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Carmen Osorio, expert in technology addiction: ‘It’s not a good idea to give children a smartphone; in any case, you let them borrow yours’ (english.elpais.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago (5 children)

A non-smartphone, that is, a cell phone like the ones that today’s parents had when we were young and with which we made calls and sent text messages, was enough for us, and it did not cause addiction.

That's not the way I remember it. Texting addiction was a thing. That's how Twitter became popular; it was basically a way to broadcast SMS to friends at first.

I guess it's a matter of degrees.

Ad-based services are the real problem here, I think. You don't hear people complaining about Wikipedia addiction.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago

I'm a Wikipedia addict but I'm not complaining

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yeah and I remember playing Snake for half a day. And spending all the school breaks bragging with the phones. And once they had color displays, we shared funny 5 second video clips each day. And that was more than 20 years ago.

To be fair, I don't think we were more addicted than you were 'addicted' to Pokemon cards. Extensively watching Peppa pig and Minecraft Lets-plays on daddy's phone at the age of 3 is a new level, though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Texting addiction was a thing.

It was? Honestly asking. Texting for me was cumbersone (T9) and .10c each (recieving too!) For my friends and I, texts were a means to an end (meeting up usually), not a place to have conversations.

You're not wrong about ads though, the main difference today is that many apps are engineered to be addictive.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

For teens it almost certainly was. The "no phone policy" of many American high schools was implemented long before the iPhone. And yeah, texts may have been 10c each but that wasn't your 10c ;)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Twitter is a pub sub system. SMS is a messaging system.

Only the pub sun produces the possibility of endless content to just scroll through.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Agreed! That quote shifts the blame onto parents, and completely ignores a decade's worth of evidence that today's social media platforms were designed to be as addictive as possible. On purpose. For better "engagement metrics" so that they can get kids' eyeballs on more ads.