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Comment by gustavus | Hacker News Reader

I see people claim this all the time but don't often see any real solutions just general grousing.

What would you do? Get rid of mobile computing altogether by government fiat? Ban providing a smart phone to someone under the age of 18? What about tablets and computers, how would one even enforce that? Would you force kids together to socialize for a period of time which is just as likely to develop trauma as relationships?

The only reasonable solution I've heard to the phone problem is individual parents getting involved and active in monitoring and limiting their children screen time, and unfortunately, involved parenting is not something that can be legislated into existence.

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I understand where you're coming from, and there might not be a lot of great answers, but off the top of my head let's say we have a high degree of confidence it is the phones. A couple immediate next steps we could take:

1. Encourage education. Explain to young people early and often through a number of avenues that phone use can cause anxiety, depression, etc. Knowledge is power and all that. Will it solve the problem? No. But it might move the needle and save some lives.

2. Fund further and more detailed studies. Are there critical periods of child development where phone use is more likely to lead to suicide? Are there particular patterns of usage? Narrowing down the hypothesis space makes it much easier to develop more nuanced studies and more targeted interventions.

> The only reasonable solution I've heard to the phone problem is individual parents getting involved and active in monitoring and limiting their children screen time, and unfortunately, involved parenting is not something that can be legislated into existence.

This! You don’t need laws for this, the solution starts with you. Then more people like you, then you’re the majority and the schools ban phones just like they did in that one school in Ireland recently.

Parenting is hard, and just like in the 90s, it’s easier to blame the technology than assume responsibility.

This is exactly the same arguments the tobacco lobby made when faced with regulation and taxation. EXACTLY the same.

"It's not our fault that people became addicted to our product via darkpatterns, addictive chemicals, misleading marketing, corruption, and suppression."

I'm all for individual responsibility but like cigarettes on the plane, this product creates irreparable harm to children.

not quite: there are zero benefits to smoking. there are some benefits to being connected, therefore the argument is harder to make. we need to look carefully at what the real damaging factors are and eliminate those without isolating youth even further by not allowing them to stay in touch with their friends.

"there are zero benefits to smoking"

You clearly have no idea how cigarettes were marketed.

"there are some benefits to being connected"

Define 'being connected' because we're not talking about kids calling each other on a party line right now.

i am not talking about marketing, i am talking about facts.

smoking has no benefits, regardless what marketing says.

being connected means the ability of my kids to talk to their friends.

we have no landline anymore. there are also no more payphones if you are outside. a computer or a mobile phone and online messaging are now the only way that my kids can communicate with others.

taking away that tool would be worse than the time when landlines were still common and kids could call their friends at home.

so simply banning social media is not going to work.

what we need is kid friendly communication tools that do not try to drive engagement but just let them send messages and call.

> we have no landline anymore

Sounds like you figured out the solution on your own.

not really. with a landline my kids could call their friends on their own. now they have to use my phone, or i have to get them a phone of their own. i don't like either choice.

then reinstall the landline and ditch the cellphones

this isn't hard

not as easy as you think. it really depends on where you are. some places don't even offer landlines anymore, and this will only increase. i am not thinking about right now, but in the future landlines will be gone completely, so this is not a viable solution.

besides you have to consider that all the other kids will not be limited to such a phone.

we need to create communication tools that are "safe" but that kids actually like to use too.

TIL there's people who've never heard of VOIP phones

you are not addressing the second part of my comment.

a voip phone won't solve that either.

Outright social media ban for under-18s. Or barring that, under-13s, and find a way to minimize harms for 13-18 year olds.

Just like cigarettes, guns, and driving: Dangerous activities that we all agree, including scientists and psychologists, that children are not capable of using safely.

Facebook’s terms of service already disallow making an account under 13 and people just ignore it. How would you enforce it?

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