Teenagers are averaging over 4.5 hours per day dorking around on their smartphones, not including time spent texting or talking. So over at Techdirt Glyn Moody writes about the question specifically asked to Apple about what to do about gadget addiction among youth.
In an open letter to Apple, two of its major shareholders, Jana Partners and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, have raised concerns about research that suggests young people are becoming "addicted" to high-tech devices like the iPhone and iPad, and the software that runs on them. It asks the company to take a number of measures to tackle the problem, such as carrying out more research in the area, and providing more tools and education for parents to help them deal with the issue. The letter quotes studies by Professor Jean M. Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University, who is also working with the shareholders in an effort to persuade Apple to do more
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:39AM
I have a power. Yes, a power. What kind of power, you ask? The power to see. The power to understand. The power to experience. I'm the Assteller. I can see the future of your ass!
You're having an enjoyable time on the beach. Suddenly, every other person vanishes and you alone are left. You take a look around, and see a small lizard beanie baby on the ground about 15 feet away from you, which you somehow realize is an evil, sentient entity.
You're in a daring mood, so you decide to make a high-stakes bet. "I betcha can't lick my buttcheeks!" you scream. You're confident that the lizard beanie baby could never slurp your buttcheeks from such a distance, as evidenced by your arrogant smile. Then, the lizard beanie replies in a confident tone, "I bet I can!" The lizard beanie baby sticks its tongue out about one inch, and you begin laughing at the futility of its actions. However, you soon hear something slap your buttcheek, and spit begins to dribble down it. It's as if most of the lizard beanie baby's tongue is invisible and that it curved around you and phased through your pants in order to slurp your cheeks. You are confounded and dismayed by this unexpected result.
You hastily decide to make an even more daring bet: "I betcha can't lick my buttcrack!" The lizard beanie baby immediately replies, with just as much confidence as before, "I bet I can!" Just like previously, the beanie baby stuck out its tongue about an inch, and a few seconds later, a sound of something smacking your buttcrack is heard. Spit. Spit is dribbling down your precious buttcrack! You are furious. You decide to make the most daring bet imaginable: "I betcha can't lick my butthole!" "I bet I can!" the lizard replied. It stuck its tongue out about an inch, a sound of something smacking your butthole is heard, and spit dribbles down from your prized hole...
This insect. This insolent insect! How dare he slurp your precious hole! You're going to dispense justice upon him, oh yes. Retribution! You walk up to the lizard beanie baby and try to kick him, but he vanishes up your pant leg. You see a lump crawling upwards under your pants, so you try to block it with your raw hands. However, it just slips right under your hands as if they are nothing, and continues moving upwards. You panic and try to rip off your pants, but for some reason, they cannot be removed. The lump continues crawling, and finally reaches your bare asshole...
Nothing. Nothing's happening. You're extremely nervous because you keep thinking that something terrible will happen, but nothing has happened as of yet. When? When will it makes its move!? Then, it happens. Tremendous amounts of tickle are inflicted upon your asshole! What is it doing!? The lizard beanie baby is... crawling in a rectangular pattern on your asshole, stopping momentarily at each corner of the imaginary rectangle! It tickles your ass and makes a sound like a rattlesnake whenever it moves. Stop! No! Don't tickle my ass! Your pleas are ignored by the malicious toy, and it just laughs evilly as it continues tickling your ass to an extent never before seen...
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:41AM
Firmware updates can be distributed to irradiate the gonads of every gadget user. Since old people are already postmenopausal or sterile anyway, there will be no effect on old people, who are the only people who matter.
Old people already have our nest eggs, and young people are useless shit taking up space.
Fuck young people, Soylent old people got ours.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:45AM (12 children)
They should do everything in their power to encourage it. They're a business not an interesctional feminist support group.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:54AM (9 children)
Fuck yeah I love running cigarette ads on TV. Who gives a shit if tobacco is addictive and kills kids. It's their own fucking fault for smoking so much so why shouldn't I make bank by helping fools to kill themselves. More money for me, and money is the only important thing in life.
Child labor is great too, and I especially enjoy seeing the working kids drop dead from overwork on Christmas Day.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:58AM (3 children)
Shit, that reminds me, I need to make The Roomie's kids go shovel the driveway tomorrow while I watch from inside with a nice hot cup of coffee.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:05AM (2 children)
I grind children's bones to powder and use it to de-ice my driveway.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:25AM (1 child)
Better invest in lots of roundup. Bones are mostly calcium phosphate... an excellent fertilizer ... and you are gonna get weeds everywhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:38AM
I have a paved concrete driveway. Stupid kid. Get off my lawn and get into my bone chipper.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:44AM (4 children)
We banned child labor because unions were run by non-children who didn't want the competition.
Child labor gives kids a valued purpose. Modern children have pointless lives. Nothing they do brings income for the family. At best, they can do chores. We have had an odd obsession with self-esteem, but taken away the path to earning it.
Children tend to set up diabolical political structures. They bully each other to fight for rank. This is greatly reduced when children have a unified genuine purpose. Some of the potential bullying urge gets diverted toward being the most valued team member.
Children can be resented by parents because children take up resources. Child labor solves that problem.
Education is not an unquestionable good. It is an investment that can be a mistake if wasted. As long as a child is learning skills that will cause total lifetime earnings to increase, the child should remain in school. The expected higher rate of earnings has to compensate for the years without earnings. Suppose that people work until age 70. They can start at age 10, 20, or 30. That is grade 5, some college, or hopefully a doctorate. The length of a career would be 60, 50, or 40. We can see right off that children who stay in school must earn a higher pay, and this is made worse by inflation. Some, generally the brighter ones, can make it work. Others are only hurt by staying in school. We're being cold snobs ("Let them eat cake!") when we tell everybody to stay in school.
Some kids, despite the child labor ban, will work. They need to do this. Since legal employment is prohibited, you can imagine what they do. Kids are out there, right now in America, selling drugs and selling their bodies. Some are trained to beg and steal.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:35AM (2 children)
> As long as a child is learning skills that will cause total lifetime earnings to increase, the child should remain in school.
You are mistaking earnings/cash income with value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @07:54AM (1 child)
That had better be some amazing "value" to justify cutting the lifetime earnings of a poor person by 15%.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:20PM
What value to place on learning to think, learning to question received wisdom, learning the origin of the modern world, rejecting superstition for science? Gaining a fluency in reading and writing? Basic arithmetic and trigonometry?
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday January 14 2018, @07:14AM
No, we banned child labour because of a combination of factors. People started caring and bitching, even more important, automation made them surplus.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:59AM
Of course, doing things you like is bad, unless it's going to bars and parties with other people. Introverts are inferior and all of their hobbies are merely addictions. If you have very little desire for socialization, you need to be fixed. Stop liking things that I don't like to a degree that I find objectionable!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:45AM
mo mony, mo mony, mo mony!!!@@#@$#!!!!
"In Living Color!"
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:47AM (6 children)
We got no original ideas or our own, so we are going to invoke the end of the world scenarios and make someone else responsible.
10 years ago the worried kids on computers.
Before that it was kids hogging the family phone.
And that damn crazy music.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:51AM
Negro lynched on baseboard after fight with pregnant mosquito, sources say.
(Score: 2, Funny) by anubi on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:30AM (4 children)
I remember when we kids used to gather in the streets, to hit baseballs with a bat, often breaking neighbor's windows, then run so nobody ever knew who did the deed.
This is a very welcome respite to the mischief *my* generation was doing!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:07AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by blackhawk on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:24PM
I'll be outside the capsules, walking from one to the next, robbing them of their valuables, like their internal organs, bones, ligaments, whatever. Viva la future!
(Score: 5, Informative) by mhajicek on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:02AM (1 child)
I remember when kids could play outside without the neighbors calling the cops.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:15AM
I think the other problem is a group of kids today is seen as a "gang".
In my day, it was just a group of kids.
Seems like the instant you take your eyes off your kids today, some gang recruiter is after them like Jehovah's Witnesses after converts.
The kids aren't wised up enough to see what's going on.
You get older, seen more, and you know exactly what the cult promoters are after. They derive their power from the obedience of whoever they can "lead". Whether it be by physical force, blackmail, or faith of delusion.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MostCynical on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:50AM (2 children)
Shareholders (in it for the dividends): encourage, promote, and improve it.
Concerned Citizens: Stop It! Think Of The Children!
Grumpy older techy types: post on news agglomeration sites, in slightly morally superior tones.
Everyone else: meh.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:53AM
He's the Grinch! The Naaaaaaaaaautical Grinch! He's slimy when he's sleepy, and shitty when he's peepee! He's the Griiiiiiiinch!
Oh, my. The lights are being sucked out of the room! And what will become of your defenseless snap...? Oh, there was an elevator sound! Get him! Tickle his ass!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:17AM
Well, anybody having fun?
Anybody getting hurt?
And if you think today's kids are bad, I am an old coot right now, and the stories I could tell you about the women of my parent's generation... mink stoles.... fancy hats festooned with rare-bird feathers... Buffums, Bullocks, Windsor, Wilshire, High fashion.... absolutely humongous drags on the family finances just to have one-upsmanship among their neighbors.
They had a name for it... "conspicuous consumption". Wanton wastefulness of resources just for show.
Today's kids are nothing compared to some of what my parent's generation were doing... and that crap was one of the reasons my my generation ( of the 60's ) had such a fallout.
That stupid congressionally-fomented war that we were supposed to fight but not supposed to win was the final straw.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:07AM (1 child)
Turn the kids into jobless dependents, more work for everyone else or easy extermination via robot army.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:21AM
Fuck the young people, old people got ours.
SoylentNews is old people
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:37AM (1 child)
Is, of course, to sell more gadgets.
The gadget sellers are in the business of -- wait for it -- selling gadgets. And when they sell more gadgets, business is good.
The agglomerations of people and resources that we call "corporations" exist to maximize profit, not address societal issues.
So why even try talking to those folks? If there's a problem with your kid, then it's *your* responsibility to address it with that kid.
I imagine that most parents are grateful for those 4.5 hours a day. Before mobile/wireless devices, many parents would plop their kids down in front of the television for at least that long every day.
Are there some kids who will have problems interacting with others because their babysitter is a mobile/wireless device? Yes.
Did kids who were just as ignored by their parents when TV was the babysitter have similar issues? Yes.
The problem is bad parenting, not the mechanisms parents use to pacify their children so they don't have to deal with them.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @04:15AM
tl;dr: profit
(Score: 2) by VanessaE on Sunday January 14 2018, @12:07AM
It's not their job nor their place to limit how long one spends on the phone/texting/gaming/etc.