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I think that this is incorrect framing, or at least incomplete framing. The question we should be asking is why are so many parents letting their young kids use

by yumraj 5y ago

I think that this is incorrect framing, or at least incomplete framing. The question we should be asking is why are so many parents letting their young kids use these platforms. In fact, why are kids before high school getting cellphones? And even if they do, why are they being allowed to use these apps? I’m not saying the responsibility does not lie with these companies, but for some reason parents’ role seems to be entirely missing in all these narratives.

dartharva 5y ago
That devolves into the age-old debate of restriction vs regulation. What devices should children have access to, and what devices are a problem? A laptop can just as well be used as badly as a cellphone in this context. Video games on home consoles can have just as much of a psychological effect as hate-mongering social media. I have had similar opinions (even reflected them in a past comment), but upon some feedback and introspection I've come to realize that forbidding kids from accessing something as ubiquitous as cellphones can't be viable. There is no set standard where you can draw a line that an individual is mature enough to handle social media, and there's no set consensus about when and how harmful it is that it would warrant bans. A handful of researches and surveys show that a section of children may face self-esteem issues from Instagram, but that's really not much to go on. btw, I share the same bewilderment for children participating unrestricted in social media. I just don't have an answer to a practical standard of restriction. It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society. So what it should boil down to, in my opinion, is to make social media spaces as safe, civil and habitable with laws, as you make the open world that children are exposed to. Regulate these platforms stringently, with constant supervision from public bodies, just as the police monitors real-life public spaces.
- yumraj 5y ago
  > It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society. So, perhaps the same argument should apply to unfettered access to online porn as well, yes? If not, why not? Perhaps we should allow kids unfettered open access to porn as well. I fully understand that the above is a provocative argument and am not suggesting we do that, but IMHO there is only a very fine line between the two since both are very addictive and at a young age can result in psychological harm.
  - dartharva 5y ago
    > there is only a very fine line between the two Is there, really? Watching porn is not something you see people admitting to publicly. In the majority of the world it has originally been considered a taboo (or an outright crime), or at most a guilty pleasure. Porn is not a way of socializing or keeping up with trends or discussing politics, social media is. The two have fundamentally different purposes and reason for existence. Please note that I am not making any case for allowing children to use social media. I have myself kept away from it, and I indeed consider it just as poisonous for the mind as you do. My point was that it's inconsequential now to try to put bans on the overall broad concept of social media. For better or worse, social media is already an essential part of the world's collective information infrastructure. Society has already shaped itself to accommodate its dominance. Even if you cut access to one platform, there will always be another to take its place. But social media, as a concept, can't go away. It's too late for that now, and the right way to go now is to regulate mainstream social media such that it becomes a safe space for people of all ages.
    - yumraj 5y ago
      I don’t disagree with the latter part, 2nd para, of your comment. My original comment was that the parents’ role is sorely missing from all the narratives and it needs to be there. That is all. I fully support regulating any and all social media. It’s not either/or, it’s both.
  - lozenge 5y ago
    Hacker News etiquette is to take the strongest form of people's arguments. There's a lot of space between "ban then from cellphones" and "give them completely unfettered, unmonitored access to everything". Your comments jump between one and the other with no in between.
  - solveit 5y ago
    You're not exactly being charitable to the person you're arguing against, but taking your slippery slope at face value, we already have a generation of adults who basically grew up with unfettered access to online porn, and sensationalist headlines notwithstanding, we're basically fine, or at least not any more fucked up than baseline. (The first half of the 20th century saw people grow up with decades of carnage, so the baseline is pretty lenient.)
- chris123 5y ago
  Wow, what a dystopian nightmare of a world you're suggesting.
hardwaregeek 5y ago
Plenty of parents likely do not let their kids use social media. How effective do you think that is? Kids can and will circumvent their parents' restrictions. You can certainly make it harder by not giving your kid a cell phone, or giving them a dumbphone. But the article makes a good point that it's a tricky line between protecting your kid and effectively ostracizing them. Especially during the pandemic. Could you imagine being a kid who can't see their friends, can't text them, can only send them emails? You'd have effectively no social contact. And you can't govern by telling people to be better parents. If one set of parents has a social media addicted child, that's on them. If ten million parents have a social media addicted child, you have a policy problem.
- barsonme 5y ago
  How come scale (“ten million”) makes it a policy problem? There are a whole heck of a lot of poor parenting practices out there, manny practiced at scale.
- yumraj 5y ago
  > How effective do you think that is? In the short term, very. In the long term, as in once the kids are off to college and so on, who knows. But, overall I think much more effective than the households/kids with unrestricted access. > your kid and effectively ostracizing them. This is an interesting one. If the kids are educated as to why a certain action is being taken, as opposed to just No then kids can accept the policy and be fine with it. Messaging such as Signal or iMessage is allowed, but I just don't understand as to why kids have to share million selfies each day. So anything out of the Zuck-factory is a complete no-no. Bottom line, I'd rather ostracize kids in the short term than cause longer term psychological harm. > If ten million parents have a social media addicted child, you have a policy problem. I never said don't do policy, but that is not a substitute for better parenting. Let me ask this, will the same parent who allow their kids unfettered access to social media allow their kids similar access to porn websites? I'm pretty sure they won't. Which is why it's not either/or, it's both. This is why I said that the narrative is incomplete.
  - ryankrage77 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
The question we should be asking is why are so many parents letting their young kids use these platforms. Because their friends use it, and you are raising adults who will almost certainly use it so you might as well let the children learn some things. In fact, why are kids before high school getting cellphones? And even if they do, why are they being allowed to use these apps? Because if you don't allow the middle schooler to have one, it seriously changes who they can effectively be friends with as it affects how easily they can communicate with others. It happens to adults, too: Some basic jobs wouldn't hire folks without a phone (Don't know if that is still the case) and folks aren't generally as close to people they cannot easily communicate with. They are allowed to use the apps in part because of ignorance and in part because kids will be kids. I watched a good amount of TV shows that my mom disallowed and bought music she disapproved of: I expect similar things with kids and apps. There is simply no way for a parent to know everything a child does, especially as they age into pre-teen ages.
stormbrew 5y ago
Someone else touched on the fact that as it becomes more common, keeping your kids from having access to technology only serves to make them be excluded from social engagement. But the other side of this, and I honestly think a much bigger driver than anyone wants to give it credit for, is that it allows parents to surveil their kids to an unprecedented degree, and for better and for worse, parents are not going to pass up an opportunity to keep better track of their kids. You'd never get a kid to keep a device on them that only tracked them. The fact it can also play games or go online is basically a bribe to be monitored.

by yumraj 5y ago

dartharva 5y ago

That devolves into the age-old debate of restriction vs regulation. What devices should children have access to, and what devices are a problem? A laptop can just as well be used as badly as a cellphone in this context. Video games on home consoles can have just as much of a psychological effect as hate-mongering social media. I have had similar opinions (even reflected them in a past comment), but upon some feedback and introspection I've come to realize that forbidding kids from accessing something as ubiquitous as cellphones can't be viable. There is no set standard where you can draw a line that an individual is mature enough to handle social media, and there's no set consensus about when and how harmful it is that it would warrant bans. A handful of researches and surveys show that a section of children may face self-esteem issues from Instagram, but that's really not much to go on. btw, I share the same bewilderment for children participating unrestricted in social media. I just don't have an answer to a practical standard of restriction. It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society. So what it should boil down to, in my opinion, is to make social media spaces as safe, civil and habitable with laws, as you make the open world that children are exposed to. Regulate these platforms stringently, with constant supervision from public bodies, just as the police monitors real-life public spaces.

yumraj 5y ago
> It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society. So, perhaps the same argument should apply to unfettered access to online porn as well, yes? If not, why not? Perhaps we should allow kids unfettered open access to porn as well. I fully understand that the above is a provocative argument and am not suggesting we do that, but IMHO there is only a very fine line between the two since both are very addictive and at a young age can result in psychological harm.
- dartharva 5y ago
  > there is only a very fine line between the two Is there, really? Watching porn is not something you see people admitting to publicly. In the majority of the world it has originally been considered a taboo (or an outright crime), or at most a guilty pleasure. Porn is not a way of socializing or keeping up with trends or discussing politics, social media is. The two have fundamentally different purposes and reason for existence. Please note that I am not making any case for allowing children to use social media. I have myself kept away from it, and I indeed consider it just as poisonous for the mind as you do. My point was that it's inconsequential now to try to put bans on the overall broad concept of social media. For better or worse, social media is already an essential part of the world's collective information infrastructure. Society has already shaped itself to accommodate its dominance. Even if you cut access to one platform, there will always be another to take its place. But social media, as a concept, can't go away. It's too late for that now, and the right way to go now is to regulate mainstream social media such that it becomes a safe space for people of all ages.
  - yumraj 5y ago
    I don’t disagree with the latter part, 2nd para, of your comment. My original comment was that the parents’ role is sorely missing from all the narratives and it needs to be there. That is all. I fully support regulating any and all social media. It’s not either/or, it’s both.
- lozenge 5y ago
  Hacker News etiquette is to take the strongest form of people's arguments. There's a lot of space between "ban then from cellphones" and "give them completely unfettered, unmonitored access to everything". Your comments jump between one and the other with no in between.
- solveit 5y ago
  You're not exactly being charitable to the person you're arguing against, but taking your slippery slope at face value, we already have a generation of adults who basically grew up with unfettered access to online porn, and sensationalist headlines notwithstanding, we're basically fine, or at least not any more fucked up than baseline. (The first half of the 20th century saw people grow up with decades of carnage, so the baseline is pretty lenient.)
chris123 5y ago
Wow, what a dystopian nightmare of a world you're suggesting.

hardwaregeek 5y ago

Plenty of parents likely do not let their kids use social media. How effective do you think that is? Kids can and will circumvent their parents' restrictions. You can certainly make it harder by not giving your kid a cell phone, or giving them a dumbphone. But the article makes a good point that it's a tricky line between protecting your kid and effectively ostracizing them. Especially during the pandemic. Could you imagine being a kid who can't see their friends, can't text them, can only send them emails? You'd have effectively no social contact. And you can't govern by telling people to be better parents. If one set of parents has a social media addicted child, that's on them. If ten million parents have a social media addicted child, you have a policy problem.

barsonme 5y ago
How come scale (“ten million”) makes it a policy problem? There are a whole heck of a lot of poor parenting practices out there, manny practiced at scale.
yumraj 5y ago
> How effective do you think that is? In the short term, very. In the long term, as in once the kids are off to college and so on, who knows. But, overall I think much more effective than the households/kids with unrestricted access. > your kid and effectively ostracizing them. This is an interesting one. If the kids are educated as to why a certain action is being taken, as opposed to just No then kids can accept the policy and be fine with it. Messaging such as Signal or iMessage is allowed, but I just don't understand as to why kids have to share million selfies each day. So anything out of the Zuck-factory is a complete no-no. Bottom line, I'd rather ostracize kids in the short term than cause longer term psychological harm. > If ten million parents have a social media addicted child, you have a policy problem. I never said don't do policy, but that is not a substitute for better parenting. Let me ask this, will the same parent who allow their kids unfettered access to social media allow their kids similar access to porn websites? I'm pretty sure they won't. Which is why it's not either/or, it's both. This is why I said that the narrative is incomplete.
- ryankrage77 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Broken_Hippo 5y ago

The question we should be asking is why are so many parents letting their young kids use these platforms. Because their friends use it, and you are raising adults who will almost certainly use it so you might as well let the children learn some things. In fact, why are kids before high school getting cellphones? And even if they do, why are they being allowed to use these apps? Because if you don't allow the middle schooler to have one, it seriously changes who they can effectively be friends with as it affects how easily they can communicate with others. It happens to adults, too: Some basic jobs wouldn't hire folks without a phone (Don't know if that is still the case) and folks aren't generally as close to people they cannot easily communicate with. They are allowed to use the apps in part because of ignorance and in part because kids will be kids. I watched a good amount of TV shows that my mom disallowed and bought music she disapproved of: I expect similar things with kids and apps. There is simply no way for a parent to know everything a child does, especially as they age into pre-teen ages.

stormbrew 5y ago

Someone else touched on the fact that as it becomes more common, keeping your kids from having access to technology only serves to make them be excluded from social engagement. But the other side of this, and I honestly think a much bigger driver than anyone wants to give it credit for, is that it allows parents to surveil their kids to an unprecedented degree, and for better and for worse, parents are not going to pass up an opportunity to keep better track of their kids. You'd never get a kid to keep a device on them that only tracked them. The fact it can also play games or go online is basically a bribe to be monitored.