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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to play devils advocate

Can we stop screentime shaming people?

We have had an ongoing moral panic about screentime for about a decade. Screentime is so broad and vast it now covers anything from chatting with your grandma to get her spaghetti recipe to playing WoW nonstop in your underwear to learning how to code on Youtube to make yourself better and more productive to using a Peloton bike to workout.

The youngest generation has it the worst with helicopter parents sitting over their kids shoulders, filling their lives with activities to "keep them off screens". Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits or navigate free time. We fail to prepare for independence as actual adults, and just create a lot of anxiety and shame around screens themselves.

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Yeah I don't understand what am I supposed to do the rest of my time.

Stare at the TV all evening like my parents do? Read a book? I already do that on the train, and it's also staring at something while sitting down. Cooking/exercise/chores? I already do that, and still have hours of time left over. Stare at the wall maybe?

If there's one thing I hate, is other people preaching to you about how you should spend your time.

Ideally you would produce something instead of consuming it. Maybe music, woodworking, painting, writing, etc... Easier said than done, after having that insight years ago it has been on my to-do list permanently and yet here I am on the screen... After producing for 8 hours at work it is pretty hard to muster up the energy to produce things for myself in the evenings.

> Ideally you would produce something instead of consuming it.

Why? I'm already "producing" a big part of my day. This "always be producing" mentality is more harmful than making time to relax, enjoy yourself in non-productive ways.

You're right, there's a place for both active leisure and passive leisure. The problem I have is that our jobs rob us of the energy we need for active leisure, so we just end up doing passive leisure 100% of the time which I think is way out of balance.

> The problem I have is that our jobs rob us of the energy we need for active leisure, so we just end up doing passive leisure 100% of the time which I think is way out of balance.

I don't know what the ratio is between active and passive leisure. Nor do I know for sure that people generally have more leisure time now than ever before, but I do suspect that is the case.

But I do know that there are many companies that one might consider to be in the "active leisure industry" and that are profitable.

It's false that people now have more leisure time, in fact we have less than ever before.

For most of human history we were hunter gatherers. We know from the field of anthropology that people in hunter gatherer tribes "work" about 30 hours a week - but their work consists of things we consider leisure like hunting, fishing, hiking, and building things with friends (ever spend a weekend helping a buddy build a deck?).

Hell, even medieval surfs had more free time than us. Planting and harvesting seasons certainly had some full workdays but other than that... lots of time off. You know all those feasts in the Catholic church? Yeah, they got all those off. Kind of like how government workers get all the extra holidays off like MLK and Columbus day. A medieval surf's PTO puts an average American's PTO (0 days by law!) to shame.

If you compare our current amount of free time to the free time of a Dickensian orphan working in a factory at the turn of the 20th century then yes, it seems like we have it pretty good. But compared to 95% percent of human history, we work way more time at our stupid jobs than any other humans in history.

> It's false that people now have more leisure time, in fact we have less than ever before.

This chart and supporting material argue that over the last 150 years annual working hours per worker drastically declining. That lets me believe that leisure time is increasing. https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever

Where do you think they're wrong?

I am not comparing our current leisure time to the time we had at the beginning of the industrial revolution and onward. We probably do have more free time than we did 150 years ago. I'm comparing our leisure time to the leisure time we had before agriculture was invented - that's why studying hunter gatherer tribes is so interesting. These also happens to be the conditions we evolved for.

That's another aspect of the screen time shaming mentioned above, a lot of those production hobbies use screens! If you want to record and share music with your friends, you'll be looking at a screen for quite some time. Are these people harming themselves by producing and recording music? Of course not nobody would suggest so, but that's the outcome when people eagerly suggest near zero screen time.

Also there's the other factor where we have this insane obsession with producing at all times. Producing for work. Producing for multiple side hustles. Producing with our hobbies. It's as if they're trying to speedrun a complete burnout, not just with work but with relationships and life itself. Some people really do need a reminder that it's ok to relax, to consume, to observe, to waste time with people you love.

Basically what I'm saying is more people should find the balance that works for them and question whether their current general routine makes them happy. I reckon for a lot of people, the difference doesn't really come down to screen time or production vs consumption, but an active choice to be doing whatever it is they are planning to do.

Go outside and touch grass.

When we was kids we would stay in and smoke grass. Never did us any 'arm.

> Yeah I don't understand what am I supposed to do the rest of my time.

That’s a question you have to answer for yourself, but on its face it sounds like a good one to ask.

Before the internet - I’m old enough to remember those days - we hung out more. People conversed and engaged in banter and whatnot. You could hang out for hours with friends. Kids especially were outside a lot more than now. As a kid we found ways to amuse ourselves. You’d spontaneously go to someone’s house and if they were there then hangout. If not you’d walk or bike around until you found some kids to play with. We played kickball in the streets. I never see kids playing in the streets in the U.S. (I grew up in the Canal Zone.).

No one I know shows up to a friends house on a whim or unannounced. It’s all planned activities and the art of conversation has died in the U.S. We are social creatures and the solitary nature of being online has an unhealthy, anti-social side effect.

i dont know about you but we mostly did this because we were bored as fuck.

plus dangerous behaviours like drinking, smoking, fighting with other kids, setting trash on fire, destroying property, stealing, an generally being a menace to society.

i think playing a bit of vidya is a god alternative outlet, and it can be just as social.

but i always admired the culture in the us where random ppl would strike up a conversation with you. if someone did that over here i would expect to get scammed, robbed or both.

> and it can be just as social.

I would argue it cannot be as social, even if you're talking to people. You won't ever get half the social cues that come from actual social interaction, nor the firing of mirror neurons that comes when people talk face-to-face, etc.

In fact, Turkle makes a good argument that online communication is destroying empathy among a whole generation of kids, and they don't even know how to really communicate in person with another human being anymore, nor any idea of social manners, etc. Having taught secondary school for five years, I can't agree more with her conclusions.

The boredom caused us to be more social and to actively seek out people with whom to engage with. The isolation that the internet causes and the lack of walkability that is caused by a car centric culture are not good for us as a species.

I didn’t have a cell phone until 2015. One time while teaching class at a community college my students found out that I didn’t have a cell phone. They asked me what I would do if my car broke down since I couldn’t call anyone. I told them I would walk to the nearest house and ask to use their phone. One student said, “I never would have thought of that.”. Another asked if I would be afraid of getting shot. American society has become anti-social and its very unhealthy that this is so.

In recent years I've been slowly reverting to 80s me, where as you say, we just hung out. (Mid 90s was when the idea of keeping in touch with friends online instead of in person started creeping in for me, initially via ICQ and AIM.)

It's just better. 1980s mode (having a couple of good friends I spend a lot of time in person with) is better than 2020s mode (having hundreds or thousands of online "friends" who I'm not really that close to). I just find it more fulfilling to interact with people in meatspace.

> No one I know shows up to a friends house on a whim or unannounced. It’s all planned activities and the art of conversation has died in the U.S. We are social creatures and the solitary nature of being online has an unhealthy, anti-social side effect.

100% agreed. I think it's actually the true underlying cause of the political fracturing we've seen in America (and are starting to see elsewhere as it filters out).

It's also the biggest difference I've noticed since moving to Ireland. People still sometimes show up unannounced, just to see if you're home and want to chat, especially in more rural areas; plus, you have the pub culture where people go and just have a drink and a chat. It's not great, because drinking is expected (though thankfully alcohol free options have come a long way) but it's much better than what exists in America.

I actually worry messenger apps like Discord make this worse, because you can just get a facsimile of human interaction online, and it's nowhere near the real thing; in fact, it can't be, because it won't trigger our brain the same way as seeing facial expressions, etc., does. Even more, I worry that as chatbots get better, we're going to see this trend get even worse as people turn to chatbots (and/or companies start shoving them in front of us). I can't see things getting better with the current state of the internet.

We hung out more, too, but that's because we were young and had fewer responsibilities. Now we're old and a bunch of us have kids or parents to take care of, jobs with varying hours, and we often had to move for our or our spouses' jobs.

We can bemoan these facts but I don't think it's accurate to blame screens or the internet. If anything the internet has made it easier to stay in touch despite the aforementioned life changes.

Yeah, we hung out more...if we had people to hang out with and got along.

I was from the rural edges of a metro area in the 90s. My main interests at 6 years old were programming, astronomy (particularly star classification systems), video games, and child development. There were no people like me around; the internet made me more social (and more socially adept) than I otherwise would have been. My parents are socially stunted because they spent 40+ years of their lives being unable to be themselves with anyone other than their spouse, siblings, my dad's parents and their children because they were routinely mocked.

We need to be careful not to be blinded by nostalgia glasses. There were some benefits to the old way of doing things, but there were substantial drawbacks as well, particularly for those who were out of step with their local community.

>and still have hours of time left over

Oh, how I wish this were true, lol.

I am always out of time by the end of the day.

I mean if you read books, cook, and exercise, you're ahead of the game so perhaps the "spend less time online" advice doesn't apply to you. The average American doesn't do any of those things very often. They are however increasingly online all the time.

Personally I don't think online time is something that needs to be limited but social media and news consumption, absolutely.

I also think socializing online is a poor substitute for doing it face-to-face.

> Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits.

Some do, some don't. My 2nd grader is happy to self regulate. My 4th grader will however spend 12-14 hours/day online and as the screentime accrues, become more likely to annoy, torment, and eventually act violently in response to perceived transgressions.

We're otherwise a no tv, no videogame console, no tablets house. Not because we've decided not to have these things, but because a half-a-day binge has resulted in a kiddo rage-destroying the device at some point and not having the broken device any longer is a natural consequence to that behaviour.

So no, I dont think all kiddos can typically learn to self regulate. The existence of some kiddos self regulating is not evidence that all of them can or that even the ones who can't are somehow "broken." Screens are a new tech and we're still learning the cultural-social technologies to interact with them healthily.

Thank you for making this point. Not all kids are created equal. They all have varying traits, tendencies and idiosyncrasies. It is sheer madness to try to put 'one size fits all' form to it. You might be able to offer some guidance or even best practices, but even those have to be actually tested against the kid to see how they respond. Anecdotally, my siblings and me were very different and responded differently to praise and punishment.

FWIW, I do think there is something damaging about screen time especially if it is just passive consumption ( brain is a muscle; if it unused, it will grow weak ) so I am personally trying to limit it. I already spend so much time with it at work ( and until recently, at school ). I do allow myself some guilty pleasures, but I treat those similarly to the way I treat ice cream or sake. It is something of holiday from reason.

edit: HN is probably a giant exception to that. It seems I spend a lot of time here. Maybe I can rationalize it as 'HN is not guilty pleasure? I get to argue with people over stuff I normally would not?'

I guess my main point is that the main responsibility lies with the parents and it kinda sucks, because at least 'in my days' my parents didn't have giant corporations working on keeping my kids glued to their device. All I had to deal with is arcade addiction.. and that.. my parents solved ( with me crying all the way ).

> with the kids themselves never learning how to set their own limits or prepare for independence as actual adults

To some extent this is not how parenting works. This is like giving heroin to an addict and letting them learn to set their own limits unattended.

In practice, supervising addiction helps control it. Kids need some kind of supervision. It's much harder to get a kid to reduce screentime if they're used to unlimited screentime.

I had complete and total freedom over my internet usage as a kid. I watched plenty of dark stuff, had sexual interactions, and made close friends.

I turned out fine. It’s hard to see the moderates in any given situation, almost by definition. That includes moderate outcomes.

Comparing the internet to heroin isn’t a moderate take. Having freedom when I was a kid directly prepared me for the rest of my life.

20k comment karma since 2019 seems like a lot of time on HN to me.

More like 100k since 2008. This is my tenth account or so.

That’s the point; unless you’re saying that everyone with high karma is mentally unsound (which may or may not be a fair argument), being constantly online doesn’t seem to have much negative impact on most people.

Anecdotally I can almost get behind spending extreme amounts of time on HN/online in general being linked to worsening of mental health in some people (like me). I have periods of months of obsessive HN activity (feeling anxiety about missing a day) and during the same time all sorts of other problems and bad habits surface, from obsessive social media checking to completely unrelated stuff. Having one now.

But even for people like me I wouldn't say being online causes those problems, more likely some third factor makes them be super online and also shows up as other issues, though it may be a feedback loop (removing the option of being constantly online could do good for me)

I’ve felt similarly in the past.

Ironically, what helped me was to focus on Twitter. Specifically producing quality tweets. I was able to build an audience at my own pace, and it led to quite a lot of opportunities.

So in the same way one particular place isn’t always good to be, one solution is to spend time in a variety of spaces. I like irc/twitter/HN/tiktok, though I still lurk Reddit occasionally.

People do tend to hang out in particular haunts. Like specific forums. Probably once they have established some social connections/invested time.

I haven't got WhatsApp, and the thought of it brings me out in hives. Would be difficult to step back from the web. SMS once had a huge draw, and that was an incredible time sink with less immediacy.

I am from the era where you had to pay a premium for a shallow web. And it was just as addictive for me. I would line the browser up, connect to the Internet, browse fast, and frantically save. Then read later: for hours. Not to mention usenet. The best thing about that was that at least it made me ruminate and refine a response that I would fire and publish the following morning and retrieve a bulk load of messages in as short a time as possible.

For me it always felt like if I'm spending extended time browsing HN, Twitter, Facebook etc. this is usually a sign that I'm in a worse mental state than usual. There's likely a feedback loop there indeed, but when I feel better I just naturally don't spend so much time there; I don't feel the need and get busy with more productive things.

I like to talk, and I like to talk online. I think there is an amount of it which is good.

I don't know what that amount is.

What I can say is that each time I have successfully restricted my access to these places, it was followed by period of intense withdrawal, and after that was over, a notable amount of extra energy to do other things, to my very obvious benefit.

I'm skeptical that anyone has a non-addictive relationship with these places, and i was speculating that you are not an obvious non-example, despite your claims at having turned out fine.

I don't, for the record, think that the solution is as simple as denying your children access to social media while you still have control over them, but it also isn't obvious that letting them engage with it freely counts as a good form of innoculation.

I love heroin, but like the Internet it's slightly moreish.

I would caution against thinking that your successful outcome with unrestricted internet access as a kid justifies a laissez-faire attitude towards children accessing the Internet.

I think some people have a better ability to self regulate than others, and you are likely one of those people. Additionally, your online experience didn’t have “the algorithm”. There really does seem to be something addicting about modern short form content and it seems quite different from the content found on the early Web.

>> Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits or navigate free time.

How exactly is a kid raised from birth with screens in front of them supposed to learn or even recognize this?

>> Can we stop screentime shaming people?

You are welcome to do so, but I'm free to shame and view negatively all sorts of behaviours. I don't need to accept this any more than you need to accept something you view as a bad habit or worse.

No because screens are terrible for your mental health. Most kids will sit there 24 hours a day if no one teaches them self control. Screens destroy relationships, health, and most of your existence if you have no self control which 90% of people don't.

"screens are terrible for your mental health"

You have to use a lot of screentime for an effect to be shown. And the studies are always showing correlations, not causations.

As an example, if you're a poorer family, with no time to spend 1-1 with your kids because you work 3 jobs. Are screens the root cause? Or is poverty the root cause?

If the US didn't have overtime rules and required health care for full time jobs, people could work just a single job if they needed to work more hours to make ends meet. They would save a lot of time on commuting especially since many poor people use much slower public transportation to get to their jobs. They would also probably have more reliable schedules. Having a society that people only need to work 40hr/wk might be a good idea (hell, why not the 4 hour work week while we are at it) but the current system encouraging that seems to have failed.

We continue to have a moral panic about screentime. There is no debating that it has continued to get worse and not better. The same kids who were addicted to WoW(or other games) or learning to code in their spare time are doing the same thing today, just longer.

Involved parents are not just helicopter parents. An involved parent might have gone through a similar generational experience where they were ignored by their parents and put in front of the radio, television, computer, etc and want to break the generational cycle with their kids. Because substituting healthy activities for screentime is a good way to model independent behavior and bring balance to your life. It doesn't mean you cannot use screens, but rather that you use them in moderation.

The difference of opinion changes when you become a parent too. You start to reflect on your childhood and things you wish were different while trying your best to bring more real experiences to your kids instead of them trying to explore the world virtually.

Nope, if I'm hanging out with friends/family and they are glued to their phone, I shame them ... if some idiot bumps into me while walking or almost walks into moving traffic cause of their screen, you shame them. It's anti social behavior

Our current “screen time” scare feels a lot like the Dungeons And Dragons scare of the ‘80s. People saw others spending lots of time playing something they don’t like. They felt some superstitious feeling that those people shouldn’t be doing that thing. But couldn’t point to any real causal negative effect it’s having. So they tried to vaguely link it to Satanism and the Occult to convince people it was bad. We see the same sort of hysteria play out today with “online” and “screen time.”

The article presents factual findings and does not get anywhere near passing judgment. That’s for the comments section.

The entire purpose of the screen time is to improve real world interactions, as in your recipe example.

If it turns out that you just spend 80% of your free time online, you've lost. Your life is not better, it is in fact worse.

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