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Comment by lrvick | Hacker News Reader

Spot on. Giving kids a smartphone and unsupervised access to algorithm driven content is child abuse, though sadly a legal form of it. Also, model the behavior you want to see, so put your own phone down around kids and let them see you pursue interests other than scrolling on a small rectangle.

If you need kids distracted for a while, at least take take the time to thoughtfully pick out some books or physical media like DVDs they can enjoy ad-free with dedicated offline media players, or give them a mechanical puzzle, or a yo-yo, or legos, or paper and crayons.

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Neglectful; sure. Child abuse; hardly. Please let’s not degrade the meaning of child abuse; it’s detrimental.

These same arguments were put in front of the public when TV was released. A steady stream of boob-tube content was seen as a detriment to society and many questioned it. But now we have a new wave of technology that parents are using to placate their children to avoid the challenges present in parenting today, just as they did 70+ years ago, but now we’re saying things like, “we’re taking away their smartphones and putting them in front of TV content we grew up with!”

I am not advocating parents plop their kids in front of devices of any kind, but to argue it’s abuse is absurd. And furthermore, to claim that TV shows prevalent in the 80s and 90s are somehow an acceptable proxy is almost as absurd.

Knowingly giving a child poison known to cause lasting damage to their brain sounds pretty abusive to me. It is the modern day equivalent of putting whiskey in the bottle to calm a kid down.

Also it is not about 80s/90s content so much as it is about helping a kid develop a longer attention span. Give them things worth watching more than 10 seconds at a time, or puzzles and project kits worth playing with for hours.

The difference is- the producers of shows such as Mister Rogers and Sesame Street did not have a profit motive to increase "engagement" numbers. They actually used psychology to try and improve the outcomes of their viewers (aka children) rather than trying to improve the outcomes of themselves.

I mean, watch CoComelon and Sesame Street (or Mister Rogers, or Daniel Tiger...) side by side and tell me there isn't a qualitative difference between the two.

You’re being purposefully obtuse by indirectly saying that TV of the past is somehow ok, when previous generations argued much the same against it.

So... because we believe now that the moral panic around TV was unfounded, that directly implies there could be no concerns about the impact of consuming large amounts of algorithmically generated "junk content" by young developing brains?

Then, if that's the case, put your kids where your mouth is, go buck wild and sit your kids in front of CoComelon all day.

Let’s talk in 70y.

TV of the past is not okay, especially not in excessive amounts. But I too have noticed that shows from that era tend to be less fast-paced than those of today, so it's probably less harmful.

oh no!, some tedious beurocratic "legal" definition of child abuse would have to be amended, and therby threaten certain agencies who consider child abuse to be under there sole, authority. Children are dying, and bieng lured into any and all ilegal activities, the main platforms are targeting children for every reason, but with pictures of puppys and buterfly's and sing song characters that then segue into the darkest corners of the internet, 3 redirects away, any time, anywhere

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