Kids with Smartphones Less Depressed, Anxious, Bullied Than Peers Without Them
reason.com
reason.com
These are kids. The sigh in this article is because kids would rather feel safe than be the bullied or made to feel lesser-than for an adult's ideological worship of free speech? Perhaps we can acknowledge that while free speech in the context of government censorship is necessary, it is certainly not the end-all-be-all for children socializing.
It seems like there is such a disconnect from basic humanity with so many reason.com writers.
> Giving kids as young as 11 years of age their own smartphone is likely fine and may be beneficial
> Try to keep kids from social platforms where they are likely to post or share publicly
> Don’t let kids and smartphones sleep in the same room
.. doesn't really support this article's title.
The selection methods are not disclosed, conflicts of interest are not disclosed, they ignore at least three critical issues.
The main one being, 57% of those surveyed reported at least 1 bullying incident per week. So ongoing mental coercion and compulsion of over half, enabled by device usage.
Really large problems, and given the lack of rational recommendations you just have to conclude this is propaganda intended to convince inattentive parents to induct their children into a maoist based re-education camps overlayed onto education on US soil.
Some history today isn't taught because its unpleasant, and occasionally people need to be reminded.
If you look closely and objectively and compare the public education system we have today in its current practical form, that survived from the 90s, to that of maoist reeducation camps in detail, you'll find almost the same structures present, and all of the functional elements are all present. Clustering of these elements in structure is occurring.
Phones ensure consistent exposure to those elements regardless of physical location. In aggregate these elements and structure form all that is needed for torture with respect to thought reform.
There was at one point a ban which was supposed to protect against the use of such elements back in the 70s, but as the FTC has weakened, and its ability to enforce has continued that trend unabated. We are seeing a progressive slow roll to maoism/communism/socialism, in our children, unnoticed.
The functional parts comes down to the nature of subliminal compulsion and persuasion, the fundamental limitations of our own metaperception that occur unconsciously.
Like for example, if I were to ask you a leading broad question that you'd have to agree to, and then asked a similar question you'd agree without question or thought, and even if you disagree with parts, this blindspot overrides your perception seeking consistency over time. I'll know you've softened up, and in conjunction with others repeating that a few times before you know it you'll have a change of heart and mind. There are many such ways to utilize blindspots we are never taught we have, and without knowledge of them we respond predictably following fixed action patterns that are not unique.
There is a very fine line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior with regards to these matters, and the lack of awareness only makes people more gullible and easily manipulated.
The enforcement mechanisms to prevent these uses in today's society simply do not, and in many respects as far as we know cannot exist within an open society. We value free speech, while not making the distinction between coerced belief and the right to not be bombarded by unwanted speech. Many of these things people have been purposefully misinformed about in a myriad of ways.
For example, Hollywood has worked very hard to condition the public by media so when you talk about subliminal advertising you think dramatic caricatures of something unrelated (going back to 60s experiments) with messaging that is easily contradicted and impossible, and in the process of agreeing with that sentiment you blind yourself to the nuanced reality.
What I am saying is, if it looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, and it functions as any duck would. Then its probably a duck even if you call it something else. The name doesn't matter, a thing is what it primarily does.
In general, it seems there is a trend where people have not been informed or educated on these matters, let alone enough to recognize these dangers unless they go out of their way to seek the material out and learn which seem to be in the minority. If you ask the average person about brainwashing, and they'll think or say you are crazy, but if you ask them about specific instances of cults, or other material that cannot be refuted, and they'll say yeah that happened but still not believe it, despite objective proof.
If you yourself are unfamiliar with the realities of this subject matter. I'd highly suggest you take some time and do the research. There is nothing better than challenging yourself and any potentially limiting beliefs you knew to be true but ended up being false (through no fault of your own).
It takes a lot of character and strength to actually do this, and a miniscule few will ever read something they disagree with, but you have to do that if you want to prove that disagreement is correct and you are right. It requires discipline, and its often the only way to amply get the fodder you need to shut down conversations, where the person pushing false or misleading material doesn't know what they are talking about.
The following authors are well established. You can find many others but these are a good starting point. A college intro to communications course will also briefly touch on identity/psychological development of culture, and that is also a blindspot mechanism we all have though its very difficult to find material on it. Its called reflected appraisal, and distorted reflected appraisal is commonly used today following structure.
[1] Joost Meerloo on the Rape of the Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost_Meerloo https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5609700.Joost_A_M_Meer...
[2] Robert Lifton on Thought Reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jay_Lifton https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/67376.Robert_Jay_Lifto...
[3] Robert Cialdini on Influence (the blindspots) https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/160932.Robert_B_Cialdi...
[4] John Leach https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4890253/
On your discussion of cults, I think we completely agree. Recently I came across elan.school, and I found it absolutely fascinating in how it depicted the process of brainwashing into a cult and how, whether deliberately or otherwise by the author, it established meaningful parallels between those processes and processes in society at large. Absolutely fascinating stuff and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, reading, and writing about it lately, so it’ll be fun to check out your resources.
Your mention of hollywood does make me want to ask something though. The most fascinating thing about the cult process to me is that it can eventually become borderline self-sustaining. Nobody has to want any of it, eventually the cult itself as an entity appears to become the cause of its own perpetuation. A bit like the party in 1984. Are you of the opinion that the behavior of hollywood, taking your portrayal for granted, is conscious action by specific actors? It seems to me that these processes are often, or even usually, headless.
On the issue of schools and phones, which I think is where we may find disagreement, could you point to specific functional elements that align with those found under maoism? I don’t even doubt that such elements exist, but it would be nice to examine them in specificity with an example or two.
As I said, I’ll be back to give a more holistic response once I have a little time to formulate one.
> Your mention of hollywood ... are you of the opinion that taking your portrayal for granted that this is the consious action by specific actors, or these processes are often and usually headless.
Both.
With respect to knowledge of the mechanics and fundamental structures, there is a universal incentive by any entrenched power hierarchy using these techniques to limit and suppress that knowledge. The absence of knowledge in such cases deprives people the defense against something they have been conditioned to see as impossible, and makes those people dependent and easily manipulated, so there is broad incentive headlessly.
There are also groups bent along ideological lines to destroy Capitalism and its related parts at a individual core identity level, and to foment disunity.
Aspects of identity targeted includes the nuclear family, and other elements of western cultural identity, as well as religion. This is broadly done through destructive interference which mirrors the process of how you go about intentionally forgetting something, its also how surrogates work where something important is replaced with a surrogate which is lesser than what was replaced (circularly, and iteratively).
Communism, and its Socialist cousins (i.e. globalist/neo-fabian) have been working towards these things for quite awhile, and they both inevitably fail when they no longer have a suitable host (Mises, Socialism 1930-1950s covers the components that lead to socio-economic collapse in such systems).
The main elements you asked for are common to all torture. They are isolation, cognitive dissonance, coercion with real or perceived loss, and lack of agency to remove.
Most of the discoveries credited to Mao involved the structure of trauma loops where you turn the psyche back on itself in clever ways, which I and many others reduce/refer to as "structure and clustering".
On the issue of schools and phones, Narcosynthesis and Exposure occur through the phone via Social Media Apps, and Associative Priming. The Octalysis Framework in game design uses quite a lot of this material, though its been reconstructed seemingly following a separation of objectionable concerns (as developed and made popular by the Stasi, 60s-90s). An example of priming would be the audio trigger upon a headshot in a game like BF1942, where you hear a cha-ching, and get a dopamine rush after conditioning each time you hear it, along with visual cues like changes in leaderboard/animations. Withdrawal too on the opposite side.
The teachers at school also utilize pedagogy based in torture. Strategies like the Hot Potato, Lying to Children, and Burning the Bridges are used at varying stages to isolate, and create/induce struggle sessions, with PTSD being common. These strategies take advantage of the natural psychology and aspects of social standing found in bureaucracies.
In favor of destroying faith/religion, aspects of sentimental moralism, nihilism, Gnosticism, and other now refuted ideologies have often been promoted in the class without naming them as such indirectly, also in media (PIXAR did this, so do others[2], Disney and Netflix included [3]). This seems to be coming from the NEA/Administrative on the school side, and Hollywood groups, and not individuals generally.
Religion is a particular important target because those with strong faith-based beliefs resist torture better. Its a strong argument for any religion.
Lying to Children has been in use since at least the late 1970s, probably well before going back to the 60s but I can't be sure. It didn't become recognized by that name until the early 90s.
With rationalism in Western society following the greeks, you boil down to first true principles, and then build back up and with that comes an intuition that allows you to model and predict which basically follows Descartes Method with a lot of useful tooling. Lying to Children takes the opposite approach. You are given flawed constructs, taught what you need to know at the time but which is brittle and doesn't reflect reality or provide use/value, then as you progress towards mastery (gnosis), you must unlearn and relearn detailed parts which are incredibly frustrating and have a conditioning effect.
Burning the Bridges is a strategy where the student is made to believe its their fault when a failure is orchestrated through structure. The teachers may not be aware of these names or the gimmick involved, they still nonetheless use it. This is used in Physics and Economics coursework most prominently in Weed-out courses. The former has often used a undisclosed method for getting significant digits and exams with causally dependent questions.The latter ambiguous language without a deterministic unique property on exam questions (i.e. you have two answers and must choose the more right one without sufficient information). The first incident is usually K12, Algebra -> Geometry -> Trigonometry, the gimmick is a change in pass criteria in conjunction with the Lying to Children structure. (I still can't get over the fact that the people involved actually call it this openly).
With regards to the cult/society process being self-sustaining I'd disagree, but only because that opinion is based in a longer time horizon than I imagine you were looking at. As an engineer I'm trained to look at the entire lifecycle.
Totalism and the antithesis ideology of the protean self are aspects that are covered in depth by Robert Lifton, some of which I disagree with. With total control which is what the former ideologies go towards, the flexibility and adaptibility vanish. This goes to darwin's fitness and puts you at risk of civilization collapse anytime you face an out-of-context problem, like Columbus and the Native Peoples. This is mainly based in what I've read with regards to history and the factors of poor and successful civilizations (Wealth of Nations, Wealth and Poverty of Nations as two starting points).
Societal collapse often comes as the result of when total control prevents adaptibility in the face of an existential crisis, with very little in the historical record.
I've included a few more links below that you may find useful. My initial response ended up being rejected so I've trimmed this down quite a bit.
[1] https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press... (pdf link on the left side about halfway down)
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnXs30BHtFA
[3] Aladdin is filled with subliminals. Netflix and Disney both often have obligatory LGBTQ roles. I'm all for acceptance but the interactions often follow destructive interference patterns intended to normalize or destructively interfere.