I grew up at exactly the right time to see this happen live. When I entered high school in 2008, flip-phones were the norm and, while texting in class was a thing, phones weren't an all-day...
I grew up at exactly the right time to see this happen live. When I entered high school in 2008, flip-phones were the norm and, while texting in class was a thing, phones weren't an all-day affair. It was a pain in the ass to type on a phone keypad. By the time I graduated in 2012, almost everyone I knew had a smartphone. I, myself, got my first one in 2010 for my 16th birthday. But even then, the phones were comparatively limited and social platforms hadn't developed into the Skinnerian nightmare they are today. Truly heady days, at least as I felt it.
I have a lot of older-Zoomer friends and family and seeing how they interact with their phones and social platforms is rather troublesome to me, I can only imagine how much worse it is for the younger members of the cohort, much less the iPad-child generation.
I find it telling that so many dislike the social platforms they're on, but stay because that's where everyone is. I personally detest Facebook, but I am socially "forced" to keep it open because of family and friends who flatly refuse to use any other communication medium. I'd never heard the term "collective-action trap", but I like it, it's very descriptive.
When Facebook shows me the memories of posts from prior years, I can see that I've been making statuses in the line of "just what am I still doing on this stupid website?" for at least 10 years...
When Facebook shows me the memories of posts from prior years, I can see that I've been making statuses in the line of "just what am I still doing on this stupid website?" for at least 10 years now. Yet still I remain, if only for calendar invites and the rolodex of people I once knew but may need to know again. Twitter addiction, Reddit maxxing: they've come and gone, yet the blue app remains.
For at least a couple of years, I'd open up Facebook and scroll idly (as one does with social media) and find myself thinking "I don't give a shit about any of these people", so I stopped going on...
For at least a couple of years, I'd open up Facebook and scroll idly (as one does with social media) and find myself thinking "I don't give a shit about any of these people", so I stopped going on as frequently. Then the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened and I just went ahead and closed my account. I don't feel that I've lost anything important.
I was in this camp until FB realized that promoting pictures of cute horses and rabbits and dogs was the way to get me to scroll. They know me well enough not to bother showing me wedding photos...
and find myself thinking "I don't give a shit about any of these people", so I stopped going on as frequently.
I was in this camp until FB realized that promoting pictures of cute horses and rabbits and dogs was the way to get me to scroll. They know me well enough not to bother showing me wedding photos from people I haven't seen in 15 years.
I think this was less targeted at getting you to scroll and more of a pivot when the amount of normal user content getting posted to Facebook cratered. I haven't had a Facebook account in years,...
I think this was less targeted at getting you to scroll and more of a pivot when the amount of normal user content getting posted to Facebook cratered.
I haven't had a Facebook account in years, but even ~6 years ago that well was drying up and I imagine it's worse now.
I think I first noticed a downtick in original friend posts around 8–10 years ago. Not right when my cohort graduated, but soon after. The groups have worthwhile posts, unlike everyone who was...
I think I first noticed a downtick in original friend posts around 8–10 years ago. Not right when my cohort graduated, but soon after. The groups have worthwhile posts, unlike everyone who was still an active poster after that decline. Mate, no one gives a shit about your political musings. Better to replace that with unfunny pokémon joke reposting.
I did this and I honestly do not feel like I lost anything either. I don't even remember the people from my social media accounts anymore. I just text and am in a discord server with my friends. I...
I did this and I honestly do not feel like I lost anything either. I don't even remember the people from my social media accounts anymore. I just text and am in a discord server with my friends.
I am too young to have a social life before social media, but I have a feeling that pre-social media lots of people would just come and go from your life and nobody cared too much about it. I think social media tricks people into thinking that everyone you meet is a valuable relationship, but most people are just acquaintances.
This should be a gift link, although I'm not sure how long they remain available for? An interesting article that looks at how phones may have impacted current teens and young adults: My kids are...
This should be a gift link, although I'm not sure how long they remain available for?
An interesting article that looks at how phones may have impacted current teens and young adults:
Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.
The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and beyond. By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.
The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to “The Nation’s Report Card,” scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s.
My kids are younger so this is not a battle we've had to fight yet. Parents with older kids, what, if anything, are you/were you doing with phones? No judgement, just curious.
My co-parent and I got our daughter a smartphone for her 11th birthday, with the reasoning being that she'd be going to high school, more of her peers would have one, and we could give her a...
Parents with older kids, what, if anything, are you/were you doing with phones?
My co-parent and I got our daughter a smartphone for her 11th birthday, with the reasoning being that she'd be going to high school, more of her peers would have one, and we could give her a little more independence under the proviso that she has her phone on her and knows to ring us at any time. Android offers Google Family Link to help control the device, and it's pretty good so far. She has to get permission to install any apps, and we couple this with saying that games have to operate a one-in, one-out system. There's no social media on her phone with the exception of WhatsApp, which is the primary messaging app here in the UK, so she can still speak to her friends. We personally check her phone semi-regularly for Internet history and conversations, just to make sure there's nothing untoward going on, and I keep an eye on her usage stats in my side of the Family Link app. She recently discovered YouTube shorts, and her usage absolutely shot up, so I've limited YouTube to 90 minutes a day.
All in all, it could have been a lot worse. There was a recent incident where she was involved in some cyber-bullying (gosh but I hate that term), where we confiscated her phone for a month as a result. And you know what? She said to both of us, unprompted, that she liked not having her phone, and wanted to use it less. She was reading more, being more creative again, chattier, all the stuff the article says. It was a remarkable adjustment, but once she got the phone back she's been straight back into it, with a few caveats. She's no longer allowed to use it for an alarm clock. It stays downstairs overnight to charge, and she doesn't get to pick it up again until she's finished getting ready for school. Funnily enough, she's getting up on time and not dithering about quite so much in the mornings any more!
What is really shocking to me is that when I talk to my siblings or other parents about this, none of them had any idea about parental controls. In my siblings' cases, their children are too young for phones yet anyway. But some of my daughter's contemporaries' parents have no clue that you can lock phones down in this way, and have just given unfettered access to the Internet to their children. There's been a lot of talk in the UK recently about banning kids from having phones, or designing a phone especially for children (we do have a very authoritarian streak when it comes to the Internet). But honestly, just a bit of widespread parental education regarding child locks and the sorts of things to be checking for would go a long, long way.
This is pretty much what I'm planning on doing. Locking down the phones and limiting access to social media. I'm not sure if iOS lets you administer network settings as part of the parental...
This is pretty much what I'm planning on doing. Locking down the phones and limiting access to social media. I'm not sure if iOS lets you administer network settings as part of the parental controls but I'll likely route everything through a wireguard VPN as well if that's something my kids can't just change at will.
We'll see though, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth live with teenage girls.
Well, quite! Mine isn't quite a teenager yet (13 in July) but it's near enough there now. I was recently told by a teacher friend that year 9 (the next school year for her) is the worst as far as...
We'll see though, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth live with teenage girls.
Well, quite! Mine isn't quite a teenager yet (13 in July) but it's near enough there now. I was recently told by a teacher friend that year 9 (the next school year for her) is the worst as far as dealing with the children goes, so I'm trying to start mentally preparing for it now so there are fewer surprises 😅
Same here. Part of it is that I take my internet reductions while on my winter assignment away from home. Once I'm back, so is the addiction. Perhaps it's time to move? I need to do this, and I'm...
said she was immeasurably better without it, yet ended up right back to full-steam posting the moment she got it back.
Same here. Part of it is that I take my internet reductions while on my winter assignment away from home. Once I'm back, so is the addiction. Perhaps it's time to move?
use a separate alarm clock, charge phones out of room
I need to do this, and I'm about three times as old as your daughter.
Sadly, that's just the nature of addiction. Do you know what meal is better than anything you can eat at a Michelin starred restaurant? Literally any fast food after a week of hospital food....
Sadly, that's just the nature of addiction.
Do you know what meal is better than anything you can eat at a Michelin starred restaurant? Literally any fast food after a week of hospital food.
Living without the things that you're addicted to is tough, but your life will be so much better without it. It's so easy to think "once won't hurt" but you'll get that rush from it and try to chase it but it's never going to be as good. And that's a lesson that you won't appreciate until you've been a few years off from stumbling out of it.
My Reddit addiction is something that picks up sharply whenever there is too much space between my other things. It's especially bad when the "other things" are Discord messages. When I'm too busy...
My Reddit addiction is something that picks up sharply whenever there is too much space between my other things. It's especially bad when the "other things" are Discord messages. When I'm too busy for Reddit (or I've gotten focused elsewhere), I don't miss it. It's not even a "feels good", so much as something to do.
I absolutely recommend it. I've been practising what I preach and doing the same thing, and it's genuinely changed my life. I used to be a really bad sleeper, I had no routine or consistent...
I need to do this, and I'm about three times as old as your daughter.
I absolutely recommend it. I've been practising what I preach and doing the same thing, and it's genuinely changed my life. I used to be a really bad sleeper, I had no routine or consistent pattern, and was consistently arriving late for my (work from home!) job. I bought a cheap alarm clock without a snooze function, and started charging my phone in another room in January. And boom. Every workday, 45 minutes before my start time, I am up. Meaning I can get a shower, skincare routine, and a light breakfast in. I go to bed at a reasonable time and am experiencing some of the best sleep of my life.
I have an electrician visiting in the next week. Part of what I need to decide is where to add more outlets to my room and whether to wire them into switches. Currently, there is a single outlet...
I have an electrician visiting in the next week. Part of what I need to decide is where to add more outlets to my room and whether to wire them into switches. Currently, there is a single outlet at the front of my room controlled by one switch. However, the front of the room ideally needs two different switches (lights vs. computer station) plus an always-on outlet for my alarm clock and charging station. Currently, the charging station is plugged into the outlet by my bed.
Growing up during this period, my struggle with self-control on social media was glaringly apparent. Back when I was 15 or 16, I found myself endlessly scrolling through the 9gag timeline, seeking...
Growing up during this period, my struggle with self-control on social media was glaringly apparent. Back when I was 15 or 16, I found myself endlessly scrolling through the 9gag timeline, seeking out memes, often checking it multiple times a day until I reached the last meme I remembered seeing. Even though I had a smartphone, I still preferred using my computer for browsing, as the app experience wasn't as optimized back then.
I feels like everything is 9gag now. Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter — everything has a linear feed, and worse, everything has an infinite linear feed. Everything suggests infinite entertainment suited for your specific niche, and worst of all, it is all accessible at all times. Managing my consumption was a challenge in my teens, but it escalated into a serious problem in adulthood.
To regain control, I had to take drastic measures. For instance, to curb my YouTube addiction, I disabled history tracking. Twitter, being the least relevant to my real-life connections, had to be axed altogether. Yet, some platforms aren't as easy to disconnect from. Instagram, for instance, used to be a source of healthy interaction for me. But when they introduced algorithmic suggestions and live feeds, I found myself endlessly scrolling, oblivious to the passage of time. Unfortunately, Instagram doesn't offer the option to disable these features, and it's a vital tool for staying connected with certain friends.
Thankfully, I've found a middle ground recently by using blockers like LeechBlockNG. They allow me to access these platforms at appropriate times, without constantly being at their mercy. I do wish there was more control over which features we engage with, like the option to disable search history on Google. But ultimately, failing to resisting the allure of social media is still a personal failure, and I wish I could overcome that without having to resort to drastic measures. If Google deleted that option overnight, for example, I think I pretty much would had to quit Youtube too, with is a shame, since my relationship with Youtube is very healthy as of now, since I can manually choose what content I want to see on my timeline, through subscriptions.
I find it fascinating how Haidt’s style and framing makes me inclined to disagree with points I already believe in. He uses a lot of writing tropes that I find irritating, like how he tends to put...
I find it fascinating how Haidt’s style and framing makes me inclined to disagree with points I already believe in. He uses a lot of writing tropes that I find irritating, like how he tends to put people into generations and tells you about all of the negatives of one generation. But the thing that really bugs me is that he knows the problem with youths today is their addiction to media taking up all of their time, yet he spends huge portions of his words focusing on the symbol of those things instead. In a way it’s like saying, “terrorists recruit on the internet. Therefore we should get rid of the internet”.
But for all the things that I can nitpick about his style, perspective, and incredibly unnecessary inclusion of the concept of pornography addiction, he is still right where it counts. Social media is the devil. And if you recognized my username at the start of this comment, you can probably tell that its a devil I’ve got perched right on my shoulder. We were probably better off in the era where people spending all their time chatting and finding partners on the internet were all the weirdo’s who couldn’t hack it in real life - speaking as one of them, of course. The more I think about how society works on these big platforms the more I realize that the sheer size of the user base and its reach is in and of itself, the problem.
I think social media is definitely more central to the problem than phones themselves but I don't think the comparison is quite fair. While I don't think social media without phones would be...
focusing on the symbol of those things instead. In a way it’s like saying, “terrorists recruit on the internet. Therefore we should get rid of the internet”.
I think social media is definitely more central to the problem than phones themselves but I don't think the comparison is quite fair. While I don't think social media without phones would be benign, it's effects would be far more muted than they currently are. The pervasiveness of social media is the issue, so lumping that into 'phones' seems at least acceptable to me.
I think phones themselves play a huge part, primarily because of notifications. The phone call made sense to interrupt your life: it was for a synchronous conversation. Text made sense, as it was...
I think phones themselves play a huge part, primarily because of notifications.
The phone call made sense to interrupt your life: it was for a synchronous conversation. Text made sense, as it was primarily intended for supplementing/replacing phone calls.
But then we extended it to everything. To the point my wife's phone looks like a 1995 pc infected with malware from the number of advertising notifications that pop up constantly. And since that's default behavior, I'm betting way more people's phones are like my wife's than mine.
Add in notifications for emails, chats, status updates for arbitrary stuff...and its no wonder that we have a hard time putting these things down.
Social media's ills are exacerbated by a machine that constantly reminds you to pick it up.
I've been struggling against my cell phone for a while now and have written about it often on this site. One of my primary dependencies is on Instagram, I genuinely enjoy being on there and mostly...
I think phones themselves play a huge part, primarily because of notifications
I've been struggling against my cell phone for a while now and have written about it often on this site. One of my primary dependencies is on Instagram, I genuinely enjoy being on there and mostly limit my follows to people I actually know or a few content creators for inspiration but it triggers a doom-loop for me and I end up spending way too much time on my phone.
It literally physically pained me to do it but I turned off notifications on Instagram three weeks ago and my use of the app absolutely plummeted. I didn't even have to remove the app, just not seeing when friends messaged or liked, etc., was enough to stop triggering me. I still go on about once a day but can honestly say that my interest in the app is seriously flagging, my notification-induced FOMO is evaporated, and I just don't care if I'm missing something on the feed anymore and friends can wait to hear back from me about inane reels they've sent me.
I'm now on a notification purging crusade on all of my devices. Outside of particular messaging apps and banking they're all slowly getting turned off.
I would agree with you, to a point. I think that notifications might just be the dividing line where social media became poisonous. The only thing is that it's not unique to cell phones. Desktop...
I would agree with you, to a point. I think that notifications might just be the dividing line where social media became poisonous.
The only thing is that it's not unique to cell phones. Desktop operating systems also have system-wide notification trays, and they had notification popups even before then. It didn't take too long after smartphones became a thing until web browsers got a notifications API built into them to make it that much easier to drill into our minds. The design and capabilities of web browsers go hand-in-hand with social media addiction as a form of a technological arms race for your attention.
It's not really a clear dividing line either; some of the most popular applications before Facebook and MySpace were instant messaging apps and cellular text messaging.
That said, I just turned off the browser notification feature entirely in Firefox. It has no value whatsoever. It's less bad when everything has to be opted-in to notifications, not opted out. Now...
That said, I just turned off the browser notification feature entirely in Firefox. It has no value whatsoever.
It's less bad when everything has to be opted-in to notifications, not opted out.
Now if only we could prevent apps from refusing to work without it or reprompting 1000 times.
I think I agree with this when it comes to the effects of phones generally, but I don't recall the notification stuff being as big a deal in the early 2010s, which is a big part of the focus of...
I think I agree with this when it comes to the effects of phones generally, but I don't recall the notification stuff being as big a deal in the early 2010s, which is a big part of the focus of each article. I think it's harder to apply this to the trends among people who were adolescents back then the way this article does (disclaimer: I was an adolescent in the early 2010s). Notification spam took a little longer to kick in after smartphones became big, iirc.
I'd agree. Also because circa 2010 apps were still mostly apps with a purpose. Not needing to install an app for every storefront, bank, and everything else. As it persisted, it got used and...
I'd agree. Also because circa 2010 apps were still mostly apps with a purpose. Not needing to install an app for every storefront, bank, and everything else.
As it persisted, it got used and abused to its limits.
I am inclined to agree with this. I got into Facebook in the early days when it was for college email addresses only and there was no smart phone. Sure I spent a decent amount of time on it, but I...
I am inclined to agree with this. I got into Facebook in the early days when it was for college email addresses only and there was no smart phone. Sure I spent a decent amount of time on it, but I had to be at a computer to use it. The moment I was away from the computer I didn't think about it that much and I went about my day. Now the computer is with me everywhere, and since I know I can access the internet whenever I want it's on my mind more often. Fortunately I have gotten a good moderation with social media like Facebook, it's just easy content aggregations like reddit that is the problem.
I would agree there is a difference, but I think it’s less dramatic than you’re imagining. I graduated high school right about when the iPhone first came out, and my peers were already addicted to...
I would agree there is a difference, but I think it’s less dramatic than you’re imagining. I graduated high school right about when the iPhone first came out, and my peers were already addicted to social media. Any of the classes where we had computers a good 40% of the class would be ignoring the teachers and logging into MySpace or early Facebook or any number of other media thing like YouTube, Neopets, etc.
I think the business environment now ia significantly more hostile to small players and distruption than it was twenty years ago. But it seems overly simplistic not to look at the work environment...
OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison noted that, for the first time since the 1970s, none of Silicon Valley’s preeminent entrepreneurs are under 30. “Something has really gone wrong,” Altman said. In a famously young industry, he was baffled by the sudden absence of great founders in their 20s.
I think the business environment now ia significantly more hostile to small players and distruption than it was twenty years ago. But it seems overly simplistic not to look at the work environment and debt load that people are graduating into and see that as a factor for these things as well.
It's a little like the plastic straw craze. Is single use plastic bad? Yes? Is awareness of that good? Yes. But does buying steel straws and replacing plastic straws in restaurants with paper ones that suck (or rather, don't suck) the answer? Or is it something that's meant to make people feel individually guilty and distract them from the ways that factories and corporations produce vast amounts of waste and produce products in exploitative and unsustainable ways in an effort to generate higher profits?
I am not saying phones and social media aren't causing harm. They definitely are. Nor am I saying that it is as small harm as plastic straws. But i think the problem is often presened like it's a personal failing, like people just need to "make better choices" and it won't be a problem. This ignores the fact that it's a system actively designed to pull you in, and choosing to opt out entirely is not an option for most people. When everything has an app and requires account, restaurants have no menus or cash registers, just a QR code on the table, when the only way to get a COVID vaccine was to schedule online (I saw people get turned away at the pharmacy counter all the time), when all that is true, it's not a real choice. I don't mean it's historically inevitable. It's a choice we've made as a society, but it's not a real choice for most individuals.
Seeing some of the other comments about the problem of notifications, I have to say I'm pretty happy with the tools that Android gives me to control notifications and with how they have improved over time. It's a credit to engineers that tackled the hard problem and found some interesting solutions. But I'm under no illusions that it's altruistic at the corporate level. Look at what Google did with Chrome as soon as they established market dominance. They started exploiting it for ad revenue. I think the only reason we're not seeing more ad push stuff in Android is that there's significant competition with iOS still. If that ever changes I expected to get a lot worse.
There definitely seem to be a general focus on personal choice, freedom and resilience instead of acknowledging that there is something systematic going on. It is generally easier for people to...
There definitely seem to be a general focus on personal choice, freedom and resilience instead of acknowledging that there is something systematic going on. It is generally easier for people to accept that some substances are addictive and it takes more than personal control to regulate highly addictive stuff, but it gets more muddy when it is psychological addictive. Gambling in general gets criticized and to an extent regulated, but we know tech firms are already designing their apps with similar psychological traps as gambling, manipulating peoples subconscious to maximize screen time, but to remedy this we are mostly told we need better self control and it is people's own fault if they get addicted. The tech world is generally highly under-regulated compared to other industries.
I think my thoughts on the matter can be illustrated really well with an anecdote from my friends that were doing masters in social work: if you do a bachelor's in psychology you basically only...
I think my thoughts on the matter can be illustrated really well with an anecdote from my friends that were doing masters in social work: if you do a bachelor's in psychology you basically only have two realistic career paths after graduation, for jobs that would actually use your degree anyway. Go back to school and get an MSW and become a therapist, or go into advertising.
This was really enlightening; thanks so much for sharing. Our kids are still young, but helping them develop in a healthy manner and not be addicted to technology has been on our minds a lot...
This was really enlightening; thanks so much for sharing.
Our kids are still young, but helping them develop in a healthy manner and not be addicted to technology has been on our minds a lot lately. I hope we see some more community-based/large-scale attempts to address this. It really is a perfect storm as a collective-action problem that stands to alienate those who don’t participate until a critical mass of “avoiders” is achieved.
I think the best thing any parent of young children can do is refuse to let them be "iPad kids." If you're at a restaurant, keep them included in the conversation or another activity that doesn't...
I think the best thing any parent of young children can do is refuse to let them be "iPad kids." If you're at a restaurant, keep them included in the conversation or another activity that doesn't include watching content (regardless of source) on an unshared screen.
(Not suggesting this is something you'd do, just giving my two cents.)
Agree 100%. We don’t even own an iPad and try to keep our kids engaged and on task when out in public. It’s amazing how even a little TV time at home becomes engrossing for them, makes them crave...
Agree 100%. We don’t even own an iPad and try to keep our kids engaged and on task when out in public. It’s amazing how even a little TV time at home becomes engrossing for them, makes them crave more, and really results in rapidly devolving behavior. We want them to be good digital citizens (something we’re still thinking about how to actually teach) while not feeding into the attention-consuming culture that the world keeps moving towards.
I grew up at exactly the right time to see this happen live. When I entered high school in 2008, flip-phones were the norm and, while texting in class was a thing, phones weren't an all-day affair. It was a pain in the ass to type on a phone keypad. By the time I graduated in 2012, almost everyone I knew had a smartphone. I, myself, got my first one in 2010 for my 16th birthday. But even then, the phones were comparatively limited and social platforms hadn't developed into the Skinnerian nightmare they are today. Truly heady days, at least as I felt it.
I have a lot of older-Zoomer friends and family and seeing how they interact with their phones and social platforms is rather troublesome to me, I can only imagine how much worse it is for the younger members of the cohort, much less the iPad-child generation.
I find it telling that so many dislike the social platforms they're on, but stay because that's where everyone is. I personally detest Facebook, but I am socially "forced" to keep it open because of family and friends who flatly refuse to use any other communication medium. I'd never heard the term "collective-action trap", but I like it, it's very descriptive.
When Facebook shows me the memories of posts from prior years, I can see that I've been making statuses in the line of "just what am I still doing on this stupid website?" for at least 10 years now. Yet still I remain, if only for calendar invites and the rolodex of people I once knew but may need to know again. Twitter addiction, Reddit maxxing: they've come and gone, yet the blue app remains.
For at least a couple of years, I'd open up Facebook and scroll idly (as one does with social media) and find myself thinking "I don't give a shit about any of these people", so I stopped going on as frequently. Then the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened and I just went ahead and closed my account. I don't feel that I've lost anything important.
I was in this camp until FB realized that promoting pictures of cute horses and rabbits and dogs was the way to get me to scroll. They know me well enough not to bother showing me wedding photos from people I haven't seen in 15 years.
I think this was less targeted at getting you to scroll and more of a pivot when the amount of normal user content getting posted to Facebook cratered.
I haven't had a Facebook account in years, but even ~6 years ago that well was drying up and I imagine it's worse now.
I think I first noticed a downtick in original friend posts around 8–10 years ago. Not right when my cohort graduated, but soon after. The groups have worthwhile posts, unlike everyone who was still an active poster after that decline. Mate, no one gives a shit about your political musings. Better to replace that with unfunny pokémon joke reposting.
I did this and I honestly do not feel like I lost anything either. I don't even remember the people from my social media accounts anymore. I just text and am in a discord server with my friends.
I am too young to have a social life before social media, but I have a feeling that pre-social media lots of people would just come and go from your life and nobody cared too much about it. I think social media tricks people into thinking that everyone you meet is a valuable relationship, but most people are just acquaintances.
This should be a gift link, although I'm not sure how long they remain available for?
An interesting article that looks at how phones may have impacted current teens and young adults:
My kids are younger so this is not a battle we've had to fight yet. Parents with older kids, what, if anything, are you/were you doing with phones? No judgement, just curious.
My co-parent and I got our daughter a smartphone for her 11th birthday, with the reasoning being that she'd be going to high school, more of her peers would have one, and we could give her a little more independence under the proviso that she has her phone on her and knows to ring us at any time. Android offers Google Family Link to help control the device, and it's pretty good so far. She has to get permission to install any apps, and we couple this with saying that games have to operate a one-in, one-out system. There's no social media on her phone with the exception of WhatsApp, which is the primary messaging app here in the UK, so she can still speak to her friends. We personally check her phone semi-regularly for Internet history and conversations, just to make sure there's nothing untoward going on, and I keep an eye on her usage stats in my side of the Family Link app. She recently discovered YouTube shorts, and her usage absolutely shot up, so I've limited YouTube to 90 minutes a day.
All in all, it could have been a lot worse. There was a recent incident where she was involved in some cyber-bullying (gosh but I hate that term), where we confiscated her phone for a month as a result. And you know what? She said to both of us, unprompted, that she liked not having her phone, and wanted to use it less. She was reading more, being more creative again, chattier, all the stuff the article says. It was a remarkable adjustment, but once she got the phone back she's been straight back into it, with a few caveats. She's no longer allowed to use it for an alarm clock. It stays downstairs overnight to charge, and she doesn't get to pick it up again until she's finished getting ready for school. Funnily enough, she's getting up on time and not dithering about quite so much in the mornings any more!
What is really shocking to me is that when I talk to my siblings or other parents about this, none of them had any idea about parental controls. In my siblings' cases, their children are too young for phones yet anyway. But some of my daughter's contemporaries' parents have no clue that you can lock phones down in this way, and have just given unfettered access to the Internet to their children. There's been a lot of talk in the UK recently about banning kids from having phones, or designing a phone especially for children (we do have a very authoritarian streak when it comes to the Internet). But honestly, just a bit of widespread parental education regarding child locks and the sorts of things to be checking for would go a long, long way.
This is pretty much what I'm planning on doing. Locking down the phones and limiting access to social media. I'm not sure if iOS lets you administer network settings as part of the parental controls but I'll likely route everything through a wireguard VPN as well if that's something my kids can't just change at will.
We'll see though, everyone has a plan until they
get punched in the mouthlive with teenage girls.Well, quite! Mine isn't quite a teenager yet (13 in July) but it's near enough there now. I was recently told by a teacher friend that year 9 (the next school year for her) is the worst as far as dealing with the children goes, so I'm trying to start mentally preparing for it now so there are fewer surprises 😅
Same here. Part of it is that I take my internet reductions while on my winter assignment away from home. Once I'm back, so is the addiction. Perhaps it's time to move?
I need to do this, and I'm about three times as old as your daughter.
Sadly, that's just the nature of addiction.
Do you know what meal is better than anything you can eat at a Michelin starred restaurant? Literally any fast food after a week of hospital food.
Living without the things that you're addicted to is tough, but your life will be so much better without it. It's so easy to think "once won't hurt" but you'll get that rush from it and try to chase it but it's never going to be as good. And that's a lesson that you won't appreciate until you've been a few years off from stumbling out of it.
My Reddit addiction is something that picks up sharply whenever there is too much space between my other things. It's especially bad when the "other things" are Discord messages. When I'm too busy for Reddit (or I've gotten focused elsewhere), I don't miss it. It's not even a "feels good", so much as something to do.
I absolutely recommend it. I've been practising what I preach and doing the same thing, and it's genuinely changed my life. I used to be a really bad sleeper, I had no routine or consistent pattern, and was consistently arriving late for my (work from home!) job. I bought a cheap alarm clock without a snooze function, and started charging my phone in another room in January. And boom. Every workday, 45 minutes before my start time, I am up. Meaning I can get a shower, skincare routine, and a light breakfast in. I go to bed at a reasonable time and am experiencing some of the best sleep of my life.
I have an electrician visiting in the next week. Part of what I need to decide is where to add more outlets to my room and whether to wire them into switches. Currently, there is a single outlet at the front of my room controlled by one switch. However, the front of the room ideally needs two different switches (lights vs. computer station) plus an always-on outlet for my alarm clock and charging station. Currently, the charging station is plugged into the outlet by my bed.
The Atlantic says 14 days.
Mirror, for when the gift link expires and paywall gets reactivated:
https://archive.is/EJtNj
Growing up during this period, my struggle with self-control on social media was glaringly apparent. Back when I was 15 or 16, I found myself endlessly scrolling through the 9gag timeline, seeking out memes, often checking it multiple times a day until I reached the last meme I remembered seeing. Even though I had a smartphone, I still preferred using my computer for browsing, as the app experience wasn't as optimized back then.
I feels like everything is 9gag now. Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter — everything has a linear feed, and worse, everything has an infinite linear feed. Everything suggests infinite entertainment suited for your specific niche, and worst of all, it is all accessible at all times. Managing my consumption was a challenge in my teens, but it escalated into a serious problem in adulthood.
To regain control, I had to take drastic measures. For instance, to curb my YouTube addiction, I disabled history tracking. Twitter, being the least relevant to my real-life connections, had to be axed altogether. Yet, some platforms aren't as easy to disconnect from. Instagram, for instance, used to be a source of healthy interaction for me. But when they introduced algorithmic suggestions and live feeds, I found myself endlessly scrolling, oblivious to the passage of time. Unfortunately, Instagram doesn't offer the option to disable these features, and it's a vital tool for staying connected with certain friends.
Thankfully, I've found a middle ground recently by using blockers like LeechBlockNG. They allow me to access these platforms at appropriate times, without constantly being at their mercy. I do wish there was more control over which features we engage with, like the option to disable search history on Google. But ultimately, failing to resisting the allure of social media is still a personal failure, and I wish I could overcome that without having to resort to drastic measures. If Google deleted that option overnight, for example, I think I pretty much would had to quit Youtube too, with is a shame, since my relationship with Youtube is very healthy as of now, since I can manually choose what content I want to see on my timeline, through subscriptions.
I find it fascinating how Haidt’s style and framing makes me inclined to disagree with points I already believe in. He uses a lot of writing tropes that I find irritating, like how he tends to put people into generations and tells you about all of the negatives of one generation. But the thing that really bugs me is that he knows the problem with youths today is their addiction to media taking up all of their time, yet he spends huge portions of his words focusing on the symbol of those things instead. In a way it’s like saying, “terrorists recruit on the internet. Therefore we should get rid of the internet”.
But for all the things that I can nitpick about his style, perspective, and incredibly unnecessary inclusion of the concept of pornography addiction, he is still right where it counts. Social media is the devil. And if you recognized my username at the start of this comment, you can probably tell that its a devil I’ve got perched right on my shoulder. We were probably better off in the era where people spending all their time chatting and finding partners on the internet were all the weirdo’s who couldn’t hack it in real life - speaking as one of them, of course. The more I think about how society works on these big platforms the more I realize that the sheer size of the user base and its reach is in and of itself, the problem.
I think social media is definitely more central to the problem than phones themselves but I don't think the comparison is quite fair. While I don't think social media without phones would be benign, it's effects would be far more muted than they currently are. The pervasiveness of social media is the issue, so lumping that into 'phones' seems at least acceptable to me.
I think phones themselves play a huge part, primarily because of notifications.
The phone call made sense to interrupt your life: it was for a synchronous conversation. Text made sense, as it was primarily intended for supplementing/replacing phone calls.
But then we extended it to everything. To the point my wife's phone looks like a 1995 pc infected with malware from the number of advertising notifications that pop up constantly. And since that's default behavior, I'm betting way more people's phones are like my wife's than mine.
Add in notifications for emails, chats, status updates for arbitrary stuff...and its no wonder that we have a hard time putting these things down.
Social media's ills are exacerbated by a machine that constantly reminds you to pick it up.
I've been struggling against my cell phone for a while now and have written about it often on this site. One of my primary dependencies is on Instagram, I genuinely enjoy being on there and mostly limit my follows to people I actually know or a few content creators for inspiration but it triggers a doom-loop for me and I end up spending way too much time on my phone.
It literally physically pained me to do it but I turned off notifications on Instagram three weeks ago and my use of the app absolutely plummeted. I didn't even have to remove the app, just not seeing when friends messaged or liked, etc., was enough to stop triggering me. I still go on about once a day but can honestly say that my interest in the app is seriously flagging, my notification-induced FOMO is evaporated, and I just don't care if I'm missing something on the feed anymore and friends can wait to hear back from me about inane reels they've sent me.
I'm now on a notification purging crusade on all of my devices. Outside of particular messaging apps and banking they're all slowly getting turned off.
I would agree with you, to a point. I think that notifications might just be the dividing line where social media became poisonous.
The only thing is that it's not unique to cell phones. Desktop operating systems also have system-wide notification trays, and they had notification popups even before then. It didn't take too long after smartphones became a thing until web browsers got a notifications API built into them to make it that much easier to drill into our minds. The design and capabilities of web browsers go hand-in-hand with social media addiction as a form of a technological arms race for your attention.
It's not really a clear dividing line either; some of the most popular applications before Facebook and MySpace were instant messaging apps and cellular text messaging.
That said, I just turned off the browser notification feature entirely in Firefox. It has no value whatsoever.
It's less bad when everything has to be opted-in to notifications, not opted out.
Now if only we could prevent apps from refusing to work without it or reprompting 1000 times.
I think I agree with this when it comes to the effects of phones generally, but I don't recall the notification stuff being as big a deal in the early 2010s, which is a big part of the focus of each article. I think it's harder to apply this to the trends among people who were adolescents back then the way this article does (disclaimer: I was an adolescent in the early 2010s). Notification spam took a little longer to kick in after smartphones became big, iirc.
I'd agree. Also because circa 2010 apps were still mostly apps with a purpose. Not needing to install an app for every storefront, bank, and everything else.
As it persisted, it got used and abused to its limits.
I am inclined to agree with this. I got into Facebook in the early days when it was for college email addresses only and there was no smart phone. Sure I spent a decent amount of time on it, but I had to be at a computer to use it. The moment I was away from the computer I didn't think about it that much and I went about my day. Now the computer is with me everywhere, and since I know I can access the internet whenever I want it's on my mind more often. Fortunately I have gotten a good moderation with social media like Facebook, it's just easy content aggregations like reddit that is the problem.
I would agree there is a difference, but I think it’s less dramatic than you’re imagining. I graduated high school right about when the iPhone first came out, and my peers were already addicted to social media. Any of the classes where we had computers a good 40% of the class would be ignoring the teachers and logging into MySpace or early Facebook or any number of other media thing like YouTube, Neopets, etc.
I think the business environment now ia significantly more hostile to small players and distruption than it was twenty years ago. But it seems overly simplistic not to look at the work environment and debt load that people are graduating into and see that as a factor for these things as well.
It's a little like the plastic straw craze. Is single use plastic bad? Yes? Is awareness of that good? Yes. But does buying steel straws and replacing plastic straws in restaurants with paper ones that suck (or rather, don't suck) the answer? Or is it something that's meant to make people feel individually guilty and distract them from the ways that factories and corporations produce vast amounts of waste and produce products in exploitative and unsustainable ways in an effort to generate higher profits?
I am not saying phones and social media aren't causing harm. They definitely are. Nor am I saying that it is as small harm as plastic straws. But i think the problem is often presened like it's a personal failing, like people just need to "make better choices" and it won't be a problem. This ignores the fact that it's a system actively designed to pull you in, and choosing to opt out entirely is not an option for most people. When everything has an app and requires account, restaurants have no menus or cash registers, just a QR code on the table, when the only way to get a COVID vaccine was to schedule online (I saw people get turned away at the pharmacy counter all the time), when all that is true, it's not a real choice. I don't mean it's historically inevitable. It's a choice we've made as a society, but it's not a real choice for most individuals.
Seeing some of the other comments about the problem of notifications, I have to say I'm pretty happy with the tools that Android gives me to control notifications and with how they have improved over time. It's a credit to engineers that tackled the hard problem and found some interesting solutions. But I'm under no illusions that it's altruistic at the corporate level. Look at what Google did with Chrome as soon as they established market dominance. They started exploiting it for ad revenue. I think the only reason we're not seeing more ad push stuff in Android is that there's significant competition with iOS still. If that ever changes I expected to get a lot worse.
There definitely seem to be a general focus on personal choice, freedom and resilience instead of acknowledging that there is something systematic going on. It is generally easier for people to accept that some substances are addictive and it takes more than personal control to regulate highly addictive stuff, but it gets more muddy when it is psychological addictive. Gambling in general gets criticized and to an extent regulated, but we know tech firms are already designing their apps with similar psychological traps as gambling, manipulating peoples subconscious to maximize screen time, but to remedy this we are mostly told we need better self control and it is people's own fault if they get addicted. The tech world is generally highly under-regulated compared to other industries.
I think my thoughts on the matter can be illustrated really well with an anecdote from my friends that were doing masters in social work: if you do a bachelor's in psychology you basically only have two realistic career paths after graduation, for jobs that would actually use your degree anyway. Go back to school and get an MSW and become a therapist, or go into advertising.
Isn't that a little weird?
This was really enlightening; thanks so much for sharing.
Our kids are still young, but helping them develop in a healthy manner and not be addicted to technology has been on our minds a lot lately. I hope we see some more community-based/large-scale attempts to address this. It really is a perfect storm as a collective-action problem that stands to alienate those who don’t participate until a critical mass of “avoiders” is achieved.
I think the best thing any parent of young children can do is refuse to let them be "iPad kids." If you're at a restaurant, keep them included in the conversation or another activity that doesn't include watching content (regardless of source) on an unshared screen.
(Not suggesting this is something you'd do, just giving my two cents.)
Agree 100%. We don’t even own an iPad and try to keep our kids engaged and on task when out in public. It’s amazing how even a little TV time at home becomes engrossing for them, makes them crave more, and really results in rapidly devolving behavior. We want them to be good digital citizens (something we’re still thinking about how to actually teach) while not feeding into the attention-consuming culture that the world keeps moving towards.