A thing I'm seeing with increasing frequency from the younger members of our community is this like ...
Let me back up.
I work with some folks in their early twenties, and I am having a hard time relating to some of them. Some of them are having a hard time relating to one another.
And the root of this difficulty is propaganda, I think. All of them are constantly bombarded with video propaganda via social media. A lot of it is anti-community propaganda. Most of the media they consume is just about strengthening their disaffiliation with various outgroups. Even the stuff that's about celebrating people is, at least in passing, also about excluding or dehumanizing people.
And, for each of them, the memberships in these various in and out groups is unique. One of them has fallen in to a real trad Christian, 1950s fetishization, one of them watches a lot of stuff premised on the idea that nuerotypical people are an evolutionary dead end, and nuerodivergent people are the path forward...
It's... The specific content isn't what worries me. Like, both of those things aren't great, but the particular contents of the propaganda is irrelevant to my current point (because content can be addressed and deprogrammed.) Regardless of what flavor of self-isolating purity test content they've fallen in to, there are some common themes:
- policing other people's behaviors and desires
- shame for basically any expression of sexuality
- an outsized importance on excluding people
I'm sure there's other stuff, and I know this isn't unique to folks under 25, but it seems to be especially pervasive with them.
Social battles that I thought were long settled are not only coming back up, but also going the wrong way.
And I have to assume that this is, intentional and coordinated or not, an attempt to break any kind of solidarity that might build between people who are dissimilar.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •And the worst part, for me, is that so much of this propaganda is being delivered effectively.
Effective propaganda designs itself so that any attempt to refute it instead reinforces it.
"Oh, you question the need for us to self isolate? Clearly you're secretly a member of that other group." No!
Fuck this.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •We aren't here on this green and blue and increasingly hot orb for any particular reason that I can discern.
But we're here, and we're here together, and we're stuck.
So we owe it to ourselves, and to one another, to hold space for one another, to experience what this life has to offer, and to work together.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Now, you may be asking yourself 'Why would there be a bunch of propaganda targeted at younger adults and teens which appears designed to isolate them, to make them hate one another, and to make them suspicious of anyone who tries to unify them?"
And the answer, I think, is simple. We're living through the dying days of a failing empire. People are easier to control when they're alone. People are easier to keep alone when you've cultivated an idea in their minds that they're correct, and special, and the only way to remain both of those things is to remove anyone who isn't correct and special from their lives.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
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Andrew (Television Executive)
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I feel like that last bit needs to be unpacked.
I work with kids on a volunteer basis. I mostly do reading tutoring, which consists largely of giving these kids situations in which they are motivated to read, and then trying to remove obstacles.
The other part of what I do is focused on helping kids develop healthy and safe relationships with technology.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •A lot of the kids I work with are autistic or have some other kind of learning difference that has left them falling behind other kids their age, but some of the kids I'm working with right now are seemingly NT and reasonably well adjusted. They're smart, but also they're between the ages of 8 and 12 and reading on a first grade level at best.
I work with their teachers and their therapists and their mental health professionals and their parents to figure out what can be done, what motivates them, where they're doing well and what they struggle with.
I did this kind of work less before covid, but some. Since covid, I've kind of stumbled smack in to the middle of it. (One of my closest and oldest friends is dating the director of the special education non-profit affiliated with our local Montessori school. The director is my wife's best friend. Their kids are among the group I'm working with.)
Pre-covid I was mostly working with the children of affluent families as a result of the area that we lived in. These kids mostly didn't have access to technology at all, outside of a classroom setting. Within the classroom setting, that technology access was heavily mediated.
Now I'm working with a combination of fairly affluent kids (it is a private school, after all) and very much not (we're in rural north GA, and associated with a non-profit that provides various needs based scholarships.) It is like I'm living in a different universe though. I don't know how much is covid (I never worked with kids in this area pre-covid), but discounting that, the biggest difference between the DC area kids I was working with 5+ years ago and the kids I'm working with now is technology access.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I'm in a kind of unique position, because I'm not a teacher.
I'm mostly playing games, making puzzles, curating books and video games and movies, and helping parents build strategies for encouraging reading.
I'm doing this with access to these kids teachers, but also their diagnoses and IEPs, and occasionally support from other professionals.
And what I'm seeing is terrifying.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •The first thing I want to point out is that every parent tells me some variation on "oh he's so much better with this stuff than I am" w/r/t tech in general and it's just not true.
None of these kids are good with technology, not even a little bit. Some of them have grown adept at navigating the menus on a Nintendo switch, or have learned some tricks to cover their tracks when they're doing something they're not supposed to on a smartphone, but across the board they have a fundamental lack of understanding of even the basic principles of most of the tech they interact with.
What they're good at is getting to the thing that they want. They're good at this not because they are good at technology, but because they're desperate, and have nothing better to do.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Sensitive content
Over the years, I've done some work with some people who were addicted to various drugs. Meth is the big one around here, but I've worked around and with folks with various chemical dependencies.
Saying these kids are good with technology is like saying those folks were good at chemistry.
What they're good at is getting a fix.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •The tech of choice for most of these kids is YouTube.
That's what they want.
When they can get it, they use speech to text to search for what they are after, and then use pictures to pick which video they'll start with.
And then they just sit. Sometimes they'll skip a video or pick one off the list, but mostly they just sit and stare until they get caught.
None of these kids have intentional unrestricted YouTube access on any device, but they're desperate and they've got free time. They find all kinds of cracks and gaps that let them get to YouTube.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •When they aren't on YouTube, they're on whatever slot machine mechanics wrapped around a children's media franchise mobile game has attracted their attention that month.
Most of the kids I work with don't have smartphones or tablets (some of them do) but they've all gotten pretty good at giving mom a convincing reason to hand hers over.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I've been struggling, lately, because most of the tools and techniques that I've used to motivate kids in the past aren't working anymore.
Their TV shows are hyper-stimulating. Their video games are hyper-stimulating and have a dozen baked in slot machine mechanics. (Even the benign looking games, hot wheels racers and the like, are full of random draw lootboxes.) Everything is designed to maximize their attention and keep them coming back.
We used to describe video games as "addictive" as if that was a good thing, when it was rarely true in even extreme circumstances. Now it's just true most of the time, and obviously bad.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •When I was 8, I'd have rather done literally anything else than to sit quietly and do nothing.
I'd stare out the window, listen to music, read a book, draw, ask questions, tell stories, play solitaire. If I was going to need to be quiet and in the same spot for a long enough period of time, I would even do practice math problems to pass the time. Anything to keep things moving.
But these kids I'm working with now would rather sit and be miserable (and they are clearly, obviously miserable. Frankly, suffering to an extent that exceeds my expectations) instead of reading or writing or drawing or whatever.
I might be able to get their attention for a few minutes, but eventually it wanes and then they'd rather do nothing, when doing nothing is causing them a great amount of distress, than have to put the work in to do something else.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •At first I thought I might be imagining things, so I started talking to parents and teachers and therapists and support folks.
And all of them have noticed the same trends, but from a lot closer. They've been boiling the frog, you know? Setting a new baseline each year for how attention span work, and really only ever considering this year's group against last year, or this kid against where they were a year ago.
They all agreed the problem was increasingly bad, but none of them had really given a lot of thought to the extremity of it or it's source (because it's not what they're working on, most of the time. Most of what they're working on is improving, so the "short attention span" thing gets chalked up as a generational divide or an old man yelling at clouds situation, until they stop and pay attention.)
I, on the other hand, took a few years off from working with kids and then came back to the same age group and found it to be a fundamentally different experience.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •But then I pointed out the trends. I pointed out how these kids would rather do literally nothing than read a book. How the only thing that seemed to motivate them was the promise of access to video games or streaming services which, by and large, seem to be making the problem worse, and I started working with these professionals to build plans to dig out of this hole and ...
Nearly across the board they confided in me that they were also seeing these issues with older kids. The few who work with kids and adults mentioned that it was also starting to creep in to the conversation with the adults they work with, sometimes with seniors.
And that this increasingly dependent technology relationship seems to also frequently coincide with conspiracy theory belief, self isolation, etc.
Which is where we started the thread.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Nicole Parsons reshared this.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •So we have a generation of kids growing up with a severe and frequently life impacting dependence on a dopamine reward cycle facilitated by technology, and getting fed to algorithms designed to maximize engagement at all costs, which generally means isolating them from their peers and pushing them towards more and more extreme content.
They would increasingly rather do literally nothing, in spite of the fact that doing nothing leaves them in a kind of discomfort that is akin to spiritual anguish, than anything that requires more than a minimal level of effort.
And we have a bunch of adults who are barely out running the same beast, who are falling victim to the same patterns. With the adults, they usually have at least some defence mechanisms against this stuff. They can usually read reasonably well. But the algorithms are more aggressive, and the gambling mechanics come with dollars attached, and it's not just that the things they're consuming are hyper-stimulating, it's specifically that these things are aggressively isolating them from their peers and alienating them from their own decision making.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •That last bit "alienating them from their own decision making" is the real crux of my concerns.
We're ceding our agency in the things we consume and the ways we communicate to machines designed to make a profit, and they profit off of us by alienating us further from our own intentions and agency.
And then "AI" enters the picture.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Most of the above to say this:
This is not an old man yelling at the sky. This is not "the youth are wrong, trust me a middle aged man."
People in their early 20s are struggling to form social bonds to a significantly greater extent than they were in the already socially isolated climate of 10 - 15 years ago, and are increasingly falling victim to technologies designed to capitalize on this.
People younger than that are developing such flawed relationships with these same technologies that it is fundamentally altering how they view and interact with the world.
And, all the while, we're being turned against one another.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Technology isn't a force for food or a force for evil. It's a force multiplier, an accelerator.
Right now, it's mostly being wielded by people who want to extract as much attention and value out of you as possible. Or by people with money who are trying to concentrate their power and squash dissent.
And, along the way, they're trying to convince you that tech is a young person's domain, too expensive and complicated for you to worry about, and that the current technological landscape is inevitable and inescapable.
And lots of folks are getting hurt in the crossfire.
It doesn't have to be like this.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •So what's to be done?
Intention.
Right now, most people's relationship with technology is either transactional (I need to use this in order to accomplish this task, do my job, talk to this person) or impulsive (I got a notification, let me check tiktok) but rarely is it intentional.
We can do this at an individual level. I think that, for many of us, being on the fediverse is part of this quest for intentional computing.
For myself, I'm a Linux user because that allows me to preserve more of my own agency than Mac or windows (conversely, if also frequently demands that I exercise my own agency more than Mac or windows.)
I've disabled the vast majority of notifications on my phone. I will spend my attention where I choose to do so.
But this is a very 1960s hippie argument. This is the whole earth catalog argument. "I can fix this for myself, so that's good enough."
Nope. This is a community problem and it's going to take a community solution.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I'm not suggesting that we all turn off youtube and facebook and abandon windows and mac en mass for linux and the fediverse.
Well, I'm not *not* suggesting that, but I think it's unlikely to happen and even if it did happen, it's likely that we would just see the same dark patterns replicate themselves on other platforms.
I'm not even suggesting that we stop consuming Youtube specifically. I'm on youtube a lot, honestly. It's the closest thing we have to an ubiquitous community media platform.
The core of my hope here is that we can re-introduce some intention and agency to our relationship with technology.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •So I'm working with a couple of professionals on the psychology/childhood development side of the house, and I'm standing in as a professional on the technology side of the house, and I'm trying to figure out what an intentional relationship with technology looks like, and what it takes to build a healthy relationship with a platform like Youtube when you're a kid with a deep and abiding obsession that dominates pretty much everything else in your life.
I'm trying to figure out how to motivate kids to read, when most of the methods I've used in the past aren't working at all.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I wish that I could wrap this in a neat little bow and say "here's a 5 step plan for fixing our current technological problems and encouraging literacy" but I'm still very much trying to figure it out.
I believe there is a path forward. I believe it starts with re-framing our relationship with technology to be more intentional.
What do you think?
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Oh, and as a side note, I've spent most of this thread talking about kids and young adults because those are the folks I work most closely with, but this problem is perhaps even more extreme with my grandparent's generation.
Folks who grew up without much tech access are now being forced in to situations where they have to use it, and figuring out many of the same methods that kids are using, and it's absolutely unraveling them. I'm less convinced that this can be fixed, but ...
Just check in on your parents and your grandparents and make sure they're not mainline facebook shorts conspiracy theories about the texas floods, okay?
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M.S. Bellows, Jr.
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Dan Fixes Coin-Ops
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I've noticed this too, looking at many of my daughter's peers.
It's not even learned helplessness, it's way more coordinated and deliberate than that, it's taught helplessness, enabled helplessness, enforced helplessness, instructed helplessness
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Dan Fixes Coin-Ops
in reply to Dan Fixes Coin-Ops • • •wired: monetized helplessness
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cognitively accessible math
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to cognitively accessible math • • •FediThing 🏳️🌈
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Thank you so much for your insights, this is one of the most thoughtful threads I've ever read. 🙏
On the topic, guess we need more regulation of algo-based monopolies but it's perhaps difficult to see where pressure for it will come from? 😕 Lawmakers tend to have a poor grasp of the problem and end up doing pre-packaged "solutions" provided by various lobbyists which do nothing about the algo addiction and corrosion of society.
Even worse, the charities etc that nominally fight against this sort of thing are committing themselves to the platforms that do this, usually without giving it a second thought.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to FediThing 🏳️🌈 • • •@FediThing I am very worried about any legal solution to this problem. I think the actual solution will only come about from a rebuilding of non governmental public institutions.
Social organizations that fulfill the role of a church without being a church, community centers etc.
FediThing 🏳️🌈
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Many of the community-minded volunteer groups, local businesses, independent services etc in my area accidentally expose people to nastiness by forcing people to communicate with them through centralisd commercial platforms. When questioned about this, they say they have to use what everyone else uses (the network effect) and that they're powerless to choose otherwise.
I'm not saying laws would solve everything, but giving the corporations a legal carte blanche is not good either?
For example, countries that banned phone network-locking gave the grassroots more power. Maybe they could ban social network-locking?
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to FediThing 🏳️🌈 • • •@FediThing I'm certain that some laws could be written to help mitigate these problems.
But I'm also certain that it's easy to misconstrue the things I described here as "kids shouldn't use technology" which is not at all what I want.
I want kids to be able to socialize, and especially to be able to use technology to do it.
I just want it to happen in a way that doesn't leave them worse off as a result.
Myotis
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •@FediThing bring back forums. Discourse over time, building relationships in comversational manner rather than quick popoffs… personal blogs…etc.
People yern for quick and easy. They always will. In my youth, people complained about SparkNotes and Wikipedia. But now its generally understood schools overwork children and if you can infer enough from SparkNotes for the fucking grade, then by all means use it. And now, Wikipedia is herald as open source learning continually checked by experts and has fewer errors and more topics than encyclopedias.
I have a feeling the technologies and shortcuts of today will be accepted and used better in the future just as Spark Notes and the advent of Wikipedia didn’t kill my generations desire for knowledge. It’s an issue deeper than the tech and independent of the tech.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Myotis • • •cwicseolfor
in reply to FediThing 🏳️🌈 • • •@FediThing Elsewhere earlier I saw someone describing that their local area only issues disaster alerts/ warnings on Facebook, but there's no reason they couldn't add something like RSS.
Mandating that an open standard *exist* and holding governmental institutions to use it (which will create a certain network effect of its own) feels like a reasonable way to split the difference.
foundseed
in reply to FediThing 🏳️🌈 • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to foundseed • • •David "Dave" Treloar
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Good thread, if 42 is your age, which I suspect, then you missed the start, I've seen the whole thing go through.
Anyway, some comments, yes my parents 70's just sit there at times glued to their phones, scrolling through junk endlessly, I however barely even use my phone, just txt/phone call really.
It seems to me that because we grew up with both and got to experience the change many of us developed a way to switch off from it, because we knew both.
Now that I'm not so well, and don't do anything major socially, tech for me is a kind of replacement for social things as I can't handle much that way anymore.
I would suggest going back to basics, what did you like to do as a kid, try a similar approach just gently, show them cool things about the world and so on, there's a whole wide world out there to discover, and it has nothing to do with tech at all mostly.
Anyway, good luck with it.
---
Addition:
For a time I did work with young adults with learning difficulties, many with every kind of disability you can think of.
Some of the things we did were not only about learning so much, but also about social cohesion, ie. field trips (sports, cooking), building confidence in themselves, and how they connect to each other, this kind of approach works wonders, even the most troubled eventually warm to the idea that they matter, and are a part of something, rather than just isolated as themselves, give it a go.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to David "Dave" Treloar • • •Darius Kazemi
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Isaac Ji Kuo
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •tl; dr: I'd rather sit and do nothing and be miserable than put in the effort to read this entire thread.
Good thing I'm an oldie and not a young person and therefore I'm not part of the problem because I didn't read the entire thread.
Infamous
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •@ajroach42, The point of Fahrenheit 451 was not about censorship, it was about being addicted to media.
The point of Idiocracy was not eugenic dumb people breed faster, it was about letting other things do the thinking for us.
As always the warnings are their, but as the saying goes, "They were so concerned with if they could, they never worried if they SHOULD".
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Infamous • • •@Laztheinfamous
Sure, but ...
Okay, so first of all the only dystopian novel that I think actually manages to strike any chords with me is Brave New World.
Everything that came after that is just shades of Brave New World, but easier to defeat.
Second, "Media Addiction" is not the problem in the abstract. Media is fine. It's my whole damn life, honestly.
The problem is that current trends in media are exploitative, and are resulting in bad outcomes.
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Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •A few quick thoughts. Yes to the reward/effort ratio. Yes to Linux and avoidance of all commercial platforms to the maximal extent possible.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how physicality matters so much in a world where the industry is intent of controlling access to digital content. Books matter. Maybe TTRPGs are a good counter, because they involve physical books, dice, figurines, pencils/pens and paper, in-person meetings, and emotional openness.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐 • • •@gcvsa TTRPGs, in person, have been really great.
Starting people on Linux is a whole separate level in terms of effort. They need to want to, and increasingly they do.
Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐
in reply to Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐 • • •Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐
in reply to Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐 • • •I believe the primary reason why this didn't work with my niece and nephew is because my mother has been steadily feeding their addiction to technology and convenience.
Like, my mother bought my nephew a PS/2 when he was 6 years old. He doesn't do anything but play videogames, now in his 20s.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐 • • •DoNotPunchDown
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Great thread. Thank you!
A relative and I are currently working with a professional from Parents 4 Peace parents4peace.org/ They are fabulous. We're only one session in and they have already helped us. They are free but you can donate. I donated first session and I'm lucky enough to be able to continue to give a little something for each session.
The relative we're trying to help is in his very early 30s. About 2 years ago he went down a right wing rabbit hole and ...
1/2
Parents For Peace
Parents For PeaceOvertonDoors
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Yeah, the forces at play in society are intentionally driving us all towards alself-isolation. It's not just in your imagining, for real yeah?
I've been watching it for the past two decades, which is to say, the entirety of my adult life. Your falling empire attribution is pretty spot on. It's a common symptom, if not the cause, I think.
To what then is the cause? Well, who owns Alphabet? Windows? The S&P 500? As a society since the 1970's America has chucked pallets of cash every day at petro-autokrats. What else were they going to buy with all that un-earned wealth? We are getting autocracy because we sold ourselves to autocrats for oil.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to OvertonDoors • • •OvertonDoors
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •True enough, no disagreement here @ajroach42
It's the same technology corps in the EU, the same multinational energy corps, the same autocrats subverting democratic norms with the same methodologies Putin has been honing since the late 90's on ruZZia's domestic population.
What I'm focused on in my spare time (former STEM tutor here) is the multinational relations between economics, energy, and increasingly technology.
From 2019: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… wise w/ archive.is/
From 2020: wired.com/story/russia-seconda…
As to the methodology: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireho…
propaganda technique
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)SidheWolf
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •bookandswordblog
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Sensitive content
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to bookandswordblog • • •Sensitive content
@bookandswordblog So many things would be better if the US had done a Lot of things differently after Nixon, like fired Volker.
But that's another story.
Casey
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •It's the people in the middle, too, and a big part of the reason why men and suffering and why the manosphere is a thing.
I've got so many male friends without families, who spend hours. a. day. on YouTube. Most of the them work, but they hate their jobs, they literally don't think their lives matter.
I've got so many female friends, WITH families, who suddenly discover they've got ADHD. Self-diagnosed from Instagram of course.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Casey • • •@OptOut ... That last comment feels pretty misogynistic.
You speak of your male friends with understanding, and your female friends with derision?
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Casey
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Casey
in reply to Casey • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Casey • • •64 Islands Aroha Cooperative
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •10yo just binges shorts, but calls unfair when she can’t watch and her brother can.
but the real killer here is our own dopamine addiction as parents, because by the end of the day? i just want to shitpost with pocket friends and play silly games, and co-parent feels the same. the kids are literally left to their devices, as are we.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to 64 Islands Aroha Cooperative • • •64 Islands Aroha Cooperative
in reply to 64 Islands Aroha Cooperative • • •or when i retire to a farm
but that’s not now. it will probably never be now.
64 Islands Aroha Cooperative
in reply to 64 Islands Aroha Cooperative • • •youtube is never going to get better is it? but as others have said, dropping off the socials is even more isolating. who wants to go back to the pre times?
anyway, big thoughts. thanks for bringing it up
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to 64 Islands Aroha Cooperative • • •@airshipper Youtube isn't going to get better, but that doesn't mean that Video Online can't be better.
(communitymedia.network \\ vod.newellijay.tv)
Community Media – A handbook for revolutions in DIY TV
communitymedia.networkAndrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Okay! So I've responded to everyone as much as I think I'm going to.
One common thread in the replies that I want to address:
I love technology in general, and I'm not advocating for restricting anyone's technology access.
One of the reasons that I'm in the position that I am right now w/r/t kids education is because I'm specifically and explicitly trying to expand the tech access these kids have.
I'm trying to figure out how to expand their tech access without worsening their already pretty bad dependent behaviors, and without exposing them to a bunch of right wing extremism, or various casinos.
I'm trying to figure out how to help foster a sense of curiosity in them that will help drive their own personal educational journey.
I want to help these kids find agency.
I want to help the young people that I work with reclaim their agency, and escape the passivity with which they approach their lives.
Technology (and capitalism) wrought these problems. Technology (and community) will undo them.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •alcinnz
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •youtube.com/watch?v=QEJpZjg8Gu…
- YouTube
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I've had a couple of people say to me "we should just let people be illiterate" or "maybe they're just a new kind of literate" or "this era of literacy has been an aberration in the trends of time." I even had one person tell me that expecting kids to be literate was ableist.
That's just not a view I can get behind?
Literacy is a positive thing. It measurably improves people's lives. Most people have the capacity for literacy and most people with the capacity for literacy would benefit significantly from being able to read.
I'm so confused as to why this is not a universal opinion.
alcinnz
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Sounds to me like they don't want to reflect on the impact our digital infrastructure has on us.
That they'd prefer to think about this in terms of individual, not in terms of society. That they'd prefer to go with the flow, than to critique our digital infrastructure.
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •It is imposing your cultural values on people who don't share them, or apparently need them.
The kids are not stupid, or addicted. They just don't think or behave like you demand they do.
Maybe find out what they want and why?
I like reading & writing. But again, millions of years without literacy. Thousands where it was rare. A few centuries where it was needed. <shrug>
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄 • • •FediThing 🏳️🌈
in reply to Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄 • • •@mdhughes Millions of years of barbaric violence, thousands of years of oppressive societies, a century or so where we have lived the nearest we've had to equality, and universal literacy has been essential to that. Literacy gives people power and agency. Take away literacy and you take away their ability to affect society and to stand up for themselves in a meaningful way.
One of the key parts of eg gender equality is ensuring children of all genders can read and receive equal education.
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to FediThing 🏳️🌈 • • •@FediThing Millions of years of hunter-gatherers living mostly in peace, as the near-animals we are.
Thousands of years of some kind of civilization. Like it or not, it worked OK to have a ruler/priest-class and everyone else.
Three hundred years of mechanized warfare, industrial hell, genocides by written order, planetary ecocide. We have not made a good world.
I'm not seeing a moral arc there.
And the Kids Today™ are educating themselves, they just don't share YOUR culture.
FediThing 🏳️🌈
in reply to Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄 • • •@mdhughes
Universal literacy didn't happen until well after industrialisation, it happened in countries with free compulsory education. And it made it a lot harder for the kind of people who do bad things to manipulate them.
Removing literacy is happening right now to e.g. girls in Afghanistan, do you think their lives will be better as a result?
There is no scenario where loss of literacy improves people's lives or improves the world. It simply creates an elite that controls a repressed majority. However bad things are now, they were much worse in the days of absolute monarchies etc.
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to FediThing 🏳️🌈 • • •@FediThing You're panicking at it being taken away, but that's not what's happened. There is no Evil Boss doing this.
The kids have thrown literacy out, or demoted it to the last resort, because it's not useful to them.
What I'm suggesting is you find out WHY and WHAT they are actually doing, instead of imposing your media preferences on others.
Or don't, and be Principal Skinner.
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to FediThing 🏳️🌈 • • •@FediThing The idea that only literacy lets you communicate is not correct. Art, music, and video also communicate, and as we've found out, video, from television to streaming, is *MASSIVELY* more effective than writing.
Nixon ran his 1960 campaign on writing, radio, & threats to the established order. JFK ran on television and change. That was the end of the "literacy is the only tool" era.
FediThing 🏳️🌈
in reply to Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄 • • •@mdhughes I have made broadcast TV, it cannot be done without literacy. There is an immense amount of paperwork and reading which someone somewhere has to do.
You're talking about a society where people can watch TV but cannot make TV except in the most shallow form.
Literacy is power, removing literacy is disempowerment. It's not a generational thing, it's a basic facet of humanity. Without the written word society becomes too easy to manipulate.
Literacy is a time machine, it lets us step into any period where writing existed. Nothing else does this, nothing else lasts for millenia.
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to FediThing 🏳️🌈 • • •@FediThing Ha ha literacy for TV, that's funny. 30 years ago, sure. Point a phone at your face, hit Share, and make a movie that's seen by millions on Twitch or Peertube or whatever.
And this idea that literate people can't be manipulated… I can't even. You know what Madison Avenue does, right? The CIA? You know these people work by writing scripts to manipulate you? Humans are REAL dumb and easy to fool, in any medium.
You are not immune to propaganda! IN FACT…
FediThing 🏳️🌈
in reply to Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄 • • •@mdhughes You point your phone at your face and then what? Say the first thing that comes into your head with no research or planning or background digging? How do you even write a script or outline without literacy?
Even if a video is seen by millions, what does that prove? Are you measuring the value of something by its ratings? A viral video of a cat can have lots of views but it does nothing to empower or inform anyone.
Literacy doesn't guarantee anything, nothing does. But it sure as heck gives you a massive, massive advantage when it comes to digging for truth.
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to FediThing 🏳️🌈 • • •@FediThing Apparently? Watch streaming or tiktok or yustub shorts. This is not a question of "is literacy good", but "do the kids prefer something else".
People did oral history and recitation for those millions of years, too. You can do quite a lot if you haven't stuffed your head with writing.
Why not try ASKING them? Watching what they do?
Go think about this, silently, to yourself a while, I'm tired of brick walls. Bye.
noodlejetski
in reply to Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄 • • •MBelcher
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I’m reminded of illiterate sharecroppers being kept in debt slavery after emancipation by their former slave holders.
These pro-illiteracy people should be publicly mocked until they go back into the hole they slithered out of.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Okay, another addendum:
The ultimate solution to this problem is to dismantle and destroy the capitalist machine that is creating the incentives that produce these outcomes.
Changing the laws might mitigate things. Changing our behaviors might mitigate things.
But the solution is to destroy the machine that has created this problem.
That's a big, long, time consuming, complicated task (and many of us are already engaged in that work!) but, until such a time as we're successful, we've still got to live through all of this.
We're victims of an abusive relationship, of several abusive relationships. We've been forced in to this situation, and we're being taken advantage of.
All the things I said about intentionallity and community are from the perspective of minimizing the long term impact of these problems while we work to destroy them.
That work also has to be done, but even once that work is done it will be too late for these kids. I'm trying to minimize the amount of harm that these systems will do to the kids and teens and young adults and adults and old adults that have to live with these systems right now.
Nothing I'm saying here about whats to be done is designed to replace destroying these systems, ripping these companies apart, and structuring our society so that they're never rebuilt.
But until we've done that, we have to figure out how to live with it, and how to best protect ourselves and our kids and our parents and grandparents.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •So, let's talk about mitigation strategies to deal with the way tech has consistently disregarded our consent and run roughshod over our boundaries.
I don't have solutions.
Well no, I do. The solutions are, as I said previously, to dismantle the system that provides the insentives through which these activities happen, and to act communally to prevent such systems from existing, but we have a long way to go before we get there, and in the meantime we have to mitigate the harm that is facing us.
I'm specifically looking for ways to provide a less harmful computing environment to children, but in doing so I suspect I'll hit upon strategies that apply equally well to adults.
I'm not here to call anyone out or to shame anyone. If what you're doing is working for you, that's awesome. If what you're doing isn't working for you, perhaps you'll find something in the strategies I'm going to explore here that may help you.
This is likely to be a Long addition to an already very long (and controversial!) thread. It will likely take me several days to get through everything I have to say, because I have a job and a life outside of this. Feel free to reply or otherwise interact, but don't expect an immediate or even a fast response. I'll get there when I get there (and that's very much the point.)
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •First, I think we need to state some of the problems as clearly as possible:
Modern technology is designed to rob you of as much agency as possible while also maximizing the amount of your attention it steals, and while it's busy dazzling you and stealing your attention, it's also spying on you and siphoning up as much information as possible about you so that it can sell that information to people who want to influence your choices or otherwise wish to exploit you.
I worked inside the factory for a number of years. I saw how the sausage was made. I sat in the room while a very excited man explained how they had tweaked some aspects of our application to make it more likely that kids would think about and ask about our platform when they weren't using it, based on behavioral science or some shit, and my stomach turned and I dropped out of the industry.
I've seen the kinds of "telemetry" that otherwise useful software pulls about people, and the ways that information gets repackaged and sold. I have first hand experience in the pit.
All of the above is true of basically every commercial software product and platform in existence with only a scant few exceptions. If a piece of software or a website is successful, and it's not actively operated and supported by a non-profit (and sometimes even if it is) it's probably fucking you over somewhere.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Knowing what these systems are doing and how they are doing it is the first step towards being able to protect yourself from it.
Again, it absolutely sucks that you have to protect yourself. It's unfair. That's the situation we've been put in by the folks in charge, and we're left to do our best to navigate it.
But each of us also has a different threat model. The kinds of ways that these things will harm us is different for each of us, and that means the mitigations that each of us needs are different. Some of this is about age and power and vulnerability, but a lot of it is just about tolerances.
I'm pretty susceptible to getting sucked in to loot box-y video games. I never spend any money, but the mechanic of a random draw is enough to keep me playing for a *while*. I know plenty of folks for whom that kind of thing holds absolutely no appeal. We're all going to need different things.
To that end, I'm going to talk about specific problems that I've seen with specific technologies, and the methods I've used to minimize those problems for myself. I might not touch on problems you're experiencing! My experience is not universal. I'm going to need help to cover this topic broadly.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Yvonne ‘looks undocumented’
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Fantastic thread! I’ve seen some of this with my grandchildren.
But the 9yo just got a kids version of a smart watch for her BD (it’s not connected to the internet or phone networks, but has games, music, cameras). It has her full attention!
I mentioned it to a friend who has two boys, 9 and 11. He said most of their friends have smart watches “cuz their parents didn’t want them to have cell phones yet” 😵💫
I hope you’ll write more on this thread.
Eyebee 🇬🇧
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Kevin Russell
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Kevin Russell • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Kevin Russell
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •You may have missed me answering you question with an answer aimed at a different question.
I posted it where it belongs.
,__
Wonderful workplace youre very lucky. Sorry about libertarian leakage in your instances.
The Gaptangle
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Världens bästa Kille™
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I bet that if ”platforms” were liable for what they published this problem would largely go away. Also it would be legally sound, as they are publishers.
It would break their business models. There would be new, better ones.
Also ad tech is what drives the machine. Regulate the shit out of that and things will change in a hurry.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Världens bästa Kille™ • • •@thelovebing It would also probably destroy the fediverse, and it would open up a whole can of worms around who gets to decide what speech is acceptable and what speech isn't.
Without a very narrow law here, it would be immediately and horribly abused.
Världens bästa Kille™
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •”Social media” aint a given. We survived for hundreds of thousands of years sans SoMe.
But I bet it could (and would) be sorted out by user agreements. Like ”follow the rules, any fines we get because of you, will be paid by you”.
You’ll say ”but privacy, anonymity”. And I’ll say ”you better choose a SoMe you can trust” and then that becomes a matter of survival for providers of services.
Pro market, not pro business.
lizzzzard
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •this will be long.
Some background:
I have a 7 (nearly 8) year old kid, in first grade. I get reprimanded by the neighbors about the amount of computer usage my kid gets. My kid also reads and maths fastest in class. I also see some of the behavior around games that you described in him, and much more in myself. I myself have been diagnosed with depression and have been fighting with it for about as long as the
So, a few points: I think you're on to something when you focus on intent. I would add *actively* using tech, even if it's for fun, and reducing passive time in front of any medium.
I think that's something you can only do well if you know what's possible though. And that might be a problem for the "he's much better at this than me"parents.
lizzzzard
in reply to lizzzzard • • •From when my son was little and we couldn't avoid some media usage due to the chaos of the covid years, we chose and filtered what he did intensely.
He got videos where people explained stuff instead of 3d generated slosh. He got games like "Khan academy kids" and "die Maus App" ( a German tv show aimed at elementary school kids with educational content that has a great app, even with a programming game).
We always talk about how long we want to be on (him and us) and use timers to tell us to stop. Sometimes we might add ten minutes, but we've rarely had tantrums when it was time to quit.
We play together: Minecraft and Stardew valley (the latter one motivated my son so much to read the story and understand the numbers for the money).
lizzzzard
in reply to lizzzzard • • •We make plans on what we want to do when we play.
I avoid games with certain mechanics like loot boxes, and focus on story games. Alba, for example is lovely and focuses on a community. Or lil gator game. Or Luna's fishing adventure. They tell stories, and to me are little different from a well-read story. Not every game is candy crush, but you need to look for the gems.
We also use the computer for other things: pixel art is fun (there's online editors for animated gifs!), so is painting a level in godot. And stop motion movies with the tablet. Identifying plants and taking photos with the phone.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to lizzzzard • • •tschenkel
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •"Technology (and capitalism) wrought these problems. Technology (and community) will undo them."
Well put. True for so many aspects of modern society.
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babble encat
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •> Folks who grew up without much tech access are now being forced in to situations where they have to use it, and figuring out many of the same methods that kids are using, and it's absolutely unraveling them
The strongest argument I've seen for the Great Firewall went something like "You can't take a country that was 100% peasant farmers 50 years ago and just throw them into unrestricted Internet, it would kill them"
I read that argument, and looked at America and said, "aw shit"
Zack Weinberg
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •For what it's worth, I'm seeing bits of this everywhere I look, as well.
On the supply side of things I think the propaganda aspect of it is secondary to the slot machine aspect -- sure, there are people out there making the propaganda, on purpose, but I think the people _building the slot machines_ don't actually give a shit about the propaganda, it's all content slop to them. I don't know any way this observation helps but there it is.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Zack Weinberg • • •@zwol sure, I agree the incentives just happen to suit propaganda
And the point of a system is what it does, not what it was intended to do n
Zack Weinberg
in reply to Zack Weinberg • • •My sister's eldest child is five and has some neurodivergence to him and a very obvious aspect of his personality right now is desperation for control. If you put a phone in front of him, what he does is pull up the _maps_ app and scroll it, imagining himself endlessly driving around town, completely in control of where he goes.
My sister dealt with this by finding an old Thomas Guide and saying "you can play the driving around game all you want with _this_ but not with my phone."
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Zack Weinberg • • •DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-lab
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-lab • • •@djsundog @zwol Any time people would go on vacation when I was a kid, I'd ask them to bring me back the map of wherever they were going.
Just the little tri-fold brochure. I had dozens of them, hundreds, by the time I stopped paying attention to them.
I loved to imagine the places in the maps.
Zack Weinberg
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •@djsundog My sister has also been encouraging him to suggest places that he would like to visit in real life, which then become weekend excursions.
Right now this causes him to occasionally demand that a detour to some random map location be added to whatever trip we're already on, and then we have to talk him down because the adults are tired and want to be done driving around, but I think that's more 5yo egocentrism that he'll grow out of.
Zack Weinberg
in reply to Zack Weinberg • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Zack Weinberg • • •Zack Weinberg
in reply to Zack Weinberg • • •Zack Weinberg
in reply to Zack Weinberg • • •... and often, acknowledging that the _upset_ is rational, in a "yes, this situation sucks for everyone and we all have to endure it" kind of way (he _hates_ being stuck in traffic jams) ...
... so I wonder, the kids who prefer to do nothing and be miserable, what do they say if you talk to them directly about this? Like, "it seems to me you are not _enjoying_ endlessly scrolling on your phone, but you can't make yourself stop, can we talk about that?"
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Zack Weinberg • • •@zwol oh, no I mean literally nothing.
If they can't have the dopamine hit, they'll sit and stare at the wall. They'll complain that they're bored, but refuse any suggested activity and also be unable to recommend their own. Incapable of articulating any desire beyond "I'm bored" and unwilling to engage in any activity that might alleviate that boredom unless it requires no input or energy or thought from them.
Zack Weinberg
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Zack Weinberg • • •lizzzzard
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to lizzzzard • • •lizzzzard
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •@zwol that's harsh. But it's a parenting fault, really, isn't it? As I understand it, offering stuff, showing the possibilities of life, that's a parenting job.
Maybe the parents should be part of your efforts?
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to lizzzzard • • •@lizzard @zwol That's a real judgey take.
I'm working with these kids (and their parents, who are also educators or otherwise deeply involved in education) because their parents are engaged in helping solve these problems.
If the parents were solely at fault, I wouldn't be involved to begin with. If the parents were solely at fault, I wouldn't *want* to be involved.
These are folks who are working hard, using the tools available to them in a system that is designed for them to fail, and are failing.
lizzzzard
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •@zwol I think this came over different than I intended, sorry about that. This wasn't about judgement.
I was speaking from the perspective of a depressed and overwhelmed mother who sometimes at one point wasn't able to provide properly either.
I was thinking along the lines of depressed parents, parents who don't know how to handle the tech or parents who can't limit their own tech use either. Helping or teaching the parents too, not just the kids.
Dr. Elda King 🦹
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •The part about intent speaks to me a lot because I have more and more been working to get that. Canceling Spotify and downloading music, disconnecting from news sources, avoiding constantly-updating games (even the more benign ones I played - nothing with microtransactions or subscriptions), getting away from "reviews" of products, even stopped following movies and TV.
And this keeps isolating me from people, I become the outgroup. I am the quirky radical that spends way too much effort (it is effort! Even nore because companies try to make it as hard as they can) avoiding normal things. Doesn't help that many who pursue these goals become this techbro cult of victim blaming and purity culture. "If your friends don't want to connect with you outside social media (using this pure alternative) they aren't really your friends."
In the end, individual choice (alone) can't fix things. We can't undo one by one what is mass-produced by megacorps.
Dr. Elda King 🦹
in reply to Dr. Elda King 🦹 • • •I don't interact much with kids. But, like you said, I see it a lot more with older folks - my parents, uncles and aunts, older professors, friends' parents. They were massively de-skilled, just as they needed these skills the most. The workflows they learned long ago were filled with trapdoors to lead them into dystopian dependence relationships with tech (most recently, filling everything with AI buttons). They learn the language of tech as products, not tech as tools, not tech as system.
And helping them with stuff is heartbreaking, because we have to explain that yeah it absolutely sucks now but they can't do X without creating an account (or they would need to do Y instead and no one but you will help them with Y). Want to see your grandkids' pictures? You need to join "super evil site" that I have to warn you about even as I help you join. Or get your kids to use "junky hippie site without any of their friends" instead.
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Dr. Elda King 🦹
in reply to Dr. Elda King 🦹 • • •Oh, another thing. I find it frustrating how the moral panic about kids spending too much on their phones is one of the blandest opinions everywhere... but it never once mentions the actual culprits and their methods. It is all victim-blamong people without once saying "facebook is actively working to do this", or "we should not let sites curate what we see" or "ads that try to grab people's attention worsen attention spans".
It is always kids' faults for being superficial or parents' fault for not stopping it. Lots of "people are using too much of this heavy drug" without considering why the fuck they are being given addictive heavy drugs by unscrupulous dealers.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Dr. Elda King 🦹 • • •@eldaking right! I don't care about video games (heck I love em) or phones (a computer I can fit in my pocket? Yes please!) but there's this real shitty strain in tech right now that's having an outsized effect on vulnerable people (in this case, kids and seniors.)
I want technology to be abundant and widely available. I want kids to have access to abundant and widely available technology.
But I don't want it to look like This.
The Other Brook
in reply to Dr. Elda King 🦹 • • •@eldaking The moral panic directed at the devices is understandable but so counterproductive.
I was fortunate enough to send my son to a private school with a great humanities-based curriculum and a single rule for community behavior: "Courtesy and common sense." A change in administration at the start of high school (he graduated in 2020) led to an anti-phone campaign, which put me at odds with the school.
I argued the problem wasn't the messenger but the message, and they needed to adjust to the fact phones are not going away. I said they were way overdue for adding media literacy to the core curriculum. I envisioned a class that actually taught how information manipulation and haptic reward cycles work so the kids could recognize it going on in themselves.
Of course that didn't happen. But other parents who objected to the phone policy on the grounds of convenience in reaching their kids won.
But I think teaching people how these patterns work, and doing it at as young an age as possible, is important.
For me, I thought getting a Master of Communication in Digital Media degree was a career enhancer, but what it led to was deep disillusionment with my profession and basically dropping out of it. I just couldn't abide enabling the wrongheadedness anymore.
At that point I was leading the digital initiatives at a PBS station which turned out to be no better than my previous jobs. Even media people aren't equipped to understand what's happening to them.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to The Other Brook • • •@theotherbrook @eldaking This is a good callout.
I don't have a problem with the devices, or even the actions that most kids want to use the devices for! What I have an issue with is a lot of the current delivery mechanisms, and how those appear to be causing long term harm.
tltroup
in reply to Dr. Elda King 🦹 • • •@eldaking “they learn the language of tech as products, not tech as tools, not tech as system” is such a keen observation.
I’m very grateful for my 1994 graphic design professor who predicted this trajectory and encouraged us to encounter software features with the question “this tool/feature was someone’s solution, what was their problem”?
Anthony
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I think this thread is very thought provoking and important, and I appreciate all you've written here. I felt compelled to respond in part because I have a young child myself and because my wife is an educator who echoes some of the same things. I'm not really getting at anything in particular with this, just sharing some thoughts that your thread kicked up in my head, for whatever it's worth.
What you're describing reminded me quite a bit of a talk by Sherry Turkle I watched recently (perhaps you've already seen it, but here it is: youtu.be/jy7bpyt_vnE). Here's a quote from it I wrote down and saved, but the whole talk is well worth experiencing:
She is, to some extent, implicating social media: it's trained people to have a computer mediate human interaction, thereby starving users of the experiences of human vulnerability that are necessary for us to develop empathy for one another. In short we've been trained to treat one another as if we were machines. A lot of bad things follow from this as I'm sure you well know.
I think there are broader currents, especially the austerity economics we've been suffering under for decades in the United States (and much of the neoliberal world frankly), that make all of these problems more pronounced. How can you have time and space for the give and take of conversation Turkle describes when you have to work two or even three jobs, or are saddled with extreme student loan debt you're worried you may never be able to repay, or you're caring for an aging or ill relative because there is no one/nowhere else for them (to name just three of the many deprivations people are struggling with)? On top of this, this economic arrangement encourages us to behave like machines, because that is usually what's rewarded in the workplace.
I don't think the cognitive impairment COVID infections cause, coupled with the mass death and therefore mass trauma of the pandemic, has helped matters either. All in all it looks to me like there's a set of forces either actively causing or at least exacerbating the trends you're describing. I think we need to grapple with this if we're to make any headway towards improving the situation for kids.
Anyway thanks again for your thread!
- YouTube
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Seamsóg
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Seamsóg • • •@seamsog I'm glad you're not experiencing the same struggles.
Do you mind me asking what technology access/availability looks like for your kids?
I'm assuming a causal relationship when all I have is correlation (but it's pretty strong correlation so far.)
Seamsóg
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Our guideline has been that they can use devices a lot, as long as they put them down when we need them to.
Making that clear very early kept us from having battles about it. We also use automated controls that shut off their phone screens at bedtime. Then they can read as much as they want.
I also don't punish them for what they see online, so that they will keep talking to me about it. It's not perfect. I'm always fretting that Invincible kid is headed down an alt right spiral.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Seamsóg • • •Seamsóg
in reply to Seamsóg • • •The Bad Guys books are super fun for early readers. My especially justice-oriented child loved George Takei's graphic novel memoir about American internment camps. My middle kid tore through $180 worth of Invincible compendia.
(I'm letting them get into chapter books at their own pace.)
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Seamsóg • • •jeremiah
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I don't think either of us are far afield in terms of what people can do. I've largely fallen into the Whole Earth catalog camp but I'm trying to bring my friends with me.
I think people (in our bracket) are receptive to the arguments about personal agency. I've found people older than me to be sometimes afraid and I've got siblings ten years younger than me and, yeah, the dopamine loop is bad.
Erica 😺
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I'm on my phone too much. Sometimes YouTube, sometimes scrolling. I want to change this but it's difficult since I am a tech worker. When I'm with other people it's easier, but living alone makes it kinda hard, especially with relatively severe ADHD/motivation issues.
I'd be interested if you have any tips on how to do this as an adult who is struggling with something akin to addiction. I've started just putting it in a different room and doing things that don't involve it, and that feels like a decent first step.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Erica 😺 • • •David Keck
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Buxton School Goes Light
VimeoAndrew (Television Executive)
in reply to David Keck • • •@davidskeck I had an LPII and it was an interesting experience.
It was limited in ways that were good for me for a little while, but ultimately kept me from doing things I actually wanted to do and believed in.
I live my life online. I'm a media producer and I run some ecommerce stuff and, while I want to strictly limit the ability of those things to intrude on my life without my consent, I still need to be able to access them.
I used a hisense A5 eink phone for about a year, and aside from the fact that it was a little too underpowered for some of the things I asked it to do, and its camera let me down a few times, it was a much better experience.
If the lightphone works for you, though, and you can live with its limitations, you'll probably feel a lot better than with a traditional smartphone.
David Keck
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •mathew
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to mathew • • •@mathew When I have a better conclusion, It will be a blog post.
rn, it's very much still gestating.
That's mostly how I use the fediverse when I'm developing an idea.
Real time feedback, conversation, etc. It helps me refine the things I really want to make clear and to remove the things that people found confusing.
Lien Rag
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Lien Rag • • •Lien Rag
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Not sure which have been translated in English...
Maybe "Telecracy against Democracy" ?
I haven't read it but watched him talking about it.
edd
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Way late to this, but I've been trying to do more or less this with our toddler. He's too into streaming platforms, and even if what he watches is curated by us, it's instant gratification you don't get with broadcast with more a click away. A lot has been changing how I interact with technology by having my phone or laptop out less and being more intentional with what I do myself.
But he does find ways to entertain himself most of the time without tech by singing or making up games.
babble encat
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •> What do you think?
Do you tutor kids 1-on-1 only, or do they get chances to talk to each other throughout the sessions?
Personally I can put up with a hell of a lot of "doing nothing" if I'm talking to a friend or two. Doing nothing _alone_ feels bad.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to babble encat • • •iideacocarl
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Bernie Isn't In Epstein Files reshared this.
Mark Shane Hayden
in reply to iideacocarl • • •@bass4dking honestly I don't think that is really a problem. Young people (*all* people these days really) already have very high levels of scepticism and an unhealthy distrust of others. By framing conversations around "question *everything*" you risk making the problem of isolation and distrust even worse.
I would say they need to be taught *critical thinking* skills. The one thing people don't question is themselves (perhaps that is what you meant by "even you"?). " Why do I believe what I believe? Does it make sense?".
As part of that, and probably most importantly, is to restore a sense of empathy in people...not just in a touchy-feely way but even in a logical "what makes people tick" sort of way. I feel like there is a sort of psychopathy epidemic now where people don't even have a common sense level of understanding the needs and wants and values of others even when they are similar to their own.
@ajroach42
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LJ
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •this whole thread is terrifying & I'm watching it unfold with the twin 11 year olds of dear friends. These kids are the 1st generation kids who started school during covid lockdown & boy oh boy do they latch onto their dopamine hits in gaming & net access.
I know schools have taken hits to what was seen as 'non essential' but I wonder if there's a difference here between kids involved in misic/theatre/sports vs those who aren't.
Being part of something larger than self.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to LJ • • •James
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I find Facebook to be particularly insidious. I avoid it but sometimes have to use it for work reasons. (Small town FD - gotta be where the citizens are)
When I do have to use it, I feel the pull strongly. I try to only use in a sandbox on my laptop but still…
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to James • • •James
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •cy
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •It's individualist propaganda that generates the thought of us all just choosing to turn off Facebook and Youtube. The reality is those are highly successful scams that need to be shut down no matter how much we use them. You "should" use Youtube more, because that increases the urgency to ban it, since it's now significantly impacting your life. (Seriously don't do that though.) The solution is not anything you can do as an individual, or by "respecting" other individual's "right" to be scammed. The solution is to decide as a society that we're not going to put up with this, and organize resistance to sabatoge, dismantle and defang these attention monsters.
So uh, suggesting each individual uses Youtube or Facebook with intention and agency just makes us feel bad when we get addicted to it anyway, and also makes us feel bad when we succeed at keeping our agency, but everyone else is just sucked into the next video on their feed, or putting all their personal information in Mark's greasy hands.
Maybe I'm wrong though I dunno. Empowering individuals to resist racketeering is good, just... the racketeers should get run out of town, rather than labor to allow them to do business by somehow making everyone immune to their latest scheme.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to cy • • •@cy this is a pretty defeatist take.
I'm saying that I don't know what the path forward is, but that it's going to start with being thoughtful and intentional.
Asking people at large to stop using these platforms won't work because these platforms are essentially infrastructural for the modern web. Building something that replaces them, but doesn't address the flaws that brought us here leaves us with bluesky (or whatever other platform thats going to replicate the same flaws as the existing platforms.
We'll need systemic and structural change to truly address these issues.
But structural or systemic change is going to take a lot of time, and will require lots of thoughtful, intentional action.
I do specifically call out that individual action will be insufficient, and that I don't have solutions. I tried to keep the language I used as personal and non-demanding as possible.
I'm not sure what else I could have said or done. Any suggestions?
Lien Rag
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Lien Rag • • •Lien Rag
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Lien Rag • • •@lienrag Oh.
Uhhh, I mean it's a foundation that could be used to build one, but it's a far cry from being one right now (I say as someone who runs three instances and a community cable network powered by peertube.)
Walnut
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Hasufin
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Even having a solid tech background, getting tech to work for me and not as a tool of our corporate overlords is a challenge. No surprise the kids are victims of this.
Andrew (Television Executive) reshared this.
cognitively accessible math
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Ian K Tindale
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •about a decade and a half ago I (incorrectly) predicted we’d be in a similar situation but with VR – that never actually came about, but I imagined it would ‘trap’ people in an earphone/eyephone immersive world, and a lot of science-fiction writers had imagined this sort of outcome for much much longer. I think what saved it from being compulsive if not addictive was a couple of things: one; it isn’t as pleasant an experience as it should be, and two: there was never any such thing as an open VR platform which anyone could participate in freely all the time all day with everyone else, without ‘signing up’ or paying money to participate, because what ended up happening was each of the VR manufacturers were isolated from each other (app stores, vendor lock-in, walled garden, whatever the buzzwords are) so there was no free interchange with anyone else you knew unless you were also on that platform.
I often wonder what would happen if YouTube had to shut down for a day, or a week.
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hackillu
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •potentially hazardous object
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to potentially hazardous object • • •@apophis Probably!
We mostly do reading practice with comic books, video games, and subtitled TV shows.
Effken
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Hi. I don't have a solution. I just want to Thank you for your thread and your observations. Thank you that you care.🙏
I myself am vulnerable to Media like Youtube or mastodon or any Kind of Quick Dopamine Response tech.
What really works for me is quality time with friends of my Buddhist Sangha. Meditating together and sharing our inner thoughts and sufferings. Going to Retreats.
It's the Plum Village Tradition by Thich Nhat Hanh a vietnamese Buddhist
May be you already know him?
hazelnot
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to hazelnot • • •babble encat
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Kimmy
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Kimmy • • •@ghostynewt I started working with kids on reading and technology in 2006, while I was in highschool, in suburban GA as part of a volunteer program through FCCLA and skillsUSA
I continued after graduation, working informally through 2012 working with that same org and most of the same kids. We moved in 2012, and I took a few years hiatus. I picked it back up on 2015 or 2016 with another organization based out of the DC area.
When we got back to GA in 2020, I started with a group of two brothers that has expanded to 10 kids as of this year. The issues I've encountered with getting the kids to read started with the 2020 batch.
The microcult/anti-social cohesion thing was in the air in 2015 and earlier, but it didn't have much traction. The incels and MRAs were in the fringes and didn't have much power. Lots of folks were arguing about these kinds of topics on Tumblr, etc. But it wasn't nearly as all consuming.
I do not see much of this purity test/all or nothing behavior in my coworkers who are currently over the age of 25. I also rarely see them in their phones in the workplace. I see it a lot in my coworkers who are between 18 and 24, and I almost never see them without their phone out and an earbud in.
Much of the content mirrors the kinds of arguments that were in the air when I was that age, but with a level of extremity and certainty, a kind of all consuming identity shaping thing, that makes the stuff I grew up with look very small.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •@ghostynewt when I've spoken with teachers and other professionals about reading ability and reading education, most of them have said something like "the last few years do feel harder" and then when I've drilled in for specifics and asked them about what books their first years and third years were reading ten years ago vs what they're reading now (or a similar question) they've pretty much all had a slow dawning look of terror cross their face.
One teacher I spoke with in particular said that her fifth year students in 2025 are at the same basic competency as her first year students in 2020, which was a fairly extreme case. A few other teachers talked about, or pulled reports from, 2010 - 2015 to compare to 2020 - 2025 and pretty consistently found that more than half their students were "on level" or "advanced" in the former range, and less than 25% are now. (In the same school, in the same demographic area, in a time of increasing affluence and funding for this school in particular.)
grimmware
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •this is the bit that terrifies me. Combine it with all of this AI hype that's effectively telling you that you no longer need to *do* anything, and you don't have to read between the lines much to infer that the intended endpoint is that everyone is effectively an isolated consumer who's just trying to steal any spare moment to have dopamine beamed into their brain by the colourful lights.
It feels like a death of shared meaning, and an outright attack on the idea of shared struggle.
Andrew (Television Executive) reshared this.
hell
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I hope it's a comfort that, although I still struggle with just doing what's easiest, I'm surrounded by friends, very engaged with the world beyond what's in front of me, and I've basically taken anything algo driven off my own machines. Sometimes I fall into that trap, like you said, and just staring at a wall is better than doing anything that requires effort; but usually, after unplugging for a little while, reinforcing some good habits, that goes away.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to hell • • •bsmall2
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to bsmall2 • • •DoomsdaysCW
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •kolektiva.social/@DoomsdaysCW/…
DoomsdaysCW (@DoomsdaysCW@kolektiva.social)
kolektiva.socialAndrew (Television Executive)
in reply to DoomsdaysCW • • •Luke O.
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •yep. "tech of choice" is an excellent phrase for this flavor of addiction behavior. Wherever the gap is, they'll work it - Pinterest? Ok, I'll take a hit - but to just sit blissed? YouTube, man.
And we can draw all kinds of lines between tech and behaviors and judgemental - my kid going to Scratch, or Ocarina of Time, same hunger, different, gateway? Idk. I'm replying to you instead of watching birds at dawn, idk.
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •OK, grampa, thanks for telling me MTV is super bad.
Literally all '80s I heard my choices in entertainment were destroying my brain, culture was abandoning traditional values, is that a boy or girl?, games I played were either "not art" (fuck Ebert) or Satanic.
We weren't competent to fix cars or repair anything (actually because they were computerized).
Programming was called useless until suddenly it was in demand, now it's "useless" again. OK.
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Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄 • • •And we *were* divided into factions. Ha ha Breakfast Club, but I spent 6 years in constant hell because I was a Nerd/Stoner dual-class, and the Jocks and Young Republicans were allowed to beat us up. Not a joke, assault was not considered a crime.
Even/esp at my age, I *do* watch a lot of yustub or Twitch. It's the way we share half our culture, and the rest is in stupid places like reddit or f*c*b**k.
Put on a stream of something I like and get some work done, or veg out.
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄 • • •It is true the younger generation are illiterate. Sometimes we say "functionally" but really they can't read more than a few words in a row and understand the meaning. Giving them a complex textbook is futile.
But there were millions of years of pre-literate people, then 4000 years where it was for the elites only, then 3 centuries where everyone had to read. Might be heading back to Roman times where you hired a scribe (bot) to read to you. Paging Marshall McLuhan.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄 • • •@mdhughes I think you've misunderstood my statements here, but it also feels like you've done so intentionally so I'm not sure there's much point in the following clarification.
Largely, I don't have a problem with the content of the media these kids are consuming. In some cases, some of it sucks real hard, but mostly I don't mind it at all.
The fact that they're all basically illiterate is worrying. The fact that many of them would rather do literally nothing than anything other than passively consume algorithmic video feeds is worrying.
But my concern is for the ways that they, and to a lesser extent all of the rest of us, are being exploited.
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •OK, gramps, the kids are being exploited but we were free minds and the CIA MK-ULTRA, Crack For Contras, promotion of "Modern Art", John Birch shit, was all completely innocent.
I feel like this is the cursed item shop thing.
Yeah, no shit last gen hates next gen's idiotic entertainments, and oh they don't Protestant work ethic like in our day, 6am to 9pm in the mines puts hair on an 8-year-old's chest!
They're not more addicted than GenX was to MTV.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄 • • •@mdhughes except they absolutely are more addicted to their tech than GenX was to MTV.
That's what I'm saying.
Major psychiatric journals are publishing new studies about this every few weeks (and most of those are based on 5+ year old data, and pretty much all of them show a problem that is worsening and accelerating.)
I'm working with, at this point, dozens of professionals who are all pretty convinced that we've passed "this generation's preferred methods of entertainment are scary to us" and have entered "Oh, this is harming them on a fundamental level."
Some of these kids are exhibiting actual withdrawal symptoms when their tablet access is restricted. Two weeks ago, I had to pull a 10 year old off of an adult who he had pulled to the ground and was beating, because he lost his turn on his switch.
These aren't isolated anecdotes, they're symptoms of a widespread problem.
I get that you're devoted to this idea of being an contrarian curmudgeon on this issue, but I ain't enjoying it.
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Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •And Dungeons & Dragons causes teens to run away or suicide (huh, might've been some other factors? NO! Blame the entertainment damaging their BRAINS!)
I am generally a contrarian and curmudgeon, sure, because most things are really stupid, and I have to sit thru it.
But kids being "addicted" to the only releases they have from a shit world, and it being hated by adults, is not new. The unending stream of anti-drug and juvenile delinquency propaganda from the 1950s on is not new.
cognitively accessible math
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •They did enjoy smacking lanternflies with fly swatter, but ... similar fast feedback.
AlisonW ♿🏳️🌈♾️
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to AlisonW ♿🏳️🌈♾️ • • •@AlisonW I don't think it's limited to kids, that's just where I've been most exposed recently.
I think we have reached a line in modern tech driven capitalism that will land us at A Brave New World in short order if we don't examine it and push back.
cognitively accessible math
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Sensitive content
Adam Dalliance
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Sensitive content
hard to become good at technology if all you have is an iPhone. Can't even program it without a license. Android isn't much better if you ain't got a laptop to plug it into you can't see it's file system properly or write a program for it to run.
Phones are the suck.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Adam Dalliance • • •Sensitive content
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
in reply to Adam Dalliance • • •Sensitive content
@pre You can download from the App Store: Pythonista, LispPad, Apple's Swift Playground (and Workflow, which is a language if you must), multiple versions of BASIC, Koder and other editors that let you live-code HTML/JS, ish which is a Linux emulator, and many others. I can't stand Lua but there's an infinite number of Lua shell things.
If the Kids Today™ aren't coding on their iPhones or iPads, it's not because of some lintwat conspiracy theory! Do one fucking second research!
Troubled Clef
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •ombremad
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to ombremad • • •epicdemiologist
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Home • Montessori Partnerships for Georgia
Montessori Partnerships for GeorgiaAndrew (Television Executive)
in reply to epicdemiologist • • •cy
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •That might be playing a part in how you see things changing so dramatically. Rich fucks have always been harsher on the less affluent, trying to get their kids addicted to bullshit. And yes that includes the fairly (but not extremely) affluent. It might be that you just didn't see the problem that's been simmering below the surface all this time. It's still a problem, though.
It's like going to a rural church from a city one, and declaring that people have suddenly gotten so fanatical and ignorant.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to cy • • •Sean Kleefeld
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Bernie Isn't In Epstein Files reshared this.
Brother Soul
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Marcos Dione
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Vincent Sparks
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Brother Soul
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •yes, Yes, & YES at every single letter typed. Big up's. Boosted.
Brother
Arne Babenhauserheide
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I think that answer (falling empire) cuts too short.
We’re also living through hybrid geopolitical battles, and polarization and isolation are also effective ways to weaken other countries.
And breaking people apart is also an advantage for some people within the country: international solidarity weakens hierarchies.
And you can’t have war against another country if most people in your society care more about their friends in that country than about their own government.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Arne Babenhauserheide • • •デイヴ
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Another possible (slightly more Occam-friendly) explanation to the noticeable explosion in this type of propaganda, is that modern [social] media have made it lucrative, even as an individual:
Selling whatever idiotic/bigoted theory online is merely a facet of being a professional "influencer". And as we know, being a successful influencer, is good money (being a mediocre one, is barely-living wage, but that will hardly stop people trying).
デイヴ
in reply to デイヴ • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to デイヴ • • •@deivudesu the point of a system is what it does.
I don't need to ascribe some shadowy conspiracy forces to the current state of the world in order for me to note the pattern and to understand that the pattern exists because it's profitable and useful.
デイヴ
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Bc while the two might result in the same, I think the ways we can hope to address them are a bit different…
CubeOfCheese
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •it is also easier to sell things to people who are socially isolated.
Want a partner? Buy tinder premium.
Want to laugh with friends? Buy a dropout subscription.
Want to be part of a community? Become a patron on Patreon and gain access to the exclusive community discord.
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Sheogorath
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •something I wonder about, especially since the word propaganda is used: Is it really explicit or is it just an implication?
E.g. the creation of the ozone hole wasn't a bond villain sitting on ther boat laughing, but rather a side effect of using this useful chemical connection.
So is it here the same thing? Is it just marketing and advertisement causing this harm as a side effect of "effective campaigns"? And will good regulation help to stop it or reduce the harm?
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Sheogorath • • •Nicole Parsons
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •For me, I am endlessly fascinated by the "Divide & Conquer" fossil fuel funding behind such propaganda & addictive tech.
prospect.org/power/2025-01-29-…
Climate denial
blog.ucs.org/elliott-negin/its…
exposedbycmd.org/2022/03/21/th…
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
counterpunch.org/2025/03/21/ta…
Covid disinformation
jacobin.com/2021/12/right-wing…
desmog.com/2020/10/26/american…
nytimes.com/2020/11/20/busines…
Immigration & xenophobia disinformation
biasly.com/news/whoisbillionai…
politifact.com/article/2023/ju…
clarionledger.com/story/news/p…
1/
Koch Foods: Mississippi ICE raid search illegal. Evidence should be excluded
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Nicole Parsons
in reply to Nicole Parsons • • •2/
Getting people hooked on society-destroying technology seems to be a goal, not an accidental byproduct.
Autism disinformation
apa.org/monitor/2025/09/advoca…
autisticadvocacy.org/2025/04/t…
npr.org/sections/shots-health-…
wired.com/story/donald-trump-r…
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/397189…
tistje.medium.com/the-richest-…
technologynetworks.com/neurosc…
Election denial
katiecouric.com/news/opinion/s…
lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2…
politico.com/news/2024/10/08/e…
LGBTQ denial
pbs.org/newshour/politics/why-…
barnraisingmedia.com/how-chris…
politico.com/news/2024/10/31/r…
Christian pastor in Wisconsin defends transgender people's rights
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Nicole Parsons
in reply to Nicole Parsons • • •3/
Erosive narratives that grow distrust & cynicism.
techpolicy.press/gendered-disi…
Tech & AI
blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2025/…
rollingstone.com/culture/cultu…
White Supremacy
propublica.org/article/tim-dun…
Climate change disinformation
energyandpolicy.org/who-is-ste…
Christian Nationalism
rollingstone.com/politics/poli…
Evangelical Dominionism
texasaft.org/research/reports/…
pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-…
These divisive narratives all appear to be coming from the same sources. Big Oil.
How Elon Musk uses his X social media platform to amplify right-wing views
PBS NewsNicole Parsons reshared this.
Morten Grøftehauge
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Excellent thread. I think there's two things:
Parasocial "relationships" are probably more successful when they isolate you from other people. Maybe we are selecting for the online equivalent of an abusive boyfriend/girlfriend.
And absolutely agree on the games.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Morten Grøftehauge • • •child of baphomet
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Bernie Isn't In Epstein Files reshared this.
Bernie Isn't In Epstein Files
in reply to child of baphomet • • •child of baphomet
in reply to Bernie Isn't In Epstein Files • • •@BernieDoesIt It might be better to encourage the thought that *people* can sometimes be ignorant about their needs.
To presume every neuro-diverse person is a kind, understanding, intelligent, accepting soul is just as dangerous. I say this as an adult with very, very late diagnosed autism.
Bernie Isn't In Epstein Files
in reply to child of baphomet • • •@shram86 Oh, they know that some NTs understand their needs. They just had a hard time understanding why all NTs didn't understand their needs.
They know intellectually that not every ND is a kind, understanding, intelligent, accepting soul, but all the ones they know are, so they don't have a lot of practice using that fact.
Fish Id Wardrobe
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Do you think the kids you are seeing are the result of some sort of selection bias? Or are they typical?
Put another way: are these kids this way because for some reason you only get to see the kids that are this way?
edit: never mind, I think you answer this: no.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Fish Id Wardrobe • • •@fishidwardrobe I think I am working with these kids because they are like this but I don't think that these kids are unique, and I suspect that a lot of other kids are in the same boat, but coping tons greater extent.
The proportion of modern kids that are essentially illiterate (and adults, even) is staggering and terrifying.
iideacocarl
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • •@Andrew (Television Executive)
Yup. This is Coercive Control 101.
like this
rastilin and Andrew (Television Executive) like this.
Jason
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Stay off social media that uses algorithms to keep you engaged.
It only feeds you the same BS over and over. This is how Trump supports got hooked.
athena_rising
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Robin Barton
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Bernie Isn't In Epstein Files reshared this.
rastilin
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I've started seeing this too. That's why I was somewhat in favor of the Australian plan to start putting age restrictions on social media; at this point the push to chisel the bonds of society apart is just an endless and unrelenting flood, and I think the only real solution is legislation.
I do think that conversations about society are important, but here it seems like Youtube is filled with self serving grifters that lie relentlessly. Just having a "marketplace of ideas" or something isn't going to fix that, as other grifters will lie a dozen more times before that first lie is even revealed or discussed.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to rastilin • • •rastilin
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •You may be right that it will cause problems to just remove social media. But there can still be things like Discord, IRC, Forums, etc... for people to socialize online. I think the ability of anyone anywhere in any country to start a Facebook, Instagram or YouTube account and immediately start pumping out an endless stream of lies is the problem. Because it's multi-national you can't even use a "truth-in-media" law to hold people accountable as many YouTube channels are just AI voice over channels that don't seem to have a clear location.
EDIT: And I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist and go "all our social divisions are caused by foreign actors", I don't believe that they are and "we" are perfectly capable of fracturing by ourselves. But. I do think it's a contributing factor that's busy stirring the pot as hard as possible.
🌜Galactic Stone🌛
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •1000% spot on and well said. It's like you read my mind and I could not have said it more completely or eloquently than you did.
I have witnessed the same dynamics at work with my grandson and his peers. It's a complex set of interrelated issues that has no blanket easy fix.
Education is key to fixing this. The idiocracy government and corporations won't help us. We must take direct action ourselves whenever we can.
Keep up the good fight.
atlovato
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •brood of byrdes
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •super. fucking. dangerous. times.
Andrew (Television Executive)
Unknown parent • • •@WanderingBeekeeper pokemon and similar games were at the heart of the reading and math program I used to run.
These kids ... Don't care in the slightest about anything that isn't exploding and covered in mr beast.
Andrew (Television Executive)
Unknown parent • • •@WanderingBeekeeper we've been doing social skills modeling with a ttrpg and we're working towards incorporating more math and reading there as well, but that's only possible once the kids are already reading, as reinforcement and practice, and some of them aren't there yet.
We'll see how it goes when we get a little further along.
Edelweißpirate Beekeeper
Unknown parent • • •Kevin C 🎬
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •It's capitalism of marginal ideas.
With the ease of publishing today on the internet, it is incredibly easy to publish compelling bad faith arguments, and then find an audience across the world willing to consume and reward it with attention and money.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Kevin C 🎬 • • •@kcarr2015 That's certainly a part of it.
But it's deeper than that, because the platforms through which these bad ideas are published make their money from "engagement" and the way to maximize engagement is to show people things that they hate, or things that are controversial.
A natural byproduct of maximizing for engagement is creating an extremism machine.
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Kevin C 🎬
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Disagree that the platforms themselves are to blame.
I've watched this happen in nearly every internet forum I've been a part of since 2000s, before you could even "like" a post, when forum posts just showed up at the top of a page due to engagement.
But that's just my take. 🤷♂️
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Kevin C 🎬 • • •@kcarr2015 I worked in one of these companies for years.
It's absolutely intentional.
Quercus 🟡⚪🟣⚫
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •echarlie
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •The student caving club at my local university is active on discord, but getting students from passive engagement online to going out and doing stuff is hard. And they don't *ask* for what they want! Even the Linux Users' group--which is intentional about technology--seems to struggle.
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echarlie
in reply to echarlie • • •echarlie
in reply to echarlie • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to echarlie • • •@notecharlie That's it!
For the kids i'm working with, we're working on it. It's getting better.
What about for the kids who's parents don't recognize that their kids are illiterate? Are we just going to sacrifice literacy in a generation?
echarlie
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •without concrete policy programs that value and emphasize a liberal education and emotional intelligence, I truely don't know. I do have to wonder how much of this is driven by technology, versus de-prioritizing the arts because STEM, versus public education failing people (because it's being actively undermined).
And societally, how do we fix this? If educated people without kids aren't seeing it happen, can we even hope to make progress?
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to echarlie • • •lp0 on fire
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to lp0 on fire • • •Salty Puck
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Sensitive content
Hell of a thread. Thanks for sharing your observations, much to ponder in there. My GGrandson's (11) saving grace is his parents and Grandparents. He's very much into gaming and wants to be a youtube influencer. But his parents take him and sister to a nearby preserve for walks 3 to 4 times a week and teach them about nature and just let them be kids. Parental involvement was a big focus when they decided to have kids.
Your thread reminds me of the prison program where they learn how to take in and train and care for dogs. Start small, an hour or two every week, build up to more time. It could be a lot of things, hiking and picking up trash along the way with a swim in a creek as a break. Learning a craft, ceremics can be easy and a healthy dopamine hit and easy to start. Just something to do in small groups that doesnt force socialization at first. Horseback riding would be good, have the kids eventually learn to curry and clean hooves. Horses are a good dopamine hit.
Gods I'm glad I'm old.
Sara
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •yes to this whole thread
I think it got MUCH worse during the pandemic
one of my kids came "back" from that, but only after months in a trail crew job where they weren't allowed access to phones during the week -- this seemed to work as a "detox" and they've gone on to have what I'd consider a normal healthy adult life, friends and work and school and hobbies
the other kid hasn't resurfaced
I know other parents with similar issues
Andrew (Television Executive)
Unknown parent • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
Unknown parent • • •@shansterable Two of the kids I'm working closely with have a physical disability that precludes long stretches outside, but you're right in that getting kids together in a group and giving them the space to be kids does temporarily alleviate a lot of this.
(Except when one of the kids has a cell phone or a tablet and then everyone just goes in to a trance.)
Andrew (Television Executive)
Unknown parent • • •@chongliss That's the kind of thing I'm looking at.
I mean, I'm going to start with individuals, and with things like "Here's how the internet works, and here's how you can build a thing to make it safer to use" rather than "getting started with linux" but, yeah.
Find some people who want to learn, teach em. Find some people who have problems, help them find the solution.
slow learner, deep feeler
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •There are 2 things I mention a lot.
How much money and effort is being spent making us feel isolated and distrustful of each other.
And how pervasive anti-Black framework is.
In my experience, there's a lot of resistance to these statements. I am hoping that the suggestion will stick around in people, the way it did in me, and that over time it will become more visible for people to see how much impact these things have on us collectively.
Mariya Delano
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •- I'm 27 and have noticed the same kind of propaganda that basically makes most people my age or younger isolated and judgmental and self-hating and unable to find anyone they deem "good enough" to get close to. People seem so primed to jump at cutting someone off as the first sign of trouble. And I've cut people off for being wbusive before, not against that, but it would be after multiple failed attempts to try to make things work and improve the relationship. Not as the first resort.
- it scares me how most people my age can't read the same articles that I read in the news or online, can't pay attention to a long video essay on YouTube, can't find the patience to play long RPG video games that require 50+ hours to really understand the story (and typically 100-200 hrs to complete). I've given up on recommending books a long time ago. These are people's preferred media formats and they lose patience after 10 minutes at most, say they don't have time for long entertainment, and start scrolling through reels on their phone or showing me "brainrot compilations". These are people with good university degrees and prestigious jobs!!
- I learned to manage my neurodivergence (ADHD + autistic traits) by being very good with disciplining my attention and minimizing destructive stimuli. And I feel like the mainstream culture is intent on breaking down all of my accommodations.
- my little sister is 10, can't read even a full sentence, and is exactly like the kids you describe. I don't know how to help her.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Mariya Delano • • •@mariyadelano It's scary.
And the number of people who are ready to just say "well, maybe everyone doesn't need to be literate anymore" is ... too high.
Most of my reading practice comes in the form of play. Video games, table top RPGs, reference books.
But I'm the Practice guy, not the Learn guy. The kids have to know at least the basics before I'm going to be any help to them.
Syphist
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Syphist • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
Unknown parent • • •Neil Kandalgaonkar
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Jonathan Lamothe
Unknown parent • •@Neil Kandalgaonkar @Andrew (Television Executive) The thing about cults is that they're so unimaginative in their tactics. They're all mostly variations on the same basic formula and have been for literal centuries.
It's not that there's one leader, but a bunch of manipulators all working from the same playbook.
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prom™️
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • •@Andrew (Television Executive)
That's the tricky part, isn't it? The tech industry has done a fantastic job of turning everything into a magic black box that everyone's afraid to look inside of for fear of breaking it.
like this
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KeithWM
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •@me Start with a goal.
With parents that goal is helping them learn enough about tech to feel safe and comfortable teaching their kids. For other people goals can be many things.
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Andrew (Television Executive)
Unknown parent • • •@Cassiopeia12727 that's traditionally my role and my methods here. I pull out the fighting fantasy game books and the comics and the text heavy RPGs and I give the kids some incentive to practice reading with me, and also a reason to get better in between.
With this batch of kids, if there's pictures, they look at the pictures (sometimes) and then they move on. Very rarely they'll read with me, or ask me to read to them, but mostly they don't even attempt solo.
citizenAlex
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
Unknown parent • • •@zannesan Sure, not everyone is going to enjoy reading.
I'm not trying to force the kids to read recreationally, I'm trying to make sure that they have enough functional literacy to avoid getting taken advantage of and to fully participate in society.
In order to do that, I have to find things that they do enjoy that involve reading, so that they have reasons to practice that reading in the pursuit of what they enjoy.
Peluche Cero
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •I got especially stuck on the need for isolating from the outgroup and the tendency to police others' behaviour, especially to police sexuality. I would appreciate if you elaborated on that. I'd like to understand.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Peluche Cero • • •@peluchecero
Think about the annual "kink at pride" discourse, or the conversations around bisexual and pansexual people in "straight passing" relationships, or the way some people within the queer community get absolutely incised at the idea of someone identifying as a lesbian and also using he/him pronouns.
One of the otherwise pretty cool people I work with is obsessed with the way other people use language to describe themselves, and gets hung up on things that don't make sense to them. But rather than accepting that it doesn't make sense to them, they focus on trying to prove that the other person's views are self contradictory and tearing them down.
This is unhealthy.
It's also reinforced by a lot of the media they watch.
Peluche Cero
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Peluche Cero • • •@peluchecero I mean, among a lot of folks in that cohort, it appears to be?
There's a whole ongoing discourse right now about "unnessicary" sex scenes in books and movies and how that relates to various social issues.
Andrew (Television Executive)
Unknown parent • • •@zannesan
That's a shockingly condescending tone, but I'm going to assume it wasn't intentional.
I'm working with 10 kids right now, and most of their parents. Most of the kids are pretty tech motivated, and various forms of screen time are the primary motivator that their parents and teachers use with them in most circumstances.
My job in this situation is to provide them with opportunities to practice reading, and motivation to do so.
Frequently that looks like "hey, here are ten video games you can play" but all of them require a fair amount of reading, or "here's the latest episode of that TV show you want to watch" but it's the subtitled version with the original Japanese audio.
The methods I'm using are definitely not going to work for every kid, but they have worked for a lot of kids from a lot of background over the years, and they're basically not working for any of the kids I'm currently working with.
I'm looking for new strategies, but I'm also looking at ways that I can both 1) provide more tech access and 2) be reasonably confident that that tech access will be neutral at worst for their education.
Andrew (Television Executive)
Unknown parent • • •@zannesan Glad to know I misinterpreted.
I think it was the combination of "worked every time" and "I know that's probably not what you want to hear" that made me feel as if I was being talked down to.
The kids I'm working with are all over the place in terms of ability, so I suspect there will not be a one size fits all solution. Using devices as motivators works really well for some kids, and is not an option for others (economic level, other behavior issues, etc. If they've lost screen time due to classroom behavior and I give it back due to reading, they're incentives get all wrong.
Poloniousmonk
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •If you need an actor to read you your information, you are probably being played. It's like the difference between reading your own bible and letting some rapist at a pulpit mansplain it to you.
Fuck video. Real information is delivered via text. Video is pablum.
Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Poloniousmonk • • •Eat This Podcast
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •Andrew (Television Executive)
in reply to Eat This Podcast • • •@etp I'm not done yet.
I'm still organizing these thoughts, and refining them. It'll make it to blog post eventually, probably.
þēodrīċ🔸(e/ack thbbft)
in reply to Andrew (Television Executive) • • •