When I see statements like "teenagers are spending 4-6 hours online, instead of going outside and meeting people" as a justification for further web regulation, I wonder to myself:
- if it had been 4-6 hours reading books, practising musical instruments, creating art, or similar, would they be demanding that books, instruments etc. have a watershed? If not, why not?
- what is the "acceptable" amount of time for a teenager to spend online each day? What makes it so?
- "going outside and meeting people" suggests a particular worldview of what is "good", which will appeal to - indeed, be possible for - some people far more than others. I was never massively sociable, and that's no crime. A day at school, and now work, would involve plenty enough peopling time for me. I am far more sociable online then offline. Where are the local free places where teenagers can get to and hang out, safely, in the warm? (They might exist in some places?)
Northanger Abbey for example is full of defensive self deprecating jokes about how bad novels are for impressionable youths, The Castle of Otranto taking the place of TikTok.
The short answer is that she's 15 and has thrown enough tantrums that we mostly turned it off. Google allowed her to opt out at 13 and getting her to accept going back was painful. The longer version is they don't work great, it's either limit total time or each app and she used to spin an hour or two on each SM app and still hit loads and then not have time for her homework that needed a phone. 1/2
@argv_minus_one @sldrant I actually have seen alot of kids when I'm outside (usually only little boys) just "walking" home from school and they just stand there touching their phones (doing I don't know) and my first grandpa doggy always barked at them XD so parents can't control that.
Parent: "why does it take you an hour to get home when we live close?"
@smilingdemon I'm pretty sure we don't have any local free places that teenagers can get to and hang out, safely, in the warm. They can hang out in the park, but there's no shelter. If they congregate in the shopping area, people mutter about gangs of youths and ask them what they are doing there. They can't win.
@smilingdemon We are getting a skate park and pump track, that was campaigned for and is now being built. It will be a good place for young people, however I don't know if it's going to be free to use.
@smilingdemon Oh, the library doesn't really count as a local free place that teenagers can hang out in, as it's only open for restricted hours, and is already taken over by the old people.
@HollieK72 @smilingdemon we have a free skate park here, and a library in town. It has limited hours of course, but it seems like teenagers are actually using it quite a bit for studying and socializing.
There’s also places like playgrounds etc where kids can hang out. None of them are heated, but otherwise they’re quite ok for the purpose.
@slothrop @HollieK72 @smilingdemon most playgrounds here have signs that they are only for kids under 14. I don't know if someone is ever enforcing that. On the soccer or basketball courts are often older kids, but also mostly boys.
@HollieK72 @smilingdemon we have here in Finland local teenage / kids hangout places. You can play that game that they play in shows/films at the bar (I don't remember the name) what Chandler & Joey also played (If you ever watched Friends) and just to hang out and talk or do school work after school (I think the reason for this is so they won't be alone at home when parents are working) and then we also have "tyttöjen talo" (hangout places for girls) and "poikien talo" (hangout places for
It's really the same error of thinking as "kids these days spend too much time at the computer!" without really looking into what the kids are doing at the computer, which was generally some combination of expressing themselves, engaging with art, meeting friends, learning programming and commiting cybercrimes, the latter of which being perhaps not unambigiously positive but still under the general header of "learning useful skills", just in a slightly misdirected way.
The people who have been online 4-6 hours a day back then (mostly at night, because dial-in rates) are nowadays in good part the backbone of our technical world. And they - talked to anonymous strangers from the end of the world - consumed questionable content - made equally questionable websites ("profiles") - joined in popularity contests ("social")
Maybe we can get rid of the "screen time" argument for good, and focus on intention and media literacy somewhat...
Not to forget: They were super privileged to be in such a position and have a head start over most of the world. Now that everyone has this, it should be restricted? That's funny...
@schmidt_fu I was one of these people and I'm all the better for it.
However now the internet has swollen to encompass everyone we see all aspects of humanity there. Lots still good. But, just like offline society, lots of awfulness too.
The internet as we experienced it in the nineties is long gone.
Adults who grew up with the good aspects of online life are slowly waking up to the reality of mid-2020s online, and are finding it shocking.
@gilester45 @schmidt_fu also how good the internet was in the late 90s/early 2000s rather depended on who you were. I had a good time and got a lot out of the experience, but that was because I was very careful about following the most important rule which was never let anyone find out you were a girl. Which in retrospect is an extremely fucked up way for half of humanity to have had to behave.
I was easily spending 4-6 hrs online chatting with friends from school on AIM, moderating a forum, learning photo manipulation with gnu imp and creating art with it, learning about linux, lots of slashdot, security focus, doing homework... Lots of school activities, had a gf, etc.
I'm with you, I was way more social online. Part of that was how my school bused kids from across the city. But that continued in a large part through undergrad.
It is also interesting to ponder what is meant by "spending time online", and how that is calculated.
Is it the same as "screen time"? And, if so, does that include time spent reading books on a device with a screen, of which I do a lot as I love my eReader?
I presume that my time reading and writing fedi posts is "online" time?
Time spent reading/replying to email? But not if I had printed the email to read on paper?
Time on calls with people? But not if I had the same meeting in a room with the same people?
Time collaborating on a document in etherpad? But not doing the same work in vim running locally?
Time watching a film from my media server (or Netflix, for the sake of argument)? But not if it were non-IP broadcast TV?
$child2 is into gaming, and will happily spend a day sat at their computer if we didn't tightly limit it.
But they're playing with friends, who they have on group call. It's collaborative, it's social.
But fundamentally it's not hugely constructive, and at 12yo they really need to be developing skills they need for adulthood, not (exclusively) gaming.
I've explained if they did other things with their computer they'd have more screen time - I'm not worried about screens per se.
I've been following what you're sharing about this with interest. I've thought about it over the last hour and it seems I have something to say.
Like in all ages, teens get damned for just being teens. It's as though these people have forgotten what it was actually like to go through the emotional turmoil and navigational difficulty of being a teen, the pure awkwardness of puberty.
Brain development is something I'm really interested in. Teens go through something called "social reorientation". They gravitate towards their friends and distance themselves more from their parents. They're basically finding their people, the group that makes them feel safe, accepted and understood. For me it was a set of very lovely heavy metal types who did look a bit scary from the outside, but were actually very sweet and kind.
2/
Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (Freitag, 18. September 2026, 07:59)
Now I know my autistic perspective runs away screaming from "going outside and meeeting people", but given the social reorientation aspect and the finding your people side of it, I don't think it is that easy for most teens.
As a teen, I lived in a small cut off village in the Midlands, which I'd moved to from Ireland when I was 12, so I had no childhood connections. Said village was tiny, very few other teens coexisted there, nevermind kind metalheads of a similar age.
I spent hours reading, playing guitar, writing and pottering about with my sewing machine. I "socialised" at school, sometimes on a Saturday. We had a phone at home; it was in the living room.
If the internet had existed, and I'd had a computer in my room, or a smart phone, I know I'd have spent some of those hours with my friends online, or playing a game. It seems strange to call that less healthy than the various solitary ass-sitting activities I used to partake in of an evening.
In about the year 2000 the occupational health doctor at my then-employer was very, very worried that all hundred people or so in the company spent many, many hours "online". Until I and others explained that we work by communicating with people around the world and managing servers that we need for our business and that all happens over the network.
I wonder if anyone ever ponder about how much time online adults spend because of their work. Are they going to regulate that? Because the amount of screen time at an office job has same or worse impact on one's health (both physical and mental). How is that not ok that a youngster is preparing for such fast-pace office job on pc then? How is a person growing up outside meeting people going to handle being all day everyday online at work afterwards?
When I think about queer kids living in rural areas, they're just glad to be able to connect with people like themselves, at least online. You are right, it's all so much more complicated than just saying “online = bad, offline = good.”
This indeed. This hits the teens that don’t fit in a group the hardest.
I grew up in the 90’ and above the IQ average. Think of a nerdy science girl with no friends, that was essentially me.
In my teens and early 20’s I almost lived chronically online because there I actually had people to talk to. Well I ended up with skills I now make my money with, fellow nerd friends and a very high English skill.
Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (Freitag, 18. September 2026, 13:16)
@Tijgertje1987 @Tautropfen A nerdy Gen-X '90s kid here, a weird loner in school who never fit in. Not much in the way of IRL friendships, most of my teenage interactions with "peers" were them beating me up for being too smart, strange, and/or queer for their tastes.
Online I met people on my own level, laughed, learned, and even taught.
When I did go outside I was by myself, often committing actual crimes for lack of anything better to do.
I keep having this discussion with my mum when she complains that I'm on my phone rather than "reading an article" or something and I have to explain that while she gets all her news and long form articles from TV or magazines, I get mine from the internet.
We don't have this conversation about books because I usually have paper books.
long post about strategies for regulating problematic internet use
Not A Teen, but from my own experience attempting to self-regulate Internet use and what I can glean from scientific literature the idea of a single "screen time/time online" as a determinant of anything meaningful is nonsense.
I set up a bunch of Leechblock limits and the only way to make it work is (a) to make it super fine-grained (and it took months to tune it to my own habits) and (b) to take ADHD pills (I mention this because problematic Internet use often goes hand-in-hand with ADHD and afaict it helps to treat the ADHD, this sort of thing was impossible pre-meds).
I exclude video calls and Google Docs etc from the limits as they don't seem to cause problematic usage patterns. I did put personal e-mail (although not Uni e-mail, at least not right now) under the limit, I think otherwise I'd spend too much time checking it or writing or re-writing. I exclude Disney+ (generally more relaxing than stressful) but not YouTube (unfortunately too easy to find nonsense).
I tend to put fedi time under a stricter limit because otherwise I can spend time on it beyond what is healthy, particularly doomscrolling. There's a lot of Fedi sites to add to my lists haha. And I curate my Fedi feed too, I'm fairly strict about muting news talk as I find that stressful. Right now I keep it to ~1hr 30/day, yes it's still a lot of my life but I socialise via the platform.
I do have limits on at night so I don't start reading stressful stuff when I'm supposed to sleep. That is by far the biggest issue. (In my own experience, I think melatonin is less of an issue, first, I can fall asleep well after watching TV or playing relaxing video games, second, when I take actual melatonin pills they don't help, but your mileage may vary).
My goals with all these limits is to stay on top of responsibilities, not stress myself out reading a bunch of stressful stuff online, and have time for relaxation/seeing friends/hobbies/etc. If I'm having fun online and staying on top of responsibilities I don't think online time is an issue. In some ways, online time helps socialisation where this would be challenging or impossible IRL (I found out limiting online time too much lead to loneliness, not better social connection, and I have social difficulties that predate smartphones).
Most importantly these are limits I set for myself tuned to my own usage patterns using an incredibly fine-grained web blocker (LeechBlock). In the case of parenting a teen, it would be up to the parent to negotiate with their teen what healthy and unhealthy use might look like and figure out those limits. Most blockers provided by the phones and social media apps are not fine-grained enough for this (why would they be? there's a huge conflict of interest) and each person is different including in how they use the Internet.
Plus, problematic Internet use can often be a result of other problems (e.g. mental illness, undiagnosed ADHD) so there's no point applying these kinds of restrictions without considering the wider context. Is the EU Kids Act also shoving billions of euros into ADHD diagnosis and treatment?
and let's remember also that there is a LOT of research trying to find negative effects of social media for teenagers, and none has been able to conclude that they always are uncomplicatedly negative for teens. in fact, some of them are even get positive effects. teenagers are not a monolith, and their internet use is as diverse as any other person
While I don't want Internet ID verification, a lot of the modern internet built by Facebook and Google is just wasting time of kids, scrolling through endless slop videos until their brains turn to mush. I'd be happy if they were reading books or even if they were socalising some other way, but scrolling TikTok and getting harassed in chat by peers and pedos is no way to live.
I want people to grow up happy and to find purpose, both to improve themselves and to improve the world around them, but so much of the Internet now seems like a sadness machine filled with propaganda meant to encourage nihilism and despair. I don't know how to help kids who are exposed to that, I can't even deal with that myself very well (which is why I'm on masto and not Facebook).
"Age verification" is bullshit surveillance and blanket bans only work on the symptoms, how to regulate online communication to enforce some standard of care and moderation, so they don't just chase _engagement_ regardless if its positive or negative. Banning recommendation models might be a good start, encourage people to curate their own relationships rather than creating parasocial relationships with "influencers" that the recommendation model happens to favor.
This isn't about protecting children from Facebook. This is about eradicating healthy nonprofit alternatives to Facebook, such as the Fediverse.
If you'll read the vast majority of these laws, you'll find that they impose compliance costs that only Facebook can afford. No way that's an accident.
Protecting children is the excuse. Controlling discourse using the Facebook algorithm is the goal.
probably also the same people who complain about groups of youths riding bikes, or fight against planning permission for a McDonalds because it would be a hangout spot. 😒
If we'd stop destroying the beauty outside and stop allowing cars to run down kids who are trying to have a childhood, they'd probably go outside more. But fuck no, we have to let people sit in their fucking machines all day destroying the entire planet or they might get fucking angry.
my (disabled) daughter certainly spends 6 hours a day online, and has since she was a child. Most of that time is spent talking to her friends. if someone has a problem with that - with kids spending time with friends in whatever way works for them - then they have their heads on wrong.
one day we'll see a study that says kids will go outside and play, just as soon as they damn well feel safe and free to go out, so we ought to stop writing laws telling them WTF to do.
If they want to enforce going outside to play, they should bring a jungle gym in and see which lawmakers are brave enough to enjoy some play time.
(Please, someone do this! I'll break my 10+ month media fast to watch it live!)
How do people define 'sociable'? What is the difference between two people meeting up a a library / cafe to play say chess and two people playing online?
What is the difference between people meeting up and playing a game such as command and conquer face to face and playing online.
In both cases it is a 'social' activity, just done differently,
What about CB/Ham radio, is that not social interaction.?
this "omg teenager are online" framing is pretty wrong. For me the problem is that they're frying their brains on platforms that are designed to be highly addictive which do not provide any benefit. But that is not only a problem with kids, adults are also falling into that trap everywhere.
We need restrictions on algorithm-based, commercial "social" media platforms. not on time spent with a computer.
@badambassador I am enthusiastic about ‘everyone knows what we mean by this’ flying in the face of both legislation and any legal matter ever proposed. People have made an entire career out of defining what ‘a reasonable man’ would understand or think in any situation. The whole point of legislation — like any contract, agreement, or law — is to be AS SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE TO THE POINT OF BEING DAMNED ANNOYING ABOUT IT. The word ‘pedantic’ never gets used, because of its pejorative nature.
Anecdote time - my father didn't particularly like me reading books because he didn't know what was in them, didn't like me reading Teletext (nearest thing we had to online!) for the same reason. Didn't like the music I made. BUT! he also didn't like me going out because he didn't know who I was talking to about what, plus didn't like my friends anyway. Didn't want me going to youth clubs because they were in the church hall and I might catch the religion. It's all about control innit.
I think the fundamental problem behind all this is that the people calling for the legislation, and the people writing it, mostly grew up in a time where you had to leave the house for most things.
They can't understand / accept that things have changed, and want their children to grow up as they did, because obviously what they did was The Right Way.
(see also: O levels vs GCSEs etc.)
Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (Freitag, 18. September 2026, 07:22)
absolutely drives me wild. And you're spot on. It's gross controlling behavior by the folks left in the dark ages hand wringing about something they know nothing about. The adoption of that by fellow parents drives me wild. The amount of parents I've had to unbrainwash during my time as a parent that "screens" are perfectly fine, it's what your kids do on them and how you as a parent engage with that, that needs consideration. Like you say, all books are not made equal. Exactly the same.
Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (Freitag, 18. September 2026, 07:26)
and if I don't want to meet other kids because they are assholes and my friends are far away? And you are right. When I was 14 there was no space for us where we could meet. Too old for kiddy groups, pubs not allowed, roaming the streets in winter? There is a huge lack of safe spaces for teenagers everywhere.
Yes my son spends more time on line than I did growing up. Of course he does. My house has a gigabit fiber running into it that's on 24/7 and wifi that reaches the every corner of the house.
When I was growing up we had a 56k modem and it was the best thing since sliced bread. We had to log off so my dad could phone grandma.
My kids school timetable and homework are apps. Its literally not possible for him to do his homework with out an internet connection.
Exactly this - govt should stop policing young people & instead use same funds to increase youth clubs, sports centres, playing fields, youth mobility at accessible prices. Run critical thinking & media courses, increase subsidies for music tuition, cycle training, local sports teams etc. While they are at it they can get social media cos to pay taxes & take down addictive design. Also stop using Meta platforms for official communications.
the problem is not the amount of time spent online but what young people are actually doing. Interesting article in Commonweal Scotland today about the latest Grand Theft Auto game which is more about developing relationships with the game characters than anything else. Lonely young people are turning to these fictional relationships rather than "meat" relationships for mental health help.
> Lonely young people are turning to these fictional relationships rather than "meat" relationships for mental health help.
Interesting!
If the proposal had been about spending money to ensure better standards of living, and to offer more mental health support, then I'd be very much in favour of it.
I was thinking of the Fry and Laurie Victorian family sketch. "Come along children, that's enough staring into the fire for one evening". Like every technological 'challenge' the EU has of course listened to their experts, who happen to be the people who have most to gain from it.
YES, where are the eu initiatives to provide free sheltered/heated/cooled public hangout spaces for kids, where they also have free access to food and drink
also, I'm old enough to remember the government scare campaigns from the 80s and 90s like "It's 4PM. Do you know where your teenager is? If they're not at home, they're probably DOING DRUGS. 😡"
I had more friends that were not at my school. I think back then it was (at least in Germany) easier to meet people from other schools in the afternoon than it is today. The schoolkids I know today spend most of their online time socializing as fas as I'm aware.
Also I had a bunch of online friends that lived too far away, and to some I chatted on a daily basis.
I know, back then the internet was different, but it seems to me this could be addressed by "better parenting", see next post.
Strong memories of being made to stop reading and go out to play with the other kids (with whom I had little in common) when on camping holiday.
Still feels bizarre to me that my mum was *worried* about how much time I spent reading, while constantly thrusting me into social situations (like Guides and Brownies) where I wasn't welcome. Whether I wanted to do it (and WHY I didn't want to do it) was not considered relevant.
If your kid doesn't *want* to socialise, ask *why*.
Oh my god, we are even debating if spending +6 h a day in front of a computer or a mobile phone while your muscles atrophy, you develop scoliosis or worse and hinder your social abilities (important for development) is good or bad.
And even more, we are pretending most of that usage isn’t brain rot in TikTok. If it wasn’t MAYBE you will have a point, just MAYBE.
Socialization and movement (sports) are important. Full stop.
Same people wanted to ban Dungeons and Dragons when I was a teen due to Satanic Panic + because their kids were spending too much time on it.
Same people wanted to rate records, so they could be banned from big retail, because they were afraid of what their kids listened to.
I'm sure the same type of people wanted to ban Rock & Roll 20 years prior. And Jazz before that.
Basically - anything the kids are doing that doesn't correspond with being little carbon copies of their parents sends some percentage of adults into a massive tizzy. Same as it ever was.
All that said, I worried a lot about how my kids spent their time online and the fact that it was damn near impossible to filter between "on the phone/computer doing homework" and "on my phone/computer playing games or on instagram". (Parental controls? More like absolute garbage that do not work.)
I do also think big tech social media is worse for kids than what we got up to as kids, but that is just as true for adults as it is for kids.
I think this is predicated on an assumption that extended online activity causes harm. I wish they would focus instead on removing the structural reasons for this.
realistically in my home town we never really had a third place to meet up outside of school. it was school, hang out outside, get together at a friend's house. oftentimes I just stayed home and read books.
Around here a teenager going outside often means a concern they're doing something they shouldn't. There is a mugga thankfully at the end of my road but definitely not enough spaces for teens.
As a parent of two teens (13/15 rn) this is very relevant... so far we have kept some simple time limits/reminders on phones. I have not set limits on PCs. I do poke my head around their doors to have a chat occasionally!
Mostly they ask for more phone time, and they get it up to a point. It is a boundary to learn to regulate themselves, which is our intention a d they understand this. I expect to remove this limit soon.
kind of a sidenote but when these kind of arguments resurface I remember how the parents usually were when I was having my swimming lessons as a child in 1984 - almost every one hidden behind a broadsheet newspaper rather than watching the pool. Plus ca change etc :)
Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (Freitag, 18. September 2026, 10:12)
If your child overwhelmingly does one thing with their entire free time to the neglect of other things - even if it is studying - that should be a concern, because you want to raise humans who are capable of balancing responsibilities, healthy social interaction and pursuing passions. The answer is not about numbers, it's about developing a correct attitude about things in life.
also consider the variety of cultures you get exposure to online. In-person you mostly meet people from your neighbourhood whereas online you meet them from all around the world and learn things you could not in your own area.
I spent loads of time as a kid, when I might have been going outside, doing ham radio. That was a sort of social network before the social networks of today existed. But it was indoors.
I never really understood why "outdoors" had such prestige in some peoples' minds.
Why did we have sports days, and not physics days?
... The concept of being online and meeting people is still 🤯 for the normative conservatives. Especially because it empowers the disenfranchised hyperdivergents to find their compatibles, team up and develop superpowers...
my teen years were not so long ago, so i can ponder for some perspective.
we hung out on saturdays at starbucks. as a group we could not afford to hang out at starbucks, but i had been bankrolled by a starbucks card, so we took advantage of the free refills on the black coffee to look busy. we chose a quieter store quite deliberately and would leave once all the tables were consumed, which got us in the good books of the manager, a student from the univerisy, who used to let us loiter there more with less table tax when it was not so busy. it was incredibly calculated.
sometimes we would hang out at the food court at the shopping centre. the security guards who walked loops would move you on if you did not have food, so our approach was to buy 99p cheeseburgers, and take a small bit from each per loop of the security guard. this ruse worked for about 6 months, but eventually they became wise to the fact we hung around there for hours.
subway was sort of shit-tier for meeting places: i had to buy everyone's food, and we generally couldn't keep a table for long before we were asked to move. but it was at least outside of the rain. this was probably the least value for money meeting place, but at least we could use student discount.
if the starbucks was busy and we had been kicked out of the food court, our next best option was a multi-storey car park. it was not a nice place to hang out, but it was at least out of the rain. black coffee from the starbucks helped warm our fingers when it was icy cold. it was monitored by CCTV and after about 30 minutes, a council worker had a 50/50 chance of appearing from the room downstairs, and moving us on. this was less likely on sundays.
if the weather was particularly good, we could go down by the river. this seemed to attract some attention from the local constabulary, who may eventually ask us to move on, but at a much smaller chance, regardless of whether certain aromas from combustible plants were emitted in the general vicinity.
but that was sort of it for meeting places, once college had kicked out for the day.
when it was open, the college library was a fantastic place because it was not a totally silent area, only the back room was silent. otherwise the canteen did well. the campus was only open 8am-5pm, so after then you were in less luck.
but otherwise, it was sometimes cold, dark, windy, wet, and depressing. so we hung around on irc instead, unless the weather was good, or we had a mission such as visiting maplin.
i sometimes wonder what it would have been like, if there was a suitable free place where we could meet and be sociable. most importantly, the social spaces should be free. there is a theme in all of our locations that we went to, where there is an expectation of a transaction, be it food, coffee, something else. my friends sometimes barely had the money for the bus, let alone to pay a tax on occupying some space. that was the hardest part, and influenced our decisions on where to hang out a lot. it was also not acceptable to hang out at home, some of us each had different reasons why.
something also on my mind, is that simply "opening a youth club" like people sometimes suggest won't fix this. it will be what, one club of a small proportion of a particular group, with not much mixing of other groups like you could see in say, the food court, or loitering at the river. perhaps one group wants to avoid another? (social dynamics are weird) so maybe the answer is multiple spaces. i also worry that such spaces might be constrained to only certain hours, much like how we could only use the college campus within certain hours, which never seemed to align well to when we actually had downtime.
so i suppose that also drove our preference for irc too...
The version of online teens are experiencing the version made by adults. If you believe it's bad being online then be an adult that helps fix it.
During lockdown my kids spend a lot of time online. One was in her room for hours and I was concerned. They she came out after learning all about Victoria clothes and had hand made a shirt and then a walking skirt. The others were playing Minecraft and Robolox with their friends while on voice chat. Online worked for them.
Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (Freitag, 18. September 2026, 12:18)
my thoughts on this are complex. I spent a LOT of my childhood in books, but also a lot outside in random nearby wild spaces, completely unsupervised.
There's a distinct health benefit to children spending time in wild spaces and sunshine and groups of other children. Learning to love the real world a little helps them make better decisions later.
also very curious whether that 4-6 hours includes time spent playing with friends. Just because they play in a virtual space doesn't mean they're not socializing.
as a parent who himself grew up with too much screen time, I try to limit my kids screen time, but I also recognize how the quality of screen time is also a major factor, and I parent accordingly
I think the major problem is that regulators are focusing entirely on just one head of the hydra (screen time and phone addiction) and focusing on just fighting that one head instead of focusing on the body of the hydra. Yes every head of the hydra is a nasty beast inofitself, and yes it's an achievement to defeat one head, but if you know your mythology, you cut off one head two more replace it.
I think the body of the hydra is the advertising surveillance economy. The server capacity to support billions of people using platforms for multiple hours per day is so much more than the server capacity for billions of people to use platforms for multiple minutes a day. Platforms only refine themselves for this level of addiction because it's profitable, and if their profit model was something other than advertising and data harvesting they would actually *want* users using their platforms less!
I strongly believe this is why the legislation trying to create privacy protections, limit technology addiction, etc. has been largely ineffectual. They aren't focused on the problem they're focused on the symptoms! The EU cut off the data harvesting head of the hydra with the GDPR and two more replaced it as companies still found ways to compliantly harvest and sell data to maintain their business models. Countries are passing age verification bills to cut off the head of childhood smartphone addiction just to create more heads in loss of privacy and the logical effects of the age verification bills themselves!
Anyways I've rambled enough, but obviously this is something I care about and I hope more can start to see the forest for the trees
Right, and you wonder about that because just because your a teenager online, doesn't mean your not being poductive in some way, but of course people are gonna just automatically assume teens are goofing off when they aren't, or even if they are doing good they will dismiss it because of age. Its honestly terrible for sure, as well, teens don't have places to hang out with each other, so it doesn't help when there isn't anywhere for teens to go, so being online is the best they have.
> what is the "acceptable" amount of time for a teenager to spend online each day?
I'd rather ask: What's the acceptable time for ANYBODY to spent online every day.
> I am far more sociable online then offline.
Me, too, but frankly, in the end it mostly feels like it must feel having sex with a dummy: Empty. I yearn for the focus I had decades ago, where I only had a couple of friends, but we met regularily and when we did I had books to read or projects to finish or time to dream.
Yes, that's also a particular world view, albeit a different one. What I feel today, is, that even non-sociable people might be better of not replacing being non-sociable by online-sociability, but by just doing the non-sociable things they love.
> Where are the local free places where teenagers can get to and hang out, safely, in the warm?
They are gone. Where they were club houses, they're replaced by social media now and the mall halls are patrolled by security. Public spaces have become less.
"Where are the local free places where teenagers can get to and hang out, safely, in the warm?" *
And, in absence of these, socialising with friends online does seem like a natural place to gravitate to. Never having had the other, kids don't know what they're missing, by not being in-person. 🤷♀️
* I asked my library if folks can talk in there, they said yes, they have conversation areas! Good for adults but kids need room to move & be noisy, too.
Phones are bad for the brain, which is not true of books. And yes, going outside is good and free. Of course there are exceptions, if you are allergic to grass, you shouldn't touch grass, but exceptions are just that
I would phrase it "being outside" or "doing something that requires mental energy or creativity" scrolling TikTok, or algorithm driven for addictiveness SM feeds
interacting with the physical world in almost(!) any way stimulates brain in much more harmonic way than sitting and staring at few square inches (a foot at most) of screen. especially wrt social interactions.
@x0 Oh you're not particularly well-read on historical pessimists, are you? Because people definitely did complain about books, in the same way they now complain about smartphones. Bicycles, record players, walkmans, even newspaper crosswords were also on the list.
My partner echoed a TikTok going around about how, in English, we don’t have a dedicated word for “the day after tomorrow” but we do have them for silly things like “throwing someone out a window”
After some research she found “Overmorrow” from Olde English for the first one, and I think it’s time to bring it back.
I've not seen that for 30+ years. We tried to revive overmorrow back in college. It never took. I think sign language was a large part of its failings. Almost all of us learnt BSL so we just used the sign for overmorrow. Nobody overheard us to question it. When almost your whole social circle doesn't speak, very few others approach you so the circle doesn't widen. So yeah, sign language stopped it being used, at least verbally.
I should add, sigh language has a sign for the day after overmorrow too. And the day after, and the day after. Repeat until you get a dedicated sign for 9 days time. Come to think of it, it goes both ways. There are individual signs for 9 days ago right through to 9 days time. Technically you can keep going. 0-20 can be signed as numbers on one hand without additional signs, after that it counts in 10's but 21 would be two-one. Welcome to the world of pedantry.
Older versions of english seem more useful than current english, one I use a lot personally is nibling, kind of like sibling but for your nephew(s) and niece(s).
I learned recently that Korean has a specific word for 10,000 of a thing and wondered why we don't have one. It turns out we do - a myriad! I knew the word but didn't know that was its specific meaning
I studied Thai I but I never learned the word for 10,000 because I never had a need to use it except when paying rent, which I did by going to the bank with a load of cash to deposit directly into my landlady's account
every month I'd go to the teller and explain (in Thai) what I wanted to do and they'd ask "how much" and I would say "ten one-thousands" and every month they would laugh and say "you mean ten thousand?" and I'd say "oh right, yeah, that"
and then I'd proceed to forget that word again
this happened once a month, eighteen times until I left the country
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it took 25+ years of searches, but i finally struck paydirt this morning: a legit, retail copy of FirstClass BBS for the macintosh
the backstory: in 1995, my redneck farm school managed to get an entire lab of twenty Mac LC's, and one of the machines was tucked off in a corner to run "FirstClass" for the entire school using an external 14.4k Global Village Teleport modem.
i was already a bbs kid by this point, but i had never heard of FC. all of the boards i visited were PC/ANSI boards running software like Oblivion/2, Iniquity, PCBoard or Wildcat. i had never even *heard* of a macintosh bbs. our computer teacher managed to get a landline number for the modem, and encouraged me to call it from home.
when i connected from home, i was nonplussed - the board was black/white ASCII with some of the worst menus i had ever seen. i browsed a few of the conferences and logged out. a "lamer board" if i had ever seen one.
the next day, i made my opinion unswervingly clear to my computer teacher: "Your board sucks Mr. M!"
He chuckled, "What? First Class is great! It's you DOS guys that suck."
he motioned to a nearby LC and opened a program called FirstClass Client. it showed a login dialog; he hammered in his u/p and a few seconds later, he was logged in to the BBS over the LAN.
...... except, it was all graphical! the entire board was a rich mac OS gui. navigation between file areas and message conferences was by opening and closing windows, and clicking on buttons. no ascii/ANSI characters. downloading a file was just plain drag and drop from the server's folder to your desktop.
i had never seen anything like it: a bbs that functioned more like an operating system and windowing environment. it was a *decade* ahead of anything i had seen in ms-dos
that experience left a huge impression on me. i never found any bbs that felt as good as FC before or afterward, and spent years trying to find a legit copy of it. because it was insanely expensive ($800+) it was mostly sold to educational and corporate institutions, and very few copies ever showed up on ebay. until today. i can't wait to receive this in a few weeks, and begin documenting and archiving the contents.
fwiw - i wrote a much longer version of this story, and many others about the 90s bbs era, in my book Mages & Modems: A Childhood Well-Wasted in the Golden Age of Personal Computers, Games, and Internet Piracy: tomotama.com/books
aaaaa so cool :D It's the best feeling when after decades of searching you finally find the XYZ and can actually obtain it. I have such memories of FirstClass (and Excalibur, which felt like kind of a Windows knockoff of FirstClass to me back then) BBSs way back.
@sen woww 🙏 a fellow firstclass user! there are so few of us 🥲
my gods, excalibur had a gui? i had NO idea! i had two local excalibur boards, and both of them connected with the usual ansi menus. i had no idea they were supposed to have a gui client! 😬
Oh, wow, I’ve never heard of FirstClass, or *any* bbs with this level of gui at the time. I *immediately* want to know what the client/server protocol was.
@a yes! it was a custom protocol written specifically for FC, byte-tuned for insane efficiency. the best part is that it let you create a gateway so you could build a network of BBSes
Neat, I didn't know FirstClass could even be used without the client software. My high school had a FirstClass server that was used for the staff email system for the whole district.
holy crap! I remember helping set that up at my high school! And then shoulder surfing the admin password so I could set it up better How many people of my generation got their start there...
Seit dem Fotoshooting mit der Vogelspinne bin ich meine Phobie ziemlich los, aber trotzdem fand ich es gemein von der Kleinen, im dunklen Treppenhaus direkt neben dem Lichtschalter auf mich zu warten.
Re-upping this because I'm still looking. At this point I'm willing to buy from Europe, to ship to North America, in order to ship back to Europe. Surely not what the framers of the PPWR had in mind, but here we are. #AskFedi #ppwr
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Hallo ihr Racker,
ich hab ein paar Neuigkeiten im Shop: Es gibt jetzt endlich Jimothy Kunstdrucke und einiges mehr! 🥳 Außerdem sind auch wieder die Mimimi und Meinungs-Tassen restocked juuuhuuuu
Jahrelang haben Klimatologen Szenarien durchgerechnet und es war immer schlimm. Niemanden hat's geschert. MS-DOS-Manfred hat gut vom Wirtschaftswachstum gelebt, viel Auto und Flugzeug, zwei mal im Jahr Urlaub, lieber konservativ gewählt, das volle Programm eben.
Jetzt, wo die Katastrophe sichtbar ist, erklärt mir MS-DOS-Manfred, dass es schlimm wird.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
Versteh ich nicht, was hat Freude am Fußball mit Nationalstolz zu tun und seit wann gibts jetzt wieder schlechten und guten Nationalstolz? Ist das nicht hinlänglich geklärt, dass so was immer zu Rassismus und Nationalismus führt?
Never before did the US of A see such a compassionate president as Mr Trump. Right?
"President Donald Trump told North Carolinians that he'll withhold FEMA funding needed for hurricane relief unless the candidate he endorsed wins the midterms."
Seit Monaten kriege ich massiv Phishing-Anrufe von "Paypal". Call-Blocker installiert, aber dennoch stört jeder abgewiesene Anruf zum Beispiel die Wiedergabe von Hörbüchern.
Ja, ich habe aufgegeben und eine neue Nummer bei #fraenk gebucht.
Und was kommt heute rein? Der erste "Paypal"-Anruf auf der neuen Nummer von "Privat"
bei mir kann ich einstellen, dass Anrufe ohne Nummer gar nicht erst angenommen werden. Wäre das bei Dir auch eine Option? Geht bei Androide wie auch iOS.
Friedrich Merz beleidigt jede Woche eine neue Bevölkerungsgruppe durch (zuletzt die Eltern), und wundert sich, dass der emotionale Kontakt fehlt. Donald Trump beschimpft und bestraft jeden früheren USA-Partner und tobt jetzt, weil sich die EU und Kanada näher kommen.
Hätten die beiden doch mal die Schulhof-Weisheit aus meiner Pubertät gehört: „wer bumsen will, muss freundlich sein.“
Interessanterweise hat sich kürzlich der CDU-Fraktionsvorsitzende hier im Landtag recht deutlich für diese neuartige Technologie ausgesprochen:
"Wir stehen als CDU für Technologieoffenheit. Als Kfz-Technikermeister sage ich Ihnen aber, dass sich am Ende der Elektromotor durchsetzen wird. Das steht außer Frage. "
Im Herbst stehen die ersten Haushaltsverhandlungen der neuen Koalition an. CDU-Fraktionschef Vogt will bei der Landesverwaltung sparen – und bei einem Projekt, das den Grünen sehr am Herzen liegt: bei der Sanierung der Stuttgarter Oper.
Als Blau zum vollen Kühlschrank kam schien die Erleuchtung wundersam: "Bin eh' ständig dicht und schließe ihn nicht! Dann frier'n die Gletscher wieder an."
Rowdy
Als Antwort auf Keyboards • • •