5 ms·

Parents can’t control the social landscape their children are born into. Sure, you can try to block the apps and socially isolate them if you care more about ma

Parents can’t control the social landscape their children are born into. Sure, you can try to block the apps and socially isolate them if you care more about making a statement than their emotional wellbeing. Alternatively we can admit that there is an issue with the amount of power and influence given to a few companies who have privatized all normal communication, especially for the younger generation. There is a reality of psychological and sociological harm that can’t be mitigated by taking your children fishing and giving them a few stern lectures. Full grown adults can’t even fight being manipulated by these apps.

alar44 5y ago
Ridiculous. The world is full of choices and kids need to learn how to make them. They don't learn that by being sheltered. And regarding power to a few companies: that's how it's always been.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- beachy 5y ago
  Try telling that to your 13 year old daughter when every one of her friend group is congregating on social app du jure.
  - coryrc 5y ago
    You are presumably an adult. Are your friends only within one year of age? Unlikely. That this happens for children is a consequence of our morally-bankrupt "education" system which isolates children away from the community and only with people the same age for socialization (of which teenagers are known to be poor at). The same way you can't blame an individual for not walking places in, say, Atlanta, because the path between two locations is interrupted by a highway; or you stop all fires from burning in a forest which has had fires for thousands of years then wonder why the fires are so intense; it's silly to point to social media being the primary issue why teens are bad at socializing when it's a direct consequence of your society to concentrate together people with wild hormones without a moderating influence.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    Being a parent is all about teaching boundaries. I hated my parents for forbidding me to do things I wanted; from having a phone to not going to party when I was too young. I ended up having a phone and partying later on and I eventually came to hate both after a few years. Now that I grew up, I'm glad they stopped me from entering that world too early, I'm glad I tried and I'm glad I'm done with it.
    - zpeti 5y ago
      And you’re getting downvoted. A very sad state of affairs that this post is what gets downvoted nowadays. Edit: perhaps ppl downvoting should ask their local psychologist about boundaries and why they’re important
    - scarface74 5y ago
      Yes because parents “setting boundaries” have stop kids from doing drugs, alcohol, having pre-marital sex, etc.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    You realize peer pressure has always been a thing right? We should have a “War on Social Media”, have the First Lady head a “Just Say No” campaign, and have commercials about “this is your brain on FaceBook”. Because that worked so well last time. But now, the government will get it right.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Humans in general are terrible at making choices. That's the whole reason every company needs a marketing department.
  - LordDragonfang 5y ago
    ...That reason being to encourage people to make bad choices which make the company money?
    - adrianN 5y ago
      Yes, of course.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      So are we going to outlaw everything that allows people to make bad choices about their own lives “for the children”?
- blowski 5y ago
  So let children make a choice around fire or knives? I guess evolution will weed out the stupid ones right? Good parenting is partly about guiding our children to make good choices. This thread is discussing how we do that, and what good choices might look like.
  - mellavora 5y ago
    parents vs marketing behemoths which also builds massive peer pressure. Wonder how that battle ends?
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      With the creation of the He-Man She-Ra Christmas special.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      So all we need is the First Lady leading a “Just Say No” campaign since that worked so well fighting “peer pressure” about drug use. There has always been peer pressure and parents have mostly loss that battle. Even with government intervention.
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  There's a balance. We don't let 13 year old kids drink alcohol, have sex, take drugs, drive cars, own guns, vote etc. Gradual exposure to responsibility, or harmful / addictive experiences isn't "sheltered", it's "responsible parenting". Jeez, I wouldn't even let my friend smoke "the strong weed" and he's 46. "Doom scrolling" didn't exist when I was a kid and I'm glad it didn't. I would never have developed a love of computers. The closest thing I had in the 80s was TV. 6 channels, and they all shut down at midnight and displayed a test signal. When they were "on" the content was mostly shit. Infinite scroll on social media is designed to be addictive. What chance does a 13 year old have when most adults (who have outgrown their teenage desperation for social acceptance) can't control that addiction? What happens when your kids is sent home from school because they assaulted someone or vandalized the school because it's a new cool thing on TikTok? Next they're yelling that the you're a bigot based on some obscure heuristic that doesn't even make sense? Ever tried using logic with someone who is 100% certain you're the bad guy because they've been brainwashed for 8 hours a day on an app? What was the big "social contagion" when you were growing up? For me it was music, slang and haircuts. These days it's self harm, coordinated vandalism, pornified ideas of bodies and sex. I know a lady who has a 16yo daughter who is bulimic... so are her whole clique.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    Why does a 13 years old have access to social media? As you mention, we don't let kids drink alcohol at 13. My kids can call me a bigot and hate me as much as they want, it won't change the fact I am the parent and I decide what's right for them until they're of age. When I was growing up there was already vandalism, porn, unrealistic body image (bodybuilders for guys, anorexic models for girls), heavy underage drinking and goth cutting themselves. The only difference in today's world is that we celebrate people with mental illnesses for political purposes. Teaching your kids what the media say is mostly biased BS and forbidding them from using social media is not too hard.
    - oblio 5y ago
      > Teaching your kids what the media say is mostly biased BS and forbidding them from using social media is not too hard. 1. Adults have pretty bad impulse control. 2. But kids or teenagers have even worse impulse control. 3. The prefrontal cortex, in charge of risk evaluation and decision making, matures when you're 25 years old (+/-). 4. These huge companies are built around addiction and getting network effects to set it. They have huge marketing budgets and a lot of money to lobby governments. What's I'm saying is: good luck getting the average kid to break a habit even many adults can't. And when the human brain, on average, fails ("don't drink and drive!"), we introduce laws to fix that. Personal responsibility only takes us so far, because we're human and fallible.
scarface74 5y ago
Parents have been trying to outlaw things “for the children” all the way from rock n roll to rap music to video games Companies have not “privatized communication” besides “Facebook is for old people”. Are we going to have the government legislate the algorithms companies use? I bet politicians would love to say that companies must prioritize whatever speech they are in favor of.

alar44 5y ago

Ridiculous. The world is full of choices and kids need to learn how to make them. They don't learn that by being sheltered. And regarding power to a few companies: that's how it's always been.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
beachy 5y ago
Try telling that to your 13 year old daughter when every one of her friend group is congregating on social app du jure.
- coryrc 5y ago
  You are presumably an adult. Are your friends only within one year of age? Unlikely. That this happens for children is a consequence of our morally-bankrupt "education" system which isolates children away from the community and only with people the same age for socialization (of which teenagers are known to be poor at). The same way you can't blame an individual for not walking places in, say, Atlanta, because the path between two locations is interrupted by a highway; or you stop all fires from burning in a forest which has had fires for thousands of years then wonder why the fires are so intense; it's silly to point to social media being the primary issue why teens are bad at socializing when it's a direct consequence of your society to concentrate together people with wild hormones without a moderating influence.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Being a parent is all about teaching boundaries. I hated my parents for forbidding me to do things I wanted; from having a phone to not going to party when I was too young. I ended up having a phone and partying later on and I eventually came to hate both after a few years. Now that I grew up, I'm glad they stopped me from entering that world too early, I'm glad I tried and I'm glad I'm done with it.
  - zpeti 5y ago
    And you’re getting downvoted. A very sad state of affairs that this post is what gets downvoted nowadays. Edit: perhaps ppl downvoting should ask their local psychologist about boundaries and why they’re important
  - scarface74 5y ago
    Yes because parents “setting boundaries” have stop kids from doing drugs, alcohol, having pre-marital sex, etc.
- scarface74 5y ago
  You realize peer pressure has always been a thing right? We should have a “War on Social Media”, have the First Lady head a “Just Say No” campaign, and have commercials about “this is your brain on FaceBook”. Because that worked so well last time. But now, the government will get it right.
adrianN 5y ago
Humans in general are terrible at making choices. That's the whole reason every company needs a marketing department.
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  ...That reason being to encourage people to make bad choices which make the company money?
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Yes, of course.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    So are we going to outlaw everything that allows people to make bad choices about their own lives “for the children”?
blowski 5y ago
So let children make a choice around fire or knives? I guess evolution will weed out the stupid ones right? Good parenting is partly about guiding our children to make good choices. This thread is discussing how we do that, and what good choices might look like.
- mellavora 5y ago
  parents vs marketing behemoths which also builds massive peer pressure. Wonder how that battle ends?
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    With the creation of the He-Man She-Ra Christmas special.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    So all we need is the First Lady leading a “Just Say No” campaign since that worked so well fighting “peer pressure” about drug use. There has always been peer pressure and parents have mostly loss that battle. Even with government intervention.
raffraffraff 5y ago
There's a balance. We don't let 13 year old kids drink alcohol, have sex, take drugs, drive cars, own guns, vote etc. Gradual exposure to responsibility, or harmful / addictive experiences isn't "sheltered", it's "responsible parenting". Jeez, I wouldn't even let my friend smoke "the strong weed" and he's 46. "Doom scrolling" didn't exist when I was a kid and I'm glad it didn't. I would never have developed a love of computers. The closest thing I had in the 80s was TV. 6 channels, and they all shut down at midnight and displayed a test signal. When they were "on" the content was mostly shit. Infinite scroll on social media is designed to be addictive. What chance does a 13 year old have when most adults (who have outgrown their teenage desperation for social acceptance) can't control that addiction? What happens when your kids is sent home from school because they assaulted someone or vandalized the school because it's a new cool thing on TikTok? Next they're yelling that the you're a bigot based on some obscure heuristic that doesn't even make sense? Ever tried using logic with someone who is 100% certain you're the bad guy because they've been brainwashed for 8 hours a day on an app? What was the big "social contagion" when you were growing up? For me it was music, slang and haircuts. These days it's self harm, coordinated vandalism, pornified ideas of bodies and sex. I know a lady who has a 16yo daughter who is bulimic... so are her whole clique.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Why does a 13 years old have access to social media? As you mention, we don't let kids drink alcohol at 13. My kids can call me a bigot and hate me as much as they want, it won't change the fact I am the parent and I decide what's right for them until they're of age. When I was growing up there was already vandalism, porn, unrealistic body image (bodybuilders for guys, anorexic models for girls), heavy underage drinking and goth cutting themselves. The only difference in today's world is that we celebrate people with mental illnesses for political purposes. Teaching your kids what the media say is mostly biased BS and forbidding them from using social media is not too hard.
  - oblio 5y ago
    > Teaching your kids what the media say is mostly biased BS and forbidding them from using social media is not too hard. 1. Adults have pretty bad impulse control. 2. But kids or teenagers have even worse impulse control. 3. The prefrontal cortex, in charge of risk evaluation and decision making, matures when you're 25 years old (+/-). 4. These huge companies are built around addiction and getting network effects to set it. They have huge marketing budgets and a lot of money to lobby governments. What's I'm saying is: good luck getting the average kid to break a habit even many adults can't. And when the human brain, on average, fails ("don't drink and drive!"), we introduce laws to fix that. Personal responsibility only takes us so far, because we're human and fallible.

scarface74 5y ago

Parents have been trying to outlaw things “for the children” all the way from rock n roll to rap music to video games Companies have not “privatized communication” besides “Facebook is for old people”. Are we going to have the government legislate the algorithms companies use? I bet politicians would love to say that companies must prioritize whatever speech they are in favor of.