The signal is also clear when interacting with adults: the people “over there” are more important.

These days I was “on call” at home and had to be able to answer my phone urgently. And I hated the fact that I needed to glance at my phone at every notification when talking with other people. Truly just having the damn thing is socially damaging.

> wondered what the scene would look like if we all had phones like that.

People with headphones looking absentmindedly straight ahead doing their best not to focus on anything, isolating themselves as much as possible to make the complete lack of personal space more bearable.

This is already what crowded subways in my city look like when you pass the threshold where people are too cramped to browse their phones. This is not a bad thing, just a coping mechanism.

I think there is much more room for behavior change if you consider people at a table (coffee or restaurant) with and without phones suitable for continuous media consumption or social network interactions.

Well I remember the days before the first smart phone and taking subways in New York City, so it’s not too hard for me to imagine. People reading books, talking to each other, very different.

That would be promising if it wasn’t for a ridiculous price tag. You shouldn’t have to pay a premium just to have features removed. The margin on that phone must be incredibly high.

Addictive behaviour is rarely cured by telling the addict to "just stop doing it".

They also become dysfunctional adults, needing a replacement parent, when the parent disappears- which is mostly the state, sometimes a company - and always a example for stunted individual growth.

I don't think you understood what op meant. There's a difference between a child saying this and parenting style.

If you work from home you will absolutely need an office when you have kids.

This crosses into personal attack and that is not allowed here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Kids also need their own time too. Having a parent constantly interfering is just as bad as having one never showing interest. And you're not a playmate, you're a parent.

My mom was always distracted so that's mostly how I remember her. We have all kinds of wonderful memories together but, what I think of her, the first thing that comes her mind is, her being in the same room as me but ignoring me.

Are you supposed to allocate 100% of your free time to your kids?

+1 as adults we intellectualize way too much what kids are reasoning… they aren’t reasoning! they aren’t fully developed. it’s literally not that deep to them.

every year that passes, the idea of the only personal time one has is in the bathroom on the toilet hits harder and harder. there’s a whole back catalog of jokes about this; hiding in the bathroom, talking extra long. yep, checks out.

Yes, I'm picking my phone over them. And that's fine. I need my own time too.

That's ridiculous, you think when we were tribes in the jungle mother's didn't have something to do? Gather berries or cook etc? Even 50 years ago it wasn't phones, it was probably household chores that mother's "chose" over playing with their kids.

I really think people who want to feel guilty always find a reason to. Yes, don't avoid your kids over your phone, pay attention to them if they ask and need it, but you can still do other things (including looking at your phone) when around them.

Aside from the physical/chemical damage alcohol does to developing brains, alcohol addiction is bad for adults too. We just concede that after childhood you can make your own choice to ruin your life.

Phone addiction is harmful to everyone at all age groups. It's not really the individuals to blame through. The tech companies have broken human psychology and developed something more addictive than drugs.

The phrase "drink beer" could mean anything from 2 beers on a sunny weekend to 6-pack every night. They are not comparable.

Why would I tell my son not to drink beer? He can do so as soon as it’s relatively safe to

this is what naive adults think, don't you remember how it was when you were a kid?

I seriously, I feel like so many people just somehow magically forget their entire childhoods, maybe selectively?

I lack the ability to lie to myself like that unfortunately

Changing habits is hard enough on it's own. parenthood and modern life makes that even more difficult

It is possible to make changes, I would say this is one of the easier bad habits to beat. The best is to start with fixed moments where you as a family decide phones are forbidden. For example, shortly after our daughter was born, we decided "no phones during eating (breakfast/lunch/dinner)". When both parents are in, it is easy to mutually enforce. For over a decade, we have never used a phone during dinner and it's one of those moments of family time.

Now we are always surprised when we have dinner together at a restaurant that some people are on their phones half the time (sometimes doing useless stuff like checking Facebook/insta), rather than enjoying each other and dinner. It's so weird.

Another good method is to remove addictive social media from your phone. Primarily games and apps with algorithmic timelines like Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, etc. I removed all those from my phone. I noticed with apps that do not have an algorithmic timeline, like Mastodon, you catch up once and after that it's not interesting anymore.

I forget the terminology but I read something recently about how people are paying too much attention to their kids and it's making their kids neurotic.

Like when kids were growing up a couple decades ago they could just do whatever they wanted and those folks turned out all right. And now we've got people obsessing over where their children are and literally tracking their location, and the results don't seem to be so great.

(I heard that this difference had actually been quantified but unfortunately I don't have a link.)

I remember something about how, some percentage of children are not even allowed to leave the yard. Whereas their parents were just roaming for miles, at a much younger age.

Although I suppose at the same time, we're also less present with each other. So I guess there's at least two dimensions to that.

I guess the first one would be, are you relaxed and do you trust them to take care of themselves, even at a young age.

And the second one would be... are you actually there, or is it just your body that's there.

There is always a question of whether a bad study is better than no study.

I think weak studies validating people's natural intuitions tend to do more damage than we give them credit for. Even if another better d signed study does way more work and comes with clear results that disprove the natural intuiton, it will be buried in the sea of low effort studies and people will already have settle the issue in their minds as "proven by science".

A better version of this study would be to run an experiment where you take away (or heavily restrict) parental phone access over a month or two and measure the parent-child relationship vs. a control group.

> "Pay more attention to your kids", which is a pretty good universal message to put across.

I wouldn't be too sure of that actually: https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/the-secret-to-parenting-...

That’s irrelevant to the issue with the study that the parent identified.

Manipulating "studies" doesn't help reveal how true this is (or even if it is, do we perhaps have an inherent level of addiction and phones are just an easy target?), nor help find effective ways to reduce it.

Sounds like an answer from a non-parent, honestly. There's a lot more to it than that, and virtually every couple I know with children thought about it a lot before going ahead.

The number one reason is because they see other families and the love and joy that their children bring into their lives. This is inspiring, and brings people around to making the decision, even if they know the sacrifices they will have to make.

Boiling it all down to pure biology is stripping parents of agency to fit your worldview.

Weird how I dont have this drive huh

You can browse the Wikipedia article I linked. It offers a few possible answers to this why question.

As for myself I would simply summarize that making an important choice such as bringing life into the world, without considering the consequences, is already somewhat unethical. One should think before taking an action that has irreversible consequences to anyone. In this case, the person being born. I wouldn't say I'm an antinatalist, I just find it interesting. On a rational level I'm not sure there are many good arguments against some of the conclusions there. If there are I'd be interested in hearing them. The fact that you are personally grateful for your existence is a pretty weak argument imo. If you had never been born you would not be around to know the difference. However had your existence been different it is not so hard to imagine you might feel differently. Surely your life is not so peachy that a scan of that article will be incomprehensible to you. Then again, perhaps you simply lived a far better life than I.

I'm not taking a position one way or the other. As I said, I just find it interesting.

This is the pitch from Idiocracy