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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 har

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
    How has that whole “War on Drugs” been working out with stopping kids from doing drugs?
    - oblio 5y ago
      I don't know how it's doing but that's cherry picking. We have a ton of bans for a ton of stuff in a ton of countries and they seem to work. The burden on proof is on you to prove they're all wrong.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        Name one thing that the US government has “banned” that people wanted where it has been effective? And why would you want government control over what you can see and say?
        oblio 5y ago
        > Name one thing that the US government has “banned” that people wanted where it has been effective? The world is more than the US. > And why would you want government control over what you can see and say? Because this is not just about me, it's about society as a whole. And humans can be horrible: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...
scarface74 5y ago
> We don't let 13 year old kids drink alcohol, have sex, take drugs, Yes because we passed laws, we stopped drug use and alcohol use by children and they aren’t having sex… > 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? Yes because fighting in school and vandalizing property was never a thing before TikTok. > What was the big "social contagion" when you were growing up? Yes because before the internet there wasn’t mass hysteria like the Salem witch trials or within my parents lifetime @running all of the Black people out of the city to protect our wome
johnnyanmac 5y ago
That's the point. those are all not allowed, some kids do it anyway. Hard restrictions don't actually protect kids but make them more curious. >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? it sucks yea. But if it wasn't facebook, it'd be any other form of ad made in the past century. including "news" channels >What was the big "social contagion" when you were growing up? TV and Video games were the new hotness, but all those were common too. cutting yourself as some perverted idea of "goth culture", body image issues from magazine and mannequins, graffiti, and yes, sex (that's a factor as old as time). Same shit, different outfit.

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
  How has that whole “War on Drugs” been working out with stopping kids from doing drugs?
  - oblio 5y ago
    I don't know how it's doing but that's cherry picking. We have a ton of bans for a ton of stuff in a ton of countries and they seem to work. The burden on proof is on you to prove they're all wrong.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      Name one thing that the US government has “banned” that people wanted where it has been effective? And why would you want government control over what you can see and say?
      - oblio 5y ago
        > Name one thing that the US government has “banned” that people wanted where it has been effective? The world is more than the US. > And why would you want government control over what you can see and say? Because this is not just about me, it's about society as a whole. And humans can be horrible: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...

scarface74 5y ago

> We don't let 13 year old kids drink alcohol, have sex, take drugs, Yes because we passed laws, we stopped drug use and alcohol use by children and they aren’t having sex… > 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? Yes because fighting in school and vandalizing property was never a thing before TikTok. > What was the big "social contagion" when you were growing up? Yes because before the internet there wasn’t mass hysteria like the Salem witch trials or within my parents lifetime @running all of the Black people out of the city to protect our wome

johnnyanmac 5y ago

That's the point. those are all not allowed, some kids do it anyway. Hard restrictions don't actually protect kids but make them more curious. >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? it sucks yea. But if it wasn't facebook, it'd be any other form of ad made in the past century. including "news" channels >What was the big "social contagion" when you were growing up? TV and Video games were the new hotness, but all those were common too. cutting yourself as some perverted idea of "goth culture", body image issues from magazine and mannequins, graffiti, and yes, sex (that's a factor as old as time). Same shit, different outfit.