What if we talked about over-60s’ screen time as we talk about young people’s?

https://webdevlaw.uk/2022/08/18/a-thought-experiment-what-if-we-talked-about-the-over-60s-screen-time-the-way-we-talk-about-young-peoples-screen-time/

by okasaki • 4 years ago

430 432 4 years ago

webdevlaw.uk

malfist2• 4 years ago

The average 65 year old consumes 6 HOURS of TV a day? Jesus. No wonder they have a warped perception of politics. That little fearbox is controlling their lives.

AmericanChopper2• 4 years ago

My grandma probably watches about that much TV, but it’s mostly quiz shows and live sports. Not sure I’d leap to the same conclusion as you here.

glitchc• 4 years ago

Your grandma watches live sports? So unusual and yet so intriguing. Which ones are her favourites?

louison11• 4 years ago

Sad indeed. Many people waste the last 2-3 decades of their lives on TV. I’m not entirely sure why, but an assumption is that they prob didn’t live a very sovereign life in their younger years, have grown increasingly disconnected from themselves through life, and by the time they’re older have completely lost track of what makes them come alive/is healthy.

prawn4• 4 years ago

Plus it's cheap, easy and stimulating.

_-david-_4• 4 years ago

Do you really think watching TV vs internet usage really different for warping political views?

seattle_spring• 4 years ago

It has the potential to be different, absolutely.

notch656a• 4 years ago

You and I are having a conversation about politics. I assume you think you have some fairly moderate views and you aren't being funded by a media mogul with billions of dollars.

How would you and I talk over the TV?

IMO unidirectional media is worse in a lot of ways; it trains the counterparty they have no say and they are a passive receiver of information with the only speakers being an extremely narrow selection of paid parties.

EamonnMR• 4 years ago

I think that video media is for reasons I cannot explain, a far more effective persuasive tool than written media. If your internet diet is YouTube/TikTok you're definitely just as vulnerable.

malfist2• 4 years ago

I think they're both a contributing factor. But I think long viewership of one channel is particularly dangerous. When you watch something like Fox news or MSNBC, you're getting only voices in your echo chamber and perspectives from one company alone.

The internet has somewhat of the opposite problem, it has an echo chamber for every niche, and gives a platform to every voice.

I think spending more time with people, or in projects is a much more healthy way to entertain yourself, and doesn't as easily lead to view distortion.

dislikedtom2• 4 years ago

Same goes for twitter. Gosh I hope nobody uses 6 hours of twitter a day.

chrisseaton• 4 years ago

I wonder what counts as 'watching'. Like if you measured it I probably spend ten hours a day 'listening' to the radio - as in it's on in the background in the kitchen most of the time. I'm not sitting there intently listening to it and not doing anything else. Probably the same for this TV statistic.

brandonmenc• 4 years ago

No wonder they have a warped perception of politics. That little fearbox is controlling their lives.

Ah yes, unlike us enlightened younger people who choose to spend our time in fancy online echo chambers.

fleddr7• 4 years ago

Even then, typical TV content is still very middle of the road compared to online content.

throwaway22032• 4 years ago

The idea here seems to be that it's OK for people to watch hours of TV a day every day.

I find it amusing that they consider TV-watching "the traditional British way". It's the traditional working class British way, sure. It's a status symbol here to _not_ have a TV, or to have a tiny one like 15" in a large room.

The issue is really that doing _anything_ mindlessly is a waste of life. TV, flicky flicky lighty box things like TikTok, and World of Warcraft enable that in exactly the same way.

And yeah, I played years of that shit when I was younger. A complete waste. Am I still here? Sure. Did it have some minor benefits? Sure. Would I recommend it? No, huge waste of time.

There's also an enormous difference here in that older people often can't really do much else. My grandma finds it difficult to read books because her eyesight is going and lots of physical pursuits are out for obvious reasons. Cosying up in front of the TV is comfortable for a woman living out the end of her days.

HappySweeney• 4 years ago

While too much of anything is detrimental, I don't find watching TV to be a waste if you are enjoying yourself. Recreation is important for mental health.

birdyrooster• 4 years ago

If one is like I used to be, TV is mindless but it can be mindful. After meeting someone who changed my perception of the medium, I find that TV is one of the most engaging and challenging exercises. You are constantly searching for symbolism, inspirations and trademarks of actor/writer/director. There is so so much to do when watching TV that anyone who says it’s a waste is missing a huge opportunity!

wobbly_bush• 4 years ago

Not the person you are responding to - I agree with you that recreation is important. I think we should be talking more about how to do recreational activities that feel beneficial down the line. Or are recreation and being beneficial mutually exclusive? Overall, it feels harder to do beneficial recreational activities.

morepork2• 4 years ago

I don't think it's fair to judge what is a "waste of life" or not. What one wants to do with their own life is a subjective thing. Each have their own interests, comfort zones, and personal struggles that they have to deal with.

markdestouches2• 4 years ago

There are two different types of "want". You want to live a full and meaningful life. You also want another cigarette if you're addicted to smoking. Sure there are people who would consciously choose a cigarette, but they are a minority. Most people would rather be productive and do something that makes their lives better even if they end up lighting a cigarette.

luckylion3• 4 years ago

Waste is waste, that's not a judgement about the person wasting something, it's a description of what's happening.

If you throw away food, you're wasting it. You might be allergic to it, but that doesn't change the "thrown-away food is food-waste" bit, it just explains why you don't want that food around.

adas4044• 4 years ago

Exactly. I think there are really 3 main ways I view time spent. - 1. Time spent learning a skill with economic value. - 2. Time spent for leasure. - 3. Time spent to fulfill biological needs (eating, sleep, etc.)

No. 1 can be pretty subjective and time where input does not correlate to output. Ages ago, learning to be a blacksmith was a very economically in-demand skill, but today it would at best be considered a hobby. No. 1 is time spent to obtain needs as well as wants. Everyone must have some source of income for food, shelter, etc.

No. 2 can be anything that one does for enjoyment. I find it pointless to argue about what kind of enjoyment is "productive" or "wasteful" because each form of enjoyment is just getting better at a skill whether that be video games or playing violin. The only "productive" entertainment would be something that advances your economic value (thus being more of a No. 1 spend of time.

The best would be to try and combine time into something that is both advances your economic value as well as is something you enjoy.

bigDinosaur• 4 years ago

Do you really think an addict is in control of what they really want? Or are their life choices being made for them? I found it was kind of the latter when I'd say I was 'addicted' to gaming. It was what I wanted in the immediate moment but far from what I wanted in my life overall. The latter gets destroyed by many short term wants, such as drugs or the kind of internet use r/nosurf exists to counter.

LatteLazy5• 4 years ago

I don't disagree that it's a waste. That said, I don't like the idea of society (the older end especially) or the government or anyone else really telling me what to do with my time. This isn't just some libertarian stance. The UK has been very clear with anyone under 50: Want an education? You're on your own. Want a decent job? You're on your own. Want housing? You're on your own. The idea that having had to do all the difficult bits myself, other people now want to sweep in and tell me what I can do in my spare time is offensive. I know that's not what you're suggesting, I just want to voice the reason people would object despite you being correct about the ultimate affects...

Gordonjcp6• 4 years ago

The UK has been very clear with anyone under 50: Want an education? You're on your own. Want a decent job? You're on your own. Want housing? You're on your own.

*England* has. Scotland takes a very different approach.

InCityDreams• 4 years ago

But who the heck is anyone to define a 'waste of time'. It's taken me quite some years to convince my partner that a smartphone is considerably less expensive to keep on, rather than the tv. She uses the tv for 'company', even when the whole family is at home. I had to rig her smartphone to some larger speakers to provide a level of bass that seemed realistic to her, so that's that. Technically, she's gone from 10hrs a day with the tv on (watching?), to 10 hrs a day "extra" (watching) on her smartphone. Neither is correct, (and nor is she British). It is however, her time, her life. And it is beyond me to agree, or disagree (with her) that 'the issue is really that doing _anything_ mindlessly is a waste of life'. We are here, we are going to not be.

standardUser5• 4 years ago

WoW is a more social activity than a lot of people ever partake in on a regular basis. Claiming it is "exactly the same" as flipping channels doesn't add up. In fact, I can't think of a less interactive, less social, less engaging activity than flipping channels (something I spent much of my youth doing).

profstasiak• 4 years ago

parasocial maybe, but not social.

ericmcer• 4 years ago

I have a lot of fond memories of WoW. While it is a bit of a waste for a young person who is doing it instead of working on their future, it seems ideal for someone who is retired. Problem solving, socializing, etc. is way healthier than most screen activities.

Karrot_Kream6• 4 years ago

Depends on how you use/play it, just like it depends on how you use social media or TV. A lot of my social media usage is finding stuff and sharing with friends in group chats and us having discussions/laughs over them. Most of the "TV" (streaming services, anime, etc) that I watch is done with my partner or a group of friends. If you just turn your brain off and grind, then WoW or any other MMORPG is an equivalent mindless time waste to just consuming TV. I suspect it gets more fondness in nerdy circles just because more folks in these circles relate to it.

hollerith• 4 years ago

The problem WoW shares with TV is that for many (most) people, logging in to WoW is an easier route to a pleasurable experience than any safe affordable activity available to a person living 70 years ago or 700 years ago or 7000 years ago. One worry that neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and others have is that if you partake often in potent pleasures that do not require much effort to achieve, you lose motivation to work hard at pursuits that haven't been carefully crafted by "designers" to be maximally engaging and pleasurable or require more effort or sacrifice to access than WoW or TV require.

It is not obvious to me that WoW's being very interactive (or its putting you in communication with real people) protects it from having the adverse effect I just described. Maybe the interactivity merely gives the designers of WoW more levers to pull in their quest to make WoW as engaging and compelling as possible -- which is more engaging and compelling than is probably good for you for something as easy to access as WoW is.

Specifically, if you binge on WoW it can take over a month for your motivational system to return to normal, and while it its taking its time returning, you have less motivation to tackle real life. Also, since pleasure causes whatever you were doing right before the pleasure to be "reinforced", if you play WoW a lot, then stop, for years afterwards whenever you are tired or under stress while at the computer you will tend to type in the command to start up WoW without any conscious awareness of intending to do so.

Of course video games, online role-playing games and TV aren't the only activities with this problem. The paperback novel for example is an invention that provides customers (at least those good at turning printed words into mental imagery) easy access to a fairly potent pleasure. This is a problem that society has been grappling with for a few centuries.

SoftTalker• 4 years ago

Yeah even as a kid I was never into video games. Just seemed like a waste of time. I rarely watch TV or movies now for the same reason. But what do I do instead? I find other ways to waste time like reading, other hobbies, browsing websites like this one. All activities with no external postive impact on anything. Just filling time.

whatever1• 4 years ago

Why is not not waste of life to read novels? Why is not waste of life to hike? Why is not waste of life to pursue hobbies?

These are very subjective matters. And sometimes you are just exhausted and you only want to decompress without thinking. Watching TV, TikTok, aimlessly browse the internet are all great ways to do so.

xwdv2• 4 years ago

Try as we might, most of life will be a waste. There are only a few moments in life that we truly cherish and would not consider waste.

Anything that is not bringing you closer to experiencing one of those moments is a waste. Spending more effort than what is necessary in pursuit of those moments might also be a waste, especially if the payoff isn’t worth it.

Therefore, you should setup your life so you can experience as many of those moments as possible. Money is the common tool of achieving a life of endless experiential opportunities. But it’s not enough, you must also learn to greatly reduce or eliminate all responsibilities as well so you can live freely. You must be financially independent, location independent, and ideologically independent. Only then can you truly stop the waste of life.

Some people are so bound to a time and place, a source of income, a way of thinking, that they will be lucky if they ever experience a single moment in life that is not a wasted.

antisthenes• 4 years ago

The author was speaking for himself, so there's no contradiction there.

If anyone wants to consider parts of their life a waste, let them do so, it's only their business.

Spooky23• 4 years ago

It’s the type of engagement.

Watch television geared towards old people or young children sometime. It’s engineered to grab passive attention and the active content is ads.

It’s easy to see the effects on people. Little kids will go crazy to obtain some product. The older people face a more insidious marketing message - fear.

paulcole• 4 years ago

The issue is really that doing _anything_ mindlessly is a waste of life

So? It’s your life and what’s a waste to you isn’t a waste to me. I watch about 15 hours of TikTok a week and love it.

slothtrop• 4 years ago

Everything is a waste. The only issue as it pertains to well-being is that too much passive consumption is both unhealthy and leads to lethargy. It can have it's place. Some people seem to enjoy it more than others.

skellertor• 4 years ago

Speaking about wasting time! Reading that article was a waste of time. That was more of a journal entry of a woman disgruntled with her family life, than it was on the "screen time" of various age groups

scotty79• 4 years ago

The issue is really that doing _anything_ mindlessly is a waste of life.

So as long as I'm gaming mindfully it's all fine?

Would I recommend it? No, huge waste of time.

I have a suspicion that on my deathbed I'd be regretting only one thing. That I didn't get more time to play and have fun.

lmm9• 4 years ago

So as long as I'm gaming mindfully it's all fine?

I actually think there's some merit to this view. There's a big difference between engaging with a TV program and vegging out while it plays in front of you, despite the superficial similarities.

throwing_away• 4 years ago

And yeah, I played years of that shit when I was younger. A complete waste. Am I still here? Sure. Did it have some minor benefits? Sure. Would I recommend it? No, huge waste of time.

My job feels like way more of a "huge waste of time" than taking in new information via TikTok, socializing with friends in WoW, or watching the latest culturally relevant media.

PeterisP2• 4 years ago

The main idea I saw in that article is effectively an observation that if the older generation and younger generation disagree about what is proper and not, then the older generation currently gets to say that the younger generation is doing everything wrong and should be nudged towards proper (as elders understand it) ways, and the younger generation currently doesn't get to do the exact same thing in reverse.

komali23• 4 years ago

I think there's another question though, that of vulnerability to new techniques in social engineering. Leave aside the question of which is a greater "waste of life," TV or doom scrolling, and ask, which is actually causing more changes to your personality, values, maybe even your brain chemistry? Maybe both equally, but if that's the case I feel like many in the newer generation grew up with more tools to fight back.

I don't know if this happened in previous generations with TV's, but I know among my friends there's a self consciousness about the bad feelings from what Instagram is doing to their mental health, and an active rejection: some quit entirely, some use the tools on their phones to limit app time, etc. I don't know if the previous generation has this or not.

Or ads. I know very few people that just let ads run: we all either pay for premium services, or use ad blockers and pi holes to block ads. Meanwhile even though teevo is a thing I still know old people that just "let the ads run." It's ALWAYS a shock to me when I visit home and shown just how absurd the ratio of content : ads is for American television.

Anyway it seems many in my generation are more aware of the threat of Algos latching onto you. I see comments all the time on YouTube mentioning it, "the Algo brought me here." But I don't ever hear older people talking about the previous version of that, the specialized social engineering and rhetorical techniques of entertainment companies like Fox News and their hosts such as Tucker Carlt. Their techniques of ragebait and leading questions seems blatant to me, as obvious as the slew of creepy ads that follow me around Facebook, Google, Instagram, or the "YouTube thumbnail" shit (everyone makes the same face), but I don't get much reaction when I try to bring this up with relatives.

Basically I'm less interested in whether watching TV or doom scrolling is a waste of time, and more interested in whether it can literally program you lol. Like how many of us lost friends to qanon conspiracy holes due to effective Facebook engagement algorithms? Do you know relatives that became wickedly radical and racist in the last 4 years because they stopped hanging out and instead spent all their time first on mass media consumption and then weirder and weirder Twitter and Reddit clones? I do. How many times have you heard tucker Carlson quotes at Thanksgiving from people that used to have way more thoughts of their own?

People may be able to say no one way of spending your time is better than another but I want to talk about what these various forms of media are doing to keep you hooked. Are we going to act like there's no danger here because we don't want to appear like elitists that say anything other than reading a book or programming is a waste of time?

jodrellblank• 4 years ago

"The idea here seems to be that it's OK for people to watch hours of TV a day every day."

No, the idea is that it's unfair for people who watch 6 hours of TV/day to be trying to support authoritarian and intrusive legislation against young people on the grounds that the young people "spend too much time watching screens, which is bad for them and bad for society". The idea isn't "it's OK to watch 6 hours of TV", it's "if you want to be left alone to watch 6 hours of TV, stop trying to control the life of someone else who wants to be left alone to watch 6 hours of TikTok".

"The issue is really that doing _anything_ mindlessly is a waste of life."

No, that's a different issue. The issue is that the government in the UK keeps pushing for more and more authoritarian surveillance and control laws over the internet and smartphones and justifying it with the kind of rhetoric used in the blog - screen time is bad because of radicalisation, spectres of terrorism, the collapse of society and community, and etc. And the Conservative government's largest voter base in the UK is the elderly.

"There's also an enormous difference here in that older people often can't really do much else."

I'm assuming your grandma is significantly older than 65? With a UK average life expectancy in the 80s, a lot of people past 65 are still well capable of doing things; even then part of the problem mentioned in the blog post is that UK society supports little else for people to do, what with the cost of living crisis (Conservative government mostly voted for by older people policies of austerity, running public services into the ground), Brexit, mostly voted for by older people, house price crisis, largely propped up by - and beneficial to - older people, the binge drinking culture, wider social issue where the one thing to go out to of an evening is go to the pub, the car focus instead of public transport focus (Conservative government, see above).

That is, there is a big feeling in the UK that the elderly have screwed up the country's future with selfish short-term policies, which disproportionately hurts the young who have more future to care about and fewer saved resources, and are trying to control the young even more while living on pension payments propped up by the working young.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 4 years ago

I would agree that MMOs in general are a time sink, but I am not sure I can absolutely equate that with a waste. There are some things I learned playing some MMOs including real microcosm of market psychology, interesting uses for linear regression and even some basic scripting. One of my best friends is effectively a result of a chance meet in an MMO. And that is before the argument that time enjoyed is hard(er) to label as a waste.

For the record, I agree with you in general, but I do not want to overgeneralize and add some nuance, because I do not want people to automatically say game time = useless. Tons of leisure activities do not yield immediate dividends ( reading books come to mind ), but are not without benefits.

Minor disclaimer: I am typing all this as an MMO recovering addict ( it got to the point where it was interfering with my work life ) so some take my opinion with a grain of salt.

patall• 4 years ago

I would probably prefer if my grandparents (~80) watched TV for 6h a day. Instead, they spend a similar amount of time on their smartphones, reading conspiracy blogs. And recently started to prepare for the imminent doom. Only thing worse would be an elder with dementia that is constantly shopping on amazon...

cameronh90• 4 years ago

To be fair, at age 80, doom is probably fairly imminent.

WorkerBee28474• 4 years ago

While the average lifespan (American stats) is about 79, if someone makes it to 80 their average lifespan is 88.

pneumic5• 4 years ago

My 70+ parents are the same but the other way—obsessed with all things Donald Trump and getting angry about him. Hours and hours lost to a politician they despise.

(edited for clarity)

mathlover22• 4 years ago

Sorry to hear that.

freedomben• 4 years ago

Extreme risk of getting off-topic, but I've been really wondering what Trump fans think of Trump's announcement of candidacy in 2024 and it's nearly impossible to ask people nowadays. Are your parents generally positive or negative on it? Did they like DeSantis last week and now think he needs to stay in Florida?

bakugo• 4 years ago

I like how you had to clarify that your parents hate Trump because other commenters immediately assumed they liked him, even though 90% of attention Trump gets is from people who dedicate most of their headspace to hating him.

nemo44x2• 4 years ago

Same. I try and talk with them about finding better ways to spend their remaining days. I guess it just feels good or something.

rsynnott• 4 years ago

I expect consiracy-based TV shows are also available. Though possibly not to the same degree of nonsense you get on the internet, I suppose.

folmar• 4 years ago

You can start with Ancient Aliens if you'd like.

xnx• 4 years ago

Fox News is close to a conspiracy-based channel.

notacoward• 4 years ago

Not just over-60s, and not just TV screens. Yes, there are plenty of people older than I am (at 57) who spend way too much time watching TV. There are also plenty of people right around my age who spend all day listening to NPR or podcasts. Their eyes might not be elsewhere, but their brains sure are. And you know who I most often see actively using their phones while driving? Not the kids, and not the old folks either. It's the 40- and 50-somethings, the tradespeople in pickups and the suburban parents in minivans, flying down the road with their eyes glued to a screen instead where they should be. Entertainment addiction takes many forms, and the author makes a good point that the kids with their phones aren't the only ones who deserve to be taken to task for it.

tomcam5• 4 years ago

What TV do you watch? Streamed? Broadcast? Both? What are some shows you like? I'm a senior but am stuck watching reruns of "Justified", "Life", and "Tehran".

PaulHoule• 4 years ago

Watch out! Over 60's vote and they can defend themselves from your finger wagging and anyone who tries to make them feel uncomfortable.

sys_64738• 4 years ago

Retired folk have lots of time on their hands so can watch as much TV as they want. They also don't need to be told by others how to spend their remaining years.

ortusdux• 4 years ago

I've been hearing more and more anecdotal stories about children blocking their parents access to Fox, OANN, etc. via parental controls and wifi routers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/yz7y...

bogwog• 4 years ago

That's actually a really good idea. Someone should sell a pi hole like box preconfigured to block all those aggressive/conspiratorial sites. Maybe make it discrete too, like a small box you plug into an outlet hidden behind some furniture.

mensetmanusman2• 4 years ago

I wonder how many realize that censoring information is a human habit as old as time?

prawn4• 4 years ago

Another option to blocking is throttling speed. Make time-wasting (or worse) laborious to access and make the woodworking videos on YouTube full speed.

jahsome4• 4 years ago

I have a deepseated aversion to outright censorship when it comes to my kids' media but this is somehow more palatable to me. What a pleasantly dystopian compromise!

gspencley3• 4 years ago

My children are adults now, but when they were growing up we wanted them to pursue productive creative endeavours so that they could learn life skills and figure out what they want to do with their lives. Our goal was to help them achieve self-sufficiency so that they could move out and feed themselves.

I'm not 65 yet, but once I am I hope that others will recognize my productive achievements and will leave me the hell alone to do whatever I want to with the rest of my limited time here on earth. If that means sitting on my ass doing nothing - that's my choice and my right.

It's not hypocrisy. A child and a retiree are not even remotely comparable. One is accountable to their parents, the other has likely worked their ass off for decades to earn a bit of down time.

yamazakiwi4• 4 years ago

I do agree that they are difficult to compare directly as the scenarios are quite different. I can also say that your attitude towards raising children is the minority, most parents will let a tv or tablet babysit for them unfortunately.

NoraCodes2• 4 years ago

It's hard not to interpret this as a kind of "youth is wasted on the young" sentiment - that children shouldn't be allowed to do things they enjoy if those things are seen as wasteful, but that retirees should. I'd submit that society might be better off if we only required people to work to a degree reasonable for their mental and physical health, and didn't frame our entire lives around "getting somewhere" so we could finally be left alone. That might mean profits stop growing quite as quickly, but I think that's a fair trade for people actually being happier.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 4 years ago

Better yet, why not snuff people when they get to 30?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film)

ar_lan• 4 years ago

I think the same thing. The concept of retiring early has never made sense to me - but I enjoy writing software, and building things, and learning things, etc. Financial independence does make sense to me, but only in-so-much that I want to be able to generally provide for my family, and have enough slight cushion to be able to take drastic creative risks and not have to starve to do so.

I don't mind if I'm working when I'm 70/80 (as long as I'm physically capable to) - I do mind if I'm slogging 60hr weeks, doing things I'm not interested in, at those ages however.

Karrot_Kream6• 4 years ago

It's hard not to interpret this as a kind of "youth is wasted on the young" sentiment - that children shouldn't be allowed to do things they enjoy if those things are seen as wasteful, but that retirees should.

This seems like a motivated conclusion. Children and retirees are not the same. Children are flexible and lack life experience. Small events leave large imprints on children. Older folks tend to get less flexible with age and have lots of life experience, so an understanding of what they do and do not enjoy. While there's definitely similarities (we're all human after all), I don't see this conclusion following at all.

That doesn't mean that retirees should simply passively consume low-complexity content or anything. More that older folk will generally understand themselves, their habits, and importantly their weaknesses better than children. Many "retirees" spend their days doing their best work unencumbered by the self-doubt and expectations they had of themselves when they were young.

nradov5• 4 years ago

People can already choose to work less for mental and physical health reasons. Just move to a low cost area and do the bare minimum work to obtain necessities.

But people who want a nice large house, luxury cars, new electronics, and fancy vacations are going to have to work harder in ways that might not be optimal for health. Most middle class people seem to be voluntarily willing to make that trade, and you're not going to convince them otherwise.

For society as a whole, growing profits represent an overall increase in living standards (although the benefits are unevenly distributed). If we were to collectively decide that current living standards are sufficient and stop trying to grow then we might have easy, pleasant lives for a couple generations but would eventually be overrun by more growth-oriented foreign societies. Life is a competitive sport and we ignore that reality at our peril. There are more important things than happiness.

strken2• 4 years ago

"Seen as wasteful" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Spending 6+ hours a day watching TV is seen as wasteful, heroin addiction is seen as wasteful, becoming a musician is seen as wasteful, dropping out of a law degree to start a company is seen as wasteful. The first two are different from the last two, though.

I think watching 6+ hours of TV a day isn't just seen as wasteful, it's seen as actively harmful, and therefore as falling under the moral and legal duty of care adults have to protect children. In contrast, a mentally sound retiree is an adult. Adults are allowed to hurt themselves.

sgustard• 4 years ago

There's also something childlike about elders as they experience mental decline. There's a reason we try to protect people from "elder scams." Personally I hope if I'm found in front of the TV absorbing conspiracy theories for hours a day somebody clocks me on the head and drags me to safety.

waboremo• 4 years ago

Especially as more "elder scams" resort to tapping into their loneliness to encourage action, it's important families and communities pay more attention to this growing problem of elders attached to their screens.

bumby2• 4 years ago

I think this misses the productivity aspect of the parent's comment. Conceivably, there is a bigger productivity hit with young people since the assumption may be that retired people's most productive years are behind them *

* I do recognize all the problems with this assumption, like the fact that older people can continue to be productive in retirement, even if it's not necessarily economically productive. I also cringe at the idea that a society is always hyper-focused on productivity. Despite all that, I also know it's a common viewpoint.

onecommentman5• 4 years ago

How many hours a day do you spend on various social media being manipulated by dark patterning, agitprop and echo chambers…eh, Sonny? :-) Are you sure you’re staying balanced and objective?

Just easier to ID manipulative media when you aren’t the target demographic (and it isn’t your flavor of conspiracy). It’s not necessarily age-driven, but you’re right that the isolation of age and the relative lack of trusted feedback makes it worse.

Please post your viewing habits so the Elders can assess whether they should send someone to perform preventive percussive maintenance on your skull. :-)

headsoup2• 4 years ago

Yeah they really need to tune out those mainstay news channels! Oh wait, that's not what you meant is it... :p

bawolff7• 4 years ago

I find the view that productive achievements are a chore, a thing, that once accomplished, thankfully we never have to do again, kind of sad.

What's the point of living if not to interact with the world?

MouseTown2• 4 years ago

How about raising children with the stated goal of having them move out?

myaccount978613• 4 years ago

I disagree that consuming media and participating online is not "interacting with the world". I spend a lot of my free time reading Wikipedia, watching YouTube, and playing games. This content comes from "the world". At my job I sit in front of a computer and interact with people via text and voice call. This is interacting with "the world".

I don't understand why we fetishize in-person interaction as being "the world" and virtual interaction as "not the world".

What about reading books? Would you criticize someone for reading too many books? Does that person not have a "point in living" in your opinion?

In my opinion, this is a true Scotsman fallacy. And the bias is due to nostalgia.

MouseTown2• 4 years ago

You have the “right” as much as the next person but society is most benefited from those with experience helping those without.

The argument that you deserve to watch TV all day because you once had a job is curious.

dylan6045• 4 years ago

Then by your argument, there should be no young teachers as what the hell kind of experiences could they possibly have to teach?

gspencley3• 4 years ago

The argument that you deserve to watch TV all day because you once had a job is curious.

How so? I think you're missing the most important part of my comment, which was about encouraging children to discover their passions and achieve self-sufficiency.

It's not about "once holding a job." It's about being able to take care of yourself. I'm not saying that I like the idea of spending the latter part of my years being unproductive, but that the wealth accrued during those productive years gives one the ability to do that.

If I'm not dependent on anyone, if I worked and saved in order to earn that life for myself, then yes I deserve to pursue my own happiness whatever that means for me and it's no one else's business or place to dictate otherwise.

gus_massa3• 4 years ago

Most people while you are working, save money in the retirement plan. So when they retire, they are just using the money they saved, not living out ot thin air.

In some jobs, old people can still contribute. But other jobs like that require a lot of physical strength are almost impossible.

An extreme case are sports. After some age, your body is just not good enough. Some can transition to being a coach or reporter. Some are only good at kicking a ball. If they are good enough to make millions of people happy, why can't they save some of the money they earn and have a nice life?

thwayunion6• 4 years ago

My MiL spends 10+ hours a day watching conspiracy theory videos on the internet (used to be YouTube, but now a lot of the channels are suspended so she uses alternative sites). It doesn't make her happy, it isn't good for her physical health, and it causes extreme social isolation.

Anger and conspiracy completely dominate her personality. We can't go more than 10-20 minutes without some sort of serious accusation, which are often passive-aggressive and accusatory toward people in the room. She has directly accused me of multiple serious felonies and conspiracies, by virtue of the fact that I work in tech.

She is no longer allowed to visit one of her daughters because my BiL (wife's sister's husband?) is not on speaking terms with her. She chooses not to visit another daughter. She floats around church social groups, who all sort of give her a few months and then punt her to the next group.

To be clear: these aren't down to major political disagreements. Most of her family and friend group are all on the same page. Even her Q Anon neighbor won't speak with her anymore. It's bad. She has no friends and is slowly losing her family.

When she visits us for holidays we have to warn friends not to engage with the fights she tries to pick. We train them on how to treat her as they would a child without being patronizing. It's hard.

She is not happy, and I wish we could get her to spend less time watching videos on the internet.

Gordonjcp6• 4 years ago

She floats around church social groups, who all sort of give her a few months and then punt her to the next group.

My teenager and her friends know someone like this who they described as "speedrunning friendships", and honestly that's the best description you're going to hear.

vkou3• 4 years ago

I have a close friend who is in that exact same situation with his mother. She lost her job, her husband lost his job, she's representing herself in a vaccine lawsuit (Spoilers: it's not going well), and she is completely incapable of being a human being around her children, all of it because she's fully committed to the Qult.

This isn't advanced age mental decline, this is just the consequence of a garbage-in-garbage-out information diet, and every nutty group building their own Facebook echo chamber.

neura• 4 years ago

I have a relative like this, but she watches absolutely nothing. She believes some of her family members are out to get her though. She's in an assisted living facility and her phone has been taken away because she has called the police too many times, claiming that one of her family members is breaking in her window, to poison her.

I'm not claiming that's the same thing, but I'm not sure less time watching videos will correct the issue or won't just lead to some other issue.

ajsnigrutin• 4 years ago

I find it sad, that you can find such stuff on discovery network channels... so channels that were for legit education and documentaries not that long ago, and now show some reality crap (pawn stars,...) and fake conspiracy crap (ancient aliens, mermaids, bigfoot, etc.).

kristianc• 4 years ago

There is something to this — the general theme of daytime TV in Britain, when it’s not doing endless property shows, or shows where people buy property in other countries, is “the man is out to get you” — a litany of shows on small time criminals, consumer scams, or local crime waves. Perhaps not surprisingly, Britain’s elderly population tends to be very right wing.

onecommentman5• 4 years ago

My impression is that there have been “cranky paranoid old pensioners” around since the dawn of time. I wouldn’t ascribe your MiL’s attitude or behaviors primarily to on-line videos or TV. They’ve been ranting in fraternal lodges, political party offices, coffeehouses, etc. for many hundreds of years prior. Twas ever thus. Keeps the circulation flowing for old folks.

If you can find someone her age who shares her “disruptive” world-views and likes arguing, facilitating a folie-à-deux might make things better for all concerned. Older folks tend to become more blunt and uncensored as time progresses and they also accept blunt and uncensored feedback…but generally only from those in their own age group. Of course, then there are two of them :-).

If it gets really bad, then a (surreptitious?) evaluation for some degenerative brain disorder probably needs to happen. Count your blessings, it isn’t that bad yet and as a SiL you are blissfully distant from the need to initiate anything.

satvikpendem3• 4 years ago

There are stories of adult children deprogramming their parents / in-laws by blocking these sites via their routers [0], and within a few weeks they're able to see their parents' views and demeanor visibly change for the positive [1].

The post from BestOfRedditorUpdates [1] for example shows the progression, basically the same as the 5 stages of grief, or withdrawal from a drug habit. First they get angry, then they try to find ways around it, then they accept that they can't and start doing something else.

The truth is most people don't really go to these sites out of choice, they do it out of habit. If you can alter the habit, you can stop them from consuming such content. It's no different than stopping any other habit, like (if you're a smoker or alcoholic) not going to places where people smoke for example.

You can also replace the habit with something else; like smokers chewing nicotine gum instead of smoking, or like those trying to lose weight going for a walk instead of sitting at home and cracking open a cold one after a long day of work, this person's aunt replaced it with BTS [2].

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/comments/vb3ddu/rhe...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/yz7y...

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/sis22t/my_...

WalterBright• 4 years ago

Alas, these can be symptoms of a neurological disorder. I suggest consulting with a neurologist.

foxylad• 4 years ago

After a close family member went down the conspiracy slide, I've realised believing conspiracy theories is an excellent indicator of mental health issues.

Your MiL is a case in point, and sounds like she needs serious help. Fifty years ago the men in white coats would intervene, but now mental health is basically ignored by society. If you care enough about her, you/your wife need to do act.

mensetmanusman2• 4 years ago

My mom was like that and it turned out she had undiagnosed schizophrenia. It’s way more common than you can imagine.

bamboozled• 4 years ago

I have a similar experience, parents and in-laws are totally consumed by right wing media and conspiracy theory’s to the point that we have to be careful about who we bring near them due to racism comments etc.

Its also super exhausting to be around them as we’re always on edge.

There’s not doubt its Facebook and modern “television”.

Ten years ago they were different people.

taurath4• 4 years ago

It's not hypocrisy. A child and a retiree are not even remotely comparable. One is accountable to their parents, the other has likely worked their ass off for decades to earn a bit of down time.

Interesting that the perceived needs of people change over time based on how productive they are or were. This belies a sort of strangely managerial/administrative mindset as to the values that make a person "valid" to take time to pursue things they enjoy, and "earn" down time.

thenerdhead2• 4 years ago

I like this perspective. It reads like the Ben Franklin quote: “Many young men die at age 25, but are not buried until they're 75.”

ClumsyPilot6• 4 years ago

will leave me the hell alone to do whatever I want to with the rest of my limited time here on earth.

Many elders are left to wither away alone, and loneliness of older people is a rampant issue - they want to feel loved or at least feel relevant in the family and not forgotten.

kevinventullo• 4 years ago

Okay deal, we’ll leave you alone if you promise not to vote.

lmm9• 4 years ago

Children are more stressed and have less free time than anyone else; it's not their fault that they're legally barred from doing anything "productive". They're not even allowed to vote on the laws that bind them!

parker_mountain• 4 years ago

A child and a retiree are not even remotely comparable.

Excessive consumption of low quality media is both bad for the brain and bad for society.

leave me the hell alone to do whatever I want to with the rest of my limited time here on earth

If that means being manipulated by aggressive algorithms designed to keep you locked in and wasting your limited time, that's fine for you. Personally, I find it horrifying.

programmarchy• 4 years ago

Dude, hell no. This is an incredibly entitled outlook.

You don't get to check out and look at your phone while your children or grandchildren want your attention. As an elder, you're expected to invest your time and wisdom into the next generation, not sit around on your ass doing nothing. Sure, maybe it's your right to squander your experience, but if it's also your choice then you deserve no respect.

There's also the looming reality that as you continue to age, you'll be less capable of caring for yourself. Hopefully your children will take care of you, at least until they grow sick of you. And the caretakers in a nursing home certainly won't give a damn about your "productive achievements" when they're changing your diaper.

You're right about one thing. A child and a retiree are not comparable. You should hold yourself to a much higher standard than a child.

rconti• 4 years ago

The blogpost was clearly written about parents who had no such high aspirations for their children, though.

bravetraveler2• 4 years ago

This feels like a programmed response the article calls out

Parents are accountable to the children, just as you say the children are to the parents. That's what relationships are.

You're right in that generally it's none of my business how my father spends his days.

However, decades of the outrage figure on TV have shown that aspects of how he spends his time are not only his concern.

Had he listened to the majority of the family he'd still have those relationships

Even now as an estranged adult, I'd appreciate his (non-deranged) input

lupire4• 4 years ago

You're right in that generally it's none of my business how my father spends his days.

Why would you say that? Family relationships matter.

itishappy6• 4 years ago

I'm not 65 yet, but once I am I hope that others will recognize my productive achievements and will leave me the hell alone to do whatever I want to with the rest of my limited time here on earth.

100% reasonable. If you're done contributing and want to sit the rest out you're welcome to in my book. But I suspect that most people keep at least 1 hand on the reigns in a critical way: they vote.

If you're planning on influencing the lives of the following generations, I think it's pretty reasonable to be concerned about your mental well being.

rsj_hn• 4 years ago

Honestly I would much rather trust a voter who spends a lot of hours watching TV than someone who spends a lot of hours on social media.

myaccount978613• 4 years ago

This seems like a reasonable argument until you go deeper.

most people keep at least 1 hand on the reins in a critical way: they vote
it's reasonable to be concerned about [old people's] mental well being.

So you're saying old people shouldn't be allowed to vote... because they're mentally incapable?

I remember one time in American history when certain folks decided certain other folks were mentally incapable of voting... (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test)

quitit• 4 years ago

Controversially I think the problem with taking this point of view is that it's also an argument for why seniors shouldn't be allowed to vote.

However, I think old people should be allowed to vote.

So really what we should be looking at is something more nuanced - that perhaps excessive screen time is wasteful, maybe even exploitative, even for seniors.

There is certainly an unevenness to the moral panic of children with screen time - but moderation is key, not blanket statements.

underwater• 4 years ago

To take a contrarian view: Raising kids is not curing cancer, having a fruitful career isn't solving world hunger. Many people get to retirement age having worked hard for their own benefit, nothing more. How does that earn them the right to contribute nothing productive back to society for the rest of their years?

bell-cot2• 4 years ago

I'm interested in how the over-60s' TV time is being measured.

Why - I know a number of older folks who live alone, and claim that they leave the TV on all day - not to watch it, but as a source of "color noise", giving them a comforting illusion of not being at home all alone.

yamazakiwi4• 4 years ago

That's a good point, I also do this as it brings some amount of comfort vs being alone with complete silence.

NoraCodes2• 4 years ago

This is a great point! I think a lot of people, myself included, do the same thing with YouTube videos or even long Netflix shows; it's playing, I'm half-listening to it, but I'm also accomplishing some annoying or semi-mechanical task. If you asked how much video content I consume, you might be shocked at the answer, but I wonder if we should count that as "wasting time".

Mountain_Skies3• 4 years ago

During my childhood, my mother would do that with The Weather Channel. It was, at least at the time, devoid of anything political, and no sex or violence, though the coverage of severe weather could be a bit anxiety inducing. But even running in the background, I'm sure we still absorbed the messaging of commercials to some extent. It's not quite the same thing as actively watching but probably still imparts some degree of impact.

FPGAhacker• 4 years ago

I haven’t hit my sixties yet, but it won’t be long now.

Youth is ignorance, and the only cure is getting older. When that happens you will marvel at how much you thought you knew and understood. You will listen or read the next generation making preposterous proclamations about older people and the older generations. Laughable in their certainty. Judging older people and finding them unworthy. Especially family. You may try to convey to the younger generation how you were just like them once, trying to shortcut the wisdom of age for them.

But there are no shortcuts. There is no easy way. So we can watch and reflect, those older than us probably have the same thoughts about us. Those ignorant 60 year olds think they know everything. Wait till they hit 90.

tomcam5• 4 years ago

Yeah I'm in my 60s and... not too impressed by the supposed wisdom of my fellow Boomers.

this_is_for_you• 4 years ago

There is wisdom is what you are saying, as I have seen it myself over the years from my younger days to my current age. But there is something that needs to be said, so badly, that I made this account despite swearing off HN commenting for good; or so I thought. (Sorry Dang if this breaks a rule, but this comment really needs to be made.)

Here it is: Age in and of itself, does not equal wisdom. One can be wise through long life, yes; but experience is why. If one does not live an experienced life, they will still be just as unwise and potentially as dumb as those who are younger than them. Likewise, someone who has lived a rich and fulfilling life no matter how those events play out, can be just as wise if not wiser than those older than them.

So while youth can be ignorance, so too can the egotism of age. This will continue to be a problem in society until the day when everyone can come to agree that our lives are not equal, and never will be; because we cannot experience everything the same way across the world. It is that diversity in experience which is why it is so important that we learn to listen to each other, even if we don't like what they have to say. To expect obedience from anyone due to age alone is just a form of authoritarianism which has no right to exist; especially when the evidence shows abundantly that the older generations didn't get everything right either. Just like how no one in their right mind expects the younger to get everything right as well.

It is only the daft and delusional that think they have gotten everything right.

And from the looks of things out there in society, we have much more of that going on, than we have any wisdom being shared.

As a final word.

If you found this wise, consider this. I'm turning 34 soon.

And with that said, this is the last any of you will hear from me. This is all I have to say.

mung• 4 years ago

Yeah you can tell dumb people from smart people, dumb people, when they are older, think they know a thing to two by virtue of being older, while smart people recognize other smart people regardless of age.

Well, that’s one way that’s relevant to the discussion anyway.

BlueTemplar2• 4 years ago

Hopefully you start noticing this by your 30s ?

Though supposedly it hits diminishing returns soon after that..?

And I don't want to spend my life constantly regretting choices made a few years before !

medvezhenok• 4 years ago

And yet, society advances as people holding backward views die off (not actually from people changing their minds). Has always been that way and always will be. If people lived twice as long you could imagine that inequality would be at least twice as bad and that society’s views would evolve slower than they do today.

oneoff7863• 4 years ago

My grandfather’s dying wisdom of loudly refusing the care of Black nursing staff cured me of the ignorance of trusting his balanced wisdom.

fleddr7• 4 years ago

It's the circle of life.

Teenagers are idiots. They think they know everything but know little to nothing. They loudly reject and rebel against the legacy world.

Around their 30s, they dial it back significantly. Understand they were wrong, their ideas stupid and unhinged, and perhaps regret some style and music choices of their teenage years. Which will be total fun for this generation, the internet is forever. This is also the point where they get skin in the game of The System.

Rather than overthrow the system, they'll work it to their personal benefit because that's what adulthood requires. The more successful they are at it, the more they become the system.

New teenagers emerge which are now found annoying, and wrong. Cycle completed.

Which generation of rebellious youngsters became the ultimate neoliberal capitalists?

...HIPPIES!

taurath4• 4 years ago

Teenagers are idiots. They think they know everything but know little to nothing. They loudly reject and rebel against the legacy world.

They also know what things did absolutely fucking nothing for them growing up and feel viscerally the harm that the previous generation caused them, and set out in their lives to live in a way that reduces that harm.

Boomers grew up being wild individualists having been raised by a generation of relatively sadistic collectivists. Millenials realize the downfall of unrestrained narcissism and tend towards more tolerant collectivism.

Gen Z was raised by a generation that valued emotional openness but couldn’t attain it in healthy way. They’re really into boundaries and prevention of emotional harm.

All this is basically what you said but without the value judgement.

int_19h5• 4 years ago

In my country of birth, the 60+-year-old generation has managed to get the country into a war against half of the world. Please tell me more about their wisdom.

gilbetron2• 4 years ago

Unless you are under 20, you are just as responsible as any random 60+ year old.

astura3• 4 years ago

My parents are close to 70 and they are dumb as fuck.

JoeAltmaier• 4 years ago

Really? We conflate the time spend by retired people with the activities of the young and supposedly productive?

PartiallyTyped2• 4 years ago

Yes, because the consequences matter.

Retired people have significantly more time, and thus have significantly higher capacity to vote and influence society even though they will not experience the long term consequences of said influence.

You ought to be worried about who whispers what from sunrise to sundown.

On the other hand, we should be very vigilant on the kind of experiences kids get to have as those indirectly influence the future of society.

onecommentman5• 4 years ago

who whispers what…and why

A healthy habit that senior executives learn is to ask the question “why are you telling me this (particular fact, among all the facts there are to tell)?”

BTW, retired folks don’t have a greater capacity to vote, as compared to all voting age qualified voters. Mobility issues in fact make it harder. Also, depending on the definition of “long-term”, it is definitely true that the elderly will experience the consequences of their actions or, conversely, no one currently living will. Why did you tell me this? :-)

fleddr7• 4 years ago

Are you saying that young people do not vote because they don't have time? Whilst the very topic we're discussing argues they're on their phone the entire damn day?

As to older people being numerous in terms of voting, that's democracy.

TedDoesntTalk• 4 years ago

There seems to be no distinction between TV and gaming. It’s all just “screen time.” But the distinction is VERY important. One can be addictive.

ChoGGi• 4 years ago

Both can be addictive.

noasaservice• 4 years ago

I'm one who did just that - my mom fell into the trap of qanon, trumper, cultist, and worse bullshit. And every time I went over there, she had that idiot box on, blaring foxnews propaganda. I caught her more than a few times down a real rendition of 2 minute hate from Orwell's 1984.

So, I turned on the child filters on her tv and removed foxnews, oann, and a few more. Is it ethical? Well, it's gray for sure. But given how unhinged she was getting, sure, I'll take that hit.

ryandrake• 4 years ago

I caught her more than a few times down a real rendition of 2 minute hate from Orwell's 1984.

This is one thing I acutely remember about my grand-dad sitting there watching endless conservative news on the TV: The red-faced build-up and then vocal rage. These shows just hook onto elderly people's emotions and gradually whirl them around in a frenzy until they are visibly upset at "all these horrible things the 'liberals' are doing". He would finally turn off the TV absolutely disgusted at all these imagined problems and conservative fever dreams, thinking he was watching actual news. Pretty sad, and really nothing you can do about it unless you physically intervened and started blocking antenna signals.

onecommentman5• 4 years ago

Only did that once for my Mom. She was visiting, and 9/11 happened. Everyone was basically stuck in the house for a few days. Fox coverage was pretty bad for that event, and there was a lot of other better coverage, so I removed Fox from the channels that would show up on the remote. But that was an event-driven sort of thing of direct local significance…

If she had invested in FTX and could have been mislead into more bad investments, I might try to have certain puff pieces about Alameda and SBF in Fortune, NYT, WSJ just…disappear.

httpz• 4 years ago

30 years later, millennials will be on their smartphones while complaining kids these days never come out of their VR world.

speakfreely2• 4 years ago

Nice try, zuck.

In all seriousness, I suspect this is probably correct. I imagine things will be very VR-oriented and Zuckerberg is actually on the right track, just way too early.

over_bridge• 4 years ago

Maybe he should have targeted the elderly from the start. People who can't leave the house easily might get more out of the experience. It seems inane to me having a metaverse which is just the real world with bad graphics but without my health and mobility it could be a different story.

Maybe market from old on down with this product

CameronNemo• 4 years ago

just way too early

That is far from Meta's only problem. They are well known as a manipulative corporation with little accountability for their actions or care for their users.

Mountain_Skies3• 4 years ago

That someday EDM will be considered music for the elderly is endlessly amusing.

a4isms• 4 years ago

When I was first going to nightclubs, Disco and Funk were counter-cultures. Disco was hated by the establishment because it was associated with homosexuality at a time when the Toronto police were conducting bath house raids and arresting bookstores for carrying queer literature. Funk was, as one documentary put it, "An unapologetic celebration of blackness."

Today I can listen to Disco and Funk any time I want, all I have to do is push a shopping cart around the supermarket. And yes, I turned 60 this year.

oblio5• 4 years ago

Isn't EDM that horribly repetitive thing you have to be high or drunk to really enjoy?

reducesuffering• 4 years ago

Nick Swardson bit on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7IlUIi-idA

tomcam5• 4 years ago

Meanwhile, those aged 65 and over spend just under six hours on average watching TV daily.

Wait people are still watching broadcast TV?

I guess if you're a pensioner in the UK who doesn't have to pay the license it makes sense. Though 6 hours, even of the Beeb, seems a bit nightmarish.

jahsome4• 4 years ago

In the US, that's like 2.5+ hours of ads. I just can't understand how these people don't lose their ever loving mind every 7 minutes.

In the rare occasion I'm in a hotel or something I almost always turn the TV on out of sheer boredom and find myself absolutely blown away by how obnoxious and prevalent commercials are. Same for terrestrial radio.

tomcam5• 4 years ago

My experience exactly

UncleEntity• 4 years ago

When I was a kid they were similar concerns about kids spending too much time in front of the TV…

And in the 90s about kids spending too much time in front of the Xboxen.

Have to ask my parents what they were worried about in the 50s, probably too much time reading books.

ianmcgowan• 4 years ago

Listening to too much degenerate Rock and Roll on the radio.

wetmore• 4 years ago

Just because similar concerns existed does not make them invalid. I was a 2000s kid who spent far too much time playing videogames and on the computer. If I could give my past self advice against doing so, I would in a heartbeat.

sibeliuss• 4 years ago

As if TV was even remotely related to spending all day scrolling through social media. There's no comparison between the two.

Mountain_Skies3• 4 years ago

True, tv doesn't alter its content on the fly minute-by-minute, using an algorithm tuned to your own personal emotional triggers.

googlryas• 4 years ago

I feel sorry for this lady. Sounds like she had a very boring home life centered around the TV. But that doesn't mean the screen time panic is necessarily wrong, though it is reductive in the sense that it treats all screen time as equal. Chatting with friends is the same as watching cat videos is the same as using MITs OCW is the same as watching porn is the same as popping virtual bubble wrap is the same as reading War and Peace on the kindle app. Likewise, some TV programming can be thoughtful and inspiring and other tv programming can be bland and mind numbing.

tomcam5• 4 years ago

I love kids being addicted to screens. Bored teenagers are less likely to incite trouble on trains, waiting in line, etc. when they can just be rocking out or Snapchatting.

seydor• 4 years ago

Until rioting becomes a meme

NaturalPhallacy• 4 years ago

This is fair. My boomer dad is almost never not watching TV...

dredmorbius2• 4 years ago

We did.

And by "we", I mean Newton Minnow, former chair of the Federal Communications Commission, and Jerry Mander, advertising executive.

Minnow's commentary came in what came to be known as his "Vast Wasteland" speech.

<https://vimeo.com/55481067>

You can find a contemporaneous interview of Minnow by Studs Terkel here:

https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/newton-minow-discusses...

And a recent (2021) take here:

<https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-05-06/newton-min...>

Audio (MP3):

Mander's argument was the book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, which is just what it says: four arguments, and not for limitation, change, or curtailment, but elimination of television. Those arguments being that television:

- removes the sense of reality from people

- promotes capitalism

- can be used as a scapegoat, and that

- all three of these issues negatively work together

(Via Wikipedia)

Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimina...>

Internet Archive: <https://archive.org/details/fourargumentsfor00mand_0>

LibGen: <http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=448E80906BCD92C0AA02235E...>

And they were far from the first or only ones. Vance Packard published The Hidden Persuaders on the power of advertising in 1957 (<https://archive.org/details/vance-packard-the-hidden-persuad...>). The Frankfurt School looked at (amongst many other things) the role of mass media on culture and politics. There's Dwight MacDonald's classic essay "A Theory of Mass Culture" (1953) <https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...> Noam Chomsky, Neil Postman, Edward Herman, Robert W. McChesney, and numerous others.

For what it's worth, I had the luck to grow up in a household without television for many years, and afterwards, only very limited access. The Tube largely repells me now, though other screens do, I confess, have their allure.

dredmorbius2• 4 years ago

NB, above was a slightly kneejerk response on my part to misreading "over-60s" as somehow referring to the 1960s.

That said, awareness of television as a generally harmful medium has in fact been recognised for quite some time. Along with other mass media.

And yes, older adults seem to have their own specific susceptibilities.

Kara Swisher speaks and writes fairly frequently over her own issues with her own mother's television viewing and its impact upon her mother's politics and general (mis)understanding of the world.

hn_throwaway_99• 4 years ago

Such an odd take in my opinion. Just because there isn't a comparative level of concern for older people's excessive screen time doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about younger people's.

Highest suicide rates have traditionally been among the elderly. Is it then a "moral panic" if we are concerned about rising suicide rates in teenagers?

girvo• 4 years ago

Possibly, it would depend on how the discussion is framed.

“Won’t somebody think of the children” should always be looked at critically, because far too often it has nothing to do with the harms those kids face at all — which the article brings up at the end.

skissane2• 4 years ago

Highest suicide rates have traditionally been among the elderly. Is it then a "moral panic" if we are concerned about rising suicide rates in teenagers?

I agree with you. Another way of making the same point:

The negative impact on those left-behind is much higher for a 15 year old who commits suicide than for an 85 year old. The 15 year old's parents may well spend decades grieving their loss; the 85 year old's parents will be long dead. Given that, I don't think it is unreasonable for society to focus the bulk of its attention and resources on youth suicide rather than elderly suicide.

thenerdhead2• 4 years ago

What if we just talked about moderation in all things and kept to ourselves?

nonrandomstring• 4 years ago

The question is not now much time you spend at a screen, but who is on the other side of it.

Much of the conversation so far concerns time, and the virtues or vices of how we spend it. Not all pastimes are equal. Knitting a jumper, taking a hike, or skateboarding are actions one performs on or in the world. Reading a book is more of an action that the world (the author especially) performs upon you. It is a different frame. Movies and video gaming are somewhere in the middle. Some media forms, such as daytime trash-TV and TiKTok are at the extreme of the passive/receptive frame. It is a pipeline of affect directly to your hypothalamus. Any discussion of harms or benefits must be understood in that light.

DougN7• 4 years ago

I’ve been pondering a bit in this area, especially around things that are addictive harmful. It seems like things that give a pleasure reward for little or no work, and aren’t furthering relationships, are dangerous. They sap motivations (no need to work hard when your feel-good choice is so close). This seems to cover social media/doom-scrolling, porn, drugs and alcohol (at various levels and circumstances), easy hookups(?), constant TV, etc. Still working on the idea…

jstarfish• 4 years ago

These aren't all inherently bad things when consumed in moderation, and over the course of a lifetime. Sometimes we just need those quick hits of artificially-induced dopamine to give us the drive to push through the responsibilities and pressures of adult life.

The problem isn't that the content is itself dangerous, it's that it's being mainlined by [adults and children alike]. Absolutely nothing in life is safe to consume this way-- the sort of drugs that otherwise provide these effects are classified as class-II controlled substances.

ted_bunny• 4 years ago

Ponder this modern classic, something I throw at everyone who will listen: https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/supernormal-stimuli/

fleddr7• 4 years ago

Or how NOT to spend it.

Before the smartphone, a significant amount of time per day was spent on nothing. Could be staring out the window during a commute, an actual break at work, waiting for somebody or something.

We mostly lost that. Zero rest for our brains, it's bombarded with information relentlessly.

13of402• 4 years ago

It's Monday, and a school holiday. It rained in the morning, but now it's just cold and overcast. It's quiet in the living room. You know the phone isn't going to ring, because who would call? You could walk to the library or a used bookstore. You could go to the 7-Eleven around the corner if you had any money, which you don't, and you haven't had for some time. You could walk the river path again. There's a TV, but it's only got 2.5 channels, and you don't like to watch Donahue or Days of Our Lives. You can hear the clock ticking, and each grain of dust falling to the floor.

klyrs2• 4 years ago

My great grandma played solitaire to while the hours away. With actual cards.

sincarne• 4 years ago

I’ve started taking saunas every day as part of my gym routine. It’s been a nice side effect that for at least 15 minutes a weekday I am not reading, watching, or listening to anything. I believe it’s a big part of why I’ve felt more refreshed after exercising of late.

badpun• 4 years ago

People had radios in the background (at work, at home) for that.

cipheredStones• 4 years ago

In what way is watching a movie more "active" than reading a book?

serf• 4 years ago

I don't support the argument necessarily, but a movie is (can) be a collective experience witnessed simultaneously with others.

Books, as fantastic as they are in all regards, do not offer that trait.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan3• 4 years ago

I've thought a lot about my hobbies as consumption vs. creation. For me, the more time I spend creating things and changing/improving the world around me (or myself, or my relationships), the happier I am. And the more time I spend passively consuming things that others have created, the less happy I am.

Movies and video gaming are somewhere in the middle.

I get how video games are something in the middle: because they're an interactive medium, they require a bit of thought and action from the engager, but that person's actions are neither creating nor changing anything in the actual world.

I don't get why you consider movies in the middle, however. I would rate movies as even more passive than books. When I'm reading a book, I can control the pace, I can stop and think about something for a moment, I can refer back an earlier passage, I can look up something in the dictionary, etc. Fiction novels force me to use my imagination to visualize scenes, and model the mental states of others as I'm reading their internal monologues.

But a film is something that just washes over you. I love them dearly, but I don't understand how they couldn't be seen as anything other than passive consumption.

dogcomplex2• 4 years ago

True with one caveat - despite being a passive experience, your choices of media are still limited and therefore the way you pick and choose and explore what you consume is still an active form of skill you develop. Watching things that pique your interests, especially in niches without that many viewers, gives a sense of your experience being valuable and interesting - and crucially, something to talk about and share. It becomes fuel for writing and philosophizing, and a great conversation piece to navigate complex issues with friends and family. e.g. Someone may get just as much joy and sense of accomplishment from sharing their obsession with Quentin Tarantino movies as they would from their oil paintings. (Even though both are in a sense unlikely to matter much in any economic or social sense beyond - does it make you happy)

Personally I think just "do what's interesting to you" is a good rule, and I think it can navigate the transition between filling up on passive entertainment (e.g. playing every factory/crafting-themed video game) and actively building (e.g. making your own game!). Sometimes you just need to load up on what's been done already in a genre, and sometimes you just need to say "fuck it" and start making something without being intimidated.

greghinch• 4 years ago

Geek - obsessive consumer

Nerd - obsessive creator

I must have heard this somewhere but I can’t recall where. In any event, I think most of us are a bit of both but personally I strive to be more of the latter.

mradek• 4 years ago

Wasting time is relative. Everyone always has some excuse for it, for why they think it’s okay to burn their brain on TV WoW TikTok whatever.

Just do your thing and live your best life. Unsubscribe from what other people think.

spoonjim• 4 years ago

This doesn’t make any sense. Forgive me for being crude but for the vast majority of over 65’s… it just doesn’t matter what they do with their time. They’re waiting around to die.

Children will grow up to build the future so what they do or don’t do matters a lot.

bell-cot2• 4 years ago

Not to endorse this attitude about my end of the population pyramid - but it does raise an interesting point about how TV screen time was measured for the older folks.

In long-term care facilities, hospitals, doctors' offices, etc. - where the TV's are just left turned on all day, "turn it off" isn't an option, and a fair number of the older folks may have failing hearing / eyesight / cognition (so they might have a hard time following the content on the TV, even if they wanted to) - was that "screen time" added into the numbers?

mathlover22• 4 years ago

Why is it that every time I read an article about modern British politics and culture, I walk away almost feeling happier about the state of the US?

It's almost like God, while planning the course of current events, looked at the inhabitants of the US recovering from 4 years of Trumpian misrule and decided to console them by having the original English-speaking developed country end up even worse off than they were.

(I'm kidding, of course. God doesn't actually exist, and I know there's a lot of places way worse off than the US or the UK. I'm also not actually this American-centric in my views. My point is that the UK somehow seems worse off these days than the US is, and that's a sentence I never thought I'd ever be saying 10 years ago.)

hindsightbias2• 4 years ago

The “boob tube” was common parlance back in the day, so all those olds got it then.

But we during commute, work and school all day we did not have a phone in front of our face for 8 hours. I was watching a roofing crew awhile back and the number of times someone pulled their phone out was startling.

That said, here is a free YC startup idea: tiktok for olds. Scrape all those old shows and build memes.

andirk• 4 years ago

That could work but what is the main dance move on Tiktok Classic? With current Tiktok, it's that move where it looks like your elbowing people next to you on either side while lip syncing. Silent movies also didn't have actual speech so those could work. Or mute The 3 Stooges and play the voiceover of some current superhero movie. And it has to loop.

chefandy2• 4 years ago

the number of times someone pulled their phone out was startling

What about it did you find startling?

hindsightbias2• 4 years ago

Roofing is dangerous enough. My crew boss would have smacked me in the head back in the day. Nail gun in one hand and phone in the other on slippery rain shield…

mynameishere• 4 years ago

Scrape all those old shows

How did you miss this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPwxmrNVKKE

I don't know what a meme is so I can't help you there.

paganel• 4 years ago

I’ve never understood the sanctimony about the need to “protect” young people from excessive screen time

Supposedly a person already in his 60s or 70s already has the best parts of his life behind him, he can spend how many hours he wants in front of the TV. At the same time, a person in his 20s still has a lot of life to, well, live, it definitely seems like it is wasted if said life is spent in front of a phone screen. If it matters I'm a person in my early 40s and I spend almost no time in front of the TV (not even Netflix), although I do spend too much time in front of my computer.

gus_massa3• 4 years ago

My father used to read the dead-tree newspapers every morning. I'm now reading them online. Is it fair to count that time as an increase of my screen time?

I guess there are some similar examples, like looking for cooking recipes in a book vs online, or paper-encyclopedia vs wikipedia.

boomchinolo782• 4 years ago

Sad to break it to you, but the quality of these has decayed quite a bit.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan3• 4 years ago

I do think there are a couple big differences between physical newspapers and digital news: endless scrolling feeds and algorithmic recommendations can make digital news much more addicting.

Newspapers have a definite beginning and end, and they're easier to browse. Each section starts with a big, high-level snapshot of its contents, and it's easy to zoom in on the bits that interest you and disregard the rest.

gus_massa3• 4 years ago

I agree. You can't believe how many linkbait titles the digital edition has!

Anyway, I'm some of the journalist have a daily column that is usualy good, and I try to stick to them (but after them, I must confess that I read some silly linkbait articles.)

lmm9• 4 years ago

It's as fair as any other use of the entirely bogus concept of "screen time", yes.

dekleinewolf• 4 years ago

Obviously it counts as 'screen time', as you're using a screen.

But 'screen time' is not the right statistic for each question.

"Does screen time affect eyesight?" Yes, this counts as screen time.

"Is this generation more/less informed about what's going on in the world?" Screen time is not the right stat, the data should be 'does this generation read news papers' and both you and your father can answer with a yes.

FYI, I read a dead-tree newspaper during my breakfast. Primarily because I don't want to be staring at a screen while having food with my kids, but for some reason I'm okay with staring at a dead-tree during breakfast.

randcraw• 4 years ago

But "screen time" tells you nothing. Is this video games? Conversation with friends? Browsing through one-liner/tweet forums? Watching documentaries? News? Films? TV shows? Porn?

Is this happening in public? While driving a car? In the presence of friends?

Is this interaction purposeful, like taking an on-line course? Like learning or improving a skill?

Is the viewer actively engaged or passive? Are they consumer or producer? Are they repeating mindless conspiracies or writing independent, informed, well reasoned argument? Or are they performing, recording it, and posting it online?

Without a lot more context, pushing "screen time" as a sign of the impending apocalypse is just more disinfo.

prawn4• 4 years ago

Reading books too.

One week I was particularly aghast at my screen time measure until I realised it was counting maps and music via CarPlay when I was driving for hours a day on a remote job.

thewebcount• 4 years ago

While I disliked the tone of the piece, I mostly agree with the sentiment. But this (very bitter) part just made me laugh:

But please, yes, tell me again about young people and screen time and content and moral decay, and how the mobiles they’re engaging with are somehow a greater risk to their character than their own parents and their own grandparents and the family traditions they hold so dear, such as laughing in your face when you suggest shared family mealtimes around a table, a suggestion which might lead to talking to each other, listening to each other, and being present in that shared moment with each other. Tell me all about it.

This sounds like something my parents would have said. We ate our meal at a table in a room without screens. Nonetheless, my spouse describes the meals I had with my family when we all lived together as “psychological warfare,” and I can’t disagree. When my parents tried to force us all to come together for anything, we laughed in their faces because we hated being together. If that’s the reaction you get from your children, look inward. And if your spouse won’t help you figure it out, then you have at least a partial answer. To this day I avoid interacting with my family as much as possible because my parents couldn’t keep the household under control. They were arbitrary with their punishments, and untrustworthy as far as confiding them with thoughts and feelings. At best nothing would be done about it. At worst, it would come back to bite you later. I didn’t want to talk to people in my family because the result was guaranteed to be extremely painful. I suspect it was the same with the author’s children and husband. It sounds like she did the right thing by getting out.

taurath4• 4 years ago

You really can't fake genuine emotional engagement and secure attachment, and when those aren't there there are absolutely no way to "force" it to happen. If your child doesn't feel safe telling you about their hopes and dreams and their social lives, forcing them to sit quietly at a dinner table is not going to make those things happen, it will teach them instead to both dread time with you and also to learn how to filter everything they care about.

standardUser5• 4 years ago

That's a great explanation of an experience I think many of us share. Family members insisting we spend time together out of some deference to tradition, in spite of the fact that there is a proven and undeniable hostility between these people that are being forced to spend time together. I don't particularly like doing anything just for the sake of tradition, let alone activities that cause obvious psychological stress and harm!

Tao3300• 4 years ago

I feel like the article started off about one thing and turned into something else.

"Marital family" seems like an unusual way to describe the arrangement, predicting a degree of distance that has nothing to do with TV under the surface.

beardyw2• 4 years ago

My wife and I are over 70. We live in the UK.

It's fun to generalise, but not always helpful. No, we don't watch anything like 6 hours of TV a day. We have our evening meal, like every meal, at a table. We mostly watch one thing a day on streaming, usually well made fiction. We read news on our phones but never watch it on TV because of all the uninformed comment.

Maybe we are not typical, but we do exist.

roland35• 4 years ago

Rock on! Glad you're enjoying hacker news too :)

beardyw2• 4 years ago

Thanks. When you retire your old job is not far away.

michaelhoney• 4 years ago

Consider that for every older person like OP who watches less than 6 hours, someone else is watching more

nradov5• 4 years ago

Are they really watching, or is the TV just on in the background while they do other stuff?

iLoveOncall• 4 years ago

Why is this top comment? You cannot criticize generalization and at the same time be culprit of it. You are generalizing your personal experience.

This article doesn't claim that all over-60 do this, it very rightfully talks about the average, which captures cases like yours and also cases where people watch TV 18 hours a day.

greyhair• 4 years ago

65. I went from 1975 through to 2010 not owning a TV. Not even one.

In 2010 we bought a 55" HDTV (but no cable service), a BluRay player, and a Nintendo Wii. We also got a Netflix DVD subscription. We had three young kids at the time. I carved a 16 foot by 16 foot square of space out of the basement, floored with resilient foam tiles, hung the screen on the wall, added some inexpensive Ikea chairs, and the kids would jump around playing Wii games, often times with their friends over, and the whole family would share a movie on occasion. Two years later we added a Roku streaming box. Still no cable service.

My wife streams something from roku, netflix or prime, while she folds laundry (she does laundry, I do most all of the cooking and dish washing). I rarely watch the screen for entertainment at all. I sit in front of a screen for work, eight or nine hours a day, for the last thirty eight years. I don't need to see more glowing pixels than that.

I know my wife and I are outliers. She sees maybe four hours of TV streaming a week. I average maybe two hours a month, only because on occasion we will sit and watch a movie together.

nottorp• 4 years ago

I've always wondered how someone can talk about the perils of mobile phones and then binge watch lousy TV series.

softwaredoug• 4 years ago

Do as I say, not as I do.

Parents waste time on their phones, so the kids learn to as well. I say this as a parent that struggles to regulate my screen time and my kids.

Putting it on the kids is a form of projection. It’s hard to hold our own shame and feel it. And easier to try and control others behavior.

The better conversation is why do we put so much shame into screentime given the power and ubiquity of computing? The, at best, the extremely marginal causal negative effects of screentime on children’s outcomes? Why don’t we focus on things that actually impact kids outcomes like Adverse Childhood Experiences (abuse, etc)?

prawn4• 4 years ago

The number of times I decline my kids' requests for screen time and then immediately return to my own laptop or phone is quite remarkable. We excuse it under the guise of work, research or organisation, but those things easily bleed into general browsing and social media.

MaxfordAndSons2• 4 years ago

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, having been sharing care-taking responsibilities for my mother who is in the mid-stages of dementia. For the last year or so, her usage of her phone has become increasingly problematic. She'll pick it up and stare at it blankly for minutes on end, trying to remember what she meant to do with it. She'll poke around the screen, bewildered, sure she had something she needed to do but unable to execute it, entrapped in a constant loop of frustration. And she would compulsively text our family nonsensical gibberish, with dozens of variations as she attempted to get out a well formed version of whatever she meant to say. It's also enabled multiple scammers to extract thousands of dollars from her.

It was particularly striking to me, because she was never overly obsessed with her phone or technology generally, prior to the onset of her dementia. Mercifully, she's recently gotten to the point where she can't use it anymore because of dexterity issues.

that_guy_iain• 4 years ago

Over 60s are generally retired. With little money to do things. Many end up with mobility issues. Watching tv is free and doesn’t require moving.

willhinsa• 4 years ago

"Las Vegas pre-COVID"

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRC14TaE/

reference for anyone who doesn't want to click on a tiktok link:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/old-people-playing-slots

datavirtue3• 4 years ago

None of it is good for any group, and I'm not sure what the main insight is because I had to stop reading her first-draft article. Perhaps an editor could have turned this wall of drivel into something profound? We will never know.

fleddr7• 4 years ago

The piece sounds like a petty personal revenge, where it's hard to detect any rational point.

She grew up in a family abusing screen time, centering the TV above anything and anyone. That was very bad, as she readily admits. How then does it make any sense to look away when a similar or worse issue is affecting young people?

Instead of preventing it from happening twice, you focus on "rubbing it in", because two wrongs make a right?

Further, from a pragmatic point of view, the comparison makes zero sense. Nobody cares how much TV the elderly watch because there's little to ruin at this point. They're past their productive years, so it doesn't matter from an economical point of view. For most it won't affect their dating chances or ambition to start a family. It matters little (or at least less) for their health, as they're already in winter.

For young people and society as a whole, these things matter far more. I don't know what the proper regulation (if any) would be for screen time but let's at least establish that the stakes are a 100 times higher compared to an old guy watching a stupid TV quiz.

The nature of the screen time is also incomparable. Digital is far more addictive, radicalizing, privacy-invading and exploitative compared to TV.

Terr_• 4 years ago

it's hard to detect any rational point.

Really? I think I detected at least:

1. This moral panic is either overblown or wildly inconsistent.

2. If it's impossible to imagine the same kind of government restriction being proposed for aging adults, why accept it for other groups?

Digital is far more addictive, radicalizing, privacy-invading and exploitative compared to TV.

Or perhaps the unidirectional nature of TV consumption makes for powerful radicalizing propaganda--especially to an at-home group with fewer external connections to ground them--and the passivity of the consumption rots your brain and dries up critical thinking.

nemo44x2• 4 years ago

Aging adults have no potential left.

fleddr7• 4 years ago

1. This moral panic is either overblown or wildly inconsistent.

As the issue at heart is young people's screen time, the article did nothing to demonstrate that it is not overblown. Old people watch TV is not a comeback that negates the young people's issue.

Is the moral panic inconsistent? Hell yes, and for very obvious reasons. The negatives matter a 100 times more for people at the beginning of their lives, as well as for our future as a whole.

2. If it's impossible to imagine the same kind of government restriction being proposed for aging adults, why accept it for other groups?

Because they're old. Old means you're close to death. Pretty much nothing matters anymore.

Pigalowda• 4 years ago

I don’t know if I can agree with you about “little to ruin” for older people and TV. As we get older we still work, have lives, learn, see family and friends, hobbies , etc.

Spending too much time alone or alone together in a non-interactive virtual realm like watching filler/garbage TV really has a huge opportunity cost. We lose so much time that way and time is the most important thing we so trivially waste. I’m doing it right now on a forum comment! That being said I’ll utilize my time in the real world after this short statement. Don’t forget the older cohort has the highest voter participation rate. What they watch and how much of it matters because it will affect your life.

Have a happy thanksgiving if you’re American. If not, happy harvest festival wherever you are!

Aeolun• 4 years ago

Sounds like author self-immolated their marriage and is still salty about it?

rosywoozlechan• 4 years ago

And twelve years of Tory austerity cuts mean there’s very little else for them to do, and not much they can afford to.

The assumption here is that people's time is spent based on how much money the government is handing out. If you're living in a capitalist economy, can't you use the opportunity available to you to do better for yourself?

boomchinolo782• 4 years ago

They're in no way comparable. One is a mind in development and the other is, hopefully, a well equipped mind. The sad thing is the clarity of thought, writing and reading comprehension of the average person has deteriorated a lot. The screens give a fake sense of literacy but it's barely parroting.

From the social class perspective, I find it soothing that otherwise bored people will be sucked into lives of passive consumption rather than whatever mischief they can conjure.

headsoup2• 4 years ago

I think the only thing he skipped over was that younger people are probably spending majority time in front of youtube or fortnite etc, so of course TV is down.

I think he also misses the main point. It's not that the TV is on for the periods of time, it's the ways shows manipulate and control people's attention to reinforce sitting in front of it. Perhaps we should take a closer look at advertising and dark patterns and 'click-bait' methods instead of just the time people spend, regardless of age group.

throwaway59592• 4 years ago

How about instead of caring about what the young or old do we mind our own fucking business?

hungryforcodes• 4 years ago

But then what would people talk about on HN? There has to be some kind of faux outrage about SOMETHING.

throwaway59592• 4 years ago

Ain’t that the truth.

jahsome4• 4 years ago

I eat meals, in the life I live now, at a table. I eat them alone, because my marital family – as you can tell – imploded up their own backsides. But in many ways, I was always eating alone, even when I was in that family, perching a plastic tray on my lap while they stared at the glowing box like they’d dropped acid.

Gee, wonder why no one is interested in sharing a meal or conversation with the author. Couldn't possibly be the sanctimonious disdain for your family, could it?

somishere• 4 years ago

Yes! Let's talk about about over-60s' screen time like we talk about young people's. Though I'd suggest "screen reliance" as a better measure than "screen time" (meaningful / active vs passive use?). Looking at my own family over the generations (sample size of 1) both screen time and reliance seem all-but incomparable, what is comparable is the sentiment around it:

My grandparents, both in their mid 90s and long-retired, probably watch at least 4-6hrs of TV in a day. At least. Almost always in the evening from about 6 or 7pm until they go to bed (quite late usually). Combination of news, british crime drama, and classic films from their DVD collection. They mainly spend their days playing (a surprising amount of) golf, driving to and eating cheap lunches at various clubs where they are life members (mainly motoring and golf clubs), getting coffee and browsing at shopping centres, and visiting (and being visited by) their large and ever-expanding family. They own a smart phone but until recently only used it for receiving calls (they've just started making them too). They do use the internet sporadically via a PC, mainly to make reservations or plan trips (no email or direct communication). They were the first family on the street to get a TV and every kid on the block used to come around to watch it when my Dad was a kid. They never allowed eating dinner in front of the TV, but usually do so themselves now unless someone is visiting. Their screen time is primarily passive. They find it enjoyable, normal, and don't seem to worry about it at all.

My parents and their partners, all in their 60s and working, waste time on their phones to varying degrees, including a small amount spent on social media. They all enjoy complaining about why internet technology works (or doesn't) the way it does and how much time they spend on it - they came to it later in life (duh) and are very self-ware in their usage. They also watch TV (2-3hrs, broadcast and on-demand), listen to radio, and read books, newspapers and magazines with much less complaint / awareness. Their media use encompasses their lives, but it is not all-encompassing. They take a lot of joy from a family group chat we're all part of, but to talk it's always over the phone or in person. They never allowed watching TV at dinner time, but we did watch the news together (sometimes the Simpsons!) and were one of the first houses in our small suburb to get a game machine (and a PC) in the early 90s, though usage was strictly controlled! My parents & partners will sometimes watch TV at dinner now. Their screen time is probably 50-50 passive to active.

I am on a phone and laptop all day for work. I lead a fairly active/outdoorsy life outside of work (mainly on the weekend), but also watch quite a bit of on-demand, a small amount of broadcast TV, and spend a couple of hours on personal internet use per day. I was the first professional / white collar worker in my family. I would classify my screen time as significant, bordering on excessive and primarily active.

My kids aren't allowed to watch TV at dinner time. They're about to enter school so still don't have too much use (or want) for a phone or the internet yet, beyond 2-3hrs on-demand streaming per week. I plan on limiting it as much as possible while I can, assuming that it will dominate their lives (while hoping that it won't). This seems to be the generationally-shared sentiment.

bartimus• 4 years ago

It's painful how slow we're coming to realize the concept of "how much screen time?" has been asking the wrong question.

Isn't a piece of paper just another screen?

Isn't a book just another screen?

What about e-paper?

Is playing a physical piano better than playing a virtual one using a screen?

There's nothing wrong with having screen time. What matters is what type of activities people do on their screens.

shahar2k• 4 years ago

none of those except MAYBE piano actively engage with the viewr / user to keep their attention / maintain a dopamine loop in the same way as interactive devices.

I say that as someone who'se worked on both films and games and there's just something about interactivity that has a huge leg up over all the other ones in retaining attention.

darepublic• 4 years ago

Young people are developing for the future whereas older people are not. If I am in the twilight of my life my comfort and ease of life factors more importantly because I'm on an irreversible decline. A young person on the other hand risks their future by watching too much

fuzzfactor• 4 years ago

I think some people are just more hypnotically attracted to the action occurring in their field of vision, and moving pictures stimulate this primal response.

Emotional response to artificial visual stimuli was first exaggerated for some with the arrival of silent movies, made more realistic (even when complete fantasy) with talkies and then color film.

Television turned this from a designated entertainment event into an everyday occurrence in the home when it was still black & white, then color TV upped the ante, but until cable came along nobody imagined that anybody would want to have it turned on all the time. The few broadcast channels in any one market used to sign off after a certain time at night then not resume programming until the next morning. There were 13 VHF channels but no market had anywhere near that number to choose from within radio range.

Then come personal style computers which were powered on all the time at the office, even if they were not that interesting people got accustomed to it, and did some of the same thing when they got more popular for the home. Laptops took the screen on the road and internet made it more interesting on a 24/7 basis, wifi broadened that and more powerful smartphones put it over the top everywhere.

Each step of the way focusing on smaller-than-realistic horizons.

What if we talked about over-60s’ screen time as we talk about young people’s?

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