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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.
I think of it in terms of "passive entertainment". That is, anything that you can do that keeps you entertained in some form while requiring minimal input from the user. This also includes reading, watching television, and listening to the radio. Anything where you can sit down and vegetate, stop interacting with the world and still find yourself entertained by someone else. The reason why "screens" are particularly bad, is that the content you can now consume lasts forever. Compared to a book that ends after a few hundred pages and you then have to buy a new one, or Saturday morning cartoons that only lasts until Saturday morning is over, the internet produces content faster than you can consume it. Especially if you don't care that much about the quality (as is often the case with children). Now add all the ways in which online content is designed to capture and hold on to your attention for as long as possible, and I think the problem starts to reveal itself.
You have an eternal source of easy stimulation that is much easier to engage with than anything else, because every other thing you could be doing requires more effort. Even pulling yourself off the screen to go to the bathroom can be hard. This creates a habit of spending as much time on the computer as possible, which then results in spending less time on healthy activities, such as moving your body around or interacting with other people in person. As you neglect those real-world skills, they start to atrophy (or in the case of children, never develop) which makes it even more difficult to do anything but sit with your iPad.
All this is before we get into how a specific piece of content might be bad for you. Just limiting what kind of online content children can watch (like YouTube kids, or requiring ID to access porn sites), I think misses the mark. If children (or anyone, really) spent the majority of their free time watching TV or reading fiction, I would think that is also really bad. But home computers, with social media and video games, are really the first thing to be so engaging as to make this extreme mass consumption viable on a large scale, where it consumes both free time, work, and school. The people spending all day passively reading or in front of the telly, used to be either weird loners or mentally ill. Due to phones and computers, this has now changed to be an increasing amount of the population, and something that starts in childhood. I think that is legitimately a real problem that should be dealt with.
You seem to me to have a set of implicit standards about the Good which I'm not necessarily disagreeing with but would like to lay out in more detail when we are, ultimately, discussing banning things people like doing.
To me, you seem to be saying broadly:
As a former and still-occasional weirdo loner whose idea of paradise is still often a big library and a lifetime to spend in it, I guess my first question is whether you see inherent value in passive entertainment that needs to be traded off against health, instrumental goals, and long-term sources of satisfaction/happiness, and/or whether you are suspicious of passivity and consider strenuousness and discomfort as a moral good in and of itself?
I correlate a good life with a healthy mind and body. The healthier you are, the better your life is likely to be. I order to achieve good physical and mental health, there are certain needs which must be met. I will highlight three, that I believe the current state of entertainment interferes with:
In your example of a paradise, I assume you also won't have to work. If so, you may not have these problems. You could spend 10 hours a day exploring your library, and still have ample time left to handle your needs. But when more than eight hours a day is spent on commuting and work, the equation changes. Even just four hours spent on the internet means you will likely have to make sacrifices elsewhere (sleep, socializing, exercise, and so on).
I don't consider strenuousness and discomfort as moral goods, but I do believe that some amount of adversity is probably necessary to live a good life. Consider an extreme example, where you have a button that you can press which floods your brain with pressure hormones, for a short time making you feel intense bliss and removing any pain or negative emotions you may have. You do not build a tolerance, and there are no side effects in the classical sense. Only, pressing the button will at any time be the most pleasurable thing you could do. Let us also say that in this world, you can replace your job with pushing the button. So if you want, every push also transfers money into your bank account, which can be used to purchase whatever necessities you may need.
This sounds horrifying to me. Even though there is an argument to be made that a society of button pushers would be heaven on earth, I just can't buy that this would be good. So while discomfort is not itself a good thing, it is probably necessary in some amount.
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