Hacker News Reader

Comment by jhbadger | Hacker News Reader

Or maybe people are just overeacting. In the 1950s there was a movement that claimed that comic books were evil and rotting kids' minds. When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s it was TV. Then it was video games. Now it's social media, Kids like to do things that (at least to parents) look like wasting time. But if the parents look back to their own childhoods, they weren't using their time that productively either.

View on HN

It’s easy to suggest that this is the same scaremongering around media and new technologies occurred in the past, but I think that’s a mistake. The Internet, web forums, social media, etc. are different because of how people interact with them and because many of them use algorithms and dark patterns to manipulate and drive further engagement.

To make matters worse, malicious actors have demonstrably used them to manipulate public opinion and distribute propaganda. Studies around illusory truth have shown that familiarity can overcome rationality and critical thinking. IOW, no matter how much you know something to be a lie, if you hear it often enough, you’ll begin to believe it.

That’s all to say I think it’s important to be wary of how technology influences your life and consider how to cultivate balance in life that includes time away from devices to contemplate as well as to escape the machine.

Dungeons and Dragons was different, because it encouraged the confusion of fantasy with reality. But in the case of algorithm-driven social media feeds the difference is different, I take it?

The scale is bigger, I think that's the key thing. I can vaguely imagine an alternate history where D&D is as popular as TikTok, and then Russia and China are publishing their own Monster Manuals full of propaganda, and laws start to appear limiting it to over 18s due to the potential for brain rot as proven by studies.

> Dungeons and Dragons was different, because it encouraged the confusion of fantasy with reality

What. DnD isn't larping. Or what do you mean.

I tried to source who said this, presumably in the 80s, but struggled. The phrase "rumors regarding players having difficulty separating fantasy from reality" appears on Wikipedia, in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons#Moral_pan... but the sources aren't good (the page from theGamer is unrelated, maybe spam). https://web.archive.org/web/20200626110749/http://www.ptgptb... has a good history of the topic, but without mention of the fantasy/reality claim. The panic made it out to be a satanic cult that induces suicide and murder. This psychiatrist was involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Radecki ... however, I can't find the claim about the blurring of fantasy and reality, so maybe nobody made it, although it's kind of the theme of Mazes and Monsters.

I mean, you are supposed to play the character and pretend to be it. But most people don't even role play that much.

I have a really hard time seeing that what is fundamentally a dice rolling game would induce psychosis etc.

What. Even larping is not confusing. Are you claiming that actors in the film/ play actually are confused and they think they REALLY ARE the characters they play?

No, but actors don't decide what their characters do.

Also I don't claim larping is "confusing" to any extent, just that it would be relatively more confusing than DnD for people with a bad grasp on reality.

Maybe it's not worse, maybe it's just as bad, who knows?

I'd try to get my kids away from TV or comics just as hard as I tried to get my kids away from their phone.

There are of course real and worthwhile culture artifacts on any media, TikTok included, but we are talking about addiction here.

Our generation would have been so much better off without tv addiction!

(Comics? Yes, they have been well known vectors of propaganda for one, and favor in general an idiotically simple manichean worldview, and therefore an adult explaining to a kid why they are potentially harmful was also in order, no?)

I’m 75% sure there are peer reviewed studies that show social media use among teens is objectively harmful to them

As a professional scientist, I think it is important for people to understand that nearly any viewpoint can point to "peer reviewed" research supporting it. That isn't enough. You need to consider the size of the study, where it is published (there are thousands of journals and many of the lesser known ones have little or no serious peer review even if they claim to have it), and whether there are other studies contradicting it.

All of those things have been rotting kids minds for decades.

Look around. Rotted minds are common.

I tend to share your optimism, but it also seems smartphones have some very different qualities from previous tech. Yes, the sounds and images, but mostly a new kind of socially remote yet nearly instantaneous communication style.

And a surprising amount of sexting.

Getting to this: https://xkcd.com/1414/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com