At this stage for the overwhelming majority. Probably not.
More effective strategy in the long term that would avoid chaos of cutting 100s of Millions of addicts off cold turkey. Would probably be to start weaning people off it. And begin actively implementing regulations of the industry.
But by its nature it’s going to run contrary to the “Free Market” and natural business incentives. As you are essentially trying to eliminate your customer base. Which is contradictory to the inherent purpose of driving usage and profit the tech companies thrive off of.
Which is ultimately what caused the problem in the first place. They set out to make it addictive. They succeeded.
The Tech sector and gaming is one of the major employers of Psychologists and Psychiatrists. Almost beating out the medical and food industries. And their primary duties in tech are to make the products more addictive.
I have noticed since Trump met with Zuckerberg, the platform for Instagram has changed from 30 second videos to longer videos ranging from one minute, to four minutes. This started happening right around the election. More and more of the videos are longer now, and I think they’re gently trying to bring people back to a more reasonable attention span.
Some states are implementing laws about not allowing kids to bring phones to school at all. Believe it or not, I think CA is the first state to implement it. It is in the legislature for Texas but not until 2026. This is only a start of course but it is a start. Parents are the ones who need to get this under control for sure.
This is a start, however if the kids are still vegging out on their phones/tablets for the other 16 hours in a day outside of school, and their parents are doing the same, nothing much is being accomplished.
The young cannot know the before times. They have no contrast to refer back to. When the phone was attached to your house or a 7/11. When you had to get off the couch to change the channel. When we had dinner as a group.
When you had to get off the couch to change the channel.
Loved having a subscription to TV Guide back then. You didn't have to stand by the tv switching channels back and forth until everybody agreed on what to watch! 😄
When we had dinner as a group.
And if we weren't at the table, we were all sitting around watching tv, eating tv dinners on tv tables! 😏
Yup. Not just limited to kids or teens. Many adults 18 to 80 are addicted to their phones. I want to scream when I see young mothers with their children, ignoring them and the surroundings while they stare and scroll through their phones. Most of the little ones have a phone or iPad device to keep them numb-busy too. I see a lot of middle-aged persons who are addicted to their phones. I have a neighbor who just can't ignore any incoming text...even when she is with company or driving!!!
Unless some catastrophic event occurs to limit or obliterate these mind-control technological toys, I think we'll have a lost generation. Only conservative-parented/home-schooled kids who limit this kind of interaction will be able to thrive.
When I worked bars and restaurants this shit pissed me off. You give a kid a phone or IPad instead of having a family dinner and teaching your kids table manners and how to act in public.
You know what's sad? Typically in my young Catholic community where there are many young parents with young kids, they're all doing a pretty good job restricting screens from their children, homeschooling them, moms stay at home, etc.
However I was at a sort of Catholic cafe one day with my mom, picking up some food from the counter, and in the sit-down table area I saw a young family with a mom, dad, son, and daughter. The kids were no older than 5 and they both had their own personal tablets plopped in front of them, watching or doing who knows what, while they were eating. Totally zoned out from the world. And even better, their parents were doing the exact same thing on their phones. Not even interacting with each other, let alone their kids.
I wanted to scream, run over to the parents and ask them why they can't have a nice meal together and face each other like normal human beings. But of course, you know how it is with spoiled, lazy parents these days. If you try to mention one bad thing about their parenting they will turn into raging, swearing banshees saying, "Don't tell me how to raise my kid!"
The rot has infected even the most "normal" and "conservative" communities in society.
if more people would force others to hear about how to live and love correctly, then eventually we would all be being told how to be the best. The world would improve!
I swear to the Good Lord above-the day the internet goes down for 6 to 12 weeks would be the best thing that could happen to the entire world.
I'm ready. Landline still active and hours of old videos downloaded to watch just in case.
I actually hope it happens. Soon. The world is too addicted to the internet and AI.
Time to go to a library for answers, folks. Yup! I'm 80 years old and still active. Hubby is 80 and works part time at Home Depot. The worst thing that happened to this world were the cell phone and tablets.
Laptops not too bad and towers not too bad, but the damn tablets and phones have destroyed the world.
No you're totally right. This is why I have an actual physical disk movie collection instead of relying on streaming. On streaming they can remove or change movies any time they please, but if you own it on disk it's yours forever unless it breaks.
When I grew up my parents said only video games during winter or when it’s dark. Otherwise I had to be out riding my bike, playing pick up basketball/football at the park etc.
Also back then there was no online video games so even if you were playing with a friend they were still with you in person.
even if you were playing with a friend they were still with you in person.
My kid used to have, and go to, LAN parties when he was in high school. All these boys would lug in their computers with assorted accoutrements and sit there all night playing and having fun.
I don't remember if they snacked on chicken tenders and Mountain Dew or not! 😄
Ahh, LAN parties were the best. And N64 parties, bringing all your friends over to play split-screen Mario Kart 64, Smash Bros 64, or Goldeneye 64 multiplayer. Kids really don't understand the things they're missing out on these days.
My granddaughters were in a small town beauty contest. All the moms were on their phones and all their pageant daughters had bags of chips and candy and were stuffing their faces behind the stage. One little black girl ran over to this womans child that was right next to her, and applied lipstick all over her face-mother on her phone totally unaware. Girl ran back to her family, and it was aWHILE before that mom noticed her kids face. She was like, "What on earth?!" Lol, she almost went out on stage like that.
Absolutely a major problem and stiff measures are required. No child should be allowed to possess a cellphone. They don't get to possess firearms or drive automobiles, so this is no different in terms of societal well-being. And it should be illegal to provide social media access to anyone under the age of 21. Parents who circumvent these restrictions should be charged with abuse of a minor.
The idea that cold turkey is intolerable is absurd. We live through volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, traffic accidents, all of which are far more traumatic that being deprived of internet media. Getting the children clear of this is as important as dragging them out of a pond filled with alligators, and needs to happen just as quickly. This stuff is seriously crippling our children with possibly permanent mental damage.
Children are children and should be treated as such. They should not be allowed to cosplay as adults. This is the logical outcome of letting children simply watch TV for as long as they want, because it keeps them out of one's hair. Adult indifference to the development of children's cognitive and social skills will kill our civilization.
I used to live with a first-grade schoolteacher who specialized in dealing with dyslexia. I would hear countless times of her frustration with parents who themselves were barely capable of sharpening a pencil, who seemed to think that the child's learning was entirely the school's responsibility and they had no responsibility whatsoever. This was 40 years ago...
I think it is a general moral and intellectual slovenliness. They also can't see the threat of democratic-socialist tyranny for what it is, either. Who do you think watches all the swill on daytime television? Slackwits. I've been watching the general mental character of the nation move steadily downward all my life.
For anyone who doesn't know what types of attention-destroying content he is describing, here are some examples. Pay close attention to
the abrupt, constant frame changing or spastic jarring movements,
the droning, robotic speech styles,
the "you wont believe this!" hype setups and the build-up of mundane things that do not warrant such excitement,
the single word closed captions, often which are colorized,
the rapid fire short sentences,
the often-times stunning and engaging visuals which have nothing at all to do with the video topic,
the initialization narrations at the beginning to set the stage for maximum engagement
and try to immerse yourself into it, don't just watch it.
Now imagine you're a child whose brain hasn't developed. This is not an accident, it's a literal psywar on children. NOBODY talks or acts like this. So now the kids can't connect with anyone in the real world or think clearly because their brains have been fried by this bullshit.
After watching this fraction of a fraction of a sample of what these kids are growing up with, how can anyone expect a teacher to compete with such content delivery systems? All I did to find these was log out of YouTube and click the Shorts tab, and just keep swiping up. Essentially every Short is like this.
Classical education (and the removal of screens) can help repair some of the brokenness. I know, I've done exactly that with one of my kids in particular. We gave her a device during COVID and within a few months, she was a different kid. We took it away (that was super fun /s), then taught her lots of logic and reasoning, and she now rocks out all her public speaking assignments (lectures, speeches, dramatic interpretations). She also points out the nonsense of young kids and devices.
Yeah, I'm seeing it in adults too. Mainly driving and when it is stop and go traffic (everyday) you see the slow car is someone staring at their phone. And a street full of people 9/10 are looking at their phone or listening through pods. Although I believe the issue with kids not learning or being motivated is partly due to this, the covid scamdemic years did irreparable damage too and the social justice lib warriors teaching anything but coursework. blm in the classroom, talking about changing genders, etc. I think a big step forward is getting rid of the DOE and the union stranglehold on education. Private school vouchers helps too.
Ah, yes. Teachers. They constantly complain about everything. You can't hold them accountable for testing results. Or student behavior. And now even to teach at all. And every time they complain, it's the kids and whatever new fangled bullshit the kids have. I remember the news reports on those slap bands destroying kids minds and how they couldn't concentrate for 3 minutes because of them. Before that, it was drugs. I also remember have too much sex, listening to the wrong music, parental oppression, parental destruction of self and so forth
Forgive me if the latest crusade spearheaded by NGOs getting fat off our tax dollars doesn't impress me.
He says it's not the teachers' faults. But I remember COVID and how the kids were kept out of the classroom for two years and the teachers didn't bother teaching during "distance learning". My daughter mostly just checked in online during class periods. She occasionally had short assignments.
My advice as a parent and a teacher, put off letting your kids get a mobile device (phone, tablet) as long as possible. When you can't put it off any longer, let your kids on it for a specific hour or two and then lock it away in a safe until the next day.
Would a blackout repair humanity?
If you have a town of people addicted to heroin/meth/alcohol/etc and the supplier suddenly ran out of product, what do you see happening?
There would be a run on doritos for sure
kek
At this stage for the overwhelming majority. Probably not.
More effective strategy in the long term that would avoid chaos of cutting 100s of Millions of addicts off cold turkey. Would probably be to start weaning people off it. And begin actively implementing regulations of the industry.
But by its nature it’s going to run contrary to the “Free Market” and natural business incentives. As you are essentially trying to eliminate your customer base. Which is contradictory to the inherent purpose of driving usage and profit the tech companies thrive off of.
Which is ultimately what caused the problem in the first place. They set out to make it addictive. They succeeded.
The Tech sector and gaming is one of the major employers of Psychologists and Psychiatrists. Almost beating out the medical and food industries. And their primary duties in tech are to make the products more addictive.
I have noticed since Trump met with Zuckerberg, the platform for Instagram has changed from 30 second videos to longer videos ranging from one minute, to four minutes. This started happening right around the election. More and more of the videos are longer now, and I think they’re gently trying to bring people back to a more reasonable attention span.
Instagram reels is the most based social media there is.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DF1jFCYs_yS/
I just posted this on PDW
This!! 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 I can’t upvote this response enough! 😀
A detoxing. Which is why MAHA’s success is desperately needed.
I sometimes wonder if this might be the way. Someone doing evil for control, but the actual outcome is good as it wakes people up from their slumber.
South Park has covered this exact scenario. The answer is… no, lol
Some states are implementing laws about not allowing kids to bring phones to school at all. Believe it or not, I think CA is the first state to implement it. It is in the legislature for Texas but not until 2026. This is only a start of course but it is a start. Parents are the ones who need to get this under control for sure.
This is a start, however if the kids are still vegging out on their phones/tablets for the other 16 hours in a day outside of school, and their parents are doing the same, nothing much is being accomplished.
The young cannot know the before times. They have no contrast to refer back to. When the phone was attached to your house or a 7/11. When you had to get off the couch to change the channel. When we had dinner as a group.
Loved having a subscription to TV Guide back then. You didn't have to stand by the tv switching channels back and forth until everybody agreed on what to watch! 😄
And if we weren't at the table, we were all sitting around watching tv, eating tv dinners on tv tables! 😏
We were so poor our remote was a pair of pliers cuz the channel knob broke off.
Oh yeah, we had a couple of TVs with the same feature!
I tell the new generation tales of having to walk 15 feet thru shag carpet just to change the channel.
Um, this issue is not limited to kids.
So in other words he has screen-free memories!
Lots of truth to what you're saying though.
Yup. Not just limited to kids or teens. Many adults 18 to 80 are addicted to their phones. I want to scream when I see young mothers with their children, ignoring them and the surroundings while they stare and scroll through their phones. Most of the little ones have a phone or iPad device to keep them numb-busy too. I see a lot of middle-aged persons who are addicted to their phones. I have a neighbor who just can't ignore any incoming text...even when she is with company or driving!!!
Unless some catastrophic event occurs to limit or obliterate these mind-control technological toys, I think we'll have a lost generation. Only conservative-parented/home-schooled kids who limit this kind of interaction will be able to thrive.
That's right about elite kids. Their private - very exclusive - schools still teach them critical thinking to have an up on the peasants.
When I worked bars and restaurants this shit pissed me off. You give a kid a phone or IPad instead of having a family dinner and teaching your kids table manners and how to act in public.
You know what's sad? Typically in my young Catholic community where there are many young parents with young kids, they're all doing a pretty good job restricting screens from their children, homeschooling them, moms stay at home, etc.
However I was at a sort of Catholic cafe one day with my mom, picking up some food from the counter, and in the sit-down table area I saw a young family with a mom, dad, son, and daughter. The kids were no older than 5 and they both had their own personal tablets plopped in front of them, watching or doing who knows what, while they were eating. Totally zoned out from the world. And even better, their parents were doing the exact same thing on their phones. Not even interacting with each other, let alone their kids.
I wanted to scream, run over to the parents and ask them why they can't have a nice meal together and face each other like normal human beings. But of course, you know how it is with spoiled, lazy parents these days. If you try to mention one bad thing about their parenting they will turn into raging, swearing banshees saying, "Don't tell me how to raise my kid!"
The rot has infected even the most "normal" and "conservative" communities in society.
if more people would force others to hear about how to live and love correctly, then eventually we would all be being told how to be the best. The world would improve!
I swear to the Good Lord above-the day the internet goes down for 6 to 12 weeks would be the best thing that could happen to the entire world.
I'm ready. Landline still active and hours of old videos downloaded to watch just in case.
I actually hope it happens. Soon. The world is too addicted to the internet and AI.
Time to go to a library for answers, folks. Yup! I'm 80 years old and still active. Hubby is 80 and works part time at Home Depot. The worst thing that happened to this world were the cell phone and tablets.
Laptops not too bad and towers not too bad, but the damn tablets and phones have destroyed the world.
No you're totally right. This is why I have an actual physical disk movie collection instead of relying on streaming. On streaming they can remove or change movies any time they please, but if you own it on disk it's yours forever unless it breaks.
When I grew up my parents said only video games during winter or when it’s dark. Otherwise I had to be out riding my bike, playing pick up basketball/football at the park etc.
Also back then there was no online video games so even if you were playing with a friend they were still with you in person.
My kid used to have, and go to, LAN parties when he was in high school. All these boys would lug in their computers with assorted accoutrements and sit there all night playing and having fun.
I don't remember if they snacked on chicken tenders and Mountain Dew or not! 😄
We used to LAN age of empires 2! Great times!
Ahh, LAN parties were the best. And N64 parties, bringing all your friends over to play split-screen Mario Kart 64, Smash Bros 64, or Goldeneye 64 multiplayer. Kids really don't understand the things they're missing out on these days.
Exactly! I've seen that way too many times. :-(
My granddaughters were in a small town beauty contest. All the moms were on their phones and all their pageant daughters had bags of chips and candy and were stuffing their faces behind the stage. One little black girl ran over to this womans child that was right next to her, and applied lipstick all over her face-mother on her phone totally unaware. Girl ran back to her family, and it was aWHILE before that mom noticed her kids face. She was like, "What on earth?!" Lol, she almost went out on stage like that.
Funny, but sad.
Child beauty pageants?
Absolutely a major problem and stiff measures are required. No child should be allowed to possess a cellphone. They don't get to possess firearms or drive automobiles, so this is no different in terms of societal well-being. And it should be illegal to provide social media access to anyone under the age of 21. Parents who circumvent these restrictions should be charged with abuse of a minor.
The idea that cold turkey is intolerable is absurd. We live through volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, traffic accidents, all of which are far more traumatic that being deprived of internet media. Getting the children clear of this is as important as dragging them out of a pond filled with alligators, and needs to happen just as quickly. This stuff is seriously crippling our children with possibly permanent mental damage.
Children are children and should be treated as such. They should not be allowed to cosplay as adults. This is the logical outcome of letting children simply watch TV for as long as they want, because it keeps them out of one's hair. Adult indifference to the development of children's cognitive and social skills will kill our civilization.
I used to live with a first-grade schoolteacher who specialized in dealing with dyslexia. I would hear countless times of her frustration with parents who themselves were barely capable of sharpening a pencil, who seemed to think that the child's learning was entirely the school's responsibility and they had no responsibility whatsoever. This was 40 years ago...
I think it is a general moral and intellectual slovenliness. They also can't see the threat of democratic-socialist tyranny for what it is, either. Who do you think watches all the swill on daytime television? Slackwits. I've been watching the general mental character of the nation move steadily downward all my life.
For anyone who doesn't know what types of attention-destroying content he is describing, here are some examples. Pay close attention to
the abrupt, constant frame changing or spastic jarring movements,
the droning, robotic speech styles,
the "you wont believe this!" hype setups and the build-up of mundane things that do not warrant such excitement,
the single word closed captions, often which are colorized,
the rapid fire short sentences,
the often-times stunning and engaging visuals which have nothing at all to do with the video topic,
the initialization narrations at the beginning to set the stage for maximum engagement
and try to immerse yourself into it, don't just watch it.
Now imagine you're a child whose brain hasn't developed. This is not an accident, it's a literal psywar on children. NOBODY talks or acts like this. So now the kids can't connect with anyone in the real world or think clearly because their brains have been fried by this bullshit.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/BcxabmAIBlo
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/HirqBCpHDlg
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/X1HPECgD8Wg
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/SUfeMxKHXUY
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/VLWH1507jQs
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/bI9ivawKZK8
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/WCBgNO1yIP8
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/qArGDeKQJtw
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/lomReIG01Jg
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/UcxTXW-lnXg
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/7ETFSqOifC8
After watching this fraction of a fraction of a sample of what these kids are growing up with, how can anyone expect a teacher to compete with such content delivery systems? All I did to find these was log out of YouTube and click the Shorts tab, and just keep swiping up. Essentially every Short is like this.
the "you wont believe this!" hype setups and the build-up of mundane things that do not warrant
my pet peeve.
Classical education (and the removal of screens) can help repair some of the brokenness. I know, I've done exactly that with one of my kids in particular. We gave her a device during COVID and within a few months, she was a different kid. We took it away (that was super fun /s), then taught her lots of logic and reasoning, and she now rocks out all her public speaking assignments (lectures, speeches, dramatic interpretations). She also points out the nonsense of young kids and devices.
It. Was. Hard.
Do it anyway.
Kids lol it's every age roped into this crap.
Yeah, I'm seeing it in adults too. Mainly driving and when it is stop and go traffic (everyday) you see the slow car is someone staring at their phone. And a street full of people 9/10 are looking at their phone or listening through pods. Although I believe the issue with kids not learning or being motivated is partly due to this, the covid scamdemic years did irreparable damage too and the social justice lib warriors teaching anything but coursework. blm in the classroom, talking about changing genders, etc. I think a big step forward is getting rid of the DOE and the union stranglehold on education. Private school vouchers helps too.
Ah, yes. Teachers. They constantly complain about everything. You can't hold them accountable for testing results. Or student behavior. And now even to teach at all. And every time they complain, it's the kids and whatever new fangled bullshit the kids have. I remember the news reports on those slap bands destroying kids minds and how they couldn't concentrate for 3 minutes because of them. Before that, it was drugs. I also remember have too much sex, listening to the wrong music, parental oppression, parental destruction of self and so forth
Forgive me if the latest crusade spearheaded by NGOs getting fat off our tax dollars doesn't impress me.
He says it's not the teachers' faults. But I remember COVID and how the kids were kept out of the classroom for two years and the teachers didn't bother teaching during "distance learning". My daughter mostly just checked in online during class periods. She occasionally had short assignments.
That was the point all along!
Ban people under 18 from using smartphones.
Hell I'd say ban under 25 from using social media.
My advice as a parent and a teacher, put off letting your kids get a mobile device (phone, tablet) as long as possible. When you can't put it off any longer, let your kids on it for a specific hour or two and then lock it away in a safe until the next day.
Who would have known that putting your 2 year old if front of cocomelon all day was a bad idea?
On the other hand...without the internet, how would we make up for the loss of GAW?
I did. The phone crowd can not speak English, can not count money and when the power goes out, they will starve in their tracks.
u/#WayAhead