6 ms·

I think there's an interesting phenomenon where the lower bound of "bad influences" has gotten much lower in a lot of places that used to be safe. Previously,

by Ardon 4y ago

I think there's an interesting phenomenon where the lower bound of "bad influences" has gotten much lower in a lot of places that used to be safe. Previously, bad influences were limited to what your local neighborhood kids were telling your kid. This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely. And that floor could be raised by society as a whole improving. Now, with TikTok, the only limit is what TikTok will ban. Which isn't much. The population segment of kids who aren't supervised in any way used to have an inherent limit. Not any more. So I suspect there's not necessarily a decrease in parents keeping their kids from bad influences, and more that there's an increase in access to (and severity of) bad influences. Edit: I should be clear, I want to minimize banning stuff as a solution as much as possible. I think the goal should be to move kids back into supervision and teaching by their parents, and just real people in their life. Parents, friends, educators, etc. The problem is much of America (and much of the world) is completely boned on this front by living in places that just don't form a community, like suburbs, or just low-density non-walkable areas in general. Complicated by the fact that the vast majority of parents are getting non-work time squeezed out of them by increases in cost of living without any increase in pay. Banning more stuff is the single-line-item solution, the simple way, the just-get-biden-to-do-an-executive-order way. But I would be horrified if that's all we could manage. I hope we can do the real solutions, not the deeply flawed patch that banning stuff is.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Well, other bad influences were reading Bukowski or Ginsberg too young but I mostly agree. This is the change that has never occurred in human history. Every thread brings up that all complaints about this new media were applied to past forms of media.
- cpach 4y ago
  I started reading Bukowski when I was around 13 or so. Many of the titles were available at the local library. I don’t think it was bad though. If anything, it was a cautionary tale of what substance abuse can lead too. And his poems were great.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Good. I like Bukowski too. At 13 I was more of a Kerouac guy. I know a girl who clearly idolizes and emulates Bukowski's lifestyle though. My point was more that there were still ways for bad influences to reach people.
ryukafalz 4y ago
> Now, with TikTok, the only limit is what TikTok will ban. Which isn't much. The population segment of kids who aren't supervised in any way used to have an inherent limit. Not any more. This may be new-ish but I’m not sure it’s that new. I grew up with the early web in the late 90s/early 2000s, and it’s always been pretty unfiltered. It wasn’t centralized in the way TikTok is, but plenty of us grew up on the web with little supervision, and web circles were/are much wider than the neighborhood.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Surely the scale and speed of information flow has greatly increased since the late 1990s and early 2000s so as to not be comparable to today.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  difference is tiktok and short video algos exploit ppls worse natures. like i know a few ppl whose feeds became e-thots doing dances in bikinis bc they wouldnt go seek it out but tiktok showed them that and their watch metrics or whatever were better. or ppl whose feed became far right shit bc it showed them some of that. there's a lot of stuff we know isn't good and won't consciously choose to go watch. but short video shows us some of that and we subconsciously engage with it more instead of consciously choosing so we watch more and more. this is hard for adults to deal with but way worse for kids with shitty impulse control.
- vincnetas 4y ago
  Early internet was populated mostly by educated people and there were very little (if at all) monetary influence to drive engagement. So i guess these two factors are sufficient for internet to be much safer place.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    4chan dates from 2003, for reference. It may be the case that algorithmic feeds and social networks that have one giant global context tend to expose stuff like this in ways that would have been less likely on the early web. 4chan has always been pretty awful but you wouldn’t have seen it unless you were on 4chan, which for most people was “never”. The norm at the time was to be in multiple different communities, and there typically wasn’t much overlap. By contrast, TikTok is all one big space, and if the algorithm wants you to see something you’ll see it. That part is new. Maybe that falls under “monetary influence to drive engagement” in which case I suppose I agree.
qzx_pierri 4y ago
Banning "undesirable topics" isn't the solution, but only a band-aid. We need to teach children critical thinking skills and allow them to make their own decisions. The former might be easier, but the latter is the most beneficial in the long run.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  "Critical thinking" as thought is kinda "trust CNN and not random rager's blog". You need judgement and wisdom for actual critical thinking, which children do not have. I would say it is a really hard problem, because it boils down to trust the trustworthy -- and who to trust is left as an exercise to the reader.
- azemetre 4y ago
  Children literally don't have the developed cognitive capabilities to critically think, nor should they be making their own decisions every time. This is an absolutely inane suggestion. I don't know when it started happening, but why do we continue to let these companies off the hook for their absolutely terrible externalities? Banning these topics if your platform allows children, preteens, etc is absolutely an effective solution if said companies refuse to rectify the problem. Why should society bare the costs because a company wants to make money at the costs of a child's mental health? How is that just or even fair? Have we truly devolved into a new feudal age where no company can do wrong and we simply have to blame ourselves for their faults? These apps are designed to be psychologically addictive and fuel outrage/fear to drive advertising revenues... why is this acceptable? Why are we blaming parents and not the executives who signed off on these decisions?
  - qzx_pierri 4y ago
    > Children literally don't have the developed cognitive capabilities to critically think, nor should they be making their own decisions every time [citation needed] Also, since children don't have the cognitive abilities to critically think, maybe some responsibility should fall onto the parent? You can deflect blame all you want and call for TikTok to go around swinging their banhammer, but your "think of the children" alarmism is short sighted. It's impossible for TikTok to blanket ban an entire topic without causing major damage in the process. I won't move into "mind reading" territory, but I suspect people who are so trigger happy to ban things online to "protect children" have a guilty conscience due to the lack of effort they put into their own child's development. The internet boogeyman can only influence your child so much... Raise your kids, people!
thrown_22 4y ago
> This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely. I find it astonishing that this is the limit of "bad". There are people alive today who were at lynchings in the US as children and cheered them on. Setting cats on fire by comparison was a harmless past time.
- Ardon 4y ago
  Very true, I picked this example as a thing that kids could theoretically be doing right now. You don't have to go very far back at all to get into the really heinous stuff. There's a big complicating factor in what parents would have actually prevented as a bad influence too, children cheering on at lynchings were accompanied by everyone else in the town cheering at lynchings. If there was a disconnect between parents tolerance of lynchings and child exposure to lynchings it didn't last very long.
watwut 4y ago
More likely bad influences were excessive alcohol, drugs, teenage pregnancies, minor crime, violence. Those are all less frequent then they used to be.
tablespoon 4y ago
> Previously, bad influences were limited to what your local neighborhood kids were telling your kid. This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely. And that floor could be raised by society as a whole improving. It also worth noting that in the past there were more supervisory resources: homemakers. Now both parents tend to work and have far less capacity to manage those bad influences.
MaxHoppersGhost 4y ago
> The problem is much of America (and much of the world) is completely boned on this front by living in places that just don't form a community, like suburbs, or just low-density non-walkable areas in general Why do you think you’re less likely to form a community in suburbs? I live in SF in an apt with a walk score of 98 and I don’t think there is much of a “community” here at all.

by Ardon 4y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Well, other bad influences were reading Bukowski or Ginsberg too young but I mostly agree. This is the change that has never occurred in human history. Every thread brings up that all complaints about this new media were applied to past forms of media.

cpach 4y ago
I started reading Bukowski when I was around 13 or so. Many of the titles were available at the local library. I don’t think it was bad though. If anything, it was a cautionary tale of what substance abuse can lead too. And his poems were great.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Good. I like Bukowski too. At 13 I was more of a Kerouac guy. I know a girl who clearly idolizes and emulates Bukowski's lifestyle though. My point was more that there were still ways for bad influences to reach people.

ryukafalz 4y ago

> Now, with TikTok, the only limit is what TikTok will ban. Which isn't much. The population segment of kids who aren't supervised in any way used to have an inherent limit. Not any more. This may be new-ish but I’m not sure it’s that new. I grew up with the early web in the late 90s/early 2000s, and it’s always been pretty unfiltered. It wasn’t centralized in the way TikTok is, but plenty of us grew up on the web with little supervision, and web circles were/are much wider than the neighborhood.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Surely the scale and speed of information flow has greatly increased since the late 1990s and early 2000s so as to not be comparable to today.
collegeburner 4y ago
difference is tiktok and short video algos exploit ppls worse natures. like i know a few ppl whose feeds became e-thots doing dances in bikinis bc they wouldnt go seek it out but tiktok showed them that and their watch metrics or whatever were better. or ppl whose feed became far right shit bc it showed them some of that. there's a lot of stuff we know isn't good and won't consciously choose to go watch. but short video shows us some of that and we subconsciously engage with it more instead of consciously choosing so we watch more and more. this is hard for adults to deal with but way worse for kids with shitty impulse control.
vincnetas 4y ago
Early internet was populated mostly by educated people and there were very little (if at all) monetary influence to drive engagement. So i guess these two factors are sufficient for internet to be much safer place.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  4chan dates from 2003, for reference. It may be the case that algorithmic feeds and social networks that have one giant global context tend to expose stuff like this in ways that would have been less likely on the early web. 4chan has always been pretty awful but you wouldn’t have seen it unless you were on 4chan, which for most people was “never”. The norm at the time was to be in multiple different communities, and there typically wasn’t much overlap. By contrast, TikTok is all one big space, and if the algorithm wants you to see something you’ll see it. That part is new. Maybe that falls under “monetary influence to drive engagement” in which case I suppose I agree.

qzx_pierri 4y ago

Banning "undesirable topics" isn't the solution, but only a band-aid. We need to teach children critical thinking skills and allow them to make their own decisions. The former might be easier, but the latter is the most beneficial in the long run.

rightbyte 4y ago
"Critical thinking" as thought is kinda "trust CNN and not random rager's blog". You need judgement and wisdom for actual critical thinking, which children do not have. I would say it is a really hard problem, because it boils down to trust the trustworthy -- and who to trust is left as an exercise to the reader.
azemetre 4y ago
Children literally don't have the developed cognitive capabilities to critically think, nor should they be making their own decisions every time. This is an absolutely inane suggestion. I don't know when it started happening, but why do we continue to let these companies off the hook for their absolutely terrible externalities? Banning these topics if your platform allows children, preteens, etc is absolutely an effective solution if said companies refuse to rectify the problem. Why should society bare the costs because a company wants to make money at the costs of a child's mental health? How is that just or even fair? Have we truly devolved into a new feudal age where no company can do wrong and we simply have to blame ourselves for their faults? These apps are designed to be psychologically addictive and fuel outrage/fear to drive advertising revenues... why is this acceptable? Why are we blaming parents and not the executives who signed off on these decisions?
- qzx_pierri 4y ago
  > Children literally don't have the developed cognitive capabilities to critically think, nor should they be making their own decisions every time [citation needed] Also, since children don't have the cognitive abilities to critically think, maybe some responsibility should fall onto the parent? You can deflect blame all you want and call for TikTok to go around swinging their banhammer, but your "think of the children" alarmism is short sighted. It's impossible for TikTok to blanket ban an entire topic without causing major damage in the process. I won't move into "mind reading" territory, but I suspect people who are so trigger happy to ban things online to "protect children" have a guilty conscience due to the lack of effort they put into their own child's development. The internet boogeyman can only influence your child so much... Raise your kids, people!

thrown_22 4y ago

> This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely. I find it astonishing that this is the limit of "bad". There are people alive today who were at lynchings in the US as children and cheered them on. Setting cats on fire by comparison was a harmless past time.

Ardon 4y ago
Very true, I picked this example as a thing that kids could theoretically be doing right now. You don't have to go very far back at all to get into the really heinous stuff. There's a big complicating factor in what parents would have actually prevented as a bad influence too, children cheering on at lynchings were accompanied by everyone else in the town cheering at lynchings. If there was a disconnect between parents tolerance of lynchings and child exposure to lynchings it didn't last very long.

watwut 4y ago

More likely bad influences were excessive alcohol, drugs, teenage pregnancies, minor crime, violence. Those are all less frequent then they used to be.

tablespoon 4y ago

> Previously, bad influences were limited to what your local neighborhood kids were telling your kid. This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely. And that floor could be raised by society as a whole improving. It also worth noting that in the past there were more supervisory resources: homemakers. Now both parents tend to work and have far less capacity to manage those bad influences.

MaxHoppersGhost 4y ago

> The problem is much of America (and much of the world) is completely boned on this front by living in places that just don't form a community, like suburbs, or just low-density non-walkable areas in general Why do you think you’re less likely to form a community in suburbs? I live in SF in an apt with a walk score of 98 and I don’t think there is much of a “community” here at all.