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Today I was listening to a Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast (paywalled on Substack, but available with ads on Apple Podcast), with Louise Perry interviewing John Daniel Davidson, and there were a lot of both dubious and interesting things there, but the one that caused an emotional reaction for me was the discussion of "screens," which I've been having with some in person friends, and seeing around Substack lately as well. I don't like the paradigms of the discussion, but have trouble articulating why. Especially when Davidson kept repeating "it rewires their brains" over and over again. My pop neuroscience model is built on a few fluffy books about neuroplasticity from a decade ago, but I thought basically everything required our brains?
There are indeed a lot of things on the internet, and especially social media, that are bad in the way casinos are bad, but calling this "screens" feels like calling slot machines "levers" or something. It's not like I could have accessed the podcast, other than by learning about it online, anyway. Was it more virtuous to listen to Davidson talk than to read him on Substack? Maybe! I was doing work with my hands while I listened.
Jonathan Haidt thinks that children shouldn't be able to post on social media or have smart phones (or internet enabled private devices more generally), and I think that may be reasonable, especially in regards to people posting photos of themselves, sure, everyone should think long and hard about doing that, and usually shouldn't. But at the same time, I don't really trust the enforcers, and do think that the rules wouldn't fall where I would hope.
Louise Perry didn't push back as much as I would have liked against the "demonic, insane, evil" rhetoric in regards to "screens" (by which I think Davidson meant something more like "the unfiltered internet"), but did mention something like that she thinks it's probably alright for her children to watch fairy tales sometimes, but that it's weird and a bit disturbing if they're watching another kid play on Youtube. And I agree that, yes, that's kind of weird, I wouldn't let my children watch that. I didn't let my child watch more than one episode of "Is it Cake," either, because that also seemed a bit weird.
Anyway, is there anyone out there who has an actually useful way of discussing "screens," especially in respect to children, but also in general? If I had more attention to devote to the topic, maybe I'd try reading Heidegger's Simulcrum and Simulation, since at least the title seems like it's heading in an interesting direction.
This is the part where I think you’re wrong. Because it’s possible to have a lever that is not attached to a slot machine, so there is no slippery slope from “Here’s a lever (that teaches you the educational engineering mechanics of fulcrums!)” to “You are now addicted to penny slots”. But it is NOT possible to have an internet-enabled device that lacks a slippery slope from “You are watching an educational Youtube video” to “You are now addicted to dopaminagenic slop”. It’s literally one click away. With the physical lever, you have to actually get off your ass and go to a casino; and as Scott tells us: you get an outsize effect from minor inconveniences.
I have a hard enough time avoiding slipping on the Youtube slope, and I’m a 30-year-old academic with enough self-discipline to finish a PhD. You wanna put five year olds on the top of the slope? Get outta heeeeeere
(What I will say, though, is that it’s better to have a five year old addicted to dopaminagenic slop than no five year old at all, so I actually support kids being raised by screens if it means TFR goes up. Just don’t delude yourself that the practice ain’t cookin’ their brains)
What does that mean? I'm pretty picky, and often do look at Youtube or Instagram, see that there's nothing interesting there, and then close the tabs and go to bed or sit under a tree with a physical book. Maybe I'm a bit odd. If I'm feeling... stressed? I'm not sure what the state is... I'll refresh The Motte or something over and over for a while, and yeah that's dumb, I shouldn't do that. I should probably take a nap at that point.
I was listening to my daughter play Hytale, and she was narrating some story about a dragon, and she was going to send it food so it wouldn't eat the villagers, and then she was making them a protector, and then it was raining pigs, and there was a zoo, and it sounded very similar to when she's drawing and narrating stories about how her doll is putting on a party, and these are invitations, here have an invitation, and now they need to reverse for their performance, and so on and so forth.
I'm right there with you, but I don't think it's universal. I feel like I won the lottery of fascinations because the supposedly-addictive (and also useless) content that gets spread around is just boring to me, so I don't get sucked into those holes. It takes zero effort whatsoever on my part.
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