a true Scotsman fallacy. And the bias is due to nostalgia.

That being said, I think there is a general bias in American culture towards "making something of yourself", which results in the act of participating in non-productive activities (ex: "mindless tv" such as gameshows, infomercials) as something which you need an excuse to do. For example: "I need to de-stress so I can be productive tomorrow". When you get old, this excuse is no longer possible. Which is why folks refer to vegetating like this as "sad".

A hedonistic/utilitarian framework is a better model to look at these situations. Is that elderly individual enjoying themselves? Yes. Will their inaction today result in negative consequences (financial, health, etc.) later in life? No. In this framework, it's a perfectly good use of their time then.

As a redneck, I love America. But I think this question posed by the OP is interesting because it shows the tradeoff everyone must make in American culture between exercising individual freedoms and increasing social credit/value/standing.

> Is that elderly individual enjoying themselves? Yes.

Are they? I dont think its as obvious as you think it is.

People often trade long term joy for short term joy. If they didn't, drug dealers, casinos, facebook etc would be out of business.

> This is interacting with "the world".

To each their own, but no, it's not the world. We're made for real, in person interaction. Huge chunks of our brains are made to discern subtle facial details or body movements.

I remember there are studies that socialization is good even for introverts. They think it isn't, but it is.

We're social creatures by design, it's built very deep into us. To try otherwise is foolish for 99.9999% of people. Of course, everyone thinks they're that 1 person in a million:-)

It may be beneficial from a medical perspective, but you're ignoring the obvious risks. For people with SAD, etc. there is the risk of severe stress. For all people, there is the risk of sexual assault. There is the risk of false or true accusations from students, friends, or partners, the risk of getting assaulted, physically confronted, or robbed, reputational damage, etc. The list goes on.

It's up to each individual to decide whether the rewards of in-person social interaction outweigh the risks. And it's not up to anyone but me to proscribe what my decision on this matter is.

> For people with SAD, etc. there is the risk of severe stress

I think you used the wrong acronym. I assume you are not talking about seasonal affective disorder.

More to the point, for most people in most places there exists social options where such risks are not significant relative to other risks.

Social anxiety disorder.

Yes I agree with you that the risks are low.

But I disagree fervently and am offended with the parent comment. It doesn't make one foolish or prideful to take ownership over evaluating the cost/benefit. As an asocial person who prefers it online: parent commenter, kindly [edit: mind your own business]

> And it's not up to anyone but me to proscribe what my decision on this matter is.

True, but then when stuff like cost of mental healthcare goes up, which it constantly is, who pays that bill? The correct answer is: everyone.

> I remember there are studies that socialization is good even for introverts. They think it isn't, but it is.

As a pet peeve. Being an introvert is not the same thing as having social anxiety or disliking socialization. Lots of introverts like socializing.

I consider engaging with media to be interacting with the world.

Passively Watching TV all day = no interaction

Writing an essay about the tv you watch = interacting. Or even just talking about it with someone.

I think what im trying to criticize is passive consumption. If you exert agency or creativity in what you do, than it isn't passive anymore.

Thinking about the TV you watch but not writing an essay about it = interaction or no interaction?

Where is the boundary; how can you define it?

Life isn't binary but full of shades of grey. There are no hard lines.

You have the “right” as much as the next person but society is most benefited from those with experience helping those without.

The argument that you deserve to watch TV all day because you once had a job is curious.

Then by your argument, there should be no young teachers as what the hell kind of experiences could they possibly have to teach?

Most of the job of a teacher is being a publicly appointed babysitter.

Much of the rest is teaching the basics, which, as a functional adult, they should have decades of experience with.

You'd be amazed at the number of "functional adults" that are lousy babysitters

Teachers don’t teach experiential knowledge

That is probably the saddest thing I have read all day.

The best teachers I ever had were the ones that taught the subject material but from a relatable manner based on their years of experience. Yes, the best teachers I personally had were older.

Feels like you’re making emotional appeals to make the previous responder look out of touch in this post, and the previous, in opposite directions.

The best teachers I ever had were kind, smart, and well funded.

The first post was that old timers not sharing their experiences was bad which in my mind extrapolates to old timers should all be teachers.

The second post was that acknowledging the fact that teachers no longer teach but instruct based on a preset curriculum arranged to get grades for specific tests higher.

The fuzzy logic in my head might not be clear to me let alone others, but I feel you're trying to make something out of nothing as well.

Probably all of the experience they gained by getting a degree and becoming certified to teach, for a start

> The argument that you deserve to watch TV all day because you once had a job is curious.

How so? I think you're missing the most important part of my comment, which was about encouraging children to discover their passions and achieve self-sufficiency.

It's not about "once holding a job." It's about being able to take care of yourself. I'm not saying that I like the idea of spending the latter part of my years being unproductive, but that the wealth accrued during those productive years gives one the ability to do that.

If I'm not dependent on anyone, if I worked and saved in order to earn that life for myself, then yes I deserve to pursue my own happiness whatever that means for me and it's no one else's business or place to dictate otherwise.

Let's imagine a very talented 10 year-old who earns a billion dollars (perhaps they're a media star or very gifted technically, whatever the reason, they have earned this money through their own efforts rather than inheriting it) and has had themselves legally emancipated. Would you feel comfortable with this child deciding they are now going to exclusively watch television for the remainder of their life?

If a 10 year-old somehow managed to get themselves legally emancipated (that's a crucial piece of context that you offered) AND had earned 10 billion dollars to sustain themselves for the rest of their lives then yes, absolutely without question. They have every moral right, and my full approval, to do whatever they want to with their one shot here on earth. I'm more than perfectly comfortable with it and it's none of my business.

Most people while you are working, save money in the retirement plan. So when they retire, they are just using the money they saved, not living out ot thin air.

In some jobs, old people can still contribute. But other jobs like that require a lot of physical strength are almost impossible.

An extreme case are sports. After some age, your body is just not good enough. Some can transition to being a coach or reporter. Some are only good at kicking a ball. If they are good enough to make millions of people happy, why can't they save some of the money they earn and have a nice life?

My MiL spends 10+ hours a day watching conspiracy theory videos on the internet (used to be YouTube, but now a lot of the channels are suspended so she uses alternative sites). It doesn't make her happy, it isn't good for her physical health, and it causes extreme social isolation.

Anger and conspiracy completely dominate her personality. We can't go more than 10-20 minutes without some sort of serious accusation, which are often passive-aggressive and accusatory toward people in the room. She has directly accused me of multiple serious felonies and conspiracies, by virtue of the fact that I work in tech.

She is no longer allowed to visit one of her daughters because my BiL (wife's sister's husband?) is not on speaking terms with her. She chooses not to visit another daughter. She floats around church social groups, who all sort of give her a few months and then punt her to the next group.

To be clear: these aren't down to major political disagreements. Most of her family and friend group are all on the same page. Even her Q Anon neighbor won't speak with her anymore. It's bad. She has no friends and is slowly losing her family.

When she visits us for holidays we have to warn friends not to engage with the fights she tries to pick. We train them on how to treat her as they would a child without being patronizing. It's hard.

She is not happy, and I wish we could get her to spend less time watching videos on the internet.

> She floats around church social groups, who all sort of give her a few months and then punt her to the next group.

My teenager and her friends know someone like this who they described as "speedrunning friendships", and honestly that's the best description you're going to hear.

It's even worse. She cycles through, as in multiple times with each group. The church knows her issues, so they cycle her through 3-4 small groups for a few months at a time so that she's included and taken care of but not overly burdensome on any particular group of people.

The patience of saints. Good to know that someone's keeping an eye on her, I guess.

They are also very patient with sexual and financial predators in their midst. If I was going to make my living scamming, my home base would be a large fundamentalist christian church. Over 40, bald and fat? Want teenage girls fighting each other for the chance to be your bride? I can point you in a few directions. They will even house, feed, and clothe you until you can get on your feet and ravage their flock.

Yeah, we had to intervene with respect to a particularly scummy financial planner from the church in particular. Completely idiotic fixed income products that made no sense relative to the alternatives. He was a non-fiduciary and taking commission plus absurd fees, of course.

The church is a net positive and mostly saints, as GP characterizes. But anywhere you find a high trust environment with low barrier to entry there will be some wolves in the flock.

I have a close friend who is in that exact same situation with his mother. She lost her job, her husband lost his job, she's representing herself in a vaccine lawsuit (Spoilers: it's not going well), and she is completely incapable of being a human being around her children, all of it because she's fully committed to the Qult.

This isn't advanced age mental decline, this is just the consequence of a garbage-in-garbage-out information diet, and every nutty group building their own Facebook echo chamber.

> This isn't advanced age mental decline, this is just the consequence of a garbage-in-garbage-out information diet.

I’m not goong to excuse crappy behaviour, but given that they both lost their job I think we can assume the economy is also a contributing factor (not claiming it’s the sole factor though).

They lost their jobs in 2021, because they, among other things, thought that someone who has taken the COVID vaccine 'emits particles that damage the female body'. (They would not allow their son into their house for months after he was vaccinated.)

The economy was not the problem last year, unassailable certainty in ignorant beliefs was. They have new jobs now, which are harder, and much worse paying.

Just wanted to acknowledge your response. Don’t really have anything to add though. Probably a whole bunch of contributing factors /shrug.

You mean the economy that is facing a worker shortage has caused them to lose their job?

Is it a worker shortage or a wage shortage though?

Exactly, if I put out an add like this it will be counted into worker shortage:

'Hiring decelipers with experience of devops, security, and 15 years of Rust experience. Proven controbutions to linux Kernel. $30k'

We can all see how laughable this is. It is equally laughable to hire workers on shit wages, just because they are blue caller jobs doesnt mean there is no minimum bar at all

The market swings both ways, but media seems to have inherent bias favour how employer's would like it to be

A 55 year old losing their 100k job and facing only minimum wage offers that replaces 30% of their income is a sad reality for a lot of Americans right now. There is not a worker shortage in every area of the economy just in the economy as a whole.

Wages for the bottom 25th percentile of Americans are significantly up in the last 2 years, even counting inflation. I promise the economy is actually doing well.

(For instance, if everyone was losing wages there wouldn't be inflation.)

Didn't real wages decrease in the latest print?

Yes, real wages decreased on average for everyone, but the bottom quartile increased so much from 2019 that they're still ahead. Of course, it always depends which point you start measuring from.

Gas prices (which drives a lot of how people feel everything is doing) have also been up and down but are solidly down recently.

https://twitter.com/arindube/status/1595606927303925760

I love the idea of forcing a fired 59 year old mid level executive to suddenly serve coffee at a Dunkin Donuts, and shouting at them asking "Why aren't you happy with this job!?!"

Realistically, the reason we have a worker shortage is because all the jobs are non-unionized shit jobs that treat you like a meat puppet and actively abuse you

I have a relative like this, but she watches absolutely nothing. She believes some of her family members are out to get her though. She's in an assisted living facility and her phone has been taken away because she has called the police too many times, claiming that one of her family members is breaking in her window, to poison her.

I'm not claiming that's the same thing, but I'm not sure less time watching videos will correct the issue or won't just lead to some other issue.

No, it's a good thought. Thanks for sharing. We've talked with her physician about the possibility of this being some early signs of dementia. We don't have actual family medical history, but what we know from word of mouth lines up with dementia-like symptoms. So it may run in the family.

But she is still functional and able to do the business of life. For now.

I find it sad, that you can find such stuff on discovery network channels... so channels that were for legit education and documentaries not that long ago, and now show some reality crap (pawn stars,...) and fake conspiracy crap (ancient aliens, mermaids, bigfoot, etc.).

> bigfoot

That particular one offends me the most - we went from 0.3 megapixels to 300 and it's still fucking blurry

Leave sasquatch out of this.

It’s always in sufficient light for a modern camera to have 1000+ shutter speed as well.

A typical old school film camera is about 87 megapixels equivalent

https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm

*film stock in optimal conditions.

I took a photography class in middle school. We used 35 mm black and white film. I scanned all the negatives in with a decent Nikon film scanner. I can't remember why I settled on scanning at 2MP, but you could already see the grain: https://i.imgur.com/dcFksGp.jpeg

Sounds like it was a fun class!

If you still have them, and a digital camera with a macro lens, you'll be surprised how much better result (actual resolved resolution versus MP "resolution") you'll get with than using a scanner.

If I had to guess as why you stopped at 2MP, it was probably a mixture of diminishing returns in terms of extra resolving power and size. Idk when you took them, but I imagine size was also a consideration. A 2MP uncompressed tiff (which I imagine is what the scanner gave you) is ~5MB. Now, you could drop that down to ~1.6 if you could save them as single channel rather than RGB.

This is also where the optimal conditions come in (motion blur, camera shake, exposure, and how it was developed).

It was! I scanned them around 2009, so it wasn't size, it was that I wasn't getting more useful resolution. The scanner was a Nikon Coolscan V ED. I might still have some prints I can look at to compare, but I'm not sure how to do the same with a negative.

As per usual Ken is being pretty disingenuous here, even ignoring the hyperbole about needing a 175MP digital sensor to 'capture the same information'.

Velvia 50 might resolve 160 lines/mm (I'm not sure if this is line pairs/mm or lines/mm) but that's at a contrast ratio of 1000:1, for a contrast ratio of 1.6:1 (more typical for normal shooting conditions) you're down to 80 lines/mm which is 22.1 MP, and that's for just the film stock under optimal conditions. When you factor in real life shooting conditions like the lens MTF charts, the aperture you were shooting at, whether you were shooting on a stable tripod, dust, grain, noise, etc, that number only goes down.

Conventional wisdom has been that you can get good results scanning colour film at 6-12MP, and this tracks with the results people got when they started comparing the first DSLRs to 35mm film - something like the full frame 11MP Canon EOS-1DS from 20 years ago with a mere 25 line pairs/mm (including losses from the Bayer and AA filters) compares favourably(*) to medium format film, with 6-8MP DX format DSLRs from the same era comparing favourably to 35mm. B&W film can be scanned at a higher resolution but still, 87MP is a theoretical maximum not a practical one.

https://luminous-landscape.com/shootout/

I remember watching Discovery and National Geography documentaries when I was a kid and absolutely loved them. A few years ago when I could afford a cable subscription of my own I was so excited about finally getting access to that content again, but the excitement didn’t last long. It was all reality TV, conspiracies and ads, like all of it all the time. Not a single serious documentary was aired in the first two weeks of being subscribed, and by the third week I had stopped checking the program. So I canceled it before the month was up.

I find Pawn Stars (without the ads, i.e. on YT) pretty enjoyable and interesting.

I agree that Discovery Channel and similar ilk are pretty awful though, not much substance at all to those - and the volume of ads makes it unwatchable regardless.

Pawn Stars is just harmless fun. They don't push any politics or conspiracy theories, the fake drama is minimal, and you can actually learn little bits of interesting history.

The problem I have with Pawn Stars is the main cast is so insufferable.

There is something to this — the general theme of daytime TV in Britain, when it’s not doing endless property shows, or shows where people buy property in other countries, is “the man is out to get you” — a litany of shows on small time criminals, consumer scams, or local crime waves. Perhaps not surprisingly, Britain’s elderly population tends to be very right wing.

> a litany of shows on ... consumer scams

That sounds like it could be good to be aware of, came across so many acams myself, most prosperous industry after brexit

In the 80s, US AM radio was taken over by similar content. It is happening again with local news, both broadcast and "print".

Seems to be the fate of declining media modalities.

My impression is that there have been “cranky paranoid old pensioners” around since the dawn of time. I wouldn’t ascribe your MiL’s attitude or behaviors primarily to on-line videos or TV. They’ve been ranting in fraternal lodges, political party offices, coffeehouses, etc. for many hundreds of years prior. Twas ever thus. Keeps the circulation flowing for old folks.

If you can find someone her age who shares her “disruptive” world-views and likes arguing, facilitating a folie-à-deux might make things better for all concerned. Older folks tend to become more blunt and uncensored as time progresses and they also accept blunt and uncensored feedback…but generally only from those in their own age group. Of course, then there are two of them :-).

If it gets really bad, then a (surreptitious?) evaluation for some degenerative brain disorder probably needs to happen. Count your blessings, it isn’t that bad yet and as a SiL you are blissfully distant from the need to initiate anything.

> I wouldn’t ascribe your MiL’s attitude or behaviors primarily to on-line videos or TV

The social network rahe machine feeds your inherent fears like a drug dealer feeds off those in desperate or dead end life situation. They are somewhere between exploiting for profit an existing condition, or creating / worsening it.

There are stories of adult children deprogramming their parents / in-laws by blocking these sites via their routers [0], and within a few weeks they're able to see their parents' views and demeanor visibly change for the positive [1].

The post from BestOfRedditorUpdates [1] for example shows the progression, basically the same as the 5 stages of grief, or withdrawal from a drug habit. First they get angry, then they try to find ways around it, then they accept that they can't and start doing something else.

The truth is most people don't really go to these sites out of choice, they do it out of habit. If you can alter the habit, you can stop them from consuming such content. It's no different than stopping any other habit, like (if you're a smoker or alcoholic) not going to places where people smoke for example.

You can also replace the habit with something else; like smokers chewing nicotine gum instead of smoking, or like those trying to lose weight going for a walk instead of sitting at home and cracking open a cold one after a long day of work, this person's aunt replaced it with BTS [2].

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/comments/vb3ddu/rhe...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/yz7y...

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/sis22t/my_...

I’ve been tempted to do this but it feels…wrong. Like bordering on gaslighting/taking someone’s phone away without their consent. It makes me feel like a bully.

Sure, but is that better or worse than your parents becoming cult-like and being harmed psychologically? Propaganda is a real thing, these websites and TV channels spend a lot of time and money trying to manipulate their users, I don't think it's morally wrong to fight back against that.

It's the same as what many HNers say about TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, etc, except it's now applied to those that are older who don't necessarily use those platforms but instead use others. If one doesn't like the former, they also should not logically like the latter either, they're two sides of the same coin.

If they don't care enough to undo what you did, is it really hurting them?

Would you say the same if they were shooting heroin?

> If they don't care enough to undo what you did, is it really hurting them?

I’m not really sure ignorance of (to?) a solution makes this suddenly a morally justifiable action.

I don’t know how to change a tire. I’d still be justifiably upset if someone just removed one while I was at dinner lol

Consider another example, if you were out drinking and someone took your keys and refused to give them back so you could drive home while intoxicated, I'd consider that morally justifiable.

While there’s perhaps a “clear and present danger” distinction, I think this analogy is a good one because we are talking about similar interventions: nonviolent, easily overcome. No one’s gonna die from taking a cab home or missing out on the latest conspiracy theory.

No one is going to die if I take their phone away from them once a day and monitor everybody who calls and texts them. I don’t think that’s really a good bar.

That’s a little different as I am under the influence of a known, measurable substance with known, measurable impairments it induces. I basically can’t exercise ANY judgment. Not just driving.

Yes I understand that someone indoctrinated/obsessed with conspiracy theories can quite literally not be able to get out of that orbit without external intervention, but it’s harder to quantify and it’s harder to draw the line on where and when it’s appropriate to declare someone unfit to set their own media consumption habits.

We’d also have to clearly define what does and doesn’t contribute to the problem, which would vary from person to person. That is definitely not a straightforward delineation. Especially when the person in question doesn’t agree at all.

You can think of it as an application of the golden rule.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Would you want someone to do this for you if they found you in a similar situation?

If so, then you know what you need to do.

> Would you want someone to do this for you if they found you in a similar situation?

I mean this assumes I’m absolutely right AND it’s my right to unilaterally cut off my family from certain media without their consent. I feel like in the end I’m correct but not in the right.

The big thing is not to cut them off - that's likely part of it - but to replace the problematic habit.

Propaganda thrives on engagement. Engagement must be replaced with something equally stimulating.

But I am cutting them off. The content is blocked. I am denying them access.

Alas, these can be symptoms of a neurological disorder. I suggest consulting with a neurologist.

Thanks. We know and are very concerned about dementia in particular. Unfortunately, she's not interested. Fortunately, she is still fully capable of carrying out the normal business of life, at least for now. Not much we can do until things progress further, but we're making financial and logistical plans for if/when that day comes.

In the mean time, subtracting even a few hours of the angry conspiracy TV would help a lot. We do see her come out of the stupor a little bit when we take her "off grid" for a long weekend. But, yes, we fear worse things are to come.

After a close family member went down the conspiracy slide, I've realised believing conspiracy theories is an excellent indicator of mental health issues.

Your MiL is a case in point, and sounds like she needs serious help. Fifty years ago the men in white coats would intervene, but now mental health is basically ignored by society. If you care enough about her, you/your wife need to do act.

>> Fifty years ago the men in white coats would intervene

I dare say they cared about people's mental health even less. Asylums were built to incarcerate relatives you found troublesome. Some healthy people made it there, too.

Not to mention the "treatment" they received there was brutal.

My mom was like that and it turned out she had undiagnosed schizophrenia. It’s way more common than you can imagine.

I have a similar experience, parents and in-laws are totally consumed by right wing media and conspiracy theory’s to the point that we have to be careful about who we bring near them due to racism comments etc.

Its also super exhausting to be around them as we’re always on edge.

There’s not doubt its Facebook and modern “television”.

Ten years ago they were different people.

> It's not hypocrisy. A child and a retiree are not even remotely comparable. One is accountable to their parents, the other has likely worked their ass off for decades to earn a bit of down time.

Interesting that the perceived needs of people change over time based on how productive they are or were. This belies a sort of strangely managerial/administrative mindset as to the values that make a person "valid" to take time to pursue things they enjoy, and "earn" down time.

I like this perspective. It reads like the Ben Franklin quote: “Many young men die at age 25, but are not buried until they're 75.”

> will leave me the hell alone to do whatever I want to with the rest of my limited time here on earth.

Many elders are left to wither away alone, and loneliness of older people is a rampant issue - they want to feel loved or at least feel relevant in the family and not forgotten.

Okay deal, we’ll leave you alone if you promise not to vote.

Children are more stressed and have less free time than anyone else; it's not their fault that they're legally barred from doing anything "productive". They're not even allowed to vote on the laws that bind them!

> A child and a retiree are not even remotely comparable.

Excessive consumption of low quality media is both bad for the brain and bad for society.

> leave me the hell alone to do whatever I want to with the rest of my limited time here on earth

If that means being manipulated by aggressive algorithms designed to keep you locked in and wasting your limited time, that's fine for you. Personally, I find it horrifying.

Dude, hell no. This is an incredibly entitled outlook.

You don't get to check out and look at your phone while your children or grandchildren want your attention. As an elder, you're expected to invest your time and wisdom into the next generation, not sit around on your ass doing nothing. Sure, maybe it's your right to squander your experience, but if it's also your choice then you deserve no respect.

There's also the looming reality that as you continue to age, you'll be less capable of caring for yourself. Hopefully your children will take care of you, at least until they grow sick of you. And the caretakers in a nursing home certainly won't give a damn about your "productive achievements" when they're changing your diaper.

You're right about one thing. A child and a retiree are not comparable. You should hold yourself to a much higher standard than a child.

The blogpost was clearly written about parents who had no such high aspirations for their children, though.

This feels like a programmed response the article calls out

Parents are accountable to the children, just as you say the children are to the parents. That's what relationships are.

You're right in that generally it's none of my business how my father spends his days.

However, decades of the outrage figure on TV have shown that aspects of how he spends his time are not only his concern.

Had he listened to the majority of the family he'd still have those relationships

Even now as an estranged adult, I'd appreciate his (non-deranged) input

> You're right in that generally it's none of my business how my father spends his days.

Why would you say that? Family relationships matter.

True, that's the thesis of my post!

This is the struggle, respecting autonomy while still caring for someone

Say I saw his health declining, I'd mention it - but I probably wouldn't expect much of it either, considering

Edit: thinking on it, the effectiveness comes down to method

Articles like this one are understandably inflammatory.

Similarly, if I called my father something awful, I couldn't expect a good result. Asking how he feels does nothing

We'd both be better off if I offered to cook him some meals, for example

> I'm not 65 yet, but once I am I hope that others will recognize my productive achievements and will leave me the hell alone to do whatever I want to with the rest of my limited time here on earth.

100% reasonable. If you're done contributing and want to sit the rest out you're welcome to in my book. But I suspect that most people keep at least 1 hand on the reigns in a critical way: they vote.

If you're planning on influencing the lives of the following generations, I think it's pretty reasonable to be concerned about your mental well being.

Honestly I would much rather trust a voter who spends a lot of hours watching TV than someone who spends a lot of hours on social media.

I wouldn't. I suspect it's a lot easier to bump into differing viewpoints on social media than sitting in front of [insert channel here] for 8 hours a day.

But I'm not at all confident in this, and I think that's the point. I think they're both likely to fuck you up, so I think it's reasonable to be concerned about both.

This seems like a reasonable argument until you go deeper.

> most people keep at least 1 hand on the reins in a critical way: they vote

> it's reasonable to be concerned about [old people's] mental well being.

So you're saying old people shouldn't be allowed to vote... because they're mentally incapable?

I remember one time in American history when certain folks decided certain other folks were mentally incapable of voting... (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test)

Please don't post nonsensical rewrites of posts. Find a charitable interpretation, or at least an honest one.

Just want to ask; how is it a disingenuous rewrite. What is the charitable interpretation of "old people have mental problems, but they still vote, and that's a problem"? That's literally what the parent comment says.

I'm right to compare it to Jim Crow, I'm quoting verbatim, and that's essentially what they're arguing for.

To clarify, there are two logical consequences of that parent comment.

Suppose a 65yo person watches too much tv and still votes.

1. In order to be allowed to vote, they need to watch less tv.

2. They don't get to vote otherwise.

My point is: we have so much stigma against the elderly in this country that arguments like these even appear reasonable at first glance. I'm arguing that there are dark consequences of this line of thinking.

So, how is this not the same as another restrictive voting requirement, such as literacy tests or poll taxes?

That's not at all what I had in mind, but I still think it's an interesting (if extreme) line of reasoning.

Why do we ban 12-year-olds from voting? Seems we already have some concept of the capacity to vote built into our legal system here in the US. Wonder if that's true of all countries... Most states don't allow felons to vote either... It feels weird that you can vote by proxy even if you barely know your own name. I think I agree dementia patients should still be able to vote, but like... it feels weird, right?

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/blog/can-people-with-dementia-...

It's not extreme to be an absolutist here like myself.

The best things about the U.S. system are simple. If you are born on her land, you are a citizen. If you are a citizen over 18* you can vote. You have the right to free speech and religion as long as it doesn't injure anyone else.

These decisions were made in part to reject the British monarch's divine right to rule and establish popular sovereignty. I am not a historian; this is not the full picture, but this is how I understand it.

To me, talk of disenfranchisement is categorically dangerous because it undermines the foundation of the government, and walks back the 250-year work of civil rights activists to establish what is today for most, a pretty good system.

So yeah, should we let kids vote? Maybe, why not.

Should we take that right away from anyone based on fuzzy criteria or a doctor's evaluation? No, and I refer you to the history of the post-reconstruction South as an example.

*(or historically 21, also male, white, etc.)

Yeah, good point. Taking away people's right to vote isn't a direction I'd prefer we all head in.

Interesting then that 2 states: Vermont and Maine (and DC!) let you vote even while you're in prison.

They weren't actually arguing that people over 65 shouldn't be able to vote. They were saying that people over 65 _do_ vote (in this case, despite claiming they are throwing in the towel on caring about the world around them) and we actually have to care if their brains turn to mush on reality TV and conspiracy videos.

OP is saying that if you vote, you're not entitled to the "I'm retired from worldly concerns, let me live however I want, even if what I want is very strange" deflection regardless of age.

It's unfortunate that that horrendous historical abuse of a fundamentally sound idea has poisoned the well.

Umm... yes, historically disenfranchisement was driven by racism and sexism.

This is driven by ageism.

Obviously racism was historically much more abusive. But both are still discrimination.

Then the disenfranchisement of the young is surely equally discriminatory.

Maybe not equally. I know maybe like 10 old people. Most of them are very smart.

I've met several 2-year-olds. Dumb like a rock.

But should 12-year-olds be allowed to vote? I don't see a reason not to besides history. In the U.S. during Vietnam the minimum age was lowered from 21 to 18. Why not younger?

Children have no interest and know nothing about politics. Realistically they would just vote for who their parents vote for.

Realistically a lot of old people just vote for who the guy on TV told them to, or the party they joined 40 years ago. But we don't see disenfranchising them as legitimate.

> Realistically a lot of old people just vote for who the guy on TV told them to

Is there a study or some data backing this up? Or just a stereotype?

Same amount of evidence as saying kids would just vote for who their parents vote for.

Nah, nobody here has suggested we ban anything for kids or old people.

OP's saying that it's reasonable to care about what we put into kid's brains as they have a future, but not to care about them because they're old. I'm saying you absolutely still impact the future even if you're done working, so maybe we should consider everyone's media consumption.

Controversially I think the problem with taking this point of view is that it's also an argument for why seniors shouldn't be allowed to vote.

However, I think old people should be allowed to vote.

So really what we should be looking at is something more nuanced - that perhaps excessive screen time is wasteful, maybe even exploitative, even for seniors.

There is certainly an unevenness to the moral panic of children with screen time - but moderation is key, not blanket statements.

To take a contrarian view: Raising kids is not curing cancer, having a fruitful career isn't solving world hunger. Many people get to retirement age having worked hard for their own benefit, nothing more. How does that earn them the right to contribute nothing productive back to society for the rest of their years?

Not just over-60s, and not just TV screens. Yes, there are plenty of people older than I am (at 57) who spend way too much time watching TV. There are also plenty of people right around my age who spend all day listening to NPR or podcasts. Their eyes might not be elsewhere, but their brains sure are. And you know who I most often see actively using their phones while driving? Not the kids, and not the old folks either. It's the 40- and 50-somethings, the tradespeople in pickups and the suburban parents in minivans, flying down the road with their eyes glued to a screen instead where they should be. Entertainment addiction takes many forms, and the author makes a good point that the kids with their phones aren't the only ones who deserve to be taken to task for it.

What TV do you watch? Streamed? Broadcast? Both? What are some shows you like? I'm a senior but am stuck watching reruns of "Justified", "Life", and "Tehran".

30 years later, millennials will be on their smartphones while complaining kids these days never come out of their VR world.

Nice try, zuck.

In all seriousness, I suspect this is probably correct. I imagine things will be very VR-oriented and Zuckerberg is actually on the right track, just way too early.

Maybe he should have targeted the elderly from the start. People who can't leave the house easily might get more out of the experience. It seems inane to me having a metaverse which is just the real world with bad graphics but without my health and mobility it could be a different story.

Maybe market from old on down with this product

just way too early

That is far from Meta's only problem. They are well known as a manipulative corporation with little accountability for their actions or care for their users.

That only means they're likely to become even more dominant, thus proving parent's point.

That someday EDM will be considered music for the elderly is endlessly amusing.

When I was first going to nightclubs, Disco and Funk were counter-cultures. Disco was hated by the establishment because it was associated with homosexuality at a time when the Toronto police were conducting bath house raids and arresting bookstores for carrying queer literature. Funk was, as one documentary put it, "An unapologetic celebration of blackness."

Today I can listen to Disco and Funk any time I want, all I have to do is push a shopping cart around the supermarket. And yes, I turned 60 this year.

Isn't EDM that horribly repetitive thing you have to be high or drunk to really enjoy?

Most music is extremely repetitive; it's not like they usually play prog rock for grocery store BGM.

(Well, recently I was in a Whole Foods and they played Once in a Lifetime, which is at least a little different…)

Repetitive and awfully loud, at least in clubs.

Few people mind repetitive low volume music.

EDM is an extremely diverse genre.

Do you have some links? The stuff I've heard is the stuff they blast in night clubs and all I remember was boom - boom - boom - boom for minutes on end.

Nick Swardson bit on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7IlUIi-idA

I would probably prefer if my grandparents (~80) watched TV for 6h a day. Instead, they spend a similar amount of time on their smartphones, reading conspiracy blogs. And recently started to prepare for the imminent doom. Only thing worse would be an elder with dementia that is constantly shopping on amazon...

To be fair, at age 80, doom is probably fairly imminent.

While the average lifespan (American stats) is about 79, if someone makes it to 80 their average lifespan is 88.

My 70+ parents are the same but the other way—obsessed with all things Donald Trump and getting angry about him. Hours and hours lost to a politician they despise.

(edited for clarity)

Sorry to hear that.

It could be the opposite of what you're thinking and that they are not actually Trump fans, but getting angry about still having to deal with Trump. This describes a lot of the older folks that I know.

Yeah, that's what I meant, wish I was clearer.

Sorry, what I mean is that they are obsessed with hating Trump. Countless hours devoted to hanging on to and getting worked up over every bit of information about a guy they despise.

Extreme risk of getting off-topic, but I've been really wondering what Trump fans think of Trump's announcement of candidacy in 2024 and it's nearly impossible to ask people nowadays. Are your parents generally positive or negative on it? Did they like DeSantis last week and now think he needs to stay in Florida?

I can't imagine trump fans being anything except positive about him running again. Why would they even be negative?

Sorry, what I mean is that they are obsessed with hating Trump.

I think GP meant their parent's are anti-Trump. Mine are as well, but ironically, during Trumps rise and presidency, I noticed them starting to act quite like mirror images of (what I imagine to be) their Fox watching right wing peers - driven to nightly flights of righteous indignation by MSNBC or CNN, increasingly conspiracy minded and less concerned with non-political news/life.

Exactly matches my experience.

I like how you had to clarify that your parents hate Trump because other commenters immediately assumed they liked him, even though 90% of attention Trump gets is from people who dedicate most of their headspace to hating him.

Same. I try and talk with them about finding better ways to spend their remaining days. I guess it just feels good or something.

I expect consiracy-based TV shows are also available. Though possibly not to the same degree of nonsense you get on the internet, I suppose.

You can start with Ancient Aliens if you'd like.

Fox News is close to a conspiracy-based channel.

Not completely wrong, but I feel like they've retreated towards the center in recent years as the more far-right channels took over. Fox News has generally been less than enthusiastically MAGA and focused on the traditional conservative talking points: culture wars, border crisis, etc. with resistance to things like election denial, Trump worship, etc. (commentators like Carlson and Hannity not included in this assessment, of course)

I’m not sure how you could talk about Fox News without including Carlson and Hannity.

"Fox News" is about an hour of airtime, not counting major events when the whole gang is at battle-stations. Then, for decades, it casually rolls into several hours of increasingly sharp opinions that have become anti-democratic, beyond dog-whistle racist and nearly seditious.

That sh1t is dangerous. Nothing new for Murdoch, but this is the 21st Century and everyone in the US has easier access to firearms than baby formula. This is on top of the clearly toxic workplace as evidenced by all the settlements and suits we actually know about.

Poison to truth, in a nation of laws, is NOT something I'm thankful for.

The average 65 year old consumes 6 HOURS of TV a day? Jesus. No wonder they have a warped perception of politics. That little fearbox is controlling their lives.

My grandma probably watches about that much TV, but it’s mostly quiz shows and live sports. Not sure I’d leap to the same conclusion as you here.

Your grandma watches live sports? So unusual and yet so intriguing. Which ones are her favourites?

My grandma would watch cricket (which is the whole 6 hours sometimes...), snooker, tennis, cycling and Formula 1.

My dad would watch the cricket by seeing the TV to the Teletext page for the score, and watching it refresh every minute. (If you're young or from America, this is life watching a Web page refresh.) There is only slightly less movement than watching actual cricket.

Cricket, tennis and rugby union are her favourites. But she’ll watch whatever’s on if there’s nothing better to do. She’s loving the World Cup at the moment…

Edit: Incase anybody’s wondering, I don’t think Symbiote and I have the same grandma. But I don’t know for certain.

My grandma absolutely loves watching (American) football.

Sad indeed. Many people waste the last 2-3 decades of their lives on TV. I’m not entirely sure why, but an assumption is that they prob didn’t live a very sovereign life in their younger years, have grown increasingly disconnected from themselves through life, and by the time they’re older have completely lost track of what makes them come alive/is healthy.

Plus it's cheap, easy and stimulating.

Do you really think watching TV vs internet usage really different for warping political views?

It has the potential to be different, absolutely.

You and I are having a conversation about politics. I assume you think you have some fairly moderate views and you aren't being funded by a media mogul with billions of dollars.

How would you and I talk over the TV?

IMO unidirectional media is worse in a lot of ways; it trains the counterparty they have no say and they are a passive receiver of information with the only speakers being an extremely narrow selection of paid parties.

Also, written media is inherently superior to animated media in my opinion, if you want something else than entertainment and factoids.

I mean, i like alternative history, and even history channels on youtube or the television. But i would never form an opinion from them. I would rather read, even old and criticized Paxton books, because i know i would stumble on some stuff, sometimes rightly, often not, and the lecture of newer books will confirm, or infirm my original thought, and allow me to form better one (not a WW2 nerd by the way (i really prefer the 16th to 19th), but i think Paxton should be the most read historian on a non history-focused forum. And he was my entry point into the science).

How many people actually use the comments vs just consuming the content? Even if many people read the comments (which I doubt) the majority of the comments aren't insightful and don't provide any contradiction to the point of the video. I don't have any evidence, but I think this may even make things worse. Since many people like to be apart of the crowd if all they are seeing is everybody agreeing it could solidify their views.

Also, when it comes to TV and radio some shows have callers to the show. It does make it interactive and can provide alternative points. This appears to be falling out of favor though.

I think that video media is for reasons I cannot explain, a far more effective persuasive tool than written media. If your internet diet is YouTube/TikTok you're definitely just as vulnerable.

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman addresses this; it's more or less pre-internet but it speaks to how different media forms work quite differently due to their inherent nature. TV inherently is the way it is (and lectures, and newspapers, and all other forms of media) because it cannot be anything else.

I think we are agreeing. I think many people who consume a lot of TV media would be the same people who consume a lot of YouTube or TikTok. If the internet didn't exist heavy YouTube users would be watching hours of TV. This causes me to think the problem isn't so much TV causing distortions, but other factors that are not unique to TV.

I think they're both a contributing factor. But I think long viewership of one channel is particularly dangerous. When you watch something like Fox news or MSNBC, you're getting only voices in your echo chamber and perspectives from one company alone.

The internet has somewhat of the opposite problem, it has an echo chamber for every niche, and gives a platform to every voice.

I think spending more time with people, or in projects is a much more healthy way to entertain yourself, and doesn't as easily lead to view distortion.

You can be in just as much of an echo chamber online. I think you are overestimating how much people really expand themselves online (or maybe I'm underestimating it). I know a lot of people who basically just get the same as Fox or MSNBC, but online. If they see something they don't like they block the user or unfriend their friends if they start pushing politics they don't like.

I guess my real question is if there is just a problem with being in an echo chamber or if TV is uniquely worse.

Same goes for twitter. Gosh I hope nobody uses 6 hours of twitter a day.

I wonder what counts as 'watching'. Like if you measured it I probably spend ten hours a day 'listening' to the radio - as in it's on in the background in the kitchen most of the time. I'm not sitting there intently listening to it and not doing anything else. Probably the same for this TV statistic.

> No wonder they have a warped perception of politics. That little fearbox is controlling their lives.

Ah yes, unlike us enlightened younger people who choose to spend our time in fancy online echo chambers.

Even then, typical TV content is still very middle of the road compared to online content.

Such an odd take in my opinion. Just because there isn't a comparative level of concern for older people's excessive screen time doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about younger people's.

Highest suicide rates have traditionally been among the elderly. Is it then a "moral panic" if we are concerned about rising suicide rates in teenagers?

Possibly, it would depend on how the discussion is framed.

“Won’t somebody think of the children” should always be looked at critically, because far too often it has nothing to do with the harms those kids face at all — which the article brings up at the end.

> Highest suicide rates have traditionally been among the elderly. Is it then a "moral panic" if we are concerned about rising suicide rates in teenagers?

I agree with you. Another way of making the same point:

The negative impact on those left-behind is much higher for a 15 year old who commits suicide than for an 85 year old. The 15 year old's parents may well spend decades grieving their loss; the 85 year old's parents will be long dead. Given that, I don't think it is unreasonable for society to focus the bulk of its attention and resources on youth suicide rather than elderly suicide.

I feel like the article started off about one thing and turned into something else.

"Marital family" seems like an unusual way to describe the arrangement, predicting a degree of distance that has nothing to do with TV under the surface.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Parents waste time on their phones, so the kids learn to as well. I say this as a parent that struggles to regulate my screen time and my kids.

Putting it on the kids is a form of projection. It’s hard to hold our own shame and feel it. And easier to try and control others behavior.

The better conversation is why do we put so much shame into screentime given the power and ubiquity of computing? The, at best, the extremely marginal causal negative effects of screentime on children’s outcomes? Why don’t we focus on things that actually impact kids outcomes like Adverse Childhood Experiences (abuse, etc)?

The number of times I decline my kids' requests for screen time and then immediately return to my own laptop or phone is quite remarkable. We excuse it under the guise of work, research or organisation, but those things easily bleed into general browsing and social media.

"Las Vegas pre-COVID"

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRC14TaE/

reference for anyone who doesn't want to click on a tiktok link:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/old-people-playing-slots

Over 60s are generally retired. With little money to do things. Many end up with mobility issues. Watching tv is free and doesn’t require moving.

Wasting time is relative. Everyone always has some excuse for it, for why they think it’s okay to burn their brain on TV WoW TikTok whatever.

Just do your thing and live your best life. Unsubscribe from what other people think.

The piece sounds like a petty personal revenge, where it's hard to detect any rational point.

She grew up in a family abusing screen time, centering the TV above anything and anyone. That was very bad, as she readily admits. How then does it make any sense to look away when a similar or worse issue is affecting young people?

Instead of preventing it from happening twice, you focus on "rubbing it in", because two wrongs make a right?

Further, from a pragmatic point of view, the comparison makes zero sense. Nobody cares how much TV the elderly watch because there's little to ruin at this point. They're past their productive years, so it doesn't matter from an economical point of view. For most it won't affect their dating chances or ambition to start a family. It matters little (or at least less) for their health, as they're already in winter.

For young people and society as a whole, these things matter far more. I don't know what the proper regulation (if any) would be for screen time but let's at least establish that the stakes are a 100 times higher compared to an old guy watching a stupid TV quiz.

The nature of the screen time is also incomparable. Digital is far more addictive, radicalizing, privacy-invading and exploitative compared to TV.

> it's hard to detect any rational point.

Really? I think I detected at least:

1. This moral panic is either overblown or wildly inconsistent.

2. If it's impossible to imagine the same kind of government restriction being proposed for aging adults, why accept it for other groups?

> Digital is far more addictive, radicalizing, privacy-invading and exploitative compared to TV.

Or perhaps the unidirectional nature of TV consumption makes for powerful radicalizing propaganda--especially to an at-home group with fewer external connections to ground them--and the passivity of the consumption rots your brain and dries up critical thinking.

Aging adults have no potential left.

I assume this is snark but just in case it isn't, this is not how you should view aging adults. Potential is always limitless, only the possibility of realizing that potential reduces as one nears end of life. But then, who knows when someone's end of life is?

1. This moral panic is either overblown or wildly inconsistent.

As the issue at heart is young people's screen time, the article did nothing to demonstrate that it is not overblown. Old people watch TV is not a comeback that negates the young people's issue.

Is the moral panic inconsistent? Hell yes, and for very obvious reasons. The negatives matter a 100 times more for people at the beginning of their lives, as well as for our future as a whole.

2. If it's impossible to imagine the same kind of government restriction being proposed for aging adults, why accept it for other groups?

Because they're old. Old means you're close to death. Pretty much nothing matters anymore.

I don’t know if I can agree with you about “little to ruin” for older people and TV. As we get older we still work, have lives, learn, see family and friends, hobbies , etc.

Spending too much time alone or alone together in a non-interactive virtual realm like watching filler/garbage TV really has a huge opportunity cost. We lose so much time that way and time is the most important thing we so trivially waste. I’m doing it right now on a forum comment! That being said I’ll utilize my time in the real world after this short statement. Don’t forget the older cohort has the highest voter participation rate. What they watch and how much of it matters because it will affect your life.

Have a happy thanksgiving if you’re American. If not, happy harvest festival wherever you are!

I think some people are just more hypnotically attracted to the action occurring in their field of vision, and moving pictures stimulate this primal response.

Emotional response to artificial visual stimuli was first exaggerated for some with the arrival of silent movies, made more realistic (even when complete fantasy) with talkies and then color film.

Television turned this from a designated entertainment event into an everyday occurrence in the home when it was still black & white, then color TV upped the ante, but until cable came along nobody imagined that anybody would want to have it turned on all the time. The few broadcast channels in any one market used to sign off after a certain time at night then not resume programming until the next morning. There were 13 VHF channels but no market had anywhere near that number to choose from within radio range.

Then come personal style computers which were powered on all the time at the office, even if they were not that interesting people got accustomed to it, and did some of the same thing when they got more popular for the home. Laptops took the screen on the road and internet made it more interesting on a 24/7 basis, wifi broadened that and more powerful smartphones put it over the top everywhere.

Each step of the way focusing on smaller-than-realistic horizons.

Really? We conflate the time spend by retired people with the activities of the young and supposedly productive?

Yes, because the consequences matter.

Retired people have significantly more time, and thus have significantly higher capacity to vote and influence society even though they will not experience the long term consequences of said influence.

You ought to be worried about who whispers what from sunrise to sundown.

On the other hand, we should be very vigilant on the kind of experiences kids get to have as those indirectly influence the future of society.

who whispers what…and why

A healthy habit that senior executives learn is to ask the question “why are you telling me this (particular fact, among all the facts there are to tell)?”

BTW, retired folks don’t have a greater capacity to vote, as compared to all voting age qualified voters. Mobility issues in fact make it harder. Also, depending on the definition of “long-term”, it is definitely true that the elderly will experience the consequences of their actions or, conversely, no one currently living will. Why did you tell me this? :-)

> BTW, retired folks don’t have a greater capacity to vote, as compared to all voting age qualified voters. Mobility issues in fact make it harder.

I think a lot of it is simply that many younger people are too busy to vote, or have too many appealing alternatives, or just don't get around to it; retired people have much more time on their hands, so they are more likely to do it.

A good way of levelling that playing field is what we have here in Australia – compulsory voting. If you are eligible to vote and don't, the government will send you a letter asking for an excuse, and if they don't think that excuse is good enough (you can appeal their rejection of your excuse to court), they'll fine you (for federal elections it is only AU$20, although if you don't pay that on time, they add another zero on the end). Added to that, voting is always on Saturday, a day which the majority of people have off work – and those who have to work that day (or are observant Jewish/etc), can go to an early voting centre before then, or cast a postal vote. Young people are much more likely to vote when you force them to.

Are you saying that young people do not vote because they don't have time? Whilst the very topic we're discussing argues they're on their phone the entire damn day?

As to older people being numerous in terms of voting, that's democracy.

In the US, due to voting not being a national holiday, and due to people working, it is difficult to actually go out and vote.

I don’t mind that older people can vote, it’s democracy after all, but I do mind the fact that they are constantly exposed to a barrage of propaganda from troll farms.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, having been sharing care-taking responsibilities for my mother who is in the mid-stages of dementia. For the last year or so, her usage of her phone has become increasingly problematic. She'll pick it up and stare at it blankly for minutes on end, trying to remember what she meant to do with it. She'll poke around the screen, bewildered, sure she had something she needed to do but unable to execute it, entrapped in a constant loop of frustration. And she would compulsively text our family nonsensical gibberish, with dozens of variations as she attempted to get out a well formed version of whatever she meant to say. It's also enabled multiple scammers to extract thousands of dollars from her.

It was particularly striking to me, because she was never overly obsessed with her phone or technology generally, prior to the onset of her dementia. Mercifully, she's recently gotten to the point where she can't use it anymore because of dexterity issues.

It's painful how slow we're coming to realize the concept of "how much screen time?" has been asking the wrong question.

Isn't a piece of paper just another screen?

Isn't a book just another screen?

What about e-paper?

Is playing a physical piano better than playing a virtual one using a screen?

There's nothing wrong with having screen time. What matters is what type of activities people do on their screens.

none of those except MAYBE piano actively engage with the viewr / user to keep their attention / maintain a dopamine loop in the same way as interactive devices.

I say that as someone who'se worked on both films and games and there's just something about interactivity that has a huge leg up over all the other ones in retaining attention.

Young people are developing for the future whereas older people are not. If I am in the twilight of my life my comfort and ease of life factors more importantly because I'm on an irreversible decline. A young person on the other hand risks their future by watching too much

> Meanwhile, those aged 65 and over spend just under six hours on average watching TV daily.

Wait people are still watching broadcast TV?

I guess if you're a pensioner in the UK who doesn't have to pay the license it makes sense. Though 6 hours, even of the Beeb, seems a bit nightmarish.

In the US, that's like 2.5+ hours of ads. I just can't understand how these people don't lose their ever loving mind every 7 minutes.

In the rare occasion I'm in a hotel or something I almost always turn the TV on out of sheer boredom and find myself absolutely blown away by how obnoxious and prevalent commercials are. Same for terrestrial radio.

My experience exactly

This doesn’t make any sense. Forgive me for being crude but for the vast majority of over 65’s… it just doesn’t matter what they do with their time. They’re waiting around to die.

Children will grow up to build the future so what they do or don’t do matters a lot.

Not to endorse this attitude about my end of the population pyramid - but it does raise an interesting point about how TV screen time was measured for the older folks.

In long-term care facilities, hospitals, doctors' offices, etc. - where the TV's are just left turned on all day, "turn it off" isn't an option, and a fair number of the older folks may have failing hearing / eyesight / cognition (so they might have a hard time following the content on the TV, even if they wanted to) - was that "screen time" added into the numbers?

None of it is good for any group, and I'm not sure what the main insight is because I had to stop reading her first-draft article. Perhaps an editor could have turned this wall of drivel into something profound? We will never know.

I've been hearing more and more anecdotal stories about children blocking their parents access to Fox, OANN, etc. via parental controls and wifi routers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/yz7y...

That's actually a really good idea. Someone should sell a pi hole like box preconfigured to block all those aggressive/conspiratorial sites. Maybe make it discrete too, like a small box you plug into an outlet hidden behind some furniture.

I wonder how many realize that censoring information is a human habit as old as time?

Another option to blocking is throttling speed. Make time-wasting (or worse) laborious to access and make the woodworking videos on YouTube full speed.

I have a deepseated aversion to outright censorship when it comes to my kids' media but this is somehow more palatable to me. What a pleasantly dystopian compromise!

> I’ve never understood the sanctimony about the need to “protect” young people from excessive screen time

Supposedly a person already in his 60s or 70s already has the best parts of his life behind him, he can spend how many hours he wants in front of the TV. At the same time, a person in his 20s still has a lot of life to, well, live, it definitely seems like it is wasted if said life is spent in front of a phone screen. If it matters I'm a person in my early 40s and I spend almost no time in front of the TV (not even Netflix), although I do spend too much time in front of my computer.

I think the only thing he skipped over was that younger people are probably spending majority time in front of youtube or fortnite etc, so of course TV is down.

I think he also misses the main point. It's not that the TV is on for the periods of time, it's the ways shows manipulate and control people's attention to reinforce sitting in front of it. Perhaps we should take a closer look at advertising and dark patterns and 'click-bait' methods instead of just the time people spend, regardless of age group.

Why is it that every time I read an article about modern British politics and culture, I walk away almost feeling happier about the state of the US?

It's almost like God, while planning the course of current events, looked at the inhabitants of the US recovering from 4 years of Trumpian misrule and decided to console them by having the original English-speaking developed country end up even worse off than they were.

(I'm kidding, of course. God doesn't actually exist, and I know there's a lot of places way worse off than the US or the UK. I'm also not actually this American-centric in my views. My point is that the UK somehow seems worse off these days than the US is, and that's a sentence I never thought I'd ever be saying 10 years ago.)

Watch out! Over 60's vote and they can defend themselves from your finger wagging and anyone who tries to make them feel uncomfortable.

When I was a kid they were similar concerns about kids spending too much time in front of the TV…

And in the 90s about kids spending too much time in front of the Xboxen.

Have to ask my parents what they were worried about in the 50s, probably too much time reading books.

Listening to too much degenerate Rock and Roll on the radio.

Just because similar concerns existed does not make them invalid. I was a 2000s kid who spent far too much time playing videogames and on the computer. If I could give my past self advice against doing so, I would in a heartbeat.

There seems to be no distinction between TV and gaming. It’s all just “screen time.” But the distinction is VERY important. One can be addictive.

Both can be addictive.

But "screen time" tells you nothing. Is this video games? Conversation with friends? Browsing through one-liner/tweet forums? Watching documentaries? News? Films? TV shows? Porn?

Is this happening in public? While driving a car? In the presence of friends?

Is this interaction purposeful, like taking an on-line course? Like learning or improving a skill?

Is the viewer actively engaged or passive? Are they consumer or producer? Are they repeating mindless conspiracies or writing independent, informed, well reasoned argument? Or are they performing, recording it, and posting it online?

Without a lot more context, pushing "screen time" as a sign of the impending apocalypse is just more disinfo.

Reading books too.

One week I was particularly aghast at my screen time measure until I realised it was counting maps and music via CarPlay when I was driving for hours a day on a remote job.

They're in no way comparable. One is a mind in development and the other is, hopefully, a well equipped mind. The sad thing is the clarity of thought, writing and reading comprehension of the average person has deteriorated a lot. The screens give a fake sense of literacy but it's barely parroting.

From the social class perspective, I find it soothing that otherwise bored people will be sucked into lives of passive consumption rather than whatever mischief they can conjure.

I've always wondered how someone can talk about the perils of mobile phones and then binge watch lousy TV series.

I'm one who did just that - my mom fell into the trap of qanon, trumper, cultist, and worse bullshit. And every time I went over there, she had that idiot box on, blaring foxnews propaganda. I caught her more than a few times down a real rendition of 2 minute hate from Orwell's 1984.

So, I turned on the child filters on her tv and removed foxnews, oann, and a few more. Is it ethical? Well, it's gray for sure. But given how unhinged she was getting, sure, I'll take that hit.

> I caught her more than a few times down a real rendition of 2 minute hate from Orwell's 1984.

This is one thing I acutely remember about my grand-dad sitting there watching endless conservative news on the TV: The red-faced build-up and then vocal rage. These shows just hook onto elderly people's emotions and gradually whirl them around in a frenzy until they are visibly upset at "all these horrible things the 'liberals' are doing". He would finally turn off the TV absolutely disgusted at all these imagined problems and conservative fever dreams, thinking he was watching actual news. Pretty sad, and really nothing you can do about it unless you physically intervened and started blocking antenna signals.

Only did that once for my Mom. She was visiting, and 9/11 happened. Everyone was basically stuck in the house for a few days. Fox coverage was pretty bad for that event, and there was a lot of other better coverage, so I removed Fox from the channels that would show up on the remote. But that was an event-driven sort of thing of direct local significance…

If she had invested in FTX and could have been mislead into more bad investments, I might try to have certain puff pieces about Alameda and SBF in Fortune, NYT, WSJ just…disappear.

> And twelve years of Tory austerity cuts mean there’s very little else for them to do, and not much they can afford to.

The assumption here is that people's time is spent based on how much money the government is handing out. If you're living in a capitalist economy, can't you use the opportunity available to you to do better for yourself?

As if TV was even remotely related to spending all day scrolling through social media. There's no comparison between the two.

True, tv doesn't alter its content on the fly minute-by-minute, using an algorithm tuned to your own personal emotional triggers.

This is fair. My boomer dad is almost never not watching TV...

Sounds like author self-immolated their marriage and is still salty about it?

What if we just talked about moderation in all things and kept to ourselves?

Yes! Let's talk about about over-60s' screen time like we talk about young people's. Though I'd suggest "screen reliance" as a better measure than "screen time" (meaningful / active vs passive use?). Looking at my own family over the generations (sample size of 1) both screen time and reliance seem all-but incomparable, what is comparable is the sentiment around it:

My grandparents, both in their mid 90s and long-retired, probably watch at least 4-6hrs of TV in a day. At least. Almost always in the evening from about 6 or 7pm until they go to bed (quite late usually). Combination of news, british crime drama, and classic films from their DVD collection. They mainly spend their days playing (a surprising amount of) golf, driving to and eating cheap lunches at various clubs where they are life members (mainly motoring and golf clubs), getting coffee and browsing at shopping centres, and visiting (and being visited by) their large and ever-expanding family. They own a smart phone but until recently only used it for receiving calls (they've just started making them too). They do use the internet sporadically via a PC, mainly to make reservations or plan trips (no email or direct communication). They were the first family on the street to get a TV and every kid on the block used to come around to watch it when my Dad was a kid. They never allowed eating dinner in front of the TV, but usually do so themselves now unless someone is visiting. Their screen time is primarily passive. They find it enjoyable, normal, and don't seem to worry about it at all.

My parents and their partners, all in their 60s and working, waste time on their phones to varying degrees, including a small amount spent on social media. They all enjoy complaining about why internet technology works (or doesn't) the way it does and how much time they spend on it - they came to it later in life (duh) and are very self-ware in their usage. They also watch TV (2-3hrs, broadcast and on-demand), listen to radio, and read books, newspapers and magazines with much less complaint / awareness. Their media use encompasses their lives, but it is not all-encompassing. They take a lot of joy from a family group chat we're all part of, but to talk it's always over the phone or in person. They never allowed watching TV at dinner time, but we did watch the news together (sometimes the Simpsons!) and were one of the first houses in our small suburb to get a game machine (and a PC) in the early 90s, though usage was strictly controlled! My parents & partners will sometimes watch TV at dinner now. Their screen time is probably 50-50 passive to active.

I am on a phone and laptop all day for work. I lead a fairly active/outdoorsy life outside of work (mainly on the weekend), but also watch quite a bit of on-demand, a small amount of broadcast TV, and spend a couple of hours on personal internet use per day. I was the first professional / white collar worker in my family. I would classify my screen time as significant, bordering on excessive and primarily active.

My kids aren't allowed to watch TV at dinner time. They're about to enter school so still don't have too much use (or want) for a phone or the internet yet, beyond 2-3hrs on-demand streaming per week. I plan on limiting it as much as possible while I can, assuming that it will dominate their lives (while hoping that it won't). This seems to be the generationally-shared sentiment.

We did.

And by "we", I mean Newton Minnow, former chair of the Federal Communications Commission, and Jerry Mander, advertising executive.

Minnow's commentary came in what came to be known as his "Vast Wasteland" speech.

<https://vimeo.com/55481067>

You can find a contemporaneous interview of Minnow by Studs Terkel here:

https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/newton-minow-discusses...

And a recent (2021) take here:

<https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-05-06/newton-min...>

Audio (MP3):

Mander's argument was the book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, which is just what it says: four arguments, and not for limitation, change, or curtailment, but elimination of television. Those arguments being that television:

- removes the sense of reality from people

- promotes capitalism

- can be used as a scapegoat, and that

- all three of these issues negatively work together

(Via Wikipedia)

Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimina...>

Internet Archive: <https://archive.org/details/fourargumentsfor00mand_0>

LibGen: <http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=448E80906BCD92C0AA02235E...>

And they were far from the first or only ones. Vance Packard published The Hidden Persuaders on the power of advertising in 1957 (<https://archive.org/details/vance-packard-the-hidden-persuad...>). The Frankfurt School looked at (amongst many other things) the role of mass media on culture and politics. There's Dwight MacDonald's classic essay "A Theory of Mass Culture" (1953) <https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...> Noam Chomsky, Neil Postman, Edward Herman, Robert W. McChesney, and numerous others.

For what it's worth, I had the luck to grow up in a household without television for many years, and afterwards, only very limited access. The Tube largely repells me now, though other screens do, I confess, have their allure.

NB, above was a slightly kneejerk response on my part to misreading "over-60s" as somehow referring to the 1960s.

That said, awareness of television as a generally harmful medium has in fact been recognised for quite some time. Along with other mass media.

And yes, older adults seem to have their own specific susceptibilities.

Kara Swisher speaks and writes fairly frequently over her own issues with her own mother's television viewing and its impact upon her mother's politics and general (mis)understanding of the world.

The idea here seems to be that it's OK for people to watch hours of TV a day every day.

I find it amusing that they consider TV-watching "the traditional British way". It's the traditional working class British way, sure. It's a status symbol here to _not_ have a TV, or to have a tiny one like 15" in a large room.

The issue is really that doing _anything_ mindlessly is a waste of life. TV, flicky flicky lighty box things like TikTok, and World of Warcraft enable that in exactly the same way.

And yeah, I played years of that shit when I was younger. A complete waste. Am I still here? Sure. Did it have some minor benefits? Sure. Would I recommend it? No, huge waste of time.

There's also an enormous difference here in that older people often can't really do much else. My grandma finds it difficult to read books because her eyesight is going and lots of physical pursuits are out for obvious reasons. Cosying up in front of the TV is comfortable for a woman living out the end of her days.

While too much of anything is detrimental, I don't find watching TV to be a waste if you are enjoying yourself. Recreation is important for mental health.

If one is like I used to be, TV is mindless but it can be mindful. After meeting someone who changed my perception of the medium, I find that TV is one of the most engaging and challenging exercises. You are constantly searching for symbolism, inspirations and trademarks of actor/writer/director. There is so so much to do when watching TV that anyone who says it’s a waste is missing a huge opportunity!

TV got good. It's hard to even talk about "TV" these days because we're combining artfully-crafted, thought-provoking shows like The Leftovers or The Wire with things like Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. Same medium, but radically different forms of content.

Have you watched Severance on Apple TV+ yet? It's so good, and thick with symbolism and dual-meanings.

Another big difference is the way we consume. "Watching TV" used to mean watching whatever was on in the current timeslot, which often meant flipping through channels until you found the least-bad thing you could tolerate.

In the last 10-15 years that style has all but disappeared* and been replaced with Netflix-style services (and maybe PVRs for sports fans and 60+), where you don't watch "TV" but watch "a show".

Browsing tiktok or YouTube might be the closest thing that people still do to channel flipping, but since it's customized and endless, there's never a need to settle for the "least-worst" thing you can find.

(* I'm sure there are people that still do this, but I'm saying this based on my circle of close family/friends, many of whom are non-technical).

Strongly agree with all of that. When I hear people complain online about all the different streaming services, I assume they're very young and didn't have to suffer through "appointment viewing" and "channel flipping" and watching "whatever's on". And a third of it all was commercials.

The fact that many people still watch TV that way baffles me.

Yeah there's definitely different types of shows. Just like there's different types of books. There are some shows and movies that have deep philosophy to them and you can spend hours, days, or weeks mulling over and discussing. The same is with books. There are also plenty of trash novels that are purely for entertainment. Is there a difference between that and your standard mindless sitcom? Probably not. But we also shouldn't paint with too wide of a brush or we're closing ourselves off to a potentially powerful form of art, expression, and even a method of learning.

I also think there is nothing wrong with purely engaging in entertainment. But this is an issue when it gets addictive and becomes too much. We need to be nuanced about these discussions rather than being so judgemental and putting our own perspectives as the higher status. That's just stroking our own egos and that's similarly not healthy nor beneficial to society as a whole.

Not the person you are responding to - I agree with you that recreation is important. I think we should be talking more about how to do recreational activities that feel beneficial down the line. Or are recreation and being beneficial mutually exclusive? Overall, it feels harder to do beneficial recreational activities.

I don't think it's fair to judge what is a "waste of life" or not. What one wants to do with their own life is a subjective thing. Each have their own interests, comfort zones, and personal struggles that they have to deal with.

There are two different types of "want". You want to live a full and meaningful life. You also want another cigarette if you're addicted to smoking. Sure there are people who would consciously choose a cigarette, but they are a minority. Most people would rather be productive and do something that makes their lives better even if they end up lighting a cigarette.

Don't confuse output with productivity.

You can also do "productive" things while you smoke a cigarette (albeit physically unhealthy).

Many people do a lot of things they think are productive but see no improvement in outcomes. i.e. reading articles

> Many people do a lot of things they think are productive but see no improvement in outcomes. i.e. reading articles

Or to put a different spin on this, some people spend so much time producing things that they never pick up a book.

You're already positioning yourself in a very specific value framework when you put productivity and self-improvement at the forefront. There are many other frameworks in which finding pleasure in the present has value.

I've known people who chased the future so hard they never took the time to live.

So if they had watched more TV would that have constituted “taking the time to live”?

If watching TV had brought them pleasure in the present, yes that would fit the definition I was using.

I believe I've addressed that saying that some would consciously pick a cigarette. I think it is reasonable to say that such people are a minority.

Consider a moment the framework where people's actions tell the truth about their true wants, and the possibility that many people constantly and effortlessly tell lies (to themselves and others) about what they actually want.

Waste is waste, that's not a judgement about the person wasting something, it's a description of what's happening.

If you throw away food, you're wasting it. You might be allergic to it, but that doesn't change the "thrown-away food is food-waste" bit, it just explains why you don't want that food around.

Then can you come up with a rigorous definition of "waste" here that others would agree with? Definitions usually require consensus.

Resources spent which, after their consumption, do not result in an experience which a human would look back upon with fondness or gratitude.

Probably not, because video game addicts will not admit they have an issue, much less one that wastes valuable time.

I'm wasting my life working on world changing problems when I could be spending it playing WoW.

Doesn't it get incredible repetitive and boring with time? You get a new extension/DLC and you have a few new things to discover and monsters to slay or whatever, and then it's back to farming gold?

At that point, you're probably 'playing' it because of the social interaction with other people, aren't you?

I'm playing devil's advocate. I haven't actually played much WoW, but I have spent a long time thinking about escapism with a critical eye. It's one of my biggest regrets.

I encourage people to waste their time. I was the happiest when I had free time to putz around with games and hobbies. I made stuff for the joy of it. I wouldn't wish a successful career on my worst enemy.

I don't see any utility in distinguishing between flavors of escapism. Why would productivity make a judge say one waste of time is better than another? Because that judge doesn't see the value in wasting time and the ones with creativity seem more like work and less like fun.

I don't think that everything "non-productive" is "wasting time", but wasting time is by definition not productive.

It's the difference between sleeping so you can be awake and putting yourself into a dreamless coma because you can't think of anything better to do. Watching TV (and not having it play in the background while you're doing something else) is the equivalent of a coma.

Deciding whether something is waste is a value judgement about what you spent it on. If you make a beautiful food sculpture that you enjoy looking at, but doing so renders the food inedible, is that food waste or not? If you feed it to someone who's already eaten more than a healthy day's food intake, is that food waste or not?

You can only say whether time is wasted if you have a measure of what's a valuable use of time, and the idea that "productive" activities are more valuable than social farting around is not uncontroversial.

What is your definition of a wasted life? It's bound to be different from the next person.

Food is made to be eaten, that is its purpose. So it's clear what wasted food is.

What is the purpose of a human life? There is no universal answer, hence no universal way to define what is a wasted life.

Exactly. I think there are really 3 main ways I view time spent. - 1. Time spent learning a skill with economic value. - 2. Time spent for leasure. - 3. Time spent to fulfill biological needs (eating, sleep, etc.)

No. 1 can be pretty subjective and time where input does not correlate to output. Ages ago, learning to be a blacksmith was a very economically in-demand skill, but today it would at best be considered a hobby. No. 1 is time spent to obtain needs as well as wants. Everyone must have some source of income for food, shelter, etc.

No. 2 can be anything that one does for enjoyment. I find it pointless to argue about what kind of enjoyment is "productive" or "wasteful" because each form of enjoyment is just getting better at a skill whether that be video games or playing violin. The only "productive" entertainment would be something that advances your economic value (thus being more of a No. 1 spend of time.

The best would be to try and combine time into something that is both advances your economic value as well as is something you enjoy.

Do you really think an addict is in control of what they really want? Or are their life choices being made for them? I found it was kind of the latter when I'd say I was 'addicted' to gaming. It was what I wanted in the immediate moment but far from what I wanted in my life overall. The latter gets destroyed by many short term wants, such as drugs or the kind of internet use r/nosurf exists to counter.

I don't disagree that it's a waste. That said, I don't like the idea of society (the older end especially) or the government or anyone else really telling me what to do with my time. This isn't just some libertarian stance. The UK has been very clear with anyone under 50: Want an education? You're on your own. Want a decent job? You're on your own. Want housing? You're on your own. The idea that having had to do all the difficult bits myself, other people now want to sweep in and tell me what I can do in my spare time is offensive. I know that's not what you're suggesting, I just want to voice the reason people would object despite you being correct about the ultimate affects...

> The UK has been very clear with anyone under 50: Want an education? You're on your own. Want a decent job? You're on your own. Want housing? You're on your own.

*England* has. Scotland takes a very different approach.

Careful, Scotland manages more affordable education only because it gets special subsidies. For which it has to stay in a union it does not like.

And where does that leave the situation on jobs and housing? Better than in England? Really?

The truth is, this is a generational struggle, not a geographical one. An imaginary line on a map won't help you I'm afraid.

Well, no, Scotland manages more affordable education out of its own finances.

Scotland pays much more into Westminster than it gets out.

Scotland receives vastly more than r/UK per person. And Pays a lot less per person in tax. This is the real reason independence is a non starter: it would make greek austerity look like a picnic...

Scotland raises £62 billion in taxes, and gets a block grant of £41 billion.

62 is bigger than 41.

>How much public spending and revenue is there for Scotland? During 2021-22 tax revenue generated in Scotland amounted to about £73.8 billion, including North Sea oil revenue. During the same period, Scotland benefited from about £97.5 billion in public spending, a difference of £23.7 billion.

https://www.deliveringforscotland.gov.uk/scotland-in-the-uk/....

(And this of course only compares local tax revenue to local spending, some local revenue has to be spent internationally on aid, defence, international organisations, EU partnership etc. So every region should expect LESS back than it pays in in cash terms).

There is nothing wrong with not being a well-off region. But spending like you are without a fiscal union with someone, is very dangerous. Just ask Greece.

If someone says they want independence, I support that. But they should acknowledge it will be independence with 30% increases in tax or cuts in spending or some mix of the two.

"Benefited from public spending" in this case means "paid a massive chunk of the failed English goverment's debts".

There is absolutely no reason why anyone north of the Midlands should be forking over a grand a year towards the cost of HS2 - a toy train that joins two towns in the south of England - but here we are, all the same...

There is no english government, so no english government debt exists either. And as I said debt isn't included in those figures.

And since you're now tacitly admitting I was right, I think we're done. Good luck with independence. Hopefully I am wrong and Scotland suddenly becomes a productive economic region...

But who the heck is anyone to define a 'waste of time'. It's taken me quite some years to convince my partner that a smartphone is considerably less expensive to keep on, rather than the tv. She uses the tv for 'company', even when the whole family is at home. I had to rig her smartphone to some larger speakers to provide a level of bass that seemed realistic to her, so that's that. Technically, she's gone from 10hrs a day with the tv on (watching?), to 10 hrs a day "extra" (watching) on her smartphone. Neither is correct, (and nor is she British). It is however, her time, her life. And it is beyond me to agree, or disagree (with her) that 'the issue is really that doing _anything_ mindlessly is a waste of life'. We are here, we are going to not be.

WoW is a more social activity than a lot of people ever partake in on a regular basis. Claiming it is "exactly the same" as flipping channels doesn't add up. In fact, I can't think of a less interactive, less social, less engaging activity than flipping channels (something I spent much of my youth doing).

parasocial maybe, but not social.

I don't understand - the relationships between guild mates aren't one sided at all. WoW raiding is like being on the phone with all your friends while you play a video game together.

Proxysocial

At least in my case they are absolutely social in nature, not parasocial in the slightest, what are you on about?

"Adjective. parasocial (not comparable) One-sided (especially of a relationship, as for example between celebrities and their audience or fans)."

In which way organizing a raid via (say Discord or whatever communication way you use) coordinating efforts towards a common objective and, in some cases, meeting your teammates offline is something parasocial?

Well, for every raider on WoW there are multiple people who just mindlessly do stuff solo. Most players never even reach raiding.

Huh TIL. Never played WoW and everything I've heard about it has involved guilds and raiding with people. I didn't even know it was possible to play solo.

Yeah, after yet another "fetch 5 random organs" quest I gave up in disgust around level 20 (twice).

This was kinda me, I literally have never done a single raid in WoW despite absurd hours of /played. Still doesn't fit definition of parasocial but since we've diverted: that was the cool thing about WoW, you really could make it your own game back in the day (200...7? To about 2010ish). My buddies and I, irl and online-only, would spend our time chit chatting either in game or using VoIP software while flying around on the game's transit system, levelling alts. Or I would be sitting in a city getting into political debates on /2 (channel available across all cities for your faction when you're in a city).

So it was still a very social game even if you weren't raiding. And the problem solving was very strong back then for the pvp scene, the concept of "meta" was still in it's infancy, I remember when one guy utterly changed the entire game of pvp with his pvp warrior videos, or another dude started publishing naked rogue gank videos. Anyway point is the social aspect was like any human society: incredibly diverse in form.

I have a lot of fond memories of WoW. While it is a bit of a waste for a young person who is doing it instead of working on their future, it seems ideal for someone who is retired. Problem solving, socializing, etc. is way healthier than most screen activities.

I agree that WoW is a waste when considered in relation to the space of possible things a young person can be doing. In practice, though, teenagers are basically trapped in their school related social circle and activities. For me, WoW was a place to be someone else, other than who I was at school, and to feel valued for reasons beyond my performance in high school social games.

Beyond that, I legitimately think that my experiences with raiding, min-maxing, grinding, etc. were a sort of preparation for the social dynamics of... corporate leadership. Of course, a lot more was required (technical skills, philosophical grounding, etc), but it was a good start.

Growing up in suburban Houston our options truly were limited to make WoW not a bad option to engage with all sorts of people. ALL other social activities require a car, so until my mom or dad will was available to drive me my only recourse was the internet.

Now I live in Taiwan and I envy the young people who i see out and about all over thanks to the bus and train system, participating in all sorts of random activities.

Depends on how you use/play it, just like it depends on how you use social media or TV. A lot of my social media usage is finding stuff and sharing with friends in group chats and us having discussions/laughs over them. Most of the "TV" (streaming services, anime, etc) that I watch is done with my partner or a group of friends. If you just turn your brain off and grind, then WoW or any other MMORPG is an equivalent mindless time waste to just consuming TV. I suspect it gets more fondness in nerdy circles just because more folks in these circles relate to it.

I didn't play very long (under a year) but I had a ton of fun mostly thanks to my guildmates. I didn't mind some grinding, and WoW has plenty, but most of what kept me coming back was to meet up with other players I had gotten to know and had a lot of fun playing and chatting with.

Definitely, and I have many friends who still play MMOs as adults who do the same thing. They open group chats with longtime (and new!) friends and play. The grind is a thing to do while everyone hangs out. But I also know people who turn their brain off and grind as a way to just pass the time. One of my favorite ways to waste time is to get a little high, fire up Diablo, and grind away. It's the same with social media. Social media can be social or it can be parasocial depending on how you use it.

The problem WoW shares with TV is that for many (most) people, logging in to WoW is an easier route to a pleasurable experience than any safe affordable activity available to a person living 70 years ago or 700 years ago or 7000 years ago. One worry that neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and others have is that if you partake often in potent pleasures that do not require much effort to achieve, you lose motivation to work hard at pursuits that haven't been carefully crafted by "designers" to be maximally engaging and pleasurable or require more effort or sacrifice to access than WoW or TV require.

It is not obvious to me that WoW's being very interactive (or its putting you in communication with real people) protects it from having the adverse effect I just described. Maybe the interactivity merely gives the designers of WoW more levers to pull in their quest to make WoW as engaging and compelling as possible -- which is more engaging and compelling than is probably good for you for something as easy to access as WoW is.

Specifically, if you binge on WoW it can take over a month for your motivational system to return to normal, and while it its taking its time returning, you have less motivation to tackle real life. Also, since pleasure causes whatever you were doing right before the pleasure to be "reinforced", if you play WoW a lot, then stop, for years afterwards whenever you are tired or under stress while at the computer you will tend to type in the command to start up WoW without any conscious awareness of intending to do so.

Of course video games, online role-playing games and TV aren't the only activities with this problem. The paperback novel for example is an invention that provides customers (at least those good at turning printed words into mental imagery) easy access to a fairly potent pleasure. This is a problem that society has been grappling with for a few centuries.

That's very insightful. You said as much, but I think that goes for anything that provides any sort of satisfaction. The less effort required to achieve the satisfaction, the more likely you'll gravitate to it. I do, anyway.

I might even take the liberty to generalize it to a sort of long-term-thinking blindness. For me, anyway, there are things I get much more more satisfaction from, that I could be doing, but require effort to do. Yet here I am on HN. I know this. I know that, on a satisfaction:time ratio, I'll get more out of one day's effort and finishing a project than a week's worth of mindlessly reading HN. That's a more fulfilling life.

It seems most of the time life just passes me by as I watch other people put in actual effort (in areas I have skills in! I could be the one doing that!) and achieve cool things. It's a difficult cycle to break. I'll figure it out tomorrow.

Yeah even as a kid I was never into video games. Just seemed like a waste of time. I rarely watch TV or movies now for the same reason. But what do I do instead? I find other ways to waste time like reading, other hobbies, browsing websites like this one. All activities with no external postive impact on anything. Just filling time.

Why is not not waste of life to read novels? Why is not waste of life to hike? Why is not waste of life to pursue hobbies?

These are very subjective matters. And sometimes you are just exhausted and you only want to decompress without thinking. Watching TV, TikTok, aimlessly browse the internet are all great ways to do so.

Try as we might, most of life will be a waste. There are only a few moments in life that we truly cherish and would not consider waste.

Anything that is not bringing you closer to experiencing one of those moments is a waste. Spending more effort than what is necessary in pursuit of those moments might also be a waste, especially if the payoff isn’t worth it.

Therefore, you should setup your life so you can experience as many of those moments as possible. Money is the common tool of achieving a life of endless experiential opportunities. But it’s not enough, you must also learn to greatly reduce or eliminate all responsibilities as well so you can live freely. You must be financially independent, location independent, and ideologically independent. Only then can you truly stop the waste of life.

Some people are so bound to a time and place, a source of income, a way of thinking, that they will be lucky if they ever experience a single moment in life that is not a wasted.

That is quite a depressed take on life. Many people find all of life good. Why not set up your life so you can cherish every moment?

Not possible.

The author was speaking for himself, so there's no contradiction there.

If anyone wants to consider parts of their life a waste, let them do so, it's only their business.

It’s the type of engagement.

Watch television geared towards old people or young children sometime. It’s engineered to grab passive attention and the active content is ads.

It’s easy to see the effects on people. Little kids will go crazy to obtain some product. The older people face a more insidious marketing message - fear.

> The issue is really that doing _anything_ mindlessly is a waste of life

So? It’s your life and what’s a waste to you isn’t a waste to me. I watch about 15 hours of TikTok a week and love it.

Everything is a waste. The only issue as it pertains to well-being is that too much passive consumption is both unhealthy and leads to lethargy. It can have it's place. Some people seem to enjoy it more than others.

Speaking about wasting time! Reading that article was a waste of time. That was more of a journal entry of a woman disgruntled with her family life, than it was on the "screen time" of various age groups

> The issue is really that doing _anything_ mindlessly is a waste of life.

So as long as I'm gaming mindfully it's all fine?

> Would I recommend it? No, huge waste of time.

I have a suspicion that on my deathbed I'd be regretting only one thing. That I didn't get more time to play and have fun.

> So as long as I'm gaming mindfully it's all fine?

I actually think there's some merit to this view. There's a big difference between engaging with a TV program and vegging out while it plays in front of you, despite the superficial similarities.

> And yeah, I played years of that shit when I was younger. A complete waste. Am I still here? Sure. Did it have some minor benefits? Sure. Would I recommend it? No, huge waste of time.

My job feels like way more of a "huge waste of time" than taking in new information via TikTok, socializing with friends in WoW, or watching the latest culturally relevant media.

The main idea I saw in that article is effectively an observation that if the older generation and younger generation disagree about what is proper and not, then the older generation currently gets to say that the younger generation is doing everything wrong and should be nudged towards proper (as elders understand it) ways, and the younger generation currently doesn't get to do the exact same thing in reverse.

I think there's another question though, that of vulnerability to new techniques in social engineering. Leave aside the question of which is a greater "waste of life," TV or doom scrolling, and ask, which is actually causing more changes to your personality, values, maybe even your brain chemistry? Maybe both equally, but if that's the case I feel like many in the newer generation grew up with more tools to fight back.

I don't know if this happened in previous generations with TV's, but I know among my friends there's a self consciousness about the bad feelings from what Instagram is doing to their mental health, and an active rejection: some quit entirely, some use the tools on their phones to limit app time, etc. I don't know if the previous generation has this or not.

Or ads. I know very few people that just let ads run: we all either pay for premium services, or use ad blockers and pi holes to block ads. Meanwhile even though teevo is a thing I still know old people that just "let the ads run." It's ALWAYS a shock to me when I visit home and shown just how absurd the ratio of content : ads is for American television.

Anyway it seems many in my generation are more aware of the threat of Algos latching onto you. I see comments all the time on YouTube mentioning it, "the Algo brought me here." But I don't ever hear older people talking about the previous version of that, the specialized social engineering and rhetorical techniques of entertainment companies like Fox News and their hosts such as Tucker Carlt. Their techniques of ragebait and leading questions seems blatant to me, as obvious as the slew of creepy ads that follow me around Facebook, Google, Instagram, or the "YouTube thumbnail" shit (everyone makes the same face), but I don't get much reaction when I try to bring this up with relatives.

Basically I'm less interested in whether watching TV or doom scrolling is a waste of time, and more interested in whether it can literally program you lol. Like how many of us lost friends to qanon conspiracy holes due to effective Facebook engagement algorithms? Do you know relatives that became wickedly radical and racist in the last 4 years because they stopped hanging out and instead spent all their time first on mass media consumption and then weirder and weirder Twitter and Reddit clones? I do. How many times have you heard tucker Carlson quotes at Thanksgiving from people that used to have way more thoughts of their own?

People may be able to say no one way of spending your time is better than another but I want to talk about what these various forms of media are doing to keep you hooked. Are we going to act like there's no danger here because we don't want to appear like elitists that say anything other than reading a book or programming is a waste of time?

Bingo! We got our experience mainlining Internet conspiracy theories decades ago. Back when you had to keep them to yourself, because the sheer majority just wouldn't understand. Fuck, you couldn't even talk about how the Internet was heavily tapped by the US government until around 2012 or so, and that was abundantly clear from multiple whistleblowers!

Normies are going through that today, but since so many are doing at once it's pop culture. And instead of only weird "Internet friends" who could understand, it's the entirety of their real life social circle, on Facebook with exposure tailored to how agreeable they are. Then they turn on the "official" traditional TV channels, which have also been pwned, further cementing the nonsense.

> "The idea here seems to be that it's OK for people to watch hours of TV a day every day."

No, the idea is that it's unfair for people who watch 6 hours of TV/day to be trying to support authoritarian and intrusive legislation against young people on the grounds that the young people "spend too much time watching screens, which is bad for them and bad for society". The idea isn't "it's OK to watch 6 hours of TV", it's "if you want to be left alone to watch 6 hours of TV, stop trying to control the life of someone else who wants to be left alone to watch 6 hours of TikTok".

> "The issue is really that doing _anything_ mindlessly is a waste of life."

No, that's a different issue. The issue is that the government in the UK keeps pushing for more and more authoritarian surveillance and control laws over the internet and smartphones and justifying it with the kind of rhetoric used in the blog - screen time is bad because of radicalisation, spectres of terrorism, the collapse of society and community, and etc. And the Conservative government's largest voter base in the UK is the elderly.

> "There's also an enormous difference here in that older people often can't really do much else."

I'm assuming your grandma is significantly older than 65? With a UK average life expectancy in the 80s, a lot of people past 65 are still well capable of doing things; even then part of the problem mentioned in the blog post is that UK society supports little else for people to do, what with the cost of living crisis (Conservative government mostly voted for by older people policies of austerity, running public services into the ground), Brexit, mostly voted for by older people, house price crisis, largely propped up by - and beneficial to - older people, the binge drinking culture, wider social issue where the one thing to go out to of an evening is go to the pub, the car focus instead of public transport focus (Conservative government, see above).

That is, there is a big feeling in the UK that the elderly have screwed up the country's future with selfish short-term policies, which disproportionately hurts the young who have more future to care about and fewer saved resources, and are trying to control the young even more while living on pension payments propped up by the working young.

I would agree that MMOs in general are a time sink, but I am not sure I can absolutely equate that with a waste. There are some things I learned playing some MMOs including real microcosm of market psychology, interesting uses for linear regression and even some basic scripting. One of my best friends is effectively a result of a chance meet in an MMO. And that is before the argument that time enjoyed is hard(er) to label as a waste.

For the record, I agree with you in general, but I do not want to overgeneralize and add some nuance, because I do not want people to automatically say game time = useless. Tons of leisure activities do not yield immediate dividends ( reading books come to mind ), but are not without benefits.

Minor disclaimer: I am typing all this as an MMO recovering addict ( it got to the point where it was interfering with my work life ) so some take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I feel sorry for this lady. Sounds like she had a very boring home life centered around the TV. But that doesn't mean the screen time panic is necessarily wrong, though it is reductive in the sense that it treats all screen time as equal. Chatting with friends is the same as watching cat videos is the same as using MITs OCW is the same as watching porn is the same as popping virtual bubble wrap is the same as reading War and Peace on the kindle app. Likewise, some TV programming can be thoughtful and inspiring and other tv programming can be bland and mind numbing.

How about instead of caring about what the young or old do we mind our own fucking business?

But then what would people talk about on HN? There has to be some kind of faux outrage about SOMETHING.

Ain’t that the truth.

Retired folk have lots of time on their hands so can watch as much TV as they want. They also don't need to be told by others how to spend their remaining years.

I love kids being addicted to screens. Bored teenagers are less likely to incite trouble on trains, waiting in line, etc. when they can just be rocking out or Snapchatting.

Until rioting becomes a meme

> I eat meals, in the life I live now, at a table. I eat them alone, because my marital family – as you can tell – imploded up their own backsides. But in many ways, I was always eating alone, even when I was in that family, perching a plastic tray on my lap while they stared at the glowing box like they’d dropped acid.

Gee, wonder why no one is interested in sharing a meal or conversation with the author. Couldn't possibly be the sanctimonious disdain for your family, could it?

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