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Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

From my experience as a kid

"Pleasant for kids to use is the polar opposite of kids finding it a pleasure to use"

I think that's provably untrue based on the fact Saturday morning cartoons were massively popular as a curated content feed on TVs through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Kids (including me at the time) loved them and sank many hours into watching them. They were wholly approved by my parents, to the point where sometimes my parents would watch with me. Unless kids have fundamentally changed (which seems unlikely) the differentiating factor is almost certainly that kids simply now have access to far more unsuitable content.

Yep. Kids still love engaging with decent content. As any parent knows. Bluey / Peppa pig / Paw patrol / etc do huge numbers.

Children haven’t changed.

My parents didn't let me watch saturday morning cartoons because my mom felt that the ad breaks were harmful to children. In fact, the TV was set to PBS and there was a plastic cup glued over the channel knob.

Both things are true.

Liking carrots doesn't negate your taste for ice cream.

Video games from the 90s were actually pleasant as a kid, and I'm happy to see my kids enjoying them today rather than the slot machines that the industry makes for kids these days…

(Unfortunately I'm well aware that it won't last long, because social pressure is impossible to fight at individual scale)

Social pressure is much easier to fight than you think but it involves being an active parent and letting your kids invite friends over to play. Most parents are not willing or are unable to do take that active role for one reason or another.

it would also be easier if, like, social media was banned for kids

You could be a parent or let the state parent for you.

Sorry to disappoint you, but from ten years old onwards your kids spend way more time socializing with other members of Society than with their parents, and there's no way around that, so I'd rather live in a society where kids aren't being abused by harmful businesses (be then booze or social media makers).

The State is just the democratically organized emanation of Society. And believe it or not, humans are social animals.

Totally on-topic, because 20th century video games were mainly single-player or 2-4 players in the same room. Multiplayer games were "social" in a different way.

Well, one part of a proper education of a child is to teach them that life isn't about gratification. Neil Postman made this point already in Amusing Ourselves to Death. By educating kids with Sesame street you didn't teach them to love education, you taught them to love television.

When you make learning synonymous with fun people start to believe that if they aren't having fun they aren't learning. Which accounts I think for something that a lot of teachers at all levels have observed, kids are increasingly unable to learn if there's no immediate reward.

Sesame Street didn’t make Facebook, X or TikTok unbridled greed and a lack of regulation did.

what does greed have to do with it? The issue at hand is that for many decades now visual mass media have taught children that constant stimulation and entertainment has to be omnipresent.

It's much worse than just greed, it's about attention. Fundamentally at this point, very few people, including adults are unable to accept boredom or lack of instant gratification. Commercial or non-commercial.

Right, and the greed is preying on that attention. The users aren’t the greedy ones, the musks and the zucks and the tiks and the toks are.

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