I would expect anxious/insecure parents to use placating behaviours (like device use) themselves, and I would expect their children to be anxious/insecure too.
So I would expect the study to find that the children of phone-overusers were more likely to be anxious/insecure.
Still, I would also expect that less phone use (subbed with more attention to kid) would help the kid with this.
I find these studies specifically frustrating because they don't answer the most interesting question - is it damaging if your caregiver uses phone a lot but remains responsive.
This study specifically excludes it, and fair enough when being honest about the statistical inference and not overreaching, but that is the question I find most interesting as someone who uses my phone to get away from my desk but keep work going so I can spend time with my kids while doing my job.
One outcome would be this is damaging and worse than just not spending time until after work, the other result would say this is a beneficial arrangement.
Moreso they are interested in the phone because we are but I don't necessary sense frustration. Especially if you are "attentive" in that you are willing to context switch back to your kids immediately, I think they see it as another "thing" like a toy or some distraction outside.
If you use the phone a lot, you are not generating any initiative on your own and are not reponsive to small initiations you dont notice. You are responsive to when kid explicitely comes to you.
Or otherwise said, if you are on the phone a lot, you are creating a barrier to interaction and people (both kids and adults) will eventually end up tired of trying and having less reciprocation.
If you are not physically there, it is actually less frustrating to others then if you create a barrier while being there.
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.
I would love to get rid of my smartphone altogether, actually. I’m just not quite sure how to do it. I need to use a map app often. And most of the announcements and services in my country from companies and schools are all handled through WhatsApp. So it makes it a bit difficult to cut that tether.
Getting a tiny phone not meant for media consumption is probably the closest you can achieve. You are not going to waste a lot of time watching youtube on a 3" screen, because that's just no fun.
The "jelly star" phone looks kind of fun. I just sat in a busy tram and wondered what the scene would look like if we all had phones like that. It's an innteresting thought experiment.
> 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.
Sure, I didn't imagine a utopia of joyful people talking to strangers. That's not what public transport ever looked like, but I do miss the times of a bit more diversity in how people spend their during the commute. Newspapers, books, handheld game consoles (which don't constantly shove ads in front of their users).
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.
Maybe it's a cultural difference but I remember before smartphones on the tube in London as well and noone talked to each other during the morning/evening commute.
I think the biggest difference is actually the lack of newspapers now. Plenty of people were plugged into headphones via iPod/Walkman/whatever was era appropriate. The people who stare at their phones today were staring at newspapers in the pre smartphone era.
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.
1. When you're browsing your phone but you're not having fun, stop. Try to distinguish "I am genuinely interested in that thing on the screen" vs "I'm just doomscrollig".
2. Try to replace parts of your smartphone with other things. Buying a clock helped me fix the habit of "I just opened my eyes, time for phone". I found my old PSP and I'm planning to run some emulator on that instead of phone to play some minigames.
3. I have my phone always completely silent. There's literally no notification that cannot wait until I decide to check the phone.
4. I sometimes turn off the data transfer in my phone. First, I get less notifications. Second, it's yet another barrier and it gives me a second to ask myself "do I really want to play with my phone now".
Now it's smartphones and devices, but in the past it was work. Personally I think these days kids get a lot more attention from their parents than anytime in the past. Even so much that it can be irritating/damaging (parents being "friends/playmates" instead of parents).
Give kids the freedom to make mistakes and suffer the (nonfatal, no loss of life or limb) consequences.
Yes, there are cases to intervene, but generally, you should let your kids hurt themselves more. Pain is a very important form of learning. By overprotecting them, they become very vulnerable adults, then worse things happen.
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 think that's the issue in some cases though, while being totally absent is a major negative, the perception the kid has of the parent _while_ present is more improtant than when being absent if the absence is understandable, a kid in daycare will observe other parents leaving and picking up and normalize it.
I suggest that reading previously took the roll devices take today. When my parents weren’t at work they were reading as often as not; newspapers and novels.
This can be tricky. I know my mother loves me unconditionally, but I also have strong memories of her shutting herself inside her study to read textbooks and journals, and children were not allowed to disturb unless she was strictly needed to handle an accident.
I have the same need for cognition as my mother, but I opt not to lock myself in my office. Instead I tell my kids, "I'm around if you need me and I'll keep an eye on you but I'm not currently a playmate; I'll be here reading on my phone."
The difference is my mother clearly separated relationship-building from study. I don't. This probably means I'm available more often, but with lower quality? I'm not sure. What is better? No idea.
I don't have kids but I've been thinking about how, I would probably need some kind of office separate from the house.
In fact that's probably a big part of why offices exist in the first place. If I had kids here then for much of the day, they would be trying to interact with me and I would be either getting distracted from work or shooing them away.
What I'm actually there I would want to be fully present with them. It goes without saying that I would follow the example of the people who invented the stuff, and not give them a brainrot device in the first place.
I had a fascinating conversation about this with my 5yo, which started with her asking "why won't you play with me?" and me replying "did you know my dad didn't play with me at all?".
That's not entirely true as I have early memories of him teaching my older sister how to play chess and me occasionally participating, but makes one think about this balance that needs to be struck.
I'm doing somewhat better than my father in this regard, but I wonder what is the healthy amount of attachment really? People are saying I'm going to miss these prompts when they'll grow older, but I don't want to do this just because of FOMO.
I have an intelligent, agentic adult spouse, and we both know that if we want to get work done, we should go to our own physical space and close the door, because otherwise the other person nearby will keep accidentally interrupting us because we're "just there". I think a child will struggle even more with this.
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.
The implication was they were asking for a playmate and he’s shutting them down, he has a constant need for intellectual stimulation so has to read instead of engage. I’m all for alone time but if they need it you won’t have to say a word, they’ll just disappear off into their room.
Parenting is not a one dimensional role. A kid that doesn’t see their parent as a playmate is the saddest thing I’ve heard. I hope you’re saying that out of ignorance.
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.
No. But from a very early age they can tell when you’re truly preoccupied versus opting to ignore them. And it has an effect on your relationship and how they’ll remember your presence as a parent.
Framing it goes a long way, “I have to clean the garage, then we can go swimming or play a game”. You’re telling them about something you have to do that they won’t be interested in, then offering up something positive.
Much different than, “I’m here, staring at my phone, bother me if you must”.
Also, these things go away soon enough. They won’t want you as a playmate anymore. During these early childhood years, I do my reading and alone time activities after bedtime. Nothing wrong with having an early bedtime just to reserve it for this purpose.
I’m not a pro parent by any means but these thoughts are certainly based on my parenting philosophy. I actively try to engage as much as possible even to the detriment of my personal hobbies and interests because while they want to engage, I want to be present.
+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.
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.
I was getting effected by the "technoference". A few friends when visiting us at our home, are being on phones, scrolling and engaging. I decided to buy a box. Any time friends visit us, they should drop their phones in that box and pick them up while leaving.
I remember the same from my childhood: being told off by my Mum for staring at something out of the window while she was doing the same. Mentioned it, got told off by my Dad. Did it affect me? I remember it 40 years later!
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 claim is usually made without specific citations. The few studies I'm aware of show correlation between mental health issues and phone use, but don't show which way the causation runs. It's just as plausible that mental health causes more phone use, yet these message boards always like to blame the phone for the mental health issues.
Can you share studies that show they’re “identical”?
You’re not going to overdose from using your phone too much, or die from withdrawal if you suddenly stop using your phone, so that seems like a stretch.
“Relatively safe to” is a very official sounding rubric. I guess tell him that and see if you agree on the timing of when that safety threshold has been met.
Telling your kid to not drink beer is giving them the courage to say no to drinking beer. I personally don’t just bark out rules with no context. I also have discussions with my kid about why drinking beer can go awry. We all expect that they will, likely before we’d feel it’s relatively safe. So I want him to at least know what’s in store and how to not make compounding mistakes.
I dunno if that is connected to ADHD, and I dunno if I have ADHD (though by reading the textbook* on it, it kinda seems I do)... but I genuinely don't remember my childhood either.
I have severe ADHD, I remember enough to remember how it is. maybe it's because I'm in my 20s.. at least the feeling/vibe and knowing how "it's for your own good!!!!" type of stuff actually sounds like
but still, imo I haven't changed that much. less risk taking, more worries, more wisdom (somewhat)
maybe for some people they really are super different when they're younger but for me it's been kind of a linear path after a certain point
+ don't quote me on this but from what I know, ADHD affects mostly short term and working memory, but long term memory, especially significant events/etc. can be quite well retained, which matches my experience
> ... by reading the textbook* on it [ADHD], it kinda seems I do ...
There's a reason why most of the books I've read on ADHD have mentioned "Don't self-diagnose; get an expert to diagnose you." Short version: many of the symptoms of ADHD such as distractability happen to everyone, or nearly everyone, to some extent. Everyone can be distracted by a random thought; most people shake it off and get their train of thought back on track. Some people are more distractable than others, but it's perfectly normal to be distracted now and then. Which is why most people reading an ADHD book will recognize some of their behaviors in that book.
My opinion? (And note that I'm not qualified to diagnose anyone, so this is strictly an opinion). If you read the ADHD book and go "Hmm, maybe that describes me, I'm not sure"... then chances are that you do not have ADHD. Because my own experience was reading an ADHD book and going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. I know for a fact this author never interviewed me. So how come he's describing me perfectly?" Not in every single chapter — I don't have emotional-regulation problems to nearly the level that he described in some of the case studies, for example. But when I got to the bits about starting projects and not finishing them, or the parts about getting (seemingly-paradoxically) hyperfocused on some task and not noticing when other people are talking to you, I just shook my head and laughed, because he was describing me to a T.
Now, even if you don't have ADHD, that doesn't mean some of the organizational techniques mentioned there won't be helpful to you. Go ahead and apply them: many of them do help even the people who fit more into the "normal" part of the distractability spectrum. But certainly do NOT try any medication without having gotten a diagnosis first. Some ADHD medications can have side effects that should be watched for, and most of them are controlled substances in most countries I'm aware of (due to the possibility of addiction if you take way more than the amount normally prescribed, for example), meaning that in most countries, it's illegal to take them without a prescription.
But go ahead and apply some of the suggestions about ways to organize your life: they can be helpful even if you only have a normal level of distractability.
Thanks for the wonderfully thought-out response. I definitely agree on the not-self-diagnose-yourself front. I'm somewhere in between your two possible reactions to such books, leaning closer to the "Whoa, whoa, whoa" one.
However, I live in Japan, where simply finding a doctor qualified and willing to diagnose someone over 20 years old is super rare. Short of expensive monthly trips to Tokyo or something just to be diagnosed, and then having a prescription that has to be received in person monthly. And the medication is highly controlled.
So I have just kinda accepted to keep applying these techniques (as well as being aware of my own created mechanisms), keep trying my best, and just live a happy life. It's been working so far!
it's like a variation of the principle of "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
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.
There are many things you can do to get it out of your family's life. No phones in the bedroom, No phones after X O'clock, Open conversations about social media with your kids, Unite with them in the fight against social media, block social media from your phones (use only a computer). My own poison of choice was twitter but thankfully, it's become X and I've become ex-twitter more or less. It's liberating. I also vibe coded some software to keep me off these things on my work computer so that's been good too.
It's not impossible,but on top of all the other stresses in life you need to sit down and figure out this new problem too? You have got to at least sympathize with the situation. I know I've regressed on phone use since my child was born.
All I can say is, time really flies by (before you know it they are teenagers). You only get one shot at enjoying their early years and they only get one youth. Make the best of it, cutting down smartphone use (for parent and child) is part of it.
If you are really addicted, seek help (we have to accept that it can be a real addiction). If not, set strict boundaries and remove addictive apps.
This is a weak study that is exemplary of psychology's weak experimentation culture and correlation/causation laundering, especially with regard to self-report.
The heavily hinted implication is that device use damages relationships. But look at what they actually measured. They ask adolescents to answer questions like:
"My primary caregiver ignores me when they are on a device." (DAIS, their new scale)
And then also ask them to answer questions like:
"I often worry that this person doesn't really care for me." (ECR-RS)
And then act like it's a revelation that these two self-report scales are correlated.
A much more plausible causal explanation is that a single psychological variable (e.g. a bad relationship) causes both self reports, rather than the implied pathway that device use causes A, which then causes B.
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.
Are people who are very very securely attached to their parents happy later in life, or is there a ceiling? The terminology invites certain conclusions here.
Maybe the whole attention thing is more a matter of quality, rather than quantity
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".
100%. I completely agree with this study's 'findings' but also agree the study is garbage.
So many studies now a days have experiments designed to confirm a hypothesis instead of challenge it. They should be doing everything possible they can to disprove their hypothesis and only accept it after all attempts at falsification fail. But of course that's in idealized science. In reality, publish or perish means you need to get something published and negative results don't get published. And so this study, like what seems to be most now a days, is designed to prove their hypothesis - which ironically proves nothing.
This (experiments only designed to confirm a hypothesis and not trying to falsify it) is also part of the reason why so many studies can't be reproduced later, the "reproducibility crisis". One of my relatives, a medical doctor who just recently retired, has often lamented the incentive structure that results in negative results not getting published. (She has also said that she wants to see about seven studies pointing in the same direction before she starts to take it seriously).
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.
Why is that much more plausible? It implies that it has always been there, and that nothing has changed since the last century, which is unlikely. Unless you want to introduce some other recent factor, but that is going to be even less likely.
And why? Because other studies have shown how addictive "phone" use is, and how it isolates people. And addicts (drugs, alcohol) are bad caretakers.
So there's really nothing that makes the explanation implausible.
You may ask yourself if it's not your own addiction speaking.
IMO this isn't necessarily bad (it's one way to get data), but the numbers are meaningless without a control. Unfortunately, I think we missed that bus by ~20 years. Had the same study been conducted every few years over the last two decades, I think it would have been valuable. Maybe it is still valuable to do this once every few years? (I think that everyone in 2026 is maximally addicted to mobile phones, but maybe I'm wrong and it can get worse).
My dude, I don’t know how to explain this to you but phones and computers are addictive for people. They get hooked on them to feed the lizard brain with digital junk food engineered for engagement.
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.
The attention economy is a resource extraction industry. It'll claw out any bit of attention it can get and sell it, even if that attention would be needed elsewhere.
I often wonder why even today with falling birthrates so many people have kids. It's a personal decision, so not something you would randomly bring up with strangers and not something one really thinks to discuss with friends until someone has a kid. Once they are on the path to question it would be rude.
But it strikes me that many parents don't really think about it that much, as in the original rationale. I've had a suspicion there is something unethical about this. What choice could be more significant? Then again, maybe the personal nature of it means one is simply not aware of what other people are going through. Maybe everyone is really thinking it through. I am led to doubt it though. I'm curious if other people have had the chance to ask their own parents and felt satisfied by the results. That might be one of the few occasions you might have hope for a somewhat revealing answer.
There are so many reasons it's hard to be exhaustive.
Selfishly, nobody will love me like my children, at least in their early years. They're also amazing playmates and students. And they give me social permission to do silly things like climb on playground structures. They're also a great excuse to get out of stuff.
Selflessly, I believe me and the mother of our children are sensible people and the world needs more sensible people. Plus someone needs to maintain the replacement rate. And it's a weird, warm, fuzzy feeling to care for one's children at one's own expense.
In the intersection, it's a fun challenge to try to achieve balance in life, work, and family. I also really appreciate the chance to get a do-over of everything my parents did, keeping the good stuff and improving on the bad.
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.
Actually, this sounds like an answer from a male non-parent. There’s a drive to reproduce in every biological being. It has never been about comparing towards neighbors, love and joy, etc. I’m a parent, and honestly, it’s just biology.
So they have kids for their personal joy and completely ignore if their kids even have a chance of a good future, got it. I am sad when I see what kids will be confronted with in the long term. Humans nowadays already cant cope with climate change and wars, this will only be multiplied tenfold for our kids.
That's not what the comment you were replying to (I'm going to avoid using terms like "parent comment" in this particular discussion as they could easily be ambiguous, heh) was saying. You may have missed the part about how "they thought about it a lot before going ahead" (emphasis mine), and also the part about "even if they know the sacrifices they [the parents] will have to make".
Personally, I know (online rather than in person) at least one couple who thought about it a lot, and ended up deciding not to have kids, because they were both carriers of a recessive gene (I forget which) that could have been nasty to whatever kid ended up with both copies. Which is kind of the opposite of "completely ignor[ing] if their kids even have a chance of a good future", IMHO. Other parents thought about it and decided to have only a certain number of kids and no more, because that was how many kids they could afford to raise and launch into a path that potentially leads to a good future.
Now, are there people who have kids for selfish reasons? Yes. I can think of some examples. But the people who think about it a lot and end up deciding to have kids? They're usually (not always, of course, but usually) some of the best parents around, precisely because they've thought about the sacrifices they would have to make and decided they're willing to make them for the sake of their kids' future happiness.
10x worse than the best time in all of history to be a human doesn't sound so bad. Even just 200 years ago, a gigantic chain of internal wars killed 25% of the entire population of my country.
> I've had a suspicion there is something unethical about this.
Why?
As a human being who was once born, I am extremely grateful for my existence, and how much thought my parents put into it beforehand is of practically no consequence.
You seem to imply that if parents haven't already committed to giving their kids a perfect childhood with perfect parenting then the kids are better off not living at all?
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.
I did skim the Wikipedia article but it didn't seem to engage with anything I was thinking about.
Almost everybody's revealed preference is to stay alive rather than to not be alive, otherwise we'd see a lot more suicide.
> making an important choice such as bringing life into the world, without considering the consequences, is already somewhat unethical.
This is a view you can take, but it's not as obviously important as you seem to think.
An alternative view is "making an important choice such as FAILING to bring life into the world, given the opportunity to do so, without considering the consequences, is somewhat unethical."
If the standard was truly that you can't have kids unless you're sure they're going to have a great life, then we would have gone extinct millions of years ago.
I think you may have missed the point of the argument.
The desire to avoid death is explicitly dealt with. The way you have thus answered it is somewhat amusing. Yes, we know people do not want to die. This is obvious. The question is then why do we keep creating people who will die? If they were never created in the first place they wouldn't know the difference. But as soon as you create them, you condemn them to that ultimate end you just acknowledged people want to avoid. You should also probably acknowledge the nature of suicide. It seems to me the antinatalists understand this better than you. After all suicide is painful because humans do not want to die. It is the ultimate suffering, not merely an escape from life. The grief associated with suicide comes from the recognition that someone has done something to themselves that they didn't really want to do. Do you really think the agony of suicide is equal to never having been born? How could that be possible? Where is the unconceived person who has been subjected to such pain? They don't exist and never did. The point of the antinatalist argument is why would you create life in a world like this? This also makes your last point sort of irrelevant for a bonafide antinatalist, as the obvious rejoinder would be, so what? If we are moral agents and not evolutionary automatons then what point are you making? The question is a moral one. Why you think evolution would provide an answer here I am not sure.
As to your middle point, it's all good to just reverse the argument. But you didn't even make an effort to substantiate it. Why would creating life be a moral imperative? Because evolution? Is the act of creation not a more deliberate and significant act than the act of abstention from such activity? To what level should parents be responsible for their children? What symmetric responsibility would you impose on non parents? It would be hard to see how it could be symmetric at all unless you think parentage is largely irrelevant. Which would imply an acknowledgement of the relative significance of having a child vs not.
As for me, I also think your last sentence betrays something. No one can be sure their kid will have a great life. That should never be the standard because it cannot exist. I generally think however it is sensible to say if a person can only provide a hand wavey answer about why they think tomorrow will be better than yesterday, in 2026, and yet still chooses to have a child one might ask if that seems unethical. You don't need to delude yourself into offering some guarantees. But I personally think it is probably unethical to create life without some conviction that at the very least, on balance your child will face more good than bad. But parents aren't responsible for everything that happens. They're human beings, like their kids. No one expects perfection. Antinatalism isn't really a question for parents it's a question for those who have not yet conceived and offers a particular moral lens from which to evaluate the option. I just think it is a somewhat interesting one. Generally I just hope people having kids are being thoughtful about it and have conviction in the future.
I think the distinction is that you think a life is only worth living if it is a sufficiently enjoyable life, and I think life is worth living intrinsically.
Fair enough. I mean in such a case then yes the antinatalist view is simply incompatible. I'm not sure what I believe. I'm just searching for compelling arguments. I will confess your's leaves me unsatisfied. But to each their own. Thanks again for the back and forth.
> However had your existence been different it is not so hard to imagine you might feel differently.
Considering how the vast majority of people don't actively seek to end their lives, I think it's reasonable to assume that they prefer to live.
The crown argument against these musings is that according to them the only way to realistically act ethically is to not have children at all - that is self-defeating and not sustainable.
Also it places emphasis on avoiding harm/suffering etc. Problem is, these are unavoidable parts of life and trying to minimise them at any cost is essentially attempting to not live.
I think the term sometimes used for such things is "death cult".
I've seen men shed their egos and women become incredible caretakers when they're with their children and they carry some of that joyfulness, compassion and humanity into the world they occupy. It's a sad world without kids.
Group 1: Some people think about it and don’t have kids,
Group 2 some think about it and do,
Group 3 and some don’t think about it much and are (probably) more likely to end up with a kid than group 1 because most people like having sex and this group will be less careful than group 1.
I would expect anxious/insecure parents to use placating behaviours (like device use) themselves, and I would expect their children to be anxious/insecure too.
So I would expect the study to find that the children of phone-overusers were more likely to be anxious/insecure.
Still, I would also expect that less phone use (subbed with more attention to kid) would help the kid with this.
I find these studies specifically frustrating because they don't answer the most interesting question - is it damaging if your caregiver uses phone a lot but remains responsive.
This study specifically excludes it, and fair enough when being honest about the statistical inference and not overreaching, but that is the question I find most interesting as someone who uses my phone to get away from my desk but keep work going so I can spend time with my kids while doing my job.
One outcome would be this is damaging and worse than just not spending time until after work, the other result would say this is a beneficial arrangement.
How do your kids feel abot it or have they expressed any frustration with your divided attention?
Moreso they are interested in the phone because we are but I don't necessary sense frustration. Especially if you are "attentive" in that you are willing to context switch back to your kids immediately, I think they see it as another "thing" like a toy or some distraction outside.
If you use the phone a lot, you are not generating any initiative on your own and are not reponsive to small initiations you dont notice. You are responsive to when kid explicitely comes to you.
Or otherwise said, if you are on the phone a lot, you are creating a barrier to interaction and people (both kids and adults) will eventually end up tired of trying and having less reciprocation.
If you are not physically there, it is actually less frustrating to others then if you create a barrier while being there.
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.
I would love to get rid of my smartphone altogether, actually. I’m just not quite sure how to do it. I need to use a map app often. And most of the announcements and services in my country from companies and schools are all handled through WhatsApp. So it makes it a bit difficult to cut that tether.
Just track your unlocks and try to keep it under let's say 40 in a day. Batching.
Getting a tiny phone not meant for media consumption is probably the closest you can achieve. You are not going to waste a lot of time watching youtube on a 3" screen, because that's just no fun.
The "jelly star" phone looks kind of fun. I just sat in a busy tram and wondered what the scene would look like if we all had phones like that. It's an innteresting thought experiment.
The thing is I'd still need my regular phone for various things and i can't cut the sim in half.
> 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.
Sure, I didn't imagine a utopia of joyful people talking to strangers. That's not what public transport ever looked like, but I do miss the times of a bit more diversity in how people spend their during the commute. Newspapers, books, handheld game consoles (which don't constantly shove ads in front of their users).
Now those books, newspapers and games are available on one device (and without constantly shoving ads down your throat, well except for the news).
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.
Maybe it's a cultural difference but I remember before smartphones on the tube in London as well and noone talked to each other during the morning/evening commute.
I think the biggest difference is actually the lack of newspapers now. Plenty of people were plugged into headphones via iPod/Walkman/whatever was era appropriate. The people who stare at their phones today were staring at newspapers in the pre smartphone era.
Maybe the new Commodore flip phone? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552614
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.
not sure where the problem is?
look at maps only in the car, mute whatsapp and then check it from time to time.
seems pretty straightforward.
Addictive behaviour is rarely cured by telling the addict to "just stop doing it".
1. When you're browsing your phone but you're not having fun, stop. Try to distinguish "I am genuinely interested in that thing on the screen" vs "I'm just doomscrollig".
2. Try to replace parts of your smartphone with other things. Buying a clock helped me fix the habit of "I just opened my eyes, time for phone". I found my old PSP and I'm planning to run some emulator on that instead of phone to play some minigames.
3. I have my phone always completely silent. There's literally no notification that cannot wait until I decide to check the phone.
4. I sometimes turn off the data transfer in my phone. First, I get less notifications. Second, it's yet another barrier and it gives me a second to ask myself "do I really want to play with my phone now".
Now it's smartphones and devices, but in the past it was work. Personally I think these days kids get a lot more attention from their parents than anytime in the past. Even so much that it can be irritating/damaging (parents being "friends/playmates" instead of parents).
Beware the helicopters.
Give kids the freedom to make mistakes and suffer the (nonfatal, no loss of life or limb) consequences.
Yes, there are cases to intervene, but generally, you should let your kids hurt themselves more. Pain is a very important form of learning. By overprotecting them, they become very vulnerable adults, then worse things happen.
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 think that's the issue in some cases though, while being totally absent is a major negative, the perception the kid has of the parent _while_ present is more improtant than when being absent if the absence is understandable, a kid in daycare will observe other parents leaving and picking up and normalize it.
> but in the past it was work.
I suggest that reading previously took the roll devices take today. When my parents weren’t at work they were reading as often as not; newspapers and novels.
> (parents being "friends/playmates" instead of parents).
That seems like a cultural thing to me. It's common in some countries for daughters ~15yrs to ~40yrs to claim their best friend is their mom.
I don't think you understood what op meant. There's a difference between a child saying this and parenting style.
This can be tricky. I know my mother loves me unconditionally, but I also have strong memories of her shutting herself inside her study to read textbooks and journals, and children were not allowed to disturb unless she was strictly needed to handle an accident.
I have the same need for cognition as my mother, but I opt not to lock myself in my office. Instead I tell my kids, "I'm around if you need me and I'll keep an eye on you but I'm not currently a playmate; I'll be here reading on my phone."
The difference is my mother clearly separated relationship-building from study. I don't. This probably means I'm available more often, but with lower quality? I'm not sure. What is better? No idea.
I don't have kids but I've been thinking about how, I would probably need some kind of office separate from the house.
In fact that's probably a big part of why offices exist in the first place. If I had kids here then for much of the day, they would be trying to interact with me and I would be either getting distracted from work or shooing them away.
What I'm actually there I would want to be fully present with them. It goes without saying that I would follow the example of the people who invented the stuff, and not give them a brainrot device in the first place.
If you work from home you will absolutely need an office when you have kids.
I had a fascinating conversation about this with my 5yo, which started with her asking "why won't you play with me?" and me replying "did you know my dad didn't play with me at all?".
That's not entirely true as I have early memories of him teaching my older sister how to play chess and me occasionally participating, but makes one think about this balance that needs to be struck.
I'm doing somewhat better than my father in this regard, but I wonder what is the healthy amount of attachment really? People are saying I'm going to miss these prompts when they'll grow older, but I don't want to do this just because of FOMO.
I have an intelligent, agentic adult spouse, and we both know that if we want to get work done, we should go to our own physical space and close the door, because otherwise the other person nearby will keep accidentally interrupting us because we're "just there". I think a child will struggle even more with this.
[flagged]
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.
Come on, it's a technical discussion on the art of parenting.
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.
The implication was they were asking for a playmate and he’s shutting them down, he has a constant need for intellectual stimulation so has to read instead of engage. I’m all for alone time but if they need it you won’t have to say a word, they’ll just disappear off into their room.
Parenting is not a one dimensional role. A kid that doesn’t see their parent as a playmate is the saddest thing I’ve heard. I hope you’re saying that out of ignorance.
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?
No. But from a very early age they can tell when you’re truly preoccupied versus opting to ignore them. And it has an effect on your relationship and how they’ll remember your presence as a parent.
Framing it goes a long way, “I have to clean the garage, then we can go swimming or play a game”. You’re telling them about something you have to do that they won’t be interested in, then offering up something positive.
Much different than, “I’m here, staring at my phone, bother me if you must”.
Also, these things go away soon enough. They won’t want you as a playmate anymore. During these early childhood years, I do my reading and alone time activities after bedtime. Nothing wrong with having an early bedtime just to reserve it for this purpose.
I’m not a pro parent by any means but these thoughts are certainly based on my parenting philosophy. I actively try to engage as much as possible even to the detriment of my personal hobbies and interests because while they want to engage, I want to be present.
+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.
A heads-up: Frontiers In is a publisher known to have extremely low quality.
Yes son. Go back to your iPad.
We should propose a ban on parental social media accounts in Australia, since it's proven to do harm to children.
I actually think we should extend the social media ban to anyone under 90
I was getting effected by the "technoference". A few friends when visiting us at our home, are being on phones, scrolling and engaging. I decided to buy a box. Any time friends visit us, they should drop their phones in that box and pick them up while leaving.
This tracks with my son’s observations on my wife’s phone use. She’ll tell him to stop watching youtube, then go right back to doing so herself.
It doesn’t really seem to compute how hypocritical that is.
I remember the same from my childhood: being told off by my Mum for staring at something out of the window while she was doing the same. Mentioned it, got told off by my Dad. Did it affect me? I remember it 40 years later!
About as much as telling your kid to not drink beer while you are doing it yourself.
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.
Spoken like someone who hasn't really done drugs.
I get what you’re saying but phone addiction has absolutely ruined people’s lives.
Numerous studies have supported this thesis, that phone addiction is identical to a chemical addiction.
Which studies?
The claim is usually made without specific citations. The few studies I'm aware of show correlation between mental health issues and phone use, but don't show which way the causation runs. It's just as plausible that mental health causes more phone use, yet these message boards always like to blame the phone for the mental health issues.
Can you share studies that show they’re “identical”?
You’re not going to overdose from using your phone too much, or die from withdrawal if you suddenly stop using your phone, so that seems like a stretch.
5% of all deaths worldwide can be attributed to alcohol.
Phone addiction is not identical. In some aspects its similar but in most others not.
What’s an example of a study that you think is convincing?
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
“Relatively safe to” is a very official sounding rubric. I guess tell him that and see if you agree on the timing of when that safety threshold has been met.
Telling your kid to not drink beer is giving them the courage to say no to drinking beer. I personally don’t just bark out rules with no context. I also have discussions with my kid about why drinking beer can go awry. We all expect that they will, likely before we’d feel it’s relatively safe. So I want him to at least know what’s in store and how to not make compounding mistakes.
I don’t need to give reasons for my son to follow my orders
Bell curve leveling off right after return-warranty runs out
Wyh can't it be something like I don't want you to end up like me? I don't think it's hypocritical
Changing habits is hard enough on it's own.parenthood and modern life makes that even more difficult
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
I have ADHD; I genuinely don't remember my childhood. If you told me my life started in secondary or high school, I would have believed you.
I dunno if that is connected to ADHD, and I dunno if I have ADHD (though by reading the textbook* on it, it kinda seems I do)... but I genuinely don't remember my childhood either.
*Taking Charge of Adult ADHD
I have severe ADHD, I remember enough to remember how it is. maybe it's because I'm in my 20s.. at least the feeling/vibe and knowing how "it's for your own good!!!!" type of stuff actually sounds like
but still, imo I haven't changed that much. less risk taking, more worries, more wisdom (somewhat)
maybe for some people they really are super different when they're younger but for me it's been kind of a linear path after a certain point
+ don't quote me on this but from what I know, ADHD affects mostly short term and working memory, but long term memory, especially significant events/etc. can be quite well retained, which matches my experience
> ... by reading the textbook* on it [ADHD], it kinda seems I do ...
There's a reason why most of the books I've read on ADHD have mentioned "Don't self-diagnose; get an expert to diagnose you." Short version: many of the symptoms of ADHD such as distractability happen to everyone, or nearly everyone, to some extent. Everyone can be distracted by a random thought; most people shake it off and get their train of thought back on track. Some people are more distractable than others, but it's perfectly normal to be distracted now and then. Which is why most people reading an ADHD book will recognize some of their behaviors in that book.
My opinion? (And note that I'm not qualified to diagnose anyone, so this is strictly an opinion). If you read the ADHD book and go "Hmm, maybe that describes me, I'm not sure"... then chances are that you do not have ADHD. Because my own experience was reading an ADHD book and going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. I know for a fact this author never interviewed me. So how come he's describing me perfectly?" Not in every single chapter — I don't have emotional-regulation problems to nearly the level that he described in some of the case studies, for example. But when I got to the bits about starting projects and not finishing them, or the parts about getting (seemingly-paradoxically) hyperfocused on some task and not noticing when other people are talking to you, I just shook my head and laughed, because he was describing me to a T.
Now, even if you don't have ADHD, that doesn't mean some of the organizational techniques mentioned there won't be helpful to you. Go ahead and apply them: many of them do help even the people who fit more into the "normal" part of the distractability spectrum. But certainly do NOT try any medication without having gotten a diagnosis first. Some ADHD medications can have side effects that should be watched for, and most of them are controlled substances in most countries I'm aware of (due to the possibility of addiction if you take way more than the amount normally prescribed, for example), meaning that in most countries, it's illegal to take them without a prescription.
But go ahead and apply some of the suggestions about ways to organize your life: they can be helpful even if you only have a normal level of distractability.
Thanks for the wonderfully thought-out response. I definitely agree on the not-self-diagnose-yourself front. I'm somewhere in between your two possible reactions to such books, leaning closer to the "Whoa, whoa, whoa" one.
However, I live in Japan, where simply finding a doctor qualified and willing to diagnose someone over 20 years old is super rare. Short of expensive monthly trips to Tokyo or something just to be diagnosed, and then having a prescription that has to be received in person monthly. And the medication is highly controlled.
So I have just kinda accepted to keep applying these techniques (as well as being aware of my own created mechanisms), keep trying my best, and just live a happy life. It's been working so far!
it's like a variation of the principle of "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
a solipsistic viewpoint I suppose.
I have no idea what your trying to say or what point you're trying to make.
ask an LLM or something, they seem to get the point just fine
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.
There are many things you can do to get it out of your family's life. No phones in the bedroom, No phones after X O'clock, Open conversations about social media with your kids, Unite with them in the fight against social media, block social media from your phones (use only a computer). My own poison of choice was twitter but thankfully, it's become X and I've become ex-twitter more or less. It's liberating. I also vibe coded some software to keep me off these things on my work computer so that's been good too.
It's not impossible,but on top of all the other stresses in life you need to sit down and figure out this new problem too? You have got to at least sympathize with the situation. I know I've regressed on phone use since my child was born.
All I can say is, time really flies by (before you know it they are teenagers). You only get one shot at enjoying their early years and they only get one youth. Make the best of it, cutting down smartphone use (for parent and child) is part of it.
If you are really addicted, seek help (we have to accept that it can be a real addiction). If not, set strict boundaries and remove addictive apps.
Children follow by example. If you're an addict your kids will be too.
Untrue and toxic statement
This is a weak study that is exemplary of psychology's weak experimentation culture and correlation/causation laundering, especially with regard to self-report.
The heavily hinted implication is that device use damages relationships. But look at what they actually measured. They ask adolescents to answer questions like:
"My primary caregiver ignores me when they are on a device." (DAIS, their new scale)
And then also ask them to answer questions like:
"I often worry that this person doesn't really care for me." (ECR-RS)
And then act like it's a revelation that these two self-report scales are correlated.
A much more plausible causal explanation is that a single psychological variable (e.g. a bad relationship) causes both self reports, rather than the implied pathway that device use causes A, which then causes B.
I largely agree this is a weak study, but it also feels like no matter how you run this study it's going to be flawed.
Parent-child interactions, relationships, feelings are probably the hardest thing to quantify at any scale.
In the end, it's really, "Pay more attention to your kids", which is a pretty good universal message to put across.
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.
It's an interesting question:
Are people who are very very securely attached to their parents happy later in life, or is there a ceiling? The terminology invites certain conclusions here.
Maybe the whole attention thing is more a matter of quality, rather than quantity
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".
100%. I completely agree with this study's 'findings' but also agree the study is garbage.
So many studies now a days have experiments designed to confirm a hypothesis instead of challenge it. They should be doing everything possible they can to disprove their hypothesis and only accept it after all attempts at falsification fail. But of course that's in idealized science. In reality, publish or perish means you need to get something published and negative results don't get published. And so this study, like what seems to be most now a days, is designed to prove their hypothesis - which ironically proves nothing.
This (experiments only designed to confirm a hypothesis and not trying to falsify it) is also part of the reason why so many studies can't be reproduced later, the "reproducibility crisis". One of my relatives, a medical doctor who just recently retired, has often lamented the incentive structure that results in negative results not getting published. (She has also said that she wants to see about seven studies pointing in the same direction before she starts to take it seriously).
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-...
> A much more plausible causal explanation
Why is that much more plausible? It implies that it has always been there, and that nothing has changed since the last century, which is unlikely. Unless you want to introduce some other recent factor, but that is going to be even less likely.
And why? Because other studies have shown how addictive "phone" use is, and how it isolates people. And addicts (drugs, alcohol) are bad caretakers.
So there's really nothing that makes the explanation implausible.
You may ask yourself if it's not your own addiction speaking.
IMO this isn't necessarily bad (it's one way to get data), but the numbers are meaningless without a control. Unfortunately, I think we missed that bus by ~20 years. Had the same study been conducted every few years over the last two decades, I think it would have been valuable. Maybe it is still valuable to do this once every few years? (I think that everyone in 2026 is maximally addicted to mobile phones, but maybe I'm wrong and it can get worse).
My dude, I don’t know how to explain this to you but phones and computers are addictive for people. They get hooked on them to feed the lizard brain with digital junk food engineered for engagement.
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.
The attention economy is a resource extraction industry. It'll claw out any bit of attention it can get and sell it, even if that attention would be needed elsewhere.
I often wonder why even today with falling birthrates so many people have kids. It's a personal decision, so not something you would randomly bring up with strangers and not something one really thinks to discuss with friends until someone has a kid. Once they are on the path to question it would be rude.
But it strikes me that many parents don't really think about it that much, as in the original rationale. I've had a suspicion there is something unethical about this. What choice could be more significant? Then again, maybe the personal nature of it means one is simply not aware of what other people are going through. Maybe everyone is really thinking it through. I am led to doubt it though. I'm curious if other people have had the chance to ask their own parents and felt satisfied by the results. That might be one of the few occasions you might have hope for a somewhat revealing answer.
I've found this notion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism somewhat interesting in this regard.
There are so many reasons it's hard to be exhaustive.
Selfishly, nobody will love me like my children, at least in their early years. They're also amazing playmates and students. And they give me social permission to do silly things like climb on playground structures. They're also a great excuse to get out of stuff.
Selflessly, I believe me and the mother of our children are sensible people and the world needs more sensible people. Plus someone needs to maintain the replacement rate. And it's a weird, warm, fuzzy feeling to care for one's children at one's own expense.
In the intersection, it's a fun challenge to try to achieve balance in life, work, and family. I also really appreciate the chance to get a do-over of everything my parents did, keeping the good stuff and improving on the bad.
> why so many people have kids
Biology / evolution. The drive to reproduce is baked in by natural selection. Organisms that didn’t want offspring didn’t pass on genes.
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.
Actually, this sounds like an answer from a male non-parent. There’s a drive to reproduce in every biological being. It has never been about comparing towards neighbors, love and joy, etc. I’m a parent, and honestly, it’s just biology.
I don’t see a disagreement between you and parent comment.
So they have kids for their personal joy and completely ignore if their kids even have a chance of a good future, got it. I am sad when I see what kids will be confronted with in the long term. Humans nowadays already cant cope with climate change and wars, this will only be multiplied tenfold for our kids.
That's not what the comment you were replying to (I'm going to avoid using terms like "parent comment" in this particular discussion as they could easily be ambiguous, heh) was saying. You may have missed the part about how "they thought about it a lot before going ahead" (emphasis mine), and also the part about "even if they know the sacrifices they [the parents] will have to make".
Personally, I know (online rather than in person) at least one couple who thought about it a lot, and ended up deciding not to have kids, because they were both carriers of a recessive gene (I forget which) that could have been nasty to whatever kid ended up with both copies. Which is kind of the opposite of "completely ignor[ing] if their kids even have a chance of a good future", IMHO. Other parents thought about it and decided to have only a certain number of kids and no more, because that was how many kids they could afford to raise and launch into a path that potentially leads to a good future.
Now, are there people who have kids for selfish reasons? Yes. I can think of some examples. But the people who think about it a lot and end up deciding to have kids? They're usually (not always, of course, but usually) some of the best parents around, precisely because they've thought about the sacrifices they would have to make and decided they're willing to make them for the sake of their kids' future happiness.
10x worse than the best time in all of history to be a human doesn't sound so bad. Even just 200 years ago, a gigantic chain of internal wars killed 25% of the entire population of my country.
Weird how I dont have this drive huh
Not that weird, you're in the majority now and birth rates are plummeting all over the world.
> I've had a suspicion there is something unethical about this.
Why?
As a human being who was once born, I am extremely grateful for my existence, and how much thought my parents put into it beforehand is of practically no consequence.
You seem to imply that if parents haven't already committed to giving their kids a perfect childhood with perfect parenting then the kids are better off not living at all?
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.
I did skim the Wikipedia article but it didn't seem to engage with anything I was thinking about.
Almost everybody's revealed preference is to stay alive rather than to not be alive, otherwise we'd see a lot more suicide.
> making an important choice such as bringing life into the world, without considering the consequences, is already somewhat unethical.
This is a view you can take, but it's not as obviously important as you seem to think.
An alternative view is "making an important choice such as FAILING to bring life into the world, given the opportunity to do so, without considering the consequences, is somewhat unethical."
If the standard was truly that you can't have kids unless you're sure they're going to have a great life, then we would have gone extinct millions of years ago.
I think you may have missed the point of the argument.
The desire to avoid death is explicitly dealt with. The way you have thus answered it is somewhat amusing. Yes, we know people do not want to die. This is obvious. The question is then why do we keep creating people who will die? If they were never created in the first place they wouldn't know the difference. But as soon as you create them, you condemn them to that ultimate end you just acknowledged people want to avoid. You should also probably acknowledge the nature of suicide. It seems to me the antinatalists understand this better than you. After all suicide is painful because humans do not want to die. It is the ultimate suffering, not merely an escape from life. The grief associated with suicide comes from the recognition that someone has done something to themselves that they didn't really want to do. Do you really think the agony of suicide is equal to never having been born? How could that be possible? Where is the unconceived person who has been subjected to such pain? They don't exist and never did. The point of the antinatalist argument is why would you create life in a world like this? This also makes your last point sort of irrelevant for a bonafide antinatalist, as the obvious rejoinder would be, so what? If we are moral agents and not evolutionary automatons then what point are you making? The question is a moral one. Why you think evolution would provide an answer here I am not sure.
As to your middle point, it's all good to just reverse the argument. But you didn't even make an effort to substantiate it. Why would creating life be a moral imperative? Because evolution? Is the act of creation not a more deliberate and significant act than the act of abstention from such activity? To what level should parents be responsible for their children? What symmetric responsibility would you impose on non parents? It would be hard to see how it could be symmetric at all unless you think parentage is largely irrelevant. Which would imply an acknowledgement of the relative significance of having a child vs not.
As for me, I also think your last sentence betrays something. No one can be sure their kid will have a great life. That should never be the standard because it cannot exist. I generally think however it is sensible to say if a person can only provide a hand wavey answer about why they think tomorrow will be better than yesterday, in 2026, and yet still chooses to have a child one might ask if that seems unethical. You don't need to delude yourself into offering some guarantees. But I personally think it is probably unethical to create life without some conviction that at the very least, on balance your child will face more good than bad. But parents aren't responsible for everything that happens. They're human beings, like their kids. No one expects perfection. Antinatalism isn't really a question for parents it's a question for those who have not yet conceived and offers a particular moral lens from which to evaluate the option. I just think it is a somewhat interesting one. Generally I just hope people having kids are being thoughtful about it and have conviction in the future.
Thanks for the back and forth.
I think the distinction is that you think a life is only worth living if it is a sufficiently enjoyable life, and I think life is worth living intrinsically.
Fair enough. I mean in such a case then yes the antinatalist view is simply incompatible. I'm not sure what I believe. I'm just searching for compelling arguments. I will confess your's leaves me unsatisfied. But to each their own. Thanks again for the back and forth.
> However had your existence been different it is not so hard to imagine you might feel differently.
Considering how the vast majority of people don't actively seek to end their lives, I think it's reasonable to assume that they prefer to live.
The crown argument against these musings is that according to them the only way to realistically act ethically is to not have children at all - that is self-defeating and not sustainable.
Also it places emphasis on avoiding harm/suffering etc. Problem is, these are unavoidable parts of life and trying to minimise them at any cost is essentially attempting to not live.
I think the term sometimes used for such things is "death cult".
I've seen men shed their egos and women become incredible caretakers when they're with their children and they carry some of that joyfulness, compassion and humanity into the world they occupy. It's a sad world without kids.
Group 1: Some people think about it and don’t have kids,
Group 2 some think about it and do,
Group 3 and some don’t think about it much and are (probably) more likely to end up with a kid than group 1 because most people like having sex and this group will be less careful than group 1.
This is the pitch from Idiocracy