My brief forays into both TikTok and YouTube Shorts have left me profoundly unimpressed with the short-form video.
It’s all vertical video as well. YouTube pushes Shorts fairly aggressively on the desktop website, and it’s a crappy experience.
Be glad Youtube still works on the desktop at all. A very large majority of users watch on their phones and YouTube only cares about profits.
I already knew this but still what a terrifying prospect, I love my phone but there are some things a desktop is just better for
Yeah I'm one of the ten people who can't stand watching videos on my phone. I draw the line at gifs.
It's all mind-melting in my experience
Literally proven to ruin attention span in children and essentially cause ADHD, can also easily cause depression by constantly seeing (usually) fake people flaunting their (usually) fake life and wealth.
Not to mention the proliferation of insane conspiracy theories, absolute nonsense and usually harmful 'advice' of one kind or another, 'being rich is the only thing that matters so here is a scam to show you how!' of all kinds of flavors...
Brain rot.
Literally proven to ruin attention span in children and essentially cause ADHD
Please link source, interested in reading.
Having recently been diagnosed with ADHD I've taken part in several classes on ADHD to learn more about it. And the consensus is that no external factors like that cause ADHD. However, I'm sure this topic of algorithm driven addictive short form videos for a very young audience is being studied more now than ever so who knows what the consensus on that will be in the future. Causing ADHD or not, I don't think it's healthy either way.
Yeah it can certainly cause problems, it's just not ADHD.
ADHD doesn't even really mean short attention spans, it's more of the inability to willingly direct attention. It's the same way people incorrectly use "OCD" to mean liking things clean and/or orderly.
I have ADHD and I've had times where I've done the same thing for 14 hours straight (even forgetting to eat) when my brain decides it wants to latch onto that thing. You just need to be sufficiently stimulated, hence why stimulants can work as a treatment.
can also easily cause depression by constantly seeing (usually) fake people flaunting their (usually) fake life and wealth
That’s a problem with many social media platforms and the “influencer” culture they host. Instagram has been particularly criticised for this.
These heavily curated content posted on these platforms does not reflect the warts and all reality of real life. People who get too engrossed in it can quickly start to feel their lives are inadequate.
I’m not sure what the solution is for this, other than trying to better regulate the algorithms used by these platforms.
There was that brief period of time where Vine existed and had actual quality content.
Then the short video format was shittified after everyone began doing it, and fairly rapidly devolved into mindless attention seeking nonsense / micro personal update vlog... or worse.
That sounds like a parental problem
What a great way to dismiss an entire problems based that affects our society. It's easier to just hand wave it away as someone else's problem than to actually consider it...
When a problem becomes systematic it's now a societal and cultural problem and not an individual responsibility problem. Individual responsibility isn't working so it's now down to the society this is occurring in to solve the systematic problem in a systematic way.
That's how almost everything works
You're both right
Yeah none of those kids should have cell phones. They should be about old enough to drive before they get one even.
Yup. I have kids (three under 10), and the only time my kids use my phone is when I'm literally there with them, letting them pick a video (usually Pat and Mat, Bert and Ernie, or similar). It's not every day, and never more than 30 min, usually like 15-20 min, and we take turns picking.
I'm not letting my kids have their own phone until I trust them with one, and that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon with how many of our other rules they break.
Yeah, parents are getting ruined by social media algorithms too.
Our government seems to be moving towards an "we only care about the children, but everyone, including adults, upload your government papers" approach.
Y'all got any of those protections for adults? I remember reading regulations that companies couldn't show children advertisements. Can I have some of that regulation too?
I just can't stop being cynical that there is little focus on homeless or underpaid adults, or other adult issues, but the one problem we're focused on just so happens to include everyone giving up anonymity on the Internet.
We do need to help kids with social media, but there's a lot of other challenges they will soon face as adults that we're ignoring.
Are there any examples of 'for the kids' legislation that isn't just something like backdoor encryption masquerading as protecting the young?
The question here would be.. where are their parents?
On tiktok too, where else.
At their second jobs.
The next generation is so fucked. Wait...they be the ones who take care of me in the old person home. I'm fucked as will.
People have been claiming that new media will destroy society at least since we invented writing, and probably before.
Look at Mr Moneybags here, getting cared for in an old person home.
That’s fucked
I managed to almost completly keep my children away from it for now (8 and 10). But it is a struggle. And I will soon lose that struggle. So many children at age 8 or 9 have smartphones for fs sake.
I plan to slowly introduce them to stuff like this, so they will be able to deal with it. I did so rather successfully with the other bullshit, like Roblox. They are only allowed to play it when I am in the room, and I check that they follow that rule (they do).
Feels like walking on the edge though. Still unsure when to open the TikTok thing. Too early is bad, but too late and they will somehow already he on tiktok and I just don't know about it.
my siblings managed to keep their kids away from smartphones until 4th grade. And even that was a struggle.
sadly it just falls into the camp of 'everyone else is doing it'. and if your kid isn't they will be socially ostracized.
Child abuse
This ban can't come soon enough. Fuck the CCP.
"In my household, the only addictive spyware we use is made in the USA!!!"
Edit: everyone below me is proving my point exactly.
Is there any data for similar age range but for YouTube?
With YouTube kids, and the popularity of channels like cocomelon, I'd be surprised if it's less than 75%...
What does "on tiktok" mean?
Unsupervised with their own accounts? I feel like that's difficult to believe. Watching a few tiktoks before dinner with their parents? That doesn't really strike me as a problem.
While I don't entirely disagree with the author, I feel like this is a far too superficial look at what is a larger societal problem: young people have checked out.
He makes the argument that mental health is in decline, and I'm not sure if that's true or we've just removed the stigma from therapy... But of more concern to me is that young people just DGAF, and I think that's because older generations have left nothing for younger generations to inherit, besides ruin. Kids 5-7 aren't gonna understand that, but they're gonna pick up the vibes from their parents.
I don't think its difficult to imagine 30% of 5 to 7s with their own phones on tiktok nearly all the time.
Raising kids is hard, especially when youre poor and stressed out or tired all the time, its waaay easier to just get them a phone.
The number of people I've met in the last couple of years? Yeah, I live amongst the poors, the abusive parents and single moms and drunk/drug addicted dads... all their kids either have their own phones or the family has one for all the kids, who basically fight over it and get smacked by a parent or older sibling when theyre being too rowdy.
A few weeks ago I was walking, puffing on a nicotine vape. A school bus pulls up and drops off what could not have been older than 2nd graders, who began hounding me: Lemme hit that wax bro, Share your wax!
These are those 5 to 7s that are on TikTok, or close to it. I didnt even realize what Wax was at first, literally had to scurry home and lookup that wax is now the term for basically dab pens.
So yeah, theres huge segments of the population where 7 year olds want a highly concentrated dose of MJ from a literal random person theyve never seen before.
Devo: It's a beautiful world we live in... for you, but not for me.
You would think that with all those kids watching, Xi would lean into the whole Winnie the Pooh resemblance.
That is terrifying
How do you take over the world? Program the children!
I’m not completely convinced. It is possible but sounds a bit high to me. It is based on a survey of less than 3k parents, and although I found the BBC article, it doesn’t seem to link to the actual source. It is therefore difficult to take this too seriously without seeing exactly who was interviewed and how the questions were worded.
It's probably not that bad, but I wouldn't be surprised just based on anecdotal experience.
I'm a provider at a children's hospital and phones have always been an issue during appointments. Before, it was mostly an issue with getting parents to pay attention or answer questions during the evaluation.
However since COVID, we've noticed a large increase of parents using tablets and phones as a constant babysitter. These children are so emotionally attached to their screens that they will tantrum until they have access to their screen again.
Seems bad, man.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
