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| ▲ | lm28469 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You can't compare late 90s/early 2000s internet with what kids have access to today. It wasn't a weapon aimed at your attention back then, and certainly not as easily accessible. There isn't much in common between the two, neither quantitatively nor qualitatively | |
| ▲ | Cthulhu_ 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We were ahead of the curve in having our attention spans hijacked by infinite content. This article is from 2003 (but has been updated over time, as e.g. Spotify and Slack came out later) and was already a warning: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/nadd/ edit: ah finally; through another HN comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528944) I was able to find the original link to the article (http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/07/10/nadd.html) and an archived version of the first version (https://web.archive.org/web/20031008160117/http://www.randsi...). Notably, the list of activities changed: 2003 version: > Me, I've got a terminal session open to a chat room, I'm listening to music, I've got Safari open with three tabs open where I'm watching Blogshares, tinkering with a web site, and looking at weekend movie returns. Not done yet. I've got iChat open, ESPN.COM is downloading sports new trailers in the background, and I've got two notepads open where I'm capturing random thoughts for later integration into various to do lists. Oh yeah, I'm writing this column, as well. Current version: > Me, I’ve got Slack opened and logged into four different teams, I’m listening to music in Spotify, I’ve got Chrome open with three tabs where I’m watching stocks on E*TRADE, I’m tinkering with WordPress, and I’m looking at weekend movie returns. Not done yet. I’ve got iMessage open, Tweetbot is merrily streaming the latest fortune cookies from friends, and I’ve got two Sublime windows open where I’m capturing random thoughts for later integration into various to-do lists. Oh yeah, I’m rewriting this article as well. | | |
| ▲ | squigz 4 days ago | parent [-] | | We were ahead of the curve in getting our attentions spans hijacked.... and yet most of us work in fields where we must maintain attention for long periods of time? Maybe, just maybe, it's possible to integrate technology into one's life without it being detrimental? Also those examples don't really paint the picture you think it does. Currently, I have about 200 browser tabs open, Sublime Text, several games, Docker containers, and a bunch of other stuff. That doesn't mean I'm doing all those things at once, or within a very short period of time. |
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| ▲ | Aeglaecia 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | while intelligence does tend to result in overfitting from my observations of smart people , nobody here grew up glued to short form content that has the same crash as cocaine | | |
| ▲ | squigz 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Then complain about short form video (which, I should add, is probably more culturally relevant than whatever we were consuming on the Internet growing up) Complaining about the Internet in general and how kids are "disconnected from reality" isn't going to solve anything, and will just result in more crazy ID laws that won't actually solve anything. | | |
| ▲ | Aeglaecia 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I specifically mentioned a culture disconnected from reality and at no point complained about the internet in general , since you're out here commanding me I command you to consider that commanding a particular behaviour tends to encourage the opposite behaviour | | |
| ▲ | squigz 4 days ago | parent [-] | | > commanding a particular behaviour tends to encourage the opposite behaviour No, it really doesn't. Look at Prohibition in America, or the "War on Drugs", or abstinence-only sex education. What does tend to reduce harmful behavior is actual education about the risks and tackling the sources of those risks. In this case, that would look like addressing the addictiveness of these platforms, instead of, say, requiring an ID to use it. The latter will only encourage kids to go to other platforms, or bypass the ID checks, to say nothing of the privacy risks to everyone else. Furthermore, the kids most in need of protection from those platforms, because their parents aren't protecting them, will likely just get their parents to ID them and let them on anyway. > I specifically mentioned a culture disconnected from reality In what way is it disconnected from reality? It seems to me that it is in fact exquisitely linked to reality by the very nature of a significant part of the population being on the Internet, as opposed to 20-30 years ago, where the culture was more of a subset of the general culture. Also, I didn't "command" you to do anything. I suggested something. A "command" would look more like, say, a law saying you can't use certain websites because of your age. A "suggestion", on the other hand, might look like, say, schools educating kids about why certain websites are harmful to them. | | |
| ▲ | Aeglaecia 3 days ago | parent [-] | | saying "then complain about x" is in the imperative mood regardless as to your intentions , it seems your examples align with my statement so there is nothing to argue there , if the whole world being on the net is exquisitely real to you then we are really never going to agree so I'm gonna leave it here |
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| ▲ | throawayonthe 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | how old are you? the avg ~20 year old has indeed already grown up with addictive social media youtube came out 20 years ago, the iphone 19 years ago, instagram 15 years ago, musical.ly 11 years ago and merged with tiktok 7 years ago... we are so cooked frfr | | |
| ▲ | nhhvhy 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Can confirm, although I won’t be 20 until tomorrow (: Nothing you listed ever felt “new”, it’s always just sort of been around. | |
| ▲ | Aeglaecia 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | old enough to have stated short form content for a very specific reason - things were absolutely not the same prior to infinite scrolling. if you're twenty and here that's cool , it's also markedly below the median HN user age from what I gather |
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