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Comment by zkmon | Hacker News Reader

Blame the screens. Screens are blackholes that suck up your time, attention, awareness and senses.

Screens are evil. They wake up the dead past as if it's alive and happening now. It became so much the norm, that people are afraid to face the real world, real people, real talking. "Dinner party? OMG, real people with real faces that force us to talk to them? Noway sir".

Screens disconnected people from real world, from each other. I was trying a VR headset the other days and immediately threw it away, as it shut off my visual and audio senses completely.

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Spoken like someone with no friends or relatives that live far away. Screens can also be extremely connecting. They are a tool and as such value neutral. Is it evil that I can have a weekly video-call with family members on another continent when the alternative would be...simply no contact at all, super expensive phone calls or letters. I don't think so.

I think even with family and friends that live far away, screens are often an excuse as well. Well sorry we aren't going to be able to visit gas is just too much, we can FaceTime instead! And I think it's ignoring the bigger problem, is perhaps you talk to your family members once a week, but do you have your community around you that you talk and do things with 'off screen'? Its easy on the internet to say you do, but the reality is most people would rather doomscroll than be bothered with trying to know their neighbor.

Before screens you visited even less. Well if you compare the 1960s to today - but the 1960s had the phone as well. Compare 1700 to today and you realize quickly that "visiting your sister who married just one village over is a big deal and it couldn't happen often".

> They are a tool and as such value neutral.

Tools are not value neutral, and it’s time we internalise that. Tools are designed with a purpose. An AK-47 is a tool. Its purpose is killing. Its creator was acutely aware of it and by the end even expressed remorse.

Yes, screens can be enabling, but your parent comment is obviously talking of the norm we’re facing. Facebook isn’t value neutral, neither is Instagram, nor TikTok, nor a myriad other insanely popular services which command too many lives. Those are tools designed explicitly to suck up your time, to feed the bellies of their owners at your expense.

Digital tools are made even more not value neutral by the fact that other humans are actively influencing them even while you're using them, via "the algorithm", "dark design patterns", etc.

At least with an AK-47 or a hammer, once you own it physically, it's yours and the original creator isn't sending you subtle psychological nudges to utilize it one way or the other.

I would argue the purpose the tools are designed for is only loosely correlated with their overall value. Secind-order effects and unintended consequences are common with any disruptive technology.

I mean... you are substituting your family on a little screen for going out into the real world and making some new friends. I'd argue that, yes, just because you wrap it in "I love my family don't question me" it doesn't change anything.

>Spoken like someone with no friends or relatives that live far away. Screens can also be extremely connecting.

Most my family is scattered. Screens can be connecting. But it doesn't replace local connection and my experience seems more to delay the inevitable drifting away of such relations due to distance. I suppose it at least tests how much your loved ones care to keep in contact with you.

Tools are not value neutral. Tools shape the user

I agree with you general sentiment but how did you end up in a situation where you feel this way but also wanted to try a VR headset but then also decided to throw it away immediately after trying it seemingly surprised by what the experience was.

He might have started feeling that way only after trying the VR headset.

My hunch is they have an agenda and is willing to lie to spice up the story.

If they are not a clanker.

> My hunch is they have an agenda and is willing to lie to spice up the story.

What do you think it is? Be clear.

> If they are not a clanker.

Probably not: "I was trying a VR headset the other days".

Or, it's because no one can afford spaces to host company:

https://fortune.com/2026/06/22/1-in-3-young-adults-living-wi...

People have had parties in parents basements, tenements, city parks, open fields, caves, for all of human history

Yeah, pretty much. Seems now dinner party means it has to be some kind of gala event.

Why, then, do you look at the speck in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the log in your own eye?

People are downvoting because the tone is a bit harsh but he has a point.

While TV has been a thing for a long time, content was limited, and more importantly curated. You couldn't manage your own playlists/subscriptions and almost infinite content on subjects that interest you.

Video games were mostly for kids.

There were no social media feeds optimize to monopolize your attention and make you doomscroll.

Hey even having a TV/widescreen at home has a direct impact on couples sex life...which magically reactivate when the light goes out.

The internet is wonderful for many things but nobody can denies it has an impact on our in person social life.

I remember a college teacher who had 9 siblings humorously answering the question of "how did your parents managed to do it" with "simple: they didn't have a TV set back then".

TVs had already affected our lives tremendously, computers and the internet just went nuts with it.

I would say that TV is the same in concept, just to a different degree.

It is what you make of it. It gives and takes, heat and light, waves for waves, words for words. It lets time stay alive as bits, as long as they don’t rot. In exchange, it suck up your real world time. To use it is to used by it.

We need a new way to use it safely for us and the world writ large.

This has been going on since at least the mid 1970s if the graphs in the article are anything to go by. How will you blame the screens then?

To play devils advocate screens could start with color television.

Television and also the VCR. The cassette recorder revolutionised TV because you could watch programmes independently of your friends

I guess there was television then?

TV screens. TVs went from playing a few over the air channels in the 50s and 60s, and then the 70s, 80s brought cable TV and VCRs, and Video Games. 90s brought on DVR, DVDs

It's not only the screen. It's everything about late Capitalism. The families are more atomized. There are less families and kids. Big dinners are usually for big families. It takes a lot of skills and practices to prepare a big dinner for 10-12 people quickly.

I have a friend who is married and have 3 kids. His wife is a SAHM. She didn't know anything about cooking before they got married back in 2011, and nowadays she could easily throw a party for 10-12 people with only half of day of preparation (excluding shopping) -- and that's 10 Chinese dishes she had to cook, not BBQ stuffs. That's crazy for us. I can't imagine how much time it would take us to prepare even 5 dishes. I used to watch she cooking and it was so elegant. She uses the stove to its full, including baking, and still has the leisure to talk to me and cut raw food quickly.

It takes practices. She having 3 kids definitely "helps" with the practice. Nowadays people don't get to practice these things. It's like a myth to us.

I think it's kinda impossible for a two-worker family unless you are really into this kind of stuffs. Otherwise taking care of work and kids is already way too much for us.

that's true. and I noticed that was true when I met my internet friends in real life and I noticed the real life interaction made the bond much more valuable and more complex than it was.

even when it's GOOD it's not as good as real life, however, it does take less effort.

I actually doubt it. For one, "blame" implies damage and I'm not sure this is even a real problem. But I actually think it corresponds with rising prosperity (which councides with the rise of technology). People associate with tribes and clans for mutual support and protection and it's just much less necessary now.

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