14 ms·

Middle School Misfortunes Then and Now, One Teacher’s Take

194 points by esaym 8y ago

gwbas1c 8y ago
Back when I was in high school, events like someone slipping and spilling soup all over themselves would be repeated forever and ever.
- JimiofEden 8y ago
  My experience is the same. High/Middle schoolers (circa late 90s early 2000s) would remember every little detail if you did something embarrassing. The most notorious would usually come with a nickname to cement it. This story is very heavily straw manned to make a point, but I can believe that social media would amplify my above experience by magnitudes, so it's not unjustified. I just don't believe that Brian would have been quite so lucky back in 2008 either.
  - tru3_power 8y ago
    While I can understand where you’re coming it’s probably much harder to brush something off that’s been recorded and passed around vs. being recalled from memory.
    - JimiofEden 8y ago
      Definitely. That's why I'd say that the power of modern technology amplifies the issues that you'd normally see in the 90s/00s
- bargl 8y ago
  They typically came with a <sarcasm> really cute and endearing </sarcasm> nick name like... Shorts. Which you finally got over in college because you told your new friends the story and they laughed with you not at you. You became shorts by your own volition or dropped the moniker by the same means. Edit: I was thinking high school above, but this story happened in elementary school. Shit - I just remembered a story where I wore jeans for the first time to school on a day where we didn't have to wear our uniform. Previously I'd been sweats only. One of the girls I thought was cute made fun of my fashion sense and I ran out of the room crying. My grandma brought me some sweats and I went back to class. I'm so glad there wasn't social media at the time. My memory of the event has faded drastically since then. I don't want to watch a video. I guess this is kind of a counter argument to my own statement. I think the damage done would have been worse had there been video. I mean, this was obviously something that affected me and I consider myself a fairly well adjusted person. I wonder how a video of this I could have watched over and over and over again would have made me feel. It's hard to say.
politician 8y ago
I think the problem here is that it's legal to post content of minors without parental consent on the Internet, but more specifically on the major platforms that minors use. When my child's daycare wants to work with the local university to do a behavioral study of toddlers, they ask for parental consent to film interactions. I can decline. Actively preventing disclosure without consent is beneath the major platforms; at best, it's a checkbox at sign up. What should the age limit be? COPPA says 13 but these platforms oppose, resist, or pay that lip service to that. > Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, has expressed opposition to COPPA and stated "That will be a fight we take on at some point. My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age." [1] Maybe that age limit should be raised to 16, and maybe harsh GDPR-style privacy fines should be assessed against platforms that fail to prevent usages that violates COPPA. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr...
- mjevans 8y ago
  The platforms can never read minds, and our court system isn't ready to actually process the results of something like... In order to use a platform you must agree to the conditions of use, which includes indemnifying the platform from harm (Blah blah)... making the parents liable for the child's actions on that platform. Which could also allow suit of and prosecution... In short making a mountain out of a molehill to try to make everyone better people. Though the real issue is that society wants to view the train-wreck, to have someone worse than the individual so that everyone else can be built up on the body of the scapegoat.
  - politician 8y ago
    This isn't difficult or new. I was talking about scanning images that other people post of children and making sure those images have proper consent, and not the situation where children sign up in the first place. This is already done for adult content and copyright. It should be extended to protecting the privacy of minors.
- akeck 8y ago
sxates 8y ago
I'm quite glad there were no smart phones when I was in middle school. There were sufficient humiliations, and I'm glad they weren't amplified outside a relatively small group.
mevile 8y ago
Middle school was hard when I was a kid. Maybe it's harder now, but it wasn't a picnic 20 years ago either.
- firebones 8y ago
  It was never a picnic and I go back farther than 20 years. I'm not discounting new brands of terror, but propensity for cruelty is the constant--the medium of cruelty is the main difference.
afpx 8y ago
Having lived through the 80s and 90s, this actually made me feel like today is better than before.
- MBCook 8y ago
  Really? Sounds like a nightmare to me. Why do you think it’s better?
  - afpx 8y ago
    For one, life was much more violent. A kid of low status, nerdy, or kind of weird (like me) could expect physical violence weekly, if not daily. Second, parents, and adults in general, were out of the picture. I actually suspect that some parents would even enable or encourage the conflict. And, then, we lacked social support networks like kids have today today. Kids then were still as bored as they are now. But, instead of being able to use video games and apps to get their dopamine rush, they had to rely on causing trouble (which likely contributed to the increased violence) or risky decisions. Finally, there was no where place to escape to. There were no other social options. Kids today are at least able to socialize, gather, and meet online. For instance, I'm amazed to learn about how my nieces and nephews form large social communities of friends on-line. They have rich social lives, even though some of their closest friends are scattered around the globe. Maybe my perspective is skewed. But, if you think I'm exaggerating, at least watch a bunch of films from that period. Maybe you'll know what I mean. I honestly expected to read this post and sympathize. But, instead, as I read the descriptions of the kids of today, I felt ashamed that I actually felt a little jealous.
    - VladimirGolovin 8y ago
      Seconding all points. Having grown up in 80's Russia, this is exactly what I feel.
    - MBCook 8y ago
      Good points. Thanks.
darkerside 8y ago
This isn't going away. This is our society. So how do we deal with it? How could Brian have dealt with it? There's probably a "right" answer. I imagine something like, "leaning into" the joke by posting a response, showing you can laugh at yourself. There are PR firms that specialize at this sort of thing. Some would say it's a shame that middle schoolers need to develop the skills of a modern PR agency. I'd say, that's just what our society is now, and as usual, (most) kids will deal with the changes much better than adults.
- DelightOne 8y ago
  Collect phones at the start of school. Like France. > Some would say it's a shame that middle schoolers need to develop the skills of a modern PR agency. If teachers don't care yes.
  - saghm 8y ago
    > Collect phones at the start of school While I don't disagree with this idea at all and think it would definitely make the situation somewhat better, I also think it's naive to think that bullying would go away if kids didn't have cell phones. My (admittedly anecdotal) personal experience of middle school before smartphones and Facebook and the like was that bullying was still a pretty common thing. While taking phones away could stop one specific incident from being the source of repeated bullying, bullies will still find a way to bully even if they aren't able to keep permanent video records of various embarrassing incidents of their targets. That being said, I think there are additional arguments for not letting kids use their phones during school hours, and I wouldn't see any problem with enacting such a policy.
    - olyjohn 8y ago
      Yes but bullies coudln't send video of their actions to 1000 people at once and get positive feedback from 400 of them within a few minutes. Their audience was limited to whomever happened to be around, positive feedback from an even smaller group, and the verbal rumor mill which wears out quickly. The larger audience, and the anonymous group/mob encouragement is the difference...
optimiz3 8y ago
Be kind to others...fast forward 10 years and imagine some authority looking into Mark's social media history. Yeah you may be a big alpha in middle school, but you'll be labeled a bully and a social pariah the rest of your life. Heck, let's imagine advances in NLP and video processing where people automatically get labeled as bullies. Being regarded as such could be the new scarlet letter. The Internet doesn't forget. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
- olyjohn 8y ago
  Unless Instagram is gone in 10 years. Does anybody go back and look at old MySpace profiles? Are they even still around? Every single one of these platforms is proprietary, and likely won't be around very long. After the bullying is done, and the service becomes uncool, the bullied kid still suffers. On the bright side, the bully could grow up to be a really amazing person, and and maybe won't be labelled this way his whole life.
fixermark 8y ago
Wait, why did Brian's follower count drop? Being the kid who fell in the puddle should be boosting his follower numbers.
z3t4 8y ago
There's different times today, people want to be famous, a viral video might launch a career.
masto 8y ago
Middle school was the worst years of my life. It was absolute torture, the bullying, the teachers' petty power trips, the pointless lull in actual education before high school. Technology was my refuge. I passed the hours just waiting to get access to a computer, and it wasn't until a few years later that I finally got a modem and found BBSes where I could participate in discussions with real people. It was fun, it saved me from I don't know what, and it set me on a path that led to this place 25 years later. I would have been so much better off with a cell phone.
- negativez 8y ago
  It's easy to forget that BBSes were not at all populated by a representative sample of all people. The communities you experienced were the norm there but are a vanishingly small part of the modern internet. If you were raised now you might never have found your way to one before your psychological development was co-opted and sent in a very different direction by today's social media offerings.
- op00to 8y ago
  Exactly the same - but even through High School, I was bullied and abused. The point here isn't "don't give your kids phones", it's "pay attention to your kids, and don't let them act like assholes". But I guess it's just a lot easier to just not give your kid a phone and then pretend this shit isn't happening because your farts no longer smell bad.
jerkstate 8y ago
Boy, this sure is a rosy picture of how school bullying worked in 2008
al2o3cr 8y ago
An alternate take from the earlier time: Now it’s eighth grade and Mark has become addicted to making smaller kids afraid. Sure, he needs a lot more ‘victims’ to get the same feeling, but that’s okay. or Now it’s eighth grade and Mark has become addicted to alcohol. Sure, he needs a lot more ‘drinks’ to get the same feeling, but that’s okay. Pretending that "the old days" weren't full of kids doing whatever it took to hit the dopamine joy-buzzer is stupid. Smartphones and social media have transformed students into creatures craving one thing: content. The author's phone must be a truly remarkable device, what with being able to mind-control people all on its own. Here in the real world, people have transformed THEMSELVES into those creatures... Childhood is fleeting. It shouldn’t be spent staring at a screen. It shouldn't be spent warehoused in a school either, but here we are.
- debaserab2 8y ago
  It's not really same at all though and I think the article does a good job of illustrating how social media can coerce a normal kid into doing something that normally a bully would do without ever actually feeling like he did something wrong. There is no "bully" moment, there's no confrontation of your perpetrator, it simply feels that everyone is against you. The enemy isn't a single person making you feel bad. It's everyone. I know I didn't face the threat of that kind of stress at school. Embarrassing moments were allowed to pass in a few days and did become enshrined documentation attached to your identity.
- negativez 8y ago
  No one is talking about the phone as a physical device. The "phone" is the multibillion-dollar industry dedicated to indiscriminately making every human spend every possible second of their day 'engaging' with media out of a simple paperclip-maximizing business imperative. This industry doesn't need to make users happy anymore than the tobacco industry makes its own customers happy - as long as the dopamine is within arm's reach they've got most people hooked so much more than tobacco ever could. But unlike cigarettes, no one can cut open a slice of your social media lungs and show you that your mind is covered in tar. And since no one dies directly of exposure, we're left trying to convey how life could have been better without the second-order effects of using the product. If your lungs don't function with all that tar, you avoid physical activity because 'you don't like exercise' (when you can't breathe anymore). And if your brain has been trained to seek fulfillment from your phone that's because 'you like using your phone more than doing other things' (when you can't think of anything else you like to do anymore).
joejerryronnie 8y ago
Wow, the bullies these days just mean-post on social media? In my day they'd pull knives on you.
- olyjohn 8y ago
  No. They pull a knife on you now, while their friend films it and posts the video online of you crying afterwards.
dankohn1 8y ago
My son is a 12-year-old 7th grader in a public school in Manhattan. Phones are absolutely banned in the school building, and no one wants to lose their phone. The story could happen during out lunch, but not on school property. More generally, the school has a big focus on anti-bullying and the kids generally seem much nicer and more together than my memories of middle school.
- droithomme 8y ago
  No phones, all phones are confiscated and you never get them back is a very good policy. Likewise with knives and guns at schools.
  - Maximus9000 8y ago
    > all phones are confiscated and you never get them back That's an interesting concept! Here in Ontario, Canada... it's my understanding that teachers have limited ability to take phones away from students... but they don't really want to because it becomes a liability issue. Some of these phones are worth $1000 and if the teacher misplaces it or another student swipes it, the teacher can be on the hook. If the policy is that the student doesn't get the phone back at all, that changes things significantly.
    - adrianratnapala 8y ago
      > If the policy is that the student doesn't get the phone back at all, ... That policy is commonly called stealing -- though it probably has a more specific label under law. Schools traditionally have been implement civil-asset forfeiture for small stuff because people rarely kick up a fuss, and the schools can quietly hand things back when they do. But if they start taking away people's smartphones there will be push-back.
- tha_nose 8y ago
  Research has shown that anti-bullying efforts may lead to more bullying. Similar to how the anti-drug (DARE) program may have to led to more drug use. The counterinuitive unintended consequences. https://www.uta.edu/news/releases/2013/09/jeong-bullying.php https://www.uta.edu/news/releases/2013/09/jeong-bullying.php Also, just because kids seem nicer and more together doesn't mean that they don't bully. Appearances can be deceiving. Though there are merits to confiscating phones from kids, we mustn't forget it also has drawbacks. Kids can't document bullying. Just because the phone is gone doesn't mean the bullying ends. It just means that the bullying can happen in secret and silence. We shouldn't forget that many child molestation by teachers and bullying by kids were brought to light because of smartphones. Smartphones are a tool. It can be both bad and good.
crescentfresh 8y ago
Some of my 13yr old son's classmates have started a bullying campaign against their own teacher, trying to dig up dirt or otherwise gossip about her. This happens over insta and snap. My son isn't involved but as a result she wouldn't even meet with me to discuss his recent report card (a right I thought I had), she is so sick and tired of people ganging up on her. I've always warned my son, you misuse or otherwise abuse a privilege in the presence of adults and they will strip you of it, a phone is no different. Then the more I tried to apply that to this situation I realized I'm wrong: his peers have already learned to bully and harass outside of school now, the teachers can do nothing about it. I don't know what to do about this one.
- distances 8y ago
  Here bullying a teacher would get you suspended fast, and bullying outside the school could have consequences in school too (if someone reports it, and some adults would care enough). I don't have kids myself so this is just theoretical to me at this point; I don't know how well that works in practice.
  - japhyr 8y ago
    I teach high school. There are ways to hold students accountable if their actions outside of school affect what's happening in school. But you need staff and administration who are all on the same page and working together, and it helps to have a group of people who are focused on what's best for the learning environment, not just a group focused on winning against kids and families. Unfortunately, that is not always a given.
  - jay_kyburz 8y ago
    I would like to think even a 13yo is smart enough to make anonymous account to bully the teacher with.
    - distances 8y ago
      They may think they are smart enough. When I was in middle school back in the 90s we all had city-provided Unix accounts for e-mail, homepages etc. The e-mail was read over telnet with Pine. Some student found out they can change the sender address inside the app, proceeded to set it to another kid's email, and sent an insulting e-mail to the science teacher. Of course the e-mail sender field is just for display purposes; the teacher had no trouble checking the headers and finding the kid behind this. The medium has changed a bit, but I can imagine teenagers still easily tripping over some technicalities and details.
deleted 8y ago
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mwnivek 8y ago
If you're interested in a movie that explores similar themes of anxiety, social media, and just trying to survive middle school, I recommend Bo Burnham's film "Eighth Grade". Its average review is 90/100 on Metacritic, and is available to watch for free on Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Eighth-Grade-Elsie-Fisher/dp/B07FJNMSFN/ https://www.amazon.com/Eighth-Grade-Elsie-Fisher/dp/B07FJNMS...
- markdown 8y ago
  > is available to watch for free on Amazon Prime In my country it isn't possible to watch any show on Amazon for free. You have to at the very least pay to be part of a club called Amazon Prime before you can watch shows. Is it different where you are?
  - CDSlice 8y ago
    Isn't that what he said? If you have Amazon Prime you can watch it for free as part of your membership.
    - markdown 8y ago
      Oh ok. I was confused by the use of the word "free", which you've used as well. Perhaps it means something different to Amazon customers.
      - citizenkeen 8y ago
        It is free if you've joined Amazon Prime. Prime is not free. Your pedantry sounds like someone saying the water fountains at Disneyland aren't free because you have to pay to get in.
        js2 8y ago
        This use of the word “free” to mean “included in the price you’ve paid for your membership” might not be clear to non-native speakers. “You can watch this for no extra charge as part of your Prime membership” would be clearer.
AcerbicZero 8y ago
American Vandal Season 2 digs into this topic a bit. I'm sometimes caught off guard by how deep that show goes in such a comical manner.
analyst74 8y ago
After hearing enough of those kinds of stories, middle schools in America just sounds like a really scary place to be. Growing up in China in the 90s, I don't remember being scared all the time for being socially excluded and bullied despite being a computer nerd. After moving to US as adult, one thing I found really challenging is navigating social environments. It is not until I started viewing it through lenses of Hollywood school dramas, some of the social dynamics start to make sense. I am amazed how stark the contrast is between being perceived as "popular" as opposed to a nerd.
- cr0sh 8y ago
  Yeah - I both keep tabs and help (mostly advice comments) to my neighbors on Nextdoor. I am constantly dismayed at not only the fact that many seem to have an education somewhere at the high school level, but also that they still seem to crave a ton of drama and other similar "schoolyard" socialization habits. It would be humorous if it weren't for the fact that I live here with them; but that was the choice I made - I deliberately chose to own an older home that cost less than what I could afford, in a decidedly blue-collar neighborhood with no HOA so I could work on my vehicles or do other "loud fabrication activities" that I couldn't in another neighborhood. Part of me, though, wishes I had taken the plunge and had a home built out in the boonies. For the most part, my neighbors are nice and thoughtful, but there's a certain segment among them that I wish would just "grow up" already.
  - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
    I hate this! I had a tough time in school. I had a teacher tell me how much she didn't like me in 6th grade, and had few friends. The girl with the locker next to me threatened physical violence from time to time, but it seemed she wasn't willing to throw the first punch. We moved in 8th grade, where the new school decided I was lesbian and didn't deserve to have friends. I ate alone most of the year. (They were half right, but I didn't realize at the time). I had hope this would go away when I got older. I was promised this. Instead what I found was that it was just as bad or worse lest you fit in and just do the "adult" thing. It is now years later and I live in a different country. It took that move to ever feel like I'm accepted by folks in general.
joefourier 8y ago
The writer seems to be confusing 2008 for 1998. I remember middle school from 2008 onwards. Almost all teenagers were online by then (on MySpace, then Facebook). Nothing prevented your father from checking emails on his Blackberry at the breakfast table, your sister from texting on her cellphone or playing games on her iPod. Teachers had to ban cellphones in classrooms back then due the teenagers texting or playing mobile games, and there were PSAs about being driven to suicide by cyberbullying. By 2009 you could already obsess over Facebook likes - before then, you could measure your popularity by the number of friends you had versus how many your own friends had - and embarrassing photos could easily end up shared online or circulating among the other students. It may not have been as extreme as today, but an embarrassing video of yourself could just as easily end up going viral online and leading to social ridicule - see the Star Wars kid.
- frosted-flakes 8y ago
  In my experience, the turning point was between 2008 and 2011. I was in late elementary school in 2008 (grade 8), and I don't know if any of my classmates had a cell phone. Yes, some people had Facebook, but I think it had a minimum age limit of 15 years (?), and stuff like Instagram did not exist. People still called each other on the telephone. Fast forward 2–3 years into high school though, and everyone was on Facebook, probably half of my classmates had BlackBerries (BBM was all the rage), and some people had iPhones. A few kids had their own laptops that they brought to school, but schoolwork was entirely paper-based. (Heck, I didn't have home Internet access until after I graduated from high school, but I think I was in the minority there.) Using your phone during class resulted in it being taken away. Now I look at my youngest siblings, and everything they do is online. They submit homework through Google Classroom while browsing Instagram on the sly (Facebook is for fudder dudders), and their phones are their lives. They don't call people, and txt spk lk this is rly populr again for some reason. And teachers encourage phone use during class for certain things.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    I think the turning point might be regionally dependent. I know that social media was already popular before 2008. It simply wasn't Facebook, but other sites such as MySpace, Orkut etc.
droithomme 8y ago
Is it legal to take humiliating films of children in private settings and publish those films globally without the consent of any of the parties? Or would the person posting, and the company distributing the film be liable for criminal acts? Perhaps this could be solved with a series of criminal and civil prosecutions.
- t0astbread 8y ago
  I can't speak for US law but I'm pretty sure it is (it is in my country afaik). However, I can imagine it's close to impossible to execute if you don't know who posted the material or it has been reposted like in the article.
mchannon 8y ago
I can't help but wonder if there's not another side to this coin. Just as gangs run prisons to effects both bad and good, I wonder if the new norms these young cyborgs (can't live without the technology that's glued to them) don't have a silver lining about them. Parents have a window into their kids' social circles that they didn't use to have. The four big bullies who'd corner the skinny kid in the alley and pummel him can instantly be repelled by a 4 ounce piece of plastic. Not repelled, deterred. This brave new world has terrors aplenty and perhaps it's not a net positive that every teenager comes preinstalled with a battery of apps. But maybe it could be a net positive and we haven't realized it.
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  I can't think of much more terrifying as a 14 year old than if my parents had a window into my world. And I had a great relationship with them. I would have rather gotten beat up once or twice as a kid, and learn to handle it, than have constant parental surveillance. Privacy really is dead.
  - t0astbread 8y ago
    Isn't that just a matter of having parents that respect your privacy (in other words: good parents)?
- VladimirGolovin 8y ago
  I definitely think there's a silver lining (at least here in Russia). My theory is that smartphones reduce street crime and bullying by providing stimulation. Back in the eighties when I grew up, the world was much, much less stimulating than it is now. Bullies bullied weaker people, hit on girls and tortured animals just to get their dopamine fixes and to alleviate boredom. Now all the potential bullies have smartphones full of apps. And the homescreen apps they have on their phones are the result of a decade of competitive evolution -- they are apex attention predators. As a result, their smartphones provide them with more than enough stimulation to keep them occupied all day: porn, dating, gossip, news, games, gambling. As a result, I haven't been mugged in a decade (knock wood). There were a couple of tries, but I just disregarded them. I say this is good.
nine_k 8y ago
Middle school is the age when social hierarchies start to form For millennia, teenagers were included in complex parts of society, with kids of different ages, and some adults around. They could learn, they could teach, the could choose authority figures to imitate. In a modern school, though, they are isolated for most of their day in a group of 20-30 kids of same age. They can't build a natural hierarchy around experience and abilities, for a wide enough gamut is not available. So they end up building a hierarchy based mostly on aggression and persuasion. It of course ends up pretty toxic.
- yay_cloud2 8y ago
  Are there any structures that kids can get involved with (or the family) that will provide some of "complex society" feel?
  - hopler 8y ago
    Church. Martial arts classes,or any rec class that isn't age based. Working at a family business.
    - bnjms 8y ago
      I left the church just as every other thoughtful kid was supposed to but I miss it and worry frequently that American culture is slowly losing something which was foundational to its wellbeing.
      - hopler 8y ago
        Maybe thoughtful kids aren't supposed to leave church after all.. maybe they just need to find a good church.
    - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
      By the time I was 12, church was something I was forced to do. I already doubted the whole premise, but couldn't actually say anything about it. And to top it all off, the churches my parents chose didn't really have kids my age. In sunday school, they usually had to decide which "special" class I was going to be in: THe one with older kids or the one with younger ones. It isn't like American children get any sort of voice in whether or not they go to church or which church/religion they adhere to. I didn't have access to the other things, or at least I didn't know of these places in the small town I lived in.
JacobJans 8y ago
Think about this: How many times in the past 24 hours did you unconsciously check your email, browse Facebook, visit a website, or check some other app? Do you ever find yourself looking at your phone, and not remember consciously deciding to look at it? If you're like 90% of smart phone users, this happens to you all the time. Sure, you can be like the 10% that doesn't fall victim to the "slot machine" psychology of the modern internet. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean the other 90% aren't going to impact your life. I feel the quality of conversations has vastly decreased, on average, because of the intense level of smart-phone addiction that is so common now. Even if nobody is looking at their phone. ("Attention residue" is a real thing.)
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >I feel the quality of conversations has vastly decreased, on average, because of the intense level of smart-phone addiction that is so common now. Even if nobody is looking at their phone. ("Attention residue" is a real thing.) It's a continuum. I used to write letters once. I loved email when it was new ("new" where I lived and amongst my friends). Within a few years, people who once wrote me a few pages of letters would rarely write more than 2-3 lines in email. It's gone downhill from there.
yesenadam 8y ago
Is middle school just a thing in the USA (I assume from the comments) or other countries too? I don't know anything about it. How many years is it, what age range? It's always the same number of years? (Also, people from the USA use the words 'sophomore', 'freshman' etc as if they're internationally understood, I have no idea what they mean, although I've heard them many times. Something to do with middle school perhaps.) In Australia there's just primary school (Kindergarten + years 1-6), then high school (secondary school, years 7-12), then university (tertiary).
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  I think there are a couple different systems. When I was in school it was primary (1-6), junior high (7-9) and high school (10-12). I think more common now is primary (k-5), middle school (6-8) and high school (9-12), but it might vary from place to place.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Middle school is either grades 6-8 or 7-8 in USA. If 7-8 sometimes called Junior High School. High School is grades 9-12
- cr0sh 8y ago
  Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior are the names for the high school grades 9-12. Kindergarten is usually for children 5 or 6 years old; 1st grade, 6-7 years old, etc. By 12th (senior) year of high school, kids are usually somewhere between 17-19 years of age.
mirimir 8y ago
My parents moved a lot. Every couple years. They were some sort of diplomatic staff. But just exactly what they did was never very clear to me. But anyway, I was always the new foreign kid. Some times were good, and some were bad. But stuff didn't follow me from one place to another. I wonder how that would work out now.
asudosandwich 8y ago
My anxiety disorder kicked off around the age I realized I was too old to be that shy - about 7th grade in early 90s. I don’t know what I would have done if reality back then was anything like the second half of the story and not the first. I’m grateful it wasn’t at least.
null000 8y ago
Yeah, I was in High School around 2008. Facebook was already a thing, as was obsession over followers. Smart phones had been around for a bit, many kids had them and had their phonest as had Twitter and a few other things. Middle school just kinda sucks. It was easily the worst period of my life, and I don't think that's a rarity in America.
davvolun 8y ago
WTF.. Because bullying that ostracized certain kids didn't exist before social media -- that's why Columbine didn't happen? We have got to stop this "good old days" nonsense. That doesn't exclude or excuse the real problems that social media and always being online can cause, but stop pretending that dad wouldn't have been reading the paper or rushing off to work, or otherwise disengaged from Brian in the morning, his sisters wouldn't have heard from the school grapevine all about him falling down. How about the kinda weird, quirky kid, who finds that putting videos of himself on Youtube helps him deal with his problems, like ADHD or dyslexia? Maybe without those videos, that kid would never have the confidence to succeed in the classroom. > Teach your children that boredom is important. Give me a fucking break! Exactly how does that lesson go down -- I imagine it's pretty similar to abstinence-only education. Some kids will listen, and it will probably screw up their lives anyway. Why do people think kids are a blank canvas they can paint on? Were you when you were a kid?
- davvolun 8y ago
  > Tell them to go outside and explore the real world. Childhood is fleeting. It shouldn’t be spent staring at a screen. Because every single kid in the history of the world hasn't heard that, either from their parents, on TV, from a teacher.

194 points by esaym 8y ago

Back when I was in high school, events like someone slipping and spilling soup all over themselves would be repeated forever and ever.

JimiofEden 8y ago
My experience is the same. High/Middle schoolers (circa late 90s early 2000s) would remember every little detail if you did something embarrassing. The most notorious would usually come with a nickname to cement it. This story is very heavily straw manned to make a point, but I can believe that social media would amplify my above experience by magnitudes, so it's not unjustified. I just don't believe that Brian would have been quite so lucky back in 2008 either.
- tru3_power 8y ago
  While I can understand where you’re coming it’s probably much harder to brush something off that’s been recorded and passed around vs. being recalled from memory.
  - JimiofEden 8y ago
    Definitely. That's why I'd say that the power of modern technology amplifies the issues that you'd normally see in the 90s/00s
bargl 8y ago
They typically came with a <sarcasm> really cute and endearing </sarcasm> nick name like... Shorts. Which you finally got over in college because you told your new friends the story and they laughed with you not at you. You became shorts by your own volition or dropped the moniker by the same means. Edit: I was thinking high school above, but this story happened in elementary school. Shit - I just remembered a story where I wore jeans for the first time to school on a day where we didn't have to wear our uniform. Previously I'd been sweats only. One of the girls I thought was cute made fun of my fashion sense and I ran out of the room crying. My grandma brought me some sweats and I went back to class. I'm so glad there wasn't social media at the time. My memory of the event has faded drastically since then. I don't want to watch a video. I guess this is kind of a counter argument to my own statement. I think the damage done would have been worse had there been video. I mean, this was obviously something that affected me and I consider myself a fairly well adjusted person. I wonder how a video of this I could have watched over and over and over again would have made me feel. It's hard to say.

politician 8y ago

I think the problem here is that it's legal to post content of minors without parental consent on the Internet, but more specifically on the major platforms that minors use. When my child's daycare wants to work with the local university to do a behavioral study of toddlers, they ask for parental consent to film interactions. I can decline. Actively preventing disclosure without consent is beneath the major platforms; at best, it's a checkbox at sign up. What should the age limit be? COPPA says 13 but these platforms oppose, resist, or pay that lip service to that. > Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, has expressed opposition to COPPA and stated "That will be a fight we take on at some point. My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age." [1] Maybe that age limit should be raised to 16, and maybe harsh GDPR-style privacy fines should be assessed against platforms that fail to prevent usages that violates COPPA. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr...

mjevans 8y ago
The platforms can never read minds, and our court system isn't ready to actually process the results of something like... In order to use a platform you must agree to the conditions of use, which includes indemnifying the platform from harm (Blah blah)... making the parents liable for the child's actions on that platform. Which could also allow suit of and prosecution... In short making a mountain out of a molehill to try to make everyone better people. Though the real issue is that society wants to view the train-wreck, to have someone worse than the individual so that everyone else can be built up on the body of the scapegoat.
- politician 8y ago
  This isn't difficult or new. I was talking about scanning images that other people post of children and making sure those images have proper consent, and not the situation where children sign up in the first place. This is already done for adult content and copyright. It should be extended to protecting the privacy of minors.
akeck 8y ago

sxates 8y ago

I'm quite glad there were no smart phones when I was in middle school. There were sufficient humiliations, and I'm glad they weren't amplified outside a relatively small group.

mevile 8y ago

Middle school was hard when I was a kid. Maybe it's harder now, but it wasn't a picnic 20 years ago either.

firebones 8y ago
It was never a picnic and I go back farther than 20 years. I'm not discounting new brands of terror, but propensity for cruelty is the constant--the medium of cruelty is the main difference.

afpx 8y ago

Having lived through the 80s and 90s, this actually made me feel like today is better than before.

MBCook 8y ago
Really? Sounds like a nightmare to me. Why do you think it’s better?
- afpx 8y ago
  For one, life was much more violent. A kid of low status, nerdy, or kind of weird (like me) could expect physical violence weekly, if not daily. Second, parents, and adults in general, were out of the picture. I actually suspect that some parents would even enable or encourage the conflict. And, then, we lacked social support networks like kids have today today. Kids then were still as bored as they are now. But, instead of being able to use video games and apps to get their dopamine rush, they had to rely on causing trouble (which likely contributed to the increased violence) or risky decisions. Finally, there was no where place to escape to. There were no other social options. Kids today are at least able to socialize, gather, and meet online. For instance, I'm amazed to learn about how my nieces and nephews form large social communities of friends on-line. They have rich social lives, even though some of their closest friends are scattered around the globe. Maybe my perspective is skewed. But, if you think I'm exaggerating, at least watch a bunch of films from that period. Maybe you'll know what I mean. I honestly expected to read this post and sympathize. But, instead, as I read the descriptions of the kids of today, I felt ashamed that I actually felt a little jealous.
  - VladimirGolovin 8y ago
    Seconding all points. Having grown up in 80's Russia, this is exactly what I feel.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    Good points. Thanks.

darkerside 8y ago

This isn't going away. This is our society. So how do we deal with it? How could Brian have dealt with it? There's probably a "right" answer. I imagine something like, "leaning into" the joke by posting a response, showing you can laugh at yourself. There are PR firms that specialize at this sort of thing. Some would say it's a shame that middle schoolers need to develop the skills of a modern PR agency. I'd say, that's just what our society is now, and as usual, (most) kids will deal with the changes much better than adults.

DelightOne 8y ago
Collect phones at the start of school. Like France. > Some would say it's a shame that middle schoolers need to develop the skills of a modern PR agency. If teachers don't care yes.
- saghm 8y ago
  > Collect phones at the start of school While I don't disagree with this idea at all and think it would definitely make the situation somewhat better, I also think it's naive to think that bullying would go away if kids didn't have cell phones. My (admittedly anecdotal) personal experience of middle school before smartphones and Facebook and the like was that bullying was still a pretty common thing. While taking phones away could stop one specific incident from being the source of repeated bullying, bullies will still find a way to bully even if they aren't able to keep permanent video records of various embarrassing incidents of their targets. That being said, I think there are additional arguments for not letting kids use their phones during school hours, and I wouldn't see any problem with enacting such a policy.
  - olyjohn 8y ago
    Yes but bullies coudln't send video of their actions to 1000 people at once and get positive feedback from 400 of them within a few minutes. Their audience was limited to whomever happened to be around, positive feedback from an even smaller group, and the verbal rumor mill which wears out quickly. The larger audience, and the anonymous group/mob encouragement is the difference...

optimiz3 8y ago

Be kind to others...fast forward 10 years and imagine some authority looking into Mark's social media history. Yeah you may be a big alpha in middle school, but you'll be labeled a bully and a social pariah the rest of your life. Heck, let's imagine advances in NLP and video processing where people automatically get labeled as bullies. Being regarded as such could be the new scarlet letter. The Internet doesn't forget. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

olyjohn 8y ago
Unless Instagram is gone in 10 years. Does anybody go back and look at old MySpace profiles? Are they even still around? Every single one of these platforms is proprietary, and likely won't be around very long. After the bullying is done, and the service becomes uncool, the bullied kid still suffers. On the bright side, the bully could grow up to be a really amazing person, and and maybe won't be labelled this way his whole life.

fixermark 8y ago

Wait, why did Brian's follower count drop? Being the kid who fell in the puddle should be boosting his follower numbers.

z3t4 8y ago

There's different times today, people want to be famous, a viral video might launch a career.

masto 8y ago

Middle school was the worst years of my life. It was absolute torture, the bullying, the teachers' petty power trips, the pointless lull in actual education before high school. Technology was my refuge. I passed the hours just waiting to get access to a computer, and it wasn't until a few years later that I finally got a modem and found BBSes where I could participate in discussions with real people. It was fun, it saved me from I don't know what, and it set me on a path that led to this place 25 years later. I would have been so much better off with a cell phone.

negativez 8y ago
It's easy to forget that BBSes were not at all populated by a representative sample of all people. The communities you experienced were the norm there but are a vanishingly small part of the modern internet. If you were raised now you might never have found your way to one before your psychological development was co-opted and sent in a very different direction by today's social media offerings.
op00to 8y ago
Exactly the same - but even through High School, I was bullied and abused. The point here isn't "don't give your kids phones", it's "pay attention to your kids, and don't let them act like assholes". But I guess it's just a lot easier to just not give your kid a phone and then pretend this shit isn't happening because your farts no longer smell bad.

jerkstate 8y ago

Boy, this sure is a rosy picture of how school bullying worked in 2008

al2o3cr 8y ago

An alternate take from the earlier time: Now it’s eighth grade and Mark has become addicted to making smaller kids afraid. Sure, he needs a lot more ‘victims’ to get the same feeling, but that’s okay. or Now it’s eighth grade and Mark has become addicted to alcohol. Sure, he needs a lot more ‘drinks’ to get the same feeling, but that’s okay. Pretending that "the old days" weren't full of kids doing whatever it took to hit the dopamine joy-buzzer is stupid. Smartphones and social media have transformed students into creatures craving one thing: content. The author's phone must be a truly remarkable device, what with being able to mind-control people all on its own. Here in the real world, people have transformed THEMSELVES into those creatures... Childhood is fleeting. It shouldn’t be spent staring at a screen. It shouldn't be spent warehoused in a school either, but here we are.

debaserab2 8y ago
It's not really same at all though and I think the article does a good job of illustrating how social media can coerce a normal kid into doing something that normally a bully would do without ever actually feeling like he did something wrong. There is no "bully" moment, there's no confrontation of your perpetrator, it simply feels that everyone is against you. The enemy isn't a single person making you feel bad. It's everyone. I know I didn't face the threat of that kind of stress at school. Embarrassing moments were allowed to pass in a few days and did become enshrined documentation attached to your identity.
negativez 8y ago
No one is talking about the phone as a physical device. The "phone" is the multibillion-dollar industry dedicated to indiscriminately making every human spend every possible second of their day 'engaging' with media out of a simple paperclip-maximizing business imperative. This industry doesn't need to make users happy anymore than the tobacco industry makes its own customers happy - as long as the dopamine is within arm's reach they've got most people hooked so much more than tobacco ever could. But unlike cigarettes, no one can cut open a slice of your social media lungs and show you that your mind is covered in tar. And since no one dies directly of exposure, we're left trying to convey how life could have been better without the second-order effects of using the product. If your lungs don't function with all that tar, you avoid physical activity because 'you don't like exercise' (when you can't breathe anymore). And if your brain has been trained to seek fulfillment from your phone that's because 'you like using your phone more than doing other things' (when you can't think of anything else you like to do anymore).

joejerryronnie 8y ago

Wow, the bullies these days just mean-post on social media? In my day they'd pull knives on you.

olyjohn 8y ago
No. They pull a knife on you now, while their friend films it and posts the video online of you crying afterwards.

dankohn1 8y ago

My son is a 12-year-old 7th grader in a public school in Manhattan. Phones are absolutely banned in the school building, and no one wants to lose their phone. The story could happen during out lunch, but not on school property. More generally, the school has a big focus on anti-bullying and the kids generally seem much nicer and more together than my memories of middle school.

droithomme 8y ago
No phones, all phones are confiscated and you never get them back is a very good policy. Likewise with knives and guns at schools.
- Maximus9000 8y ago
  > all phones are confiscated and you never get them back That's an interesting concept! Here in Ontario, Canada... it's my understanding that teachers have limited ability to take phones away from students... but they don't really want to because it becomes a liability issue. Some of these phones are worth $1000 and if the teacher misplaces it or another student swipes it, the teacher can be on the hook. If the policy is that the student doesn't get the phone back at all, that changes things significantly.
  - adrianratnapala 8y ago
    > If the policy is that the student doesn't get the phone back at all, ... That policy is commonly called stealing -- though it probably has a more specific label under law. Schools traditionally have been implement civil-asset forfeiture for small stuff because people rarely kick up a fuss, and the schools can quietly hand things back when they do. But if they start taking away people's smartphones there will be push-back.
tha_nose 8y ago
Research has shown that anti-bullying efforts may lead to more bullying. Similar to how the anti-drug (DARE) program may have to led to more drug use. The counterinuitive unintended consequences. https://www.uta.edu/news/releases/2013/09/jeong-bullying.php https://www.uta.edu/news/releases/2013/09/jeong-bullying.php Also, just because kids seem nicer and more together doesn't mean that they don't bully. Appearances can be deceiving. Though there are merits to confiscating phones from kids, we mustn't forget it also has drawbacks. Kids can't document bullying. Just because the phone is gone doesn't mean the bullying ends. It just means that the bullying can happen in secret and silence. We shouldn't forget that many child molestation by teachers and bullying by kids were brought to light because of smartphones. Smartphones are a tool. It can be both bad and good.

crescentfresh 8y ago

Some of my 13yr old son's classmates have started a bullying campaign against their own teacher, trying to dig up dirt or otherwise gossip about her. This happens over insta and snap. My son isn't involved but as a result she wouldn't even meet with me to discuss his recent report card (a right I thought I had), she is so sick and tired of people ganging up on her. I've always warned my son, you misuse or otherwise abuse a privilege in the presence of adults and they will strip you of it, a phone is no different. Then the more I tried to apply that to this situation I realized I'm wrong: his peers have already learned to bully and harass outside of school now, the teachers can do nothing about it. I don't know what to do about this one.

distances 8y ago
Here bullying a teacher would get you suspended fast, and bullying outside the school could have consequences in school too (if someone reports it, and some adults would care enough). I don't have kids myself so this is just theoretical to me at this point; I don't know how well that works in practice.
- japhyr 8y ago
  I teach high school. There are ways to hold students accountable if their actions outside of school affect what's happening in school. But you need staff and administration who are all on the same page and working together, and it helps to have a group of people who are focused on what's best for the learning environment, not just a group focused on winning against kids and families. Unfortunately, that is not always a given.
- jay_kyburz 8y ago
  I would like to think even a 13yo is smart enough to make anonymous account to bully the teacher with.
  - distances 8y ago
    They may think they are smart enough. When I was in middle school back in the 90s we all had city-provided Unix accounts for e-mail, homepages etc. The e-mail was read over telnet with Pine. Some student found out they can change the sender address inside the app, proceeded to set it to another kid's email, and sent an insulting e-mail to the science teacher. Of course the e-mail sender field is just for display purposes; the teacher had no trouble checking the headers and finding the kid behind this. The medium has changed a bit, but I can imagine teenagers still easily tripping over some technicalities and details.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

mwnivek 8y ago

If you're interested in a movie that explores similar themes of anxiety, social media, and just trying to survive middle school, I recommend Bo Burnham's film "Eighth Grade". Its average review is 90/100 on Metacritic, and is available to watch for free on Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Eighth-Grade-Elsie-Fisher/dp/B07FJNMSFN/ https://www.amazon.com/Eighth-Grade-Elsie-Fisher/dp/B07FJNMS...

markdown 8y ago
> is available to watch for free on Amazon Prime In my country it isn't possible to watch any show on Amazon for free. You have to at the very least pay to be part of a club called Amazon Prime before you can watch shows. Is it different where you are?
- CDSlice 8y ago
  Isn't that what he said? If you have Amazon Prime you can watch it for free as part of your membership.
  - markdown 8y ago
    Oh ok. I was confused by the use of the word "free", which you've used as well. Perhaps it means something different to Amazon customers.
    - citizenkeen 8y ago
      It is free if you've joined Amazon Prime. Prime is not free. Your pedantry sounds like someone saying the water fountains at Disneyland aren't free because you have to pay to get in.
      - js2 8y ago
        This use of the word “free” to mean “included in the price you’ve paid for your membership” might not be clear to non-native speakers. “You can watch this for no extra charge as part of your Prime membership” would be clearer.

AcerbicZero 8y ago

American Vandal Season 2 digs into this topic a bit. I'm sometimes caught off guard by how deep that show goes in such a comical manner.

analyst74 8y ago

After hearing enough of those kinds of stories, middle schools in America just sounds like a really scary place to be. Growing up in China in the 90s, I don't remember being scared all the time for being socially excluded and bullied despite being a computer nerd. After moving to US as adult, one thing I found really challenging is navigating social environments. It is not until I started viewing it through lenses of Hollywood school dramas, some of the social dynamics start to make sense. I am amazed how stark the contrast is between being perceived as "popular" as opposed to a nerd.

cr0sh 8y ago
Yeah - I both keep tabs and help (mostly advice comments) to my neighbors on Nextdoor. I am constantly dismayed at not only the fact that many seem to have an education somewhere at the high school level, but also that they still seem to crave a ton of drama and other similar "schoolyard" socialization habits. It would be humorous if it weren't for the fact that I live here with them; but that was the choice I made - I deliberately chose to own an older home that cost less than what I could afford, in a decidedly blue-collar neighborhood with no HOA so I could work on my vehicles or do other "loud fabrication activities" that I couldn't in another neighborhood. Part of me, though, wishes I had taken the plunge and had a home built out in the boonies. For the most part, my neighbors are nice and thoughtful, but there's a certain segment among them that I wish would just "grow up" already.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  I hate this! I had a tough time in school. I had a teacher tell me how much she didn't like me in 6th grade, and had few friends. The girl with the locker next to me threatened physical violence from time to time, but it seemed she wasn't willing to throw the first punch. We moved in 8th grade, where the new school decided I was lesbian and didn't deserve to have friends. I ate alone most of the year. (They were half right, but I didn't realize at the time). I had hope this would go away when I got older. I was promised this. Instead what I found was that it was just as bad or worse lest you fit in and just do the "adult" thing. It is now years later and I live in a different country. It took that move to ever feel like I'm accepted by folks in general.

joefourier 8y ago

The writer seems to be confusing 2008 for 1998. I remember middle school from 2008 onwards. Almost all teenagers were online by then (on MySpace, then Facebook). Nothing prevented your father from checking emails on his Blackberry at the breakfast table, your sister from texting on her cellphone or playing games on her iPod. Teachers had to ban cellphones in classrooms back then due the teenagers texting or playing mobile games, and there were PSAs about being driven to suicide by cyberbullying. By 2009 you could already obsess over Facebook likes - before then, you could measure your popularity by the number of friends you had versus how many your own friends had - and embarrassing photos could easily end up shared online or circulating among the other students. It may not have been as extreme as today, but an embarrassing video of yourself could just as easily end up going viral online and leading to social ridicule - see the Star Wars kid.

frosted-flakes 8y ago
In my experience, the turning point was between 2008 and 2011. I was in late elementary school in 2008 (grade 8), and I don't know if any of my classmates had a cell phone. Yes, some people had Facebook, but I think it had a minimum age limit of 15 years (?), and stuff like Instagram did not exist. People still called each other on the telephone. Fast forward 2–3 years into high school though, and everyone was on Facebook, probably half of my classmates had BlackBerries (BBM was all the rage), and some people had iPhones. A few kids had their own laptops that they brought to school, but schoolwork was entirely paper-based. (Heck, I didn't have home Internet access until after I graduated from high school, but I think I was in the minority there.) Using your phone during class resulted in it being taken away. Now I look at my youngest siblings, and everything they do is online. They submit homework through Google Classroom while browsing Instagram on the sly (Facebook is for fudder dudders), and their phones are their lives. They don't call people, and txt spk lk this is rly populr again for some reason. And teachers encourage phone use during class for certain things.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  I think the turning point might be regionally dependent. I know that social media was already popular before 2008. It simply wasn't Facebook, but other sites such as MySpace, Orkut etc.

droithomme 8y ago

Is it legal to take humiliating films of children in private settings and publish those films globally without the consent of any of the parties? Or would the person posting, and the company distributing the film be liable for criminal acts? Perhaps this could be solved with a series of criminal and civil prosecutions.

t0astbread 8y ago
I can't speak for US law but I'm pretty sure it is (it is in my country afaik). However, I can imagine it's close to impossible to execute if you don't know who posted the material or it has been reposted like in the article.

mchannon 8y ago

I can't help but wonder if there's not another side to this coin. Just as gangs run prisons to effects both bad and good, I wonder if the new norms these young cyborgs (can't live without the technology that's glued to them) don't have a silver lining about them. Parents have a window into their kids' social circles that they didn't use to have. The four big bullies who'd corner the skinny kid in the alley and pummel him can instantly be repelled by a 4 ounce piece of plastic. Not repelled, deterred. This brave new world has terrors aplenty and perhaps it's not a net positive that every teenager comes preinstalled with a battery of apps. But maybe it could be a net positive and we haven't realized it.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago
I can't think of much more terrifying as a 14 year old than if my parents had a window into my world. And I had a great relationship with them. I would have rather gotten beat up once or twice as a kid, and learn to handle it, than have constant parental surveillance. Privacy really is dead.
- t0astbread 8y ago
  Isn't that just a matter of having parents that respect your privacy (in other words: good parents)?
VladimirGolovin 8y ago
I definitely think there's a silver lining (at least here in Russia). My theory is that smartphones reduce street crime and bullying by providing stimulation. Back in the eighties when I grew up, the world was much, much less stimulating than it is now. Bullies bullied weaker people, hit on girls and tortured animals just to get their dopamine fixes and to alleviate boredom. Now all the potential bullies have smartphones full of apps. And the homescreen apps they have on their phones are the result of a decade of competitive evolution -- they are apex attention predators. As a result, their smartphones provide them with more than enough stimulation to keep them occupied all day: porn, dating, gossip, news, games, gambling. As a result, I haven't been mugged in a decade (knock wood). There were a couple of tries, but I just disregarded them. I say this is good.

nine_k 8y ago

Middle school is the age when social hierarchies start to form For millennia, teenagers were included in complex parts of society, with kids of different ages, and some adults around. They could learn, they could teach, the could choose authority figures to imitate. In a modern school, though, they are isolated for most of their day in a group of 20-30 kids of same age. They can't build a natural hierarchy around experience and abilities, for a wide enough gamut is not available. So they end up building a hierarchy based mostly on aggression and persuasion. It of course ends up pretty toxic.

yay_cloud2 8y ago
Are there any structures that kids can get involved with (or the family) that will provide some of "complex society" feel?
- hopler 8y ago
  Church. Martial arts classes,or any rec class that isn't age based. Working at a family business.
  - bnjms 8y ago
    I left the church just as every other thoughtful kid was supposed to but I miss it and worry frequently that American culture is slowly losing something which was foundational to its wellbeing.
    - hopler 8y ago
      Maybe thoughtful kids aren't supposed to leave church after all.. maybe they just need to find a good church.
  - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
    By the time I was 12, church was something I was forced to do. I already doubted the whole premise, but couldn't actually say anything about it. And to top it all off, the churches my parents chose didn't really have kids my age. In sunday school, they usually had to decide which "special" class I was going to be in: THe one with older kids or the one with younger ones. It isn't like American children get any sort of voice in whether or not they go to church or which church/religion they adhere to. I didn't have access to the other things, or at least I didn't know of these places in the small town I lived in.

JacobJans 8y ago

Think about this: How many times in the past 24 hours did you unconsciously check your email, browse Facebook, visit a website, or check some other app? Do you ever find yourself looking at your phone, and not remember consciously deciding to look at it? If you're like 90% of smart phone users, this happens to you all the time. Sure, you can be like the 10% that doesn't fall victim to the "slot machine" psychology of the modern internet. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean the other 90% aren't going to impact your life. I feel the quality of conversations has vastly decreased, on average, because of the intense level of smart-phone addiction that is so common now. Even if nobody is looking at their phone. ("Attention residue" is a real thing.)

BeetleB 8y ago
>I feel the quality of conversations has vastly decreased, on average, because of the intense level of smart-phone addiction that is so common now. Even if nobody is looking at their phone. ("Attention residue" is a real thing.) It's a continuum. I used to write letters once. I loved email when it was new ("new" where I lived and amongst my friends). Within a few years, people who once wrote me a few pages of letters would rarely write more than 2-3 lines in email. It's gone downhill from there.

yesenadam 8y ago

Is middle school just a thing in the USA (I assume from the comments) or other countries too? I don't know anything about it. How many years is it, what age range? It's always the same number of years? (Also, people from the USA use the words 'sophomore', 'freshman' etc as if they're internationally understood, I have no idea what they mean, although I've heard them many times. Something to do with middle school perhaps.) In Australia there's just primary school (Kindergarten + years 1-6), then high school (secondary school, years 7-12), then university (tertiary).

amanaplanacanal 8y ago
I think there are a couple different systems. When I was in school it was primary (1-6), junior high (7-9) and high school (10-12). I think more common now is primary (k-5), middle school (6-8) and high school (9-12), but it might vary from place to place.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Middle school is either grades 6-8 or 7-8 in USA. If 7-8 sometimes called Junior High School. High School is grades 9-12
cr0sh 8y ago
Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior are the names for the high school grades 9-12. Kindergarten is usually for children 5 or 6 years old; 1st grade, 6-7 years old, etc. By 12th (senior) year of high school, kids are usually somewhere between 17-19 years of age.

mirimir 8y ago

My parents moved a lot. Every couple years. They were some sort of diplomatic staff. But just exactly what they did was never very clear to me. But anyway, I was always the new foreign kid. Some times were good, and some were bad. But stuff didn't follow me from one place to another. I wonder how that would work out now.

asudosandwich 8y ago

My anxiety disorder kicked off around the age I realized I was too old to be that shy - about 7th grade in early 90s. I don’t know what I would have done if reality back then was anything like the second half of the story and not the first. I’m grateful it wasn’t at least.

null000 8y ago

Yeah, I was in High School around 2008. Facebook was already a thing, as was obsession over followers. Smart phones had been around for a bit, many kids had them and had their phonest as had Twitter and a few other things. Middle school just kinda sucks. It was easily the worst period of my life, and I don't think that's a rarity in America.

davvolun 8y ago

WTF.. Because bullying that ostracized certain kids didn't exist before social media -- that's why Columbine didn't happen? We have got to stop this "good old days" nonsense. That doesn't exclude or excuse the real problems that social media and always being online can cause, but stop pretending that dad wouldn't have been reading the paper or rushing off to work, or otherwise disengaged from Brian in the morning, his sisters wouldn't have heard from the school grapevine all about him falling down. How about the kinda weird, quirky kid, who finds that putting videos of himself on Youtube helps him deal with his problems, like ADHD or dyslexia? Maybe without those videos, that kid would never have the confidence to succeed in the classroom. > Teach your children that boredom is important. Give me a fucking break! Exactly how does that lesson go down -- I imagine it's pretty similar to abstinence-only education. Some kids will listen, and it will probably screw up their lives anyway. Why do people think kids are a blank canvas they can paint on? Were you when you were a kid?

davvolun 8y ago
> Tell them to go outside and explore the real world. Childhood is fleeting. It shouldn’t be spent staring at a screen. Because every single kid in the history of the world hasn't heard that, either from their parents, on TV, from a teacher.