As a British teen I concerned my parents a lot with my computer usage, with all they had heard about the dangers of over use. But for me that was an outlet in a pretty miserable childhood and turned into my career, I was programming and learning how stuff worked. I don't envy the kids that found an outlet doing something productive only to have a nanny state eventually rip it away from them.
You messing with a computer and teens doom-scrolling social media are two entirely different things.
Yes, some teens are creative with uploading videos, most are not. But teens can still be creative with a smart phone, just don’t post that stuff on social media.
But they don't - either through lack of knowledge or just can't be bothered to enforce it because they don't want to upset their kid. If parents were doing this already, the government wouldn't have to step in.
There were pedophiles, porn, extreme gore, cults, scams and a primitive notion of brainrot. Music and games (not that I played games, but honestly my mum thought that this is why I liked computers and what I was doing) were generally thought to turn kids into killers.
Computer users even in the best conditions (and not children) were looked at negatively- as if they were no life losers. The techbro thing, and the normalisation of computer use is a very modern notion.
FWIW I had the same exact situation as the parent, and heard it all from my mum. The computer was considered undesirable at best and actively harmful at worst.
Their point is: for some individuals it can be beneficial.
My point is: on a societal level, the numbers are pretty clear that teens consume too much media (and social media is even more addictive) and their skills and attention span deteriorate.
I think you understood my point and you understand the reasons for the act. But I'm just protesting on behalf of the kids that will pretty much have their lives ruined or made worse for this decision, for what it's worth.
They said same about video games but it turns out I didn't just want to play them, I also invested crazy amounts of time learning how to make them. Best time to spend crazy hours pursuing something you care about before the busy schedule of an adult saps all that away. It got me ahead. Not everyone just wants quick fixes.
The difference, I think (as an "over-user" of computers all throughout childhood) is that there were no basis for "they said same about video games", but there is a lot of basis for "social media is a net bad" now.
Do I believe the UK is doing this for the right reason or the right way? Absolutely not. But I also don't agree with the comparison of now and when I was a kid/teen.
I was playing brain dead Game Boy games when I was a kid and adults around me were saying games need to be outlawed because they're making my generation stupid. Now I'm a game developer and pretty happy with it.
Every generation has grumpy old people complaining about the youth. I see the dumb TikTok videos that grumpy old people complain about today, and they're about 2 steps above the absolute slop Gen X adults used to watch in the early 2000s: reality TV. Now grumpy old people watch political streamers saying we need to ban (new thing) because it's making kids stupid.
I'm sure parents back in the day thought the same about video games. You're lumping a lot of kids together there, maybe some of them will become journalists... Maybe social media is the only media that will even be relevant in 20 years when their career gets serious.
games could cause a lot of 'lost' time, but you had a say in games; there's a lot more consuming and almost no producing in social media use. And games did not cause you anxiety and FOMO, nor did they programatically lure you into spending your time and money on them.
Thats great for you (and i guess for most of us here on HN).
But was access to that outlet really that free for you? I remember our main computer being in the middle of the living room where everyone in the family could potentially see what i was doing on the computer. I remember dial up being extremely expensive (or "broadband" have really low monthly caps) or the connection dropped the moment anyone would pickup the phone at home. Or use of computer/internet in schools being in public. I also remember all i had to learn to overcome these limits and the choices (cost/benefit analysis) i had to make to overcome those barriers. Those barriers not only provided the learning opportunities but also the necessary friction to reevaluate patterns and decisions.
Do you think the current state of access really replicates that? Are barriers really only "bad"?
And we're finally going back to a time where if a kid is even a little bit different from those around them, they're robbed of finding any type of community that doesn't ostracize them.
you dont think the amount of bullying and pressure to fit in on social media by teens isnt a huge problem? this isnt internet forums and online communities of the 90s, it’s in-your-face constant advertising and pressure by peers every second of every day
The major AIs have access to all sorts of tools, including a math library. I thought this was well-known. There's no "illusion of actual insight" - they're just "using a calculator" (in the sense that they call a math library when needed). AIs are not just LLMs.
It's not 'magic' though but previously LLMs have performed very badly on longer multiplication, 'insight' is the wrong word but I'm saying maybe they're not wildly better at this calculation... maybe they are just optimising these well known jagged edges.
I didn't grow up in a 3rd world country but had the same experience, bar running games I don't own. Not everyone in the west had parents that wanted to just spend thousands on hardware that seemed to be obsolete next year, or any means of making that money. And I've never stopped using sub-par hardware, to this day I enjoy squeezing every drop of performance from cheap pre-owned stuff.
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