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> it truly saddens me that people think social media is a requirement for living. just dont do it, and dont let your kids do it. In some ways, it is. News get

> it truly saddens me that people think social media is a requirement for living. just dont do it, and dont let your kids do it. In some ways, it is. News get shared over social media. Events get published (only) on social media. A lot of people organize hobbys or work on social media. You will miss a lot by choosing to ignore it. And yes, you can still live without it, but comparing it to a time when nobody used social media is just apples to oranges. We as adults can choose not to use it and deal with the social consequences. But other kids won't be understanding or even accommodating. Completely banning you kids from social media is just as bad as letting them use it.

bodge5000 5y ago
To my knowledge its not nearly as big a thing, but I heard about a kid who was essentially ostracised from his friend group because he had an android phone and they all used iphones, which effectively to them just meant his chat bubble in imessage was a different colour (I know there are legitimate advantages of imessage, but talking to people who use it, I doubt that was the issue at play). Eventually his parents brought him an iphone and he was allowed back into the group, but yeh kids can be brutal. If kids are that brutal over the colour of a chat message, you can only imagine how they'd react if they didn't have a phone at all (or have social media, they are essentially one in the same in this case).
- jjk166 5y ago
  Kids were ostracizing each other from groups for dumb reasons long before phones or social media were ever invented, and they will continue to do so long after we move onto the next thing. There will always be some arbitrary way to define an ingroup and an outgroup, the fact that kids are brutal enough to exclude someone because of something as pointless as their text bubbles' color illustrates the futility of trying to avoid this fate by appeasement. At some point people just have to have that uncomfortable conversation with their child where they explain friends who abandon you at a drop of a hat aren't friends.

bodge5000 5y ago

To my knowledge its not nearly as big a thing, but I heard about a kid who was essentially ostracised from his friend group because he had an android phone and they all used iphones, which effectively to them just meant his chat bubble in imessage was a different colour (I know there are legitimate advantages of imessage, but talking to people who use it, I doubt that was the issue at play). Eventually his parents brought him an iphone and he was allowed back into the group, but yeh kids can be brutal. If kids are that brutal over the colour of a chat message, you can only imagine how they'd react if they didn't have a phone at all (or have social media, they are essentially one in the same in this case).

jjk166 5y ago
Kids were ostracizing each other from groups for dumb reasons long before phones or social media were ever invented, and they will continue to do so long after we move onto the next thing. There will always be some arbitrary way to define an ingroup and an outgroup, the fact that kids are brutal enough to exclude someone because of something as pointless as their text bubbles' color illustrates the futility of trying to avoid this fate by appeasement. At some point people just have to have that uncomfortable conversation with their child where they explain friends who abandon you at a drop of a hat aren't friends.