Social media, not gaming, tied to rising attention problems in teens, new study finds
https://theconversation.com/social-media-not-gaming-tied-to-rising-attention-problems-in-teens-new-study-finds-271144Open linkView original on lemmy.world335
Comments16
This is not surprising, video gaming has been around since the 70s, the first gamers are hitting 70+.
I don't use tiktok, but I was hanging out with brother and his gf and they showed me how they watch reels/tiktok. It was funny, I won't lie, but man the format is slop.
Video games require you to listen to instructions, execute inputs, and follow tasks to completion to get a reward. Tiktok is basically swipe, watch for a few seconds, next hit; 85% of the clips will be shit but that 15% makes our monkey brain happy so we swipe again and suddenly an hour is gone and you've gained nothing but a shorter attention span.
That 15% ends up on other social media sites anyway so…
But what if I miss that one meme and the internet culture leaves me behind? How can I be in on all the inside jokes and references of I'm ever offline??
I was replaying Super Mario Bros a while ago and it was really striking to me how deliberate the game seems to be about trying to teach patience and impulse control. Games ask more from you than social media content does.
Yes! Thank you for putting this into words, I had the same experience recently but couldn't articulate what I was feeling...
Platformers, metroidvanias, soulslikes, puzzlers... some games are almost brutal in how they demand patience and focus!
Speaking as someone who grew up with video games and only reluctantly engages with social media, I think I understand how the previous generation felt
Well duh. When I play video games, I could be focused on one thing for several hours. When I scroll social media, the feed doesn't let me focus on anything too long ever.
Exactly!
Most games require long-term attention.
Right? And problem solving skills. Though maybe I wouldn't elevate games like gem smashers too high.
those color matching/bubble popper shit mobile games are probably worse than social media most are tied around simple gambling mechanisms...and mobile is the largest gaming market by far iirc.
entire society built around training these dopamine junkie-zombies via rudimentary psychologal games, simple training/reward system tuned towards keeping your eyes glued to those little rectangles so they can sell ads
Good luck doing anything about it. EA is one of the biggest game companies and the entire company is worth less than Zuckerberg. And somehow Elon keeps making money despite burning advertisers and users. There is nothing that can be done except taking a case to the Supreme Court to debate free speech. Video games get no such respect. A lone crackpot can talk shit and get games regulated.
This was posted by a new account that deleted itself.
It’s so funny how the default is to assume games are just shooty violence
We also have fantasy/medieval rts and rpg violence too! 😩