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The Tech Industry's War On Kids (curry.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader RoccamOccam summarizes an article now circulating on the web sites of several schools:
Child and adolescent psychologist Richard Freed writes, "...parents have no idea that lurking behind their kids' screens and phones are a multitude of psychologists, neuroscientists, and social science experts who use their knowledge of psychological vulnerabilities to devise products that capture kids' attention for the sake of industry profit. What these parents and most of the world have yet to grasp is that psychology—a discipline that we associate with healing—is now being used as a weapon against children."
Stanford psychology researcher B.J. Fogg, has developed the "Fogg Behavior Model", which he claims is a well-tested method to change behavior and, in its simplified form, involves three primary factors: motivation, ability, and triggers. Describing how his formula is effective at getting people to use a social network, the psychologist says in an academic paper that a key motivator is users' desire for "social acceptance," although he says an even more powerful motivator is the desire "to avoid being socially rejected."
Ramsay Brown, the founder of Dopamine Labs, says in a KQED Science article, "We have now developed a rigorous technology of the human mind, and that is both exciting and terrifying. We have the ability to twiddle some knobs in a machine learning dashboard we build, and around the world hundreds of thousands of people are going to quietly change their behavior in ways that, unbeknownst to them, feel second-nature but are really by design."
Stanford psychology researcher B.J. Fogg, has developed the "Fogg Behavior Model", which he claims is a well-tested method to change behavior and, in its simplified form, involves three primary factors: motivation, ability, and triggers. Describing how his formula is effective at getting people to use a social network, the psychologist says in an academic paper that a key motivator is users' desire for "social acceptance," although he says an even more powerful motivator is the desire "to avoid being socially rejected."
Ramsay Brown, the founder of Dopamine Labs, says in a KQED Science article, "We have now developed a rigorous technology of the human mind, and that is both exciting and terrifying. We have the ability to twiddle some knobs in a machine learning dashboard we build, and around the world hundreds of thousands of people are going to quietly change their behavior in ways that, unbeknownst to them, feel second-nature but are really by design."
As long as they don't come to your house and shoot you then "War" is a misnomer. More like persuasion.
Learn to make your own decisions, based on your own solid research and genuine needs and wants, rather than based on what some shiny! glowy! display tells you. And better learn it fast, before you become a broke string puppet.
This is related to learning not to fall for spanish prisoner scams a.k.a. advance fee fraud. IOW, facebook et al. are the next-gen nigerian royalty.
Sadly weâ(TM)ve been engineering how people think and act as long as religion and human society has existed. Hopefully this will be used to improve peopleâ(TM)s lives and not make them better sources of unquestioning obedience and monetary donations.
Why would we think this is only happening to kids? The adults are the ones with the money...
I haven't seen that domain since Adam Curry was a VJ on MTV!
moral panic
Won't somebody think of the children!!
You think it has more impact? On Slashdot?
By the way, calling something a "war on..." is usually in the same league as adding "-gate" to something: A weak attempt to make something sound interesting and scandalous that nobody would otherwise give 2 fucks about.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Fortnite attracts kids like flies with the cartoonish look, competetive gameplay and humoristic side parts (dancing, skins,etc.)
But in reality those kids are used as a direct way to get into their parents pockets. This is the real way to success in 2018 imho. Get the kids addicted and make the parents pay for their addiction.
Most capitalists are sick ****s who'd sell your children to pedophiles if it meant they could make a 'legal' taxable profit out of it.
You mean compared to pedophiles who make a legal non-taxable profit? Pretty much every religious and quasi-religious group (be they Nazis or SJWs) makes indoctrination of children from the earliest possible age one of their top priorities.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I stopped reading after that.
Corporations putting profit before moral isn't news - Big Tobacco still earns billions every year by turning children into addicts.
But it is somewhat new that people of the same profession now warn the public about their colleagues being only after your money... as if we didn't know that already.
He was more right than even he realized. I wish, now more than ever, that he still had access to a hardware store and a post office.
Heinlein sure got a lot of things right about what was the future to him. Hope the good parts come true as well!
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Communists did nothing wrong.
Clearly you're not a responsible parent if you allow your kids to use social media, and you should lead by example by not using it yourself either. In fact take away their smartphones and give them cheap dumbphones that are only good for voice and text messages while you're at it, their grades will likely go up.
Science finally learns what conmen, priests, pastors, and charlatans, have known for millennia!!! Woot! Woot! Go Science.
Attitudes like this are WHY they end up killing themselves.
I hope you don't really have any kids.
This is not the "Tech Industry"'s war on kids, it's the Marketing Industry's, the propagandists, the people shapers. It's not even new, Vance Packard was warning about this in the 1950s, and he wasn't the only one. The marketers they've had over 60 years since then to refine their techniques.
The tech - smartphones, internet, whatever - is just a new tool that they've adopted and twisted to their purposes. Unfortunately, it's a very effective tool for them - made even more effective by decades of habituating people to ubiquitous propaganda.
Marketing is one of the greatest evils ever to be invented. A crime against humanity - and should be prosecuted and sentenced as such.
The lame quality of this post, and the lame quality of responses to it, remind me how far Slashdot has slid down the slippery slope.
The 'Tech Industry' is made of human beings ... many of whom are nothing to write home about. This is not a revelation, nor something anyone can do anything about, short of running a million volts through them.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
If the production of content based on analysis of consumer behavior can be cast as "war", then nothing can mean anything.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
The great white males are the establishment.
The ad industry has ALWAYS used psychological tricks to attract kids to their products. Nothing new here. . .
Come on, buddy... a little CSS would go a LOOOONG way.
"parents have no idea that lurking behind their kids' screens and phones are a multitude of psychologists, neuroscientists, and social science experts who use their knowledge of psychological vulnerabilities to devise products that capture kids' attention for the sake of industry profit."
We all know this is happening, but there's very little you can do about it.
And before you jump on your high horse, I went to school with kids who had parents that tried to protect them from TV, McDonalds, Coke etc (the parenting horrors of the 70's) and those kids had no friends. So the options are lose/lose. Be socially isolated, or be manipulated by big business. The latter is less bad in my opinion as a parent.
We have the ability to twiddle some knobs in a machine learning dashboard we build, and around the world hundreds of thousands of people are going to quietly change their behavior in ways that, unbeknownst to them, feel second-nature but are really by design."
Vernor Vinge predicted this in 2006 in Rainbows End. Turns out he was optimistic: he predicted it for 2025. He called it the YGBM, an acronym for Ya Gotta Believe Me. He characterized it correctly: as a weapon.
Hugo and Locus Award winner for 2007. Good book.