I was working at a music festival, schlepping cases of beer. Some guy hit me with "I'm Gord Downie's cousin, give me one", I didn't know who he was talking about, so I told him that and ignored him.
Later, a bunch of Ontarians told me I did that in perfect deadpan. In reality, I grew up on the east coast, where the Tragically Hip wasn't nearly as popular, so I legitimately had no clue who he was talking about.
The research showed that parents’ screen use could negatively affect their interactions with their children, and also established a connection between parents’ and children’s screen habits, with the children of heavy users developing similar habits themselves.
As another Lemmite mentioned, kids are learning behaviour from their parents.
The statement that the new commercial veneer is dying needs to be backed up: YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, and Reddit still drive traffic, despite the slop, and because of the commercialization. Meta and Facebook are doing fine.
I like what he says about the underlying protocols, but it is missing a bit of nuance: Google has been instrumental in the evolution of HTTP; SMTP became a very different game when Google (via Gmail) pushed authentication; DRM made it into browsers thanks to Google and media companies.
Commercial companies may be benefiting from open protocols, but they are also pushing them in new directions. The stack the author remembers still exists, but it has been changed by that commercial "veneer".
The world before AC was rough.