[ceronman]

The elderly, the kids, the teenagers, the adults. Screen addiction is a pandemic. The biggest one humanity has ever seen.

The richest, most powerful organizations are spending billions every month to make it more addictive, to reach more people.

[SoftTalker]

I'm not sure I agree. We had all these complaints about TV going back to the 1970s (the earliest clear memories I have). It was called "the plug in drug" and "the boob tube."

Homebound and housewives used to watch hours of game shows and soap operas all day.

If a kid liked to read, some parents would tell them to "get your head out of that book and go outside."

It's just something to do to fill the boredom.

[majormajor]

We've had those complaints for a long time, and associated stereotypical problems with them - like daydrinking housewives. And now we have increased loneliness, mental health issues, etc. So maybe there's something to the complaints. Maybe sticking your face in media cloistered away at home 24/7 is worse for the mental health of most people than socializing, having to get out there and find ways to entertain yourself with others.

If you never practice making and having friends, how are you ever going to have them?

[kakacik]

TV is still addictive, and it was. I felt it myself in 80s and 90s, good content was rare and I had to set an alarm in the middle of the night to watch some good stuff. And stick around 5 minute block of ads. Active screens, especially ones always in the pocket or on the table, are way more addictive.

It takes some... special mindset to be polite to not see it literally everywhere, the scale and intensity of it, the addiction of kids especially. They have no freakin' defenses and often didn't experience normal life, ever. Ask any child psychologist about their opinion of screens among kids before say 14, and even afterwards.

It can be fought, we are quite successful so far with our kids and we have quite a few parents around us with same mindset, but we have to lead by example.

Easiest is to unplug from active social cancers (fb, instagram, tiktok or whatever kids are addicted to these days). Ignore most of the news, read about topic from source far away from place/country affected. TV can serve some quality content but one has to do some effort, no ads. Computer games are a waste of time and life (I know, I've wasted half of my childhood with them, 100x that for any online gaming), if one is bored then get a sport, passion, read a book, force yourself into some social action, whatever is vastly better. Then comes along junk food, again parents lead by examples.

Life is freakin' short, its pretty sad view to waste it on all above in more than a minimal fashion. Its sort of life success in 'look I am not a homeless person or heroine addict', but just a good fat notch above that. Literally anybody can do better.

[kjkjadksj]

You weren’t watching TV every free instant you had, like at a red light, on the escalator, while using the urinal, etc. I mean some of these people must not think at all. All free time they could have spent daydreaming or planning or whatever is just taken up by the dumb app in tiny dopamine driving chunks of time. This has to have some effect on brain wiring over time. Just giving yourself absolutely no time for your own thoughts.

[bdangubic]

TV in the ‘70s cannot possibly be compared to what we are up against today…

[enraged_camel]

Nah, this misses the point entirely. The scale of the problem today is multiple orders of magnitude greater, for several reasons.

First, TVs were stationary. Unlike smartphones, you couldn't take them wherever you went. If you were wealthier, you could somewhat compensate for this by having multiple TVs, for example in the bedroom in addition to the living room. But whenever you stepped outside your house the TV did not come with you. Places like doctors offices or hotel lobbies might have them in waiting rooms but that was really it in terms of the average person's exposure.

Second, TV programming was not explicitly designed to be addictive. Sure, studios wanted people to watch their programs because that's how they got ad revenue, but they had neither sophisticated tools nor the methods to dial addictiveness to the max. They did not have algorithms, for example, to serve you personalized content based on your tastes and desires. You picked from a limited selection of what was available in that week's programming.

Third, TVs did not have built-in mechanisms to demand re-engagement when you had them turned off. No such thing as notifications. At best you had blurbs about what is next on the program, but those were both channel-specific and also required your TV to be on. So people were not constantly bombarded with micro dopamine hits like they are today.

I could go on, but yeah, your rebuttal does not stand up to critical scrutiny. What we have today is a global scale addiction. It is absolutely nothing like TVs or newspapers/books before them.

[insane_dreamer]

It was bad then. But it's much worse now because it's ubiquitous -- you're carrying it around in your pocket to fill every empty moment. Not to mention that back then, your "favorite shows" were on a couple of times a day if you were lucky. Now, it's 24/7.

The quantity and availability of "visual entertainment" for me as a child of the 70s pales in comparison to what my young kids have available to them. As parents we're continuously fighting it, including shutting off the router at set times.

[bogdanoff_2]

What exactly do you not agree with?

[w0de0]

Too true. Then we elected a reality TV star president. Just ‘cause humanity survived doesn’t mean it thrived.

[HPsquared]

People did watch too much TV, and it was bad.

[GeoAtreides]

We had opium dens in the past, why not fentanyl dens today?

It's just something to do to fill the boredom.

(That's to say: Just because something was mildly bad in the past doesn't mean that the current, somewhat similar, thing in the present isn't horrifically bad. The issues are orthogonal +- 5deg max)

[nytesky]

There maybe something more than that. Maybe modern life and the great financial crisis have put us all into more stress, more work, so that we don’t have time for real relationships. It’s part of why politics have shifted the way they do.

I am VERY online, but I don’t usual traditional social media. I mostly read Hackers News and a DC parenting forum which is pretty no-holds bar, but is a website out of the 90s so not really capable of infinite scroll or dark patterns (other than the addictive and open ended topics).

I also read a lot of news like NYT and watch TV like Apple TV, but it’s hardly the dopamine drip of TikTok or Instagram. Yet I am ashamed of my 8 hours of screen time despite my best efforts. I used to reach out to friends more but as I get older it feels intrusive and hard to make conversations.

[blfr]

This explains too much. I remember the Internet before corporate dominance and it was just as, if not more, magical then.

There's just something about having a beautiful OLED screen, the tablet-like shape, touch interface, and access to all of human knowledge/news/entertainment. I remember when people used to have a tv on when they lounged around the house, or cooked, or cleaned. My parents even had a little special splash proof CRT TV in the kitchen.

The modern screens are just that, except also much more convenient and with million times more content, and personalized, and wireless ANC headphones if you like. This is it, this is peak human information environment. It's not a conspiracy of corporations.

Much like obesity is primarily driven by abundance of calories, another fight we won with our natural environment. The highly processed foods and marketing are just barely making a dent at the edge, and are largely a zero-sum game between food manufacturers.

[kace91]

I have noticed that better devices just lead me to more time spent in apps I don’t really enjoy, just because I like the device itself.

I’ve had success consciously worsening my experience, doing stuff like reducing color intensity with accessibility options or using the web version of an app for added friction, which is ridiculous but here we are.

[JKCalhoun]

I disagree, I guess, except for your comment: "and with million times more content"

That's it in a nutshell, I think. We had television at home since I was maybe 10 years old but the content that would interest a kid was very neatly time-slotted to small segments of each day (with Sunday being essentially an entertainment desert to a kid).

So TV was boring most of the day so we went outside, or if Winter, found ways to amuse ourselves indoors. I drew pictures, played board games with my sister, wired up a circuit with my 65-in-1 electronics kit…

[rixed]

This explains too little. I remember TV before corporate dominance and it was nowhere as bad as cable-TV.

It's hard to believe but initially the content was much thoughful, with actual cultural gems produced for it. Then that content got pushed further and further late at night and eventually disapeared. We can categorize that trend as some kind of "natural erosion" but that'd be ignoring the various forces that fought to change that medium, one of which may be lazy humans relinquishing their soul to the beautiful screen, but another sure one is profit seeking through selling advertisement.

Also, I remember a time when bringing a handheld video game at school would be terrible for a kid's social status. Now it's socially acceptable to spend time in video games.

[deegles]

Would you characterize opiate addiction as an abundance of neurotransmitters? You're missing the forest for the trees.

[amelius]

Yes, we all have a TV on our office desks now.

Something we could not have imagined a few decades ago.

[lapcat]

> Much like obesity is primarily driven by abundance of calories, another fight we won with our natural environment. The highly processed foods and marketing are just barely making a dent at the edge, and are largely a zero-sum game between food manufacturers.

Who is getting obese from fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, and the like?

People will eat a whole bag of salted potato chips or a whole container of ice cream in a sitting, but who eats a whole bag of oranges in a sitting?

[noduerme]

Can we stop redefining-down the word "pandemic" please? I think enough people are already going to stick their fingers in their ears and go "na na na" when the next actual pandemic virus comes along. Maybe just skip the comparison and say screen addiction is the most dangerous addiction humanity's ever seen. Then it just sounds like a normal hyperbole. Or try these:

"Screen addiction is an apocalypse"

"Screen addiction is a genocide"

...

[JKCalhoun]

It will interesting to see what term historians use. I suppose it depends on how disastrous they see our societal fetish for technology.

[everdrive]

>Can we stop

No, that's not possible. Your comment will be seen by a tiny minority of people on the internet and is a drop in the ocean. The impulse to persuade social change works in small groups, and the frustration you're feeling is completely feckless on the internet. (ie, if you were saying "can we stop [thing] in a small workplace you might actually have success. Out here on the internet this is really impossible, and is a mismatch between our intuitions and reality.)

[crossbody]

Redefining "pandemic" is basically word violence!

/s

Fully agree with you comment. I am shocked that the hyperbole with the classic "greedy corporations are eating us alive" empty narrative got so many upvotes here

[palata]

> The biggest one humanity has ever seen.

Sugar, anyone?

[InMice]

Thank you for saying it. Ever be around to watch kids grow up or have them yourself? The exposure and cultural, regulatory control that the junk food industry has here in USA is kind of amazing. Especially in schools. It's really insane but it's become accepted here it's normal for kids, toddlers to consume hundreds of grams of added/free sugars per day. Even infants if you think about it, when ever in human history does an infant grow up sucking down pulverized fruit packets multiple times a day, 365 days a year? This is totally normal and acceptable for most people today.

[safety1st]

I know it's going to generate a bunch of responses and consume a bunch of attention, but what value does this drive-by comment add to the discussion, really?

Yeah we know sugar is bad. The article's about screens. It's not really important whether sugar addiction or screen addiction is bigger. This isn't worth fighting over.

They can both be bad and you can post an article about sugar for talking about sugar.

[rolisz]

Did you ever go and eat a bag of pure sugar? Or rather a bag of sweets, which usually contain other stuff, not just sugar.

We're not addicted to sugar, the "sugar cravings" are mostly to combos of carbs and fats.

Eating enough turns off my "sugar cravings". Eating lots of protein makes any craving for sugar disappear (I survived last Christmas by not eating any cakes, just lots of meat).

[badgersnake]

Breathing

[Broken_Hippo]

> If people dont know what to do with themselves its kinda their own issue.

That "kinda" is important. I didn't have the freedom to just do what I wanted to when I was a young teen. 14-year old me couldn't just take a walk. I'm in my late 40s now - my mother was particularly strict for the time period.

People have children. Some folks really are stuck at home, taking care of someone, with a life peppered with boredom. You know, like parents. Screens have a way of decorating those bits of time and lessening the monotony of it all.

Not to mention the effects of being poor - I'm not even talking outright poverty here. Just a point that you simply have to budget somewhat carefully and don't have a lot of extra money. One of the great things about the internet is the entertainment built right in. You pay for the communication access society and businesses expect from you, you get entertainment as well.

Societal expectations might also keep you in. If you need an app to make sure that your child isn't left out, it might mean that you don't have the same options to simply quit something without harming innocent folks along the way.

Other folks have touched on the addiction bit, so no need to repeat here.

[palata]

The one thing to know about addiction is that everyone is different. If you think that it's easy not to be an addict, you may just lack empathy.

It's easy for you to quit smoking? Good for you. But it's very clearly not the case for most people. Feels to me a bit like saying "it's easy to be rich, you just have to be born in a rich family like me".

[rixed]

> Same reason as to why a lot of people smoke, they cant bear being bored for 5 minutes. Its incredibly easy to quit too

For you information, nicotine is generally considered a highly addictive substance (see for instance: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/drugs-a-to-z) Although various people do seem to experience it very differently, and some indeed have reported to me that they feel almost no addiction. From others, I've heard such things as "I've quit smoking 30 years ago, and for 30 years I've been craving for a cigaret". My personnal experience is that it takes a good, dedicated several weeks long effort to quit; I haven't had a lot of addictions in my life but this one was by far the hardest to get rid of. But the effect of nicotine, or lack thereof, are benign, maybe that's why it gives you the impression that it's not very addictive. Turns out, the most addictive substances are not necessarily the ones with the strongest effects.

As to who is lacking discipline, well I guess we would all be better off with more discipline. Including you, who lack the discipline to do the mental work to research a topic you know little about before you comment on it, and most importantly the mental work needed to see things from other's perspective. ;)

[JKCalhoun]

Wow, did you actually smoke for a decade or more? I did and kicking the smoking habit was the hardest thing I have done in my life.

Even after I quit I wanted a cigarette every day for a year—the battle was each day, for hundreds of days. At the time I would often dream too that I was smoking — and continued to for another few years.

Even now I think if I were told I had a year to live, I would be tempted to light up again.

[itsalwaysgood]

Smoking addiction and screen addiction are two very different things.

It's everyone's own problem of course. But it becomes society's problem when everyone is affected.

[dns_snek]

This is an incredibly ignorant take on addiction. It's never a choice - by definition.

> Its incredibly easy to quit too, people just lack discipline.

Hey, do you want to chat about how when I tried to quit nicotine, I went through 2 weeks of physical and mental hell, how exhausted I felt not being able to sleep more than an hour without waking up, still feeling exhausted, with mental fog so severe that made quitting feel impossible?