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Hadiat's views aren't as different as you might think. He distinguishes between tech and social media specifically. He thinks tech and the internet are great for kids. However, he thinks that social media before developing meatspace social skills is very damaging, especially for teen girls.

I think his takes are pretty accurate.

He actually says what you're arguing for is akin to saying we should give kids a bit of nicotine earlier on so they know how to smoke before they're adults and won't be as affected by it then.

I didn't find anything in the article about nicotine, but that sounds like a ridiculous comparison. Nicotine-processing skills aren't generally required for a successful life these days and in the future.

> akin

> that sounds like a ridiculous comparison

So you assume social media is required for a successful life? I bet there were people that would have argued in the ‘50s and ‘60s that the social aspect of smoking was helpful to having a successful life back then too. Never mind the cancer and all being popular with your peers is what’s important.

> So you assume social media is required for a successful life?

No, nothing in my post assumed or even suggested that. Recall the discussion was whether smartphones and tablets have any more utility than nicotine. Let's forget social media for a moment, then, since it's a red herring here. I can, and do, capably use both devices without needing to use social media.

Yes, being able to use a smartphone or tablet is likely required for many successful careers, and likely more in the future. If someone looking for a job can only use a phone or tablet as well as my grandma can use a mouse, that unfortunately rules out some career options. The story is the same for me: Had I no access to computers or technology until I was an adult, I would have a totally different career path and life. Not sure I'd be as happy in that case as I am now.

I don't like how "devices" are replacing full-fledged computers (maybe it's the old man in me), but that only portends more hardship for people handicapped in "on-device computing".

The article was about social media rotting kids brains and devices being the path to that rotten apple…so remove the path. The other comment made the comparison that tobacco use doesn’t work in small bites either. You made the successful life skills connection, so it’s not a huge leap of assumption to see that you were connecting social media usage to those successful life skills.

I merely made the further connection that smoking had a social connection too and was yet another rotten thing we did to ourselves and kids once upon a time.

Frankly, I’d also suggest to your point that devices, computer, and coding skills are going to be less important in the future. I think coding and SW dev will become less and less a human endeavor and more a product of AI practically eliminating the vocation, but that’s not what this thread is about and I am sure not what folks on HN will want to hear. People will also manage to figure out how to utilize the tech of their time, they won’t need to be exposed to it as children. I know I wasn’t, and my nearly 90 year old mother manages to use a smartphone and tablet just fine and she didn’t even have indoor plumbing when she grew up.

The thread I responded to was a story about a child using a tablet, and a reply saying that particular story was "akin" to children consuming nicotine. Neither contained any mention of social media.

I can, and do, capably use both tablets (and smartphones!) without needing to use social media, and we have no indication that the child in question used social media. So, let's forget social media for a moment, then, since it's a red herring here. Let's return to topic: whether the story of child tablet usage which spawned this thread is "akin to" child nicotine consumption.

I appreciate your point about deep computer knowledge being less useful as HCI approaches a conversation, and can see that being a possible future as well.

I wouldn't be as dismissive as you.

Even at the height of smoking, around half of the population were nonsmokers.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184418/percentage-of-cig...

How many high school kids don't have a smartphone, especially outside the poorest areas? One in thirty?

Socially, it is very different being part of half of the population, and a tiny minority of the population, doubly so if it restricts your communication capabilities and you are left out of all common activities of your peers.

The situation can be fixed, but a critical mass of people willing to change their current ways must gather and be willing to sacrifice some efficiency and comfort for the sake of personal contact.

Not being dismissive, but if 1 kid in 30 doesn’t smoke, but 29 do, that doesn’t make smoking any less dangerous.

If you switch nicotine out for a different socially acceptable drug – alcohol – and suddenly that's not so unreasonable. It's long been argued that the US model of "no alcohol until you're 21" followed by full (and largely unsupervised) access to as much alcohol as you can afford leads to more young adult problems with alcohol than something more akin to various western European cultures where some small degree of supervised alcohol consumption before being legally allowed to buy and consume unlimited amounts.

I see this a lot where "${thing} is bad" leads to people saying "we should stop letting people have ${thing}" and trying to raise kids as if ${thing} doesn't exist or as if they can choose to not be addicted / influenced by ${thing}, regardless of how realistic that is. Pick your vice, sex, drugs, guns, rock and roll, pop music, movies, TV, the internet at large, social media, communism, capitalism, socialism, fascism, power tools, knives, etc. And it seems to me, more often than not, heavily "abstinence only" treatment of ${thing} results in far more harm than in trying to model ways to healthily deal with the fact that ${thing} exists and may vary well be something you have to deal with.

I think of it like an immune system response. Your body needs to encounter pathogens in order to learn how to deal with them. Sure it would be ideal if you never ever got sick at all. But since that's basically impossible, and we know that trying to do that often results in unintended side effects, it's better instead to teach people (and their immune systems) how to deal with things. People get taught to wash their hands, cover their mouths, and immune systems get vaccines, and exposure to pathogens by not keeping our kids in hermetically sealed environments. Should you go out an intentionally get your kid sick? No, generally speaking you shouldn't. But that's exactly the goal of a vaccine. Get your body a little sick, so that it's better prepared to deal with the real thing when it gets there. Or see also chicken pox parties (though I don't know if that's still a thing or even recommended anymore)

That’s why I remain in favor of the 21 drinking age. By the time you turn 21 you’ve had several years of drinking experience and can handle it responsibly

I was very much going to take a similar approach to help train a child to know what the right behavior is. I have four children and it turns out they're all very different in terms of varying amounts of self control. I can definitely with my second one to use it at appropriate times but my oldest is way too impulsive and doesn't have the self control to exercise good behaviors (this isn't just a smartphone problem).

I'm in the same boat...2 kids. The one who always wants a tablet also always want snacks and candy. Any good resources on curbing this before it gets worse?

I would suggest approaching the impulsive kid as a trainer might approach a dog. Determine what the motivation is, and then use that as leverage to get the behavior that you want (and which is better for the child). So, if you want them to practice reading, offer the tablet or candy as a reward for a certain amount of time or, perhaps better, a certain realistic goal. You haven't mentioned anything about ages or other personality characteristics, which has a big influence on this sort of approach, so take with a big grain of salt.

I love my kids more than life, but I find a lot of dog training stuff crosses over very well. I taught them "come" command from an early age - and they know to come immediately, without question. The idea being if they are in a dangerous situation, like in the middle of a street or about to be hit by a bike or something, that this is how I will get them out of it. I don't use the command very often, but damn if those kids don't come running! It makes me feel so much safer.

I really believe having two rescue dogs (with their own issues) before having kids was a really good intro on how to set expectations and build up patience.

This is dead on. I find, however, that you have to be careful about revealing your secret, at least in so many words. I had (more or less) the following interaction with a parent we see occasionally:

Them: "How'd you get $oneYearOld to do $that?"

Me: [Explains]

Them: "That's clever"

Me (unguardedly): "Yeah, it's basically like dog-training - [more or less what you said]."

Them: [Dirty look]

A year on I don't think they've started another conversation with me. Lol. I have the "bad parent" rep, but everyone likes our kid, so I really, really don't care.

[Edit: It's all positive reinforcement, mind. I'm not yelling or beating the kid, or anything like that. The objection is to a mental association between the child and an animal. My wife initially had the same.

How old are they? You might just be able to cut those things out of their life...a week or two of pain but then they might forget about it

They are 5 and 7.

> we should be teaching our child good habits

If it’s parents and teachers vs legions of well-funded PhDs at Meta and TikTok, I know who I would bet on winning…

It's still about good habits and modelling good behavior.

Millions of dollars of research goes into making Doritos and Coca Cola hyper palatable yet it's been 5 years since I tasted either of them.

It's more holistic than just telling your kids to not eat Doritos. You have to inculcate skills and decision making. Such as the ability to cook delicious food. The ability to meal plan and shop accordingly. If you have no idea how to cook, no cultural norms about eating out only once in a while as a treat rather than a habit, then when you're hungry you'll jump for the packet of chips.

Unfortunately not only are we slowly forgetting these skills, we also come up with galaxy brained theories about why that's a good thing.

> This is the result of my [intentional] teaching

This is a key part. As a parent it’s hard to distinguish between parent guidance and the way the kid would be even without our intervention. In any case, Haidt’s argument is one of public health. The claim is that many/most parents don’t know how to provide that teaching even if they were of a mind to be intentional about parenting.

> like somehow their child will magically manifest all the skills they need to deal . . . once they turn 18

There are so many things like this. Fortunately one’s offspring need not get cut off at 18. The challenge is progressively cutting apron strings so any particular threshold isn’t a cliff.

What qualifies as good habits for a tween using TikTok or instagram, and is it actually reasonable to expect their developing brains to be able to carry out instructions regarding limiting their usage of highly-addictive platforms?

I guess my observation is that most parents, even competent ones, fail to get this right and end up with phone or tablet addicted children. Maybe there is some approach that teaches them a better way, but I wonder if avoiding devices entirely is a less risky path if you aren’t confident in your ability to teach them how to use devices.

> This is the result of my international teaching of my daughter about how we interact with devices.

Do you mean like exposure to how different cultures live with technology?

There's an assumption lurking here that I feel needs to be dragged out into the open. This entire line of reasoning assumes that there is something teachable that would circumvent screen addiction, with a secondary assumption that kids are programmable and will accept whatever instruction is provided regardless of competing inputs. This seems questionable that a child can be armed to compete against a couple decades of psyops research by some of the best funded private organizations on the planet.

I don't see anything good coming from depriving teens of their freedom of speech as a scapegoat for mental health problems that are caused by other factors in the first place.

The problem is with a society where we deprive minors of their freedom and independence because we refuse to pay for basic public safety and basic public transportation. Instead, we make helicopter parenting into the norm and then blame the one domain (the internet) where they are capable of experiencing some freedom for the problems caused by a lack of freedom. If we actually want to fix the youth mental health problem, we need to ensure that kids can safely go outside and play or go places without parents having to follow them 24/7 like they could in past generations.

> we need to ensure that kids can safely go outside and play or go places without parents having to follow them 24/7 like they could in past generations.

Where in the world is it unsafe for children to play outside? As far as I can see children don't play outside simply because they are not encouraged to.

My impression has been that it is common in the US for jerks to call the cops and/or CPS if they see kids playing outside without an adult around. A couple examples:

https://www.nydailynews.com/2014/09/17/neighbor-calls-cops-c...

https://reason.com/2023/03/09/teaneck-new-jersey-arrest-kids...

Ah, I had the wrong kind of unsafe in mind.

>This is the result of my international teaching of my daughter about how we interact with devices.

No. It's the result of you having time to spend with her instead of working 2 or 3 back-breaking jobs like many parents have to, and her having a safe and stable material livelihood so she doesn't constantly desire escape.

They could just be lucky, and have a kid with that kind of attitude (on top of the things you mentioned). I've seen a number of stable families (at least outwardly) around school/work whose kids are glued to the damn things.

What really makes me sad is when I'm at a restaurant or shop or similar and there is a parent with a small child getting restless and they pacify them by sticking a phone with Youtube in their face.

My point is that they are wrong about which parts of their good parenting are causing the good outcome, which is important because if I'm right then we should understand the problem more as a failure of society than a failure of parenting.

Of course anyone can be a bad parent, but being a good parent might require having a certain amount of material security and wealth. Not such a crazy idea if you think about it.

It’s a correlation to be sure. But also inter-generational family habits, like inculcation values of meriting good habits, e.g. discipline. Some families like that basic history.

You're being down voted but you're right.

You need a support system to be able to model good behavior. If you barely have energy to make it to bed at night then you definitely won't have energy to entertain a hyperactive toddler. Things like having grandparents help raise kids and spend time with them instead of turning on YouTube can help.

If I had children when I wanted to (which I am still saving up to do) then their grandparents would still be working full time.