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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3701 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Are The Kids Alright?

Motivated by a mainline reddit thread I saw asking teachers "what do kids today not know?"

Because of my career + age + unmarried status, I have close to zero interaction with Gen-Z and ... whatever the next one is. I am starting to get second hand reports from parents in my social circle, as well as manager types who are now hiring Gen-Z.

By most, but certainly not all, accounts, the major differences seems to be just very under-developed basic social interaction skills. Anywhere from hyper-preferences for everything to be done via text/e-mail, to literally falling silent in in-person meetings because of inability to cope with (what I think is) base-line social anxiety (what I mean here is the general sense of awkwardness we all feel the first time we meet someone new).

Is this the case for Mottizens who have these interactions? Are there other signs or common symptoms? Most of all -- why is it happening (if it is)? Will I ever be a grandpa without resorting to Greek Mythology levels of sexual "fuck it, I'll do it myself!"

Anecdotal, but I've had a theory for a long time that too much screentime leads to atrophy of the part of the brain used for social interaction. I'm quite serious about this, based on personal experience. The more interactive the screen is, the more detrimental it is; basically watching tv < doomscrolling social media < videogames.

I remember reading some insights from a child psychologist about this back in 2012 who called it 'Electronic Screen Syndrome', a sub-clinical issue that proposed a link between nervous system overstimulation and social anxiety (amongst other things). From the link:

  • The child exhibits symptoms related to mood, anxiety, cognition, behavior, or social interactions that cause significant impairment in school, at home, or with peers. Typical signs/symptoms mimic chronic stress and include irritable, depressed or labile mood, excessive tantrums, low frustration tolerance, poor self-regulation, disorganized behavior, oppositional-defiant behaviors, poor sportsmanship, social immaturity, poor eye contact, insomnia/non-restorative sleep, learning difficulties, and poor short-term memory.[7]
  • ESS may occur in the absence or presence of other psychiatric, neurological, behavior or learning disorders, and can mimic or exacerbate virtually any mental health-related disorder.
  • Symptoms markedly improve or resolve with strict removal of electronic media (an “electronic fast”); three- to four-week electronic fasts are often sufficient but longer fasts may be required in severe cases.
  • Symptoms may return with re-introduction of electronic media following a fast, depending on a variety of factors. Some children can tolerate moderation after a fast, while others seem to relapse immediately if re-exposed.
  • Vulnerability factors exist and include: male gender, pre-existing psychiatric, neurodevelopmental, learning, or behavior disorders, co-existing stressors, and total lifetime electronic media exposure. At particular risk may be boys with ADHD and/or autism spectrum disorders.

I found limiting screen time to improve my own sociability, but unsurprisingly I'm ticking the boxes for some of those vulnerability factors.

edit: Anyway, I couldn't find some non-fluffy data around screentime use by age, but the fluff articles in a simple google search show that younger generations are using screens more (More than 6 hours per day). Also, here's a random paper showing a correlation between more than 6 hours of screentime a day and depression.

This is probably one of the main sources of my techno-pessimism, and anti-transhumanism. I get that it's hard to get away from a screen these days, I get how parents eventually succumb to the stupid arms race of "but all my friends already have phones" (though I think there's a special place in hell for the ones that hand them out to very young kids as pacifiers), but how is it that, at a minimum, schools don't force kids to put away their phones to a locker for as long as they're in the building? When I think too much about it, I'm prone to go full-tinfoil (though that's not unique to this subject).

Screens are amazingly useful when used in isolation moderation. Also, restricting them too much can lead to social isolation of the child involved (think about all of your child's friends being on instagram, while they are not). It's really a 'dose makes the poison' issue.

I think screens are useful to teachers and parents as a sedative (and as educational tools), but likely because the long term impacts of overuse have not yet been properly studied and disseminated in the wider community. This reminds me of similar issues like ultra processed foods (cheap and quick to prepare) vs obesity, or convenient modern plastic packaging vs endocrine disruption through microplastics. Tobacco vs cancer is probably the ur-example.

Basically it seems to be a common theme that there is some game changing technology introduced into our environment where the drawbacks only became apparent after a couple of generations, by which point the damage had been done.

I'm not some anarcho-primativist who advocates a Return to Monke, but I think its a good idea to always keep an eye towards living in a manner that our bodies were designed for. Our environment was meant to accommodate us, not the other way around.

Edit: moderation.

You'd think there would be a demand for private schools where the children are not allowed to have social media accounts at all. Anyone caught with one is expelled and the parents are expected to police this at home.

With social isolation it strikes me a lot more as "race towards the bottom", which is why I'm for banning it in places where a ban is enforceable on the entire social circle (it's not like not like that constitutes the majority of contexts the kid will find themselves in, anyway). I can see the educational potential in the technology, but quite frankly most of it is going to waste in our schools system, and with the way it's set up, I don't see it ever being used to it's full extent, so I don't think it's worth the negative impact on attention spans, for example.

As for using screens as a sedative - like I said, a special place in hell...

Whoops, I wrote isolation rather than moderation (fixed). I agree with your post. I think its important to create tech free zones for kids to interact naturally where you can. They need to learn social skills in a low stakes environment. Otherwise you get really awkward adults doing all sorts of things at the local Meetup.

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