She advocates for prohibiting the use of phones with internet capabilities to those under 16, and states that the best parental control is, precisely, the parents
As someone who has built a career in building and maintaining digital services, a lot of what Carmen talks about rings very true to me, especially this part:
“The platforms make money based on the time we spend on them, and they don’t hesitate to use unethical, addictive resources, so how are you going to ask a 10-year-old or a 13-year-old to stop, if it’s even hard for us adults?”
I’ve struggled with social media and technology addiction myself, so in my mind, allowing a child a smartphone is akin to teaching them how to smoke - that is how toxic and generally “bad-for-your-health” modern internet is, I think.
At the same time, I am not (yet) a parent, so I really don’t know how am I going to be making such a decision when the time comes.
The modern internet is weird. It’s a space where you can link up a Skinner machine feeding you pure hate and vitriol directly to your brain, but it’s also a space where you can teach yourself literally anything.
I feel like the trick is using it more for the latter and less for the former. Even using Beehaw too much, it quickly becomes obvious that I need to shift my focus. Endless streams of news and opinion aren’t, like, great.
As someone who has built a career in building and maintaining digital services, a lot of what Carmen talks about rings very true to me, especially this part:
“The platforms make money based on the time we spend on them, and they don’t hesitate to use unethical, addictive resources, so how are you going to ask a 10-year-old or a 13-year-old to stop, if it’s even hard for us adults?”
I’ve struggled with social media and technology addiction myself, so in my mind, allowing a child a smartphone is akin to teaching them how to smoke - that is how toxic and generally “bad-for-your-health” modern internet is, I think.
At the same time, I am not (yet) a parent, so I really don’t know how am I going to be making such a decision when the time comes.
The modern internet is weird. It’s a space where you can link up a Skinner machine feeding you pure hate and vitriol directly to your brain, but it’s also a space where you can teach yourself literally anything.
I feel like the trick is using it more for the latter and less for the former. Even using Beehaw too much, it quickly becomes obvious that I need to shift my focus. Endless streams of news and opinion aren’t, like, great.