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We occasionally "grounded" our teenaged daughters from their devices for various reasons. This primarily cut them off from social media. After a week away from

We occasionally "grounded" our teenaged daughters from their devices for various reasons. This primarily cut them off from social media. After a week away from it, even they acknowledged how much healthier and happier they were (mentally/emotionally). A few days after device usage resumed, those things tanked. We pointed it out a few times. They saw it, too, even brought it up themselves. But of course they continued using the stuff. It reminds me of the vast hordes of young people vaping who wouldn't be caught dead hitting a cigarette, apparently aware that this is idiotic but doing it anyway. It's fun times to be a human.

lordnacho 4y ago
Social media is basically internet era alcohol. Except alcohol has been around for a heck of a long time and the internet has been a culturally important thing for maybe a quarter century. Just like in previous times when we discovered alcohol, various cultures also found ways over time to deal with the fallout. Some cultures don't do so well with it. The same happened with various other chemicals like opium, tobacco, and crack, which all have had societal reactions over time. The contraceptive pill is another one, and I'd argue so are processed foods.
- Tempest1981 4y ago
  But more insidious
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    I'd say the fact that the internet is clearly useful in certain ways is a thing that allows some of the downsides to travel along. With something like recreational drugs, the upsides are just pure hedonism, you do them because they make you feel a certain way and the downsides aren't inextricably connected. Plus the downsides are pretty awful, whereas with internet stuff it's awful but in a way that doesn't require an ambulance. Basically social media addiction is a flu that millions of people catch and mostly live with, whereas drug addiction is a thing fewer people catch but some of them die from it, like Ebola.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > Social media is basically internet era alcohol God I wish, I’d probably use it more if it had any similar benefits as alcohol.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    Well, HN is also social media. I find at least some benefit in it, learning about new technologies.
    - warning26 4y ago
      You're getting downvoted, but this raises a good point; how does HN avoid becoming a toxic cesspool? It shares many attributes/features with other social media. Does it just come down to excellent moderation on the part of u/dang? Is it the lack of instant reply notifications? Is it that thread depth is capped? Only allowing downvotes for power users? Some combination of all those?
      - satvikpendem 4y ago
        I believe so, it's hard to have flamewars as well since most users are limited from responding too fast. All of the above are good ways to increase the quality of discourse here. In a way, based on the alcohol analogy, HN is kind of like an evening beer with friends at a biergarten, you drink socially, not too much to even get very inebriated, and if you try to, mechanisms exist to stop you, such as the biergarten owners kicking you out. You're not getting (or are supposed to get) drunk at a biergarten, generally speaking. On the other hand, many other social media are more like clubs. Sure, you can drink less, but the entire environment is designed to get you to drink more. This is analogous to places like Twitter or Instagram which are specifically designed for you to use them as much as possible, like through only allowing short replies (thus stripping nuance and incentivizing short angry replies) or gamifying like counters and incentivizing heavily cherry picked and edited photos.
      - qu4z-2 4y ago
        I've found a clear split between sites which are topic-focused and sites which are person-focused. Also smaller communities tend to be better. That said, Hacker News is unusually good even for a topic-focused site.
- superfrank 4y ago
  > Social media is basically internet era alcohol. I've always used sugar and high fructose corn syrup as my analogy. In the early days of the internet we didn't have what we now call social media, but we had things like blogs and message boards that allowed for some connection with other people. Those things had some of the elements that make modern social media toxic, but they were mixed in with other good things and we consumed them much slower. Over the past few decades, we've slowly refined social media to what it is today. In an attempt to retain customers we've boiled it down to its most addictive and unhealthy parts and pushed customers to consume more of that quicker than ever before.
  - wrp 4y ago
    The analogy I think of is the introduction of sugar to Inuit culture. Before the Europeans brought it, the Inuit apparently had no need to be concerned about dental hygiene and controlling intake of certain foods. For decades, there was the stereotype of Eskimos with most of their teeth rotted out. I don't know how many generations it took for Inuit culture to adapt.
  - berniedurfee 4y ago
    Spot on. Humans are driven to optimize innovation to an incredible degree… for better or for worse. The distillation of social media is still ongoing. It won’t be long before TikTok looks as quaint as MySpace does today.
devwastaken 4y ago
Social media for teens are effectively casinos. They're designed to do that. Those who vape would also smoke, vaping is far healthier to do, it's cheaper, and it tastes better. You also can't government regulate liquid like you can cigarettes.
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  > you can't government regulate liquid You certainly can, my city just passed a ban of all flavored tobacco products which will include vaping. I disagree with the ban, but that's beside the point here. I'm actually curious to see how things play out. The first thing that occurred to me was that vape shops might start selling unflavored liquid and also sell flavoring which you would have to mix in yourself. Not sure that would be passable under the legal regime or not. Interestingly, statehouse Republicans attempted to pass a law which would have negated my city's ban. This was vetoed by the state governor though.
  - devwastaken 4y ago
    And now the city has created a black market of unregulated vaping liquid. Sounds like it's perfectly legal to buy the base liquid itself, then you just add the flavoring. Much cheaper and fun!
    - agentwiggles 4y ago
      To be fair, I'm not sure that's the case re: unflavored liquid, I was just speculating. That said, as with any prohibition, yes, there will obviously be people selling vapes / liquid illegally now. It's quite frustrating that as we slowly step towards an end to the senseless and wildly net negative prohibition of marijuana, we are determined to repeat the mistake with nicotine. Lots of the motivation behind this seems to be the popularity of vaping among teens. "Think of the children" and all that goes along with it.
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  > You also can't government regulate liquid like you can cigarettes. Alcohol
AussieWog93 4y ago
I've noticed that effect for so many things that have become cultural norms, from the food we eat to how we spend time with our friends. Seems really sad that we're forced to choose between our own wellbeing and participating in broader culture. Have to point out, though, it seems the one place where everything isn't toxic seems to be (certain forms of) orgnanised religion.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  Hmm? To me organized religion seems to be the most toxic of all - megachurches and Internet-only pastors are the ones whipping up their followers into believing people that are not like them are existential threats worthy of being killed. The healthier forms of religion are the ones that explicitly un-organized: Unitarian Universalists, Quakers, your local community church that serves as a gathering place for like-minded folks but isn't interested in imposing their beliefs on others. Maybe the lesson there is that organization is the evil, given that it seems to pop up in so many contexts (megacorps < small businesses, megachurches < community organizations, public schooling < small private/parochial/charter schools, big government < grassroots organizations). Would make sense, since an organization, by definition, is about subsuming what individually makes you happy so you can be a part of something bigger. The bigger the organization grows, the less it can fit the authentic selves of the people who support it.
  - akkartik 4y ago
    The essential prisoner's dilemma of humanity: * As a group grows it gets worse at serving each individual's needs. * Large groups outcompete and disrupt small ones. I think the trick is for small groups to be illegible to the outside world. Fish school, birds flock and animals herd partly to avoid predators. I wonder if multiple schools/flocks/herds are always superior to a single one, as long as each of them is above some critical threshold.
  - chowells 4y ago
    Organization from the bottom up works fine. The problem comes with hierarchies that exist to reinforce power. If you naturally construct a hierarchy to coordinate, great. Let the hierarchy die when the need to coordinate is over. When someone co-opts that hierarchy to increase their own power and reduce that of others, you've got a problem.
Wolfbeta 4y ago
Same as it ever was. "One wants to do everything and one can do nothing, one is always thinking that from to-morrow one will begin a new life, that from to-morrow one will set to work as one ought, that from to-morrow one will put oneself on a diet; but not a bit of it, on the evening of that very day one will over-eat oneself, so that one can only blink one’s eyes and can’t say a word—yes really; and it’s always like that.” -- "Hlobuev", Gogol, N. Dead Souls (1854)
- d_sem 4y ago
  It's quite recent to have multi-billion dollar tech companies develop algorithms that are this affective of hijacking attention.
  - ryan93 4y ago
    Food is more powerful
    - Retric 4y ago
      Obesity is killing ~2.8 million people a year, and being over weight causes a great deal of suffering.
      - j-bos 4y ago
        I don't think obesity deaths were breaking a mill in 1854.
        Retric 4y ago
        You lost me. Obesity uncommon back then, on average people where younger, and there where only ~1.2 billion people alive in 1854 vs 8 billion today. I would be surprised if obesity related deaths topped 100,000 / year back then.
        j-bos 4y ago
voldacar 4y ago
Vaping doesn't deposit nitrosamines, polycyclic hydrocarbons and tar in your lungs though? I don't see how it warrants comparison
- manmal 4y ago
  Nicotine itself incurs DNA damage and is suspected to be a carcinogen.
  - pksebben 4y ago
    I've yet to find conclusive research backing this up. Got any sources?
    - stirfish 4y ago
      Analysis of nicotine-induced DNA damage in cells of the human respiratory tract https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22001448/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22001448/
      - ApolloFortyNine 4y ago
        Props for the link, but the full text seems to be pay walled? And the important bit seems to be >nicotine concentration between 0.001 mM and 4.0mM. And they found an effect starting at 1.0mW. But, this is what I hate about pretty much all scientific papers that clearly set out with a purpose in mind (good or bad) is the abstract doesn't mention what the hell 1.0mW. Is that even a feasible amount? Is that one puff? Is that 100% nicotine being directly vaped? What on earth is it? None of this is mentioned, for free anyways.
        Firther 4y ago
        It's molar concentration, the study doesn't really mention it directly of course. 1mM is probably high since they're looking at what concentration of tobacco causes DNA damage in e.g., a cavity, but the study doesn't think it's unreasonable. Other studies in animals used up to 4mM. The full study can be found as the first article in this pdf: http://tobacco.cleartheair.org.hk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Nicotine-genotoxicity-mutation.pdf http://tobacco.cleartheair.org.hk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01...
Karellen 4y ago
ObSMBC https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/addicted https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/addicted
nimajneb 4y ago
This is my fear with my daughter, even though I'm addicted to electronics as well. I've trying to decrease my usage, but it's hard.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I know papa is constantly looking at his phone, but I believe it’s bad for you, so I don’t want you to do it. Becoming the hypocrite is never fun, but at least I understand my parents now.
  - MandieD 4y ago
    “Don’t you ever start, Mandie,” said my grandmother, lighting her next cigarette from the current one.
User23 4y ago
Addictions are insidious. I recall that brief era when Internet addiction was a concern. Then virtually everyone got addicted so it's just normal.
treeman79 4y ago
That was my exact experience with a teenage daughter. She was depressed and rude with social media. She’s get it taken away for a month. Happy and energetic. Complete reversal in a couple days after getting it back. Repeat for several years.
Aeolun 4y ago
This is no different from me and my mobile phone usage. It directly correlates with the quality of my sleep, and I know I should sleep more, but it’s just too hard to give up.
za3faran 4y ago
I recall hearing a lecture from Dr Leonard Sax where during part of it he discussed the dangers of social media on teens. He also mentioned that girls were especially disproportionately affected than boys. > But of course they continued using the stuff Sorry to be blunt, but why don't you do your duty as a parent and continue the prohibition of those devices except for necessary things?
pxoe 4y ago
why doesn't it really work and why do people come back and do it anyway? It's because cutting off is the most basic non-solution, that doesn't actually try to tackle the problem or fix anything. (Perhaps less so for 'managing use and having time limits', but definitely that for just 'cutting completely off, down to zero' approaches.) In a digital and online world, cutting people off is inhibiting people's communication. It's just plainly unfair. People need the ability to communicate, and venues to socialize in, at any age. And, it is not given that just because someone's 'technically of adult age', that they're gonna have some kind of understanding about digital spaces and how social life can play out within them. Just being in a space, or even having some experience within it, isn't necessarily gonna give explanations, answers and solutions. It is just a thing that's worth explaining and giving guidance on, whomever they may be. Perhaps one useful and applicable distinction that can be made, is between 'interpersonal communication' (in apps like messengers, directly talking to people you know) and 'posting something on a platform' (in apps that are more like "social media", where posts are available to a broader public). Another distinction could be made for 'private platforms/spaces' (like discord) or 'limited/like-minded/focused spaces' (that aren't just the most general platforms, but something bit more specialized for some kind of content or audience), and the bigger platforms/spaces (that are basically just 'you're out there with everyone'. it also could be pointed out that 'having a semi-private group on a big platform might not be too bad - but that it might be still out there and accessible, so there's things to mind'. or, hell, explain what comes with posting on a big platform and what precautions should one take). Explaining the differences and outlining where and what someone would be doing, could help, in a practical way that won't be just 'you can't do anything now'. Cutting off messaging isn't something that should be done, in my opinion - it's too drastic. it's basically saying, 'don't talk to people/you don't get to talk to people', and those people are probably gonna be the most familiar/important people to them. Cutting off social media, could be done, but it's really worth talking through and explaining the difference between 'publishing something for the whole internet and hanging out in that broad of a space' or 'posting something for your friends group to see, and hanging in a private, familiar space' (and perhaps, enticing them to grow and enrich their own social circle and seek something there, not just from random people on big platforms). At the end of the day though, cutting off and prohibiting something can be just circumvented, as people might just do something anyway, and if they don't have the 'why' explained to them, it might be even easier to ignore the limits without much concern. With guidance, that stands on its own, maybe it could be less so.

lordnacho 4y ago

Social media is basically internet era alcohol. Except alcohol has been around for a heck of a long time and the internet has been a culturally important thing for maybe a quarter century. Just like in previous times when we discovered alcohol, various cultures also found ways over time to deal with the fallout. Some cultures don't do so well with it. The same happened with various other chemicals like opium, tobacco, and crack, which all have had societal reactions over time. The contraceptive pill is another one, and I'd argue so are processed foods.

Tempest1981 4y ago
But more insidious
- lordnacho 4y ago
  I'd say the fact that the internet is clearly useful in certain ways is a thing that allows some of the downsides to travel along. With something like recreational drugs, the upsides are just pure hedonism, you do them because they make you feel a certain way and the downsides aren't inextricably connected. Plus the downsides are pretty awful, whereas with internet stuff it's awful but in a way that doesn't require an ambulance. Basically social media addiction is a flu that millions of people catch and mostly live with, whereas drug addiction is a thing fewer people catch but some of them die from it, like Ebola.
the_only_law 4y ago
> Social media is basically internet era alcohol God I wish, I’d probably use it more if it had any similar benefits as alcohol.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  Well, HN is also social media. I find at least some benefit in it, learning about new technologies.
  - warning26 4y ago
    You're getting downvoted, but this raises a good point; how does HN avoid becoming a toxic cesspool? It shares many attributes/features with other social media. Does it just come down to excellent moderation on the part of u/dang? Is it the lack of instant reply notifications? Is it that thread depth is capped? Only allowing downvotes for power users? Some combination of all those?
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      I believe so, it's hard to have flamewars as well since most users are limited from responding too fast. All of the above are good ways to increase the quality of discourse here. In a way, based on the alcohol analogy, HN is kind of like an evening beer with friends at a biergarten, you drink socially, not too much to even get very inebriated, and if you try to, mechanisms exist to stop you, such as the biergarten owners kicking you out. You're not getting (or are supposed to get) drunk at a biergarten, generally speaking. On the other hand, many other social media are more like clubs. Sure, you can drink less, but the entire environment is designed to get you to drink more. This is analogous to places like Twitter or Instagram which are specifically designed for you to use them as much as possible, like through only allowing short replies (thus stripping nuance and incentivizing short angry replies) or gamifying like counters and incentivizing heavily cherry picked and edited photos.
    - qu4z-2 4y ago
      I've found a clear split between sites which are topic-focused and sites which are person-focused. Also smaller communities tend to be better. That said, Hacker News is unusually good even for a topic-focused site.
superfrank 4y ago
> Social media is basically internet era alcohol. I've always used sugar and high fructose corn syrup as my analogy. In the early days of the internet we didn't have what we now call social media, but we had things like blogs and message boards that allowed for some connection with other people. Those things had some of the elements that make modern social media toxic, but they were mixed in with other good things and we consumed them much slower. Over the past few decades, we've slowly refined social media to what it is today. In an attempt to retain customers we've boiled it down to its most addictive and unhealthy parts and pushed customers to consume more of that quicker than ever before.
- wrp 4y ago
  The analogy I think of is the introduction of sugar to Inuit culture. Before the Europeans brought it, the Inuit apparently had no need to be concerned about dental hygiene and controlling intake of certain foods. For decades, there was the stereotype of Eskimos with most of their teeth rotted out. I don't know how many generations it took for Inuit culture to adapt.
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  Spot on. Humans are driven to optimize innovation to an incredible degree… for better or for worse. The distillation of social media is still ongoing. It won’t be long before TikTok looks as quaint as MySpace does today.

devwastaken 4y ago

Social media for teens are effectively casinos. They're designed to do that. Those who vape would also smoke, vaping is far healthier to do, it's cheaper, and it tastes better. You also can't government regulate liquid like you can cigarettes.

agentwiggles 4y ago
> you can't government regulate liquid You certainly can, my city just passed a ban of all flavored tobacco products which will include vaping. I disagree with the ban, but that's beside the point here. I'm actually curious to see how things play out. The first thing that occurred to me was that vape shops might start selling unflavored liquid and also sell flavoring which you would have to mix in yourself. Not sure that would be passable under the legal regime or not. Interestingly, statehouse Republicans attempted to pass a law which would have negated my city's ban. This was vetoed by the state governor though.
- devwastaken 4y ago
  And now the city has created a black market of unregulated vaping liquid. Sounds like it's perfectly legal to buy the base liquid itself, then you just add the flavoring. Much cheaper and fun!
  - agentwiggles 4y ago
    To be fair, I'm not sure that's the case re: unflavored liquid, I was just speculating. That said, as with any prohibition, yes, there will obviously be people selling vapes / liquid illegally now. It's quite frustrating that as we slowly step towards an end to the senseless and wildly net negative prohibition of marijuana, we are determined to repeat the mistake with nicotine. Lots of the motivation behind this seems to be the popularity of vaping among teens. "Think of the children" and all that goes along with it.
rolenthedeep 4y ago
> You also can't government regulate liquid like you can cigarettes. Alcohol

AussieWog93 4y ago

I've noticed that effect for so many things that have become cultural norms, from the food we eat to how we spend time with our friends. Seems really sad that we're forced to choose between our own wellbeing and participating in broader culture. Have to point out, though, it seems the one place where everything isn't toxic seems to be (certain forms of) orgnanised religion.

nostrademons 4y ago
Hmm? To me organized religion seems to be the most toxic of all - megachurches and Internet-only pastors are the ones whipping up their followers into believing people that are not like them are existential threats worthy of being killed. The healthier forms of religion are the ones that explicitly un-organized: Unitarian Universalists, Quakers, your local community church that serves as a gathering place for like-minded folks but isn't interested in imposing their beliefs on others. Maybe the lesson there is that organization is the evil, given that it seems to pop up in so many contexts (megacorps < small businesses, megachurches < community organizations, public schooling < small private/parochial/charter schools, big government < grassroots organizations). Would make sense, since an organization, by definition, is about subsuming what individually makes you happy so you can be a part of something bigger. The bigger the organization grows, the less it can fit the authentic selves of the people who support it.
- akkartik 4y ago
  The essential prisoner's dilemma of humanity: * As a group grows it gets worse at serving each individual's needs. * Large groups outcompete and disrupt small ones. I think the trick is for small groups to be illegible to the outside world. Fish school, birds flock and animals herd partly to avoid predators. I wonder if multiple schools/flocks/herds are always superior to a single one, as long as each of them is above some critical threshold.
- chowells 4y ago
  Organization from the bottom up works fine. The problem comes with hierarchies that exist to reinforce power. If you naturally construct a hierarchy to coordinate, great. Let the hierarchy die when the need to coordinate is over. When someone co-opts that hierarchy to increase their own power and reduce that of others, you've got a problem.

Wolfbeta 4y ago

Same as it ever was. "One wants to do everything and one can do nothing, one is always thinking that from to-morrow one will begin a new life, that from to-morrow one will set to work as one ought, that from to-morrow one will put oneself on a diet; but not a bit of it, on the evening of that very day one will over-eat oneself, so that one can only blink one’s eyes and can’t say a word—yes really; and it’s always like that.” -- "Hlobuev", Gogol, N. Dead Souls (1854)

d_sem 4y ago
It's quite recent to have multi-billion dollar tech companies develop algorithms that are this affective of hijacking attention.
- ryan93 4y ago
  Food is more powerful
  - Retric 4y ago
    Obesity is killing ~2.8 million people a year, and being over weight causes a great deal of suffering.
    - j-bos 4y ago
      I don't think obesity deaths were breaking a mill in 1854.
      - Retric 4y ago
        You lost me. Obesity uncommon back then, on average people where younger, and there where only ~1.2 billion people alive in 1854 vs 8 billion today. I would be surprised if obesity related deaths topped 100,000 / year back then.
        j-bos 4y ago

voldacar 4y ago

Vaping doesn't deposit nitrosamines, polycyclic hydrocarbons and tar in your lungs though? I don't see how it warrants comparison

manmal 4y ago
Nicotine itself incurs DNA damage and is suspected to be a carcinogen.
- pksebben 4y ago
  I've yet to find conclusive research backing this up. Got any sources?
  - stirfish 4y ago
    Analysis of nicotine-induced DNA damage in cells of the human respiratory tract https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22001448/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22001448/
    - ApolloFortyNine 4y ago
      Props for the link, but the full text seems to be pay walled? And the important bit seems to be >nicotine concentration between 0.001 mM and 4.0mM. And they found an effect starting at 1.0mW. But, this is what I hate about pretty much all scientific papers that clearly set out with a purpose in mind (good or bad) is the abstract doesn't mention what the hell 1.0mW. Is that even a feasible amount? Is that one puff? Is that 100% nicotine being directly vaped? What on earth is it? None of this is mentioned, for free anyways.
      - Firther 4y ago
        It's molar concentration, the study doesn't really mention it directly of course. 1mM is probably high since they're looking at what concentration of tobacco causes DNA damage in e.g., a cavity, but the study doesn't think it's unreasonable. Other studies in animals used up to 4mM. The full study can be found as the first article in this pdf: http://tobacco.cleartheair.org.hk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Nicotine-genotoxicity-mutation.pdf http://tobacco.cleartheair.org.hk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01...

Karellen 4y ago

ObSMBC https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/addicted https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/addicted

nimajneb 4y ago

This is my fear with my daughter, even though I'm addicted to electronics as well. I've trying to decrease my usage, but it's hard.

Aeolun 4y ago
I know papa is constantly looking at his phone, but I believe it’s bad for you, so I don’t want you to do it. Becoming the hypocrite is never fun, but at least I understand my parents now.
- MandieD 4y ago
  “Don’t you ever start, Mandie,” said my grandmother, lighting her next cigarette from the current one.

User23 4y ago

Addictions are insidious. I recall that brief era when Internet addiction was a concern. Then virtually everyone got addicted so it's just normal.

treeman79 4y ago

That was my exact experience with a teenage daughter. She was depressed and rude with social media. She’s get it taken away for a month. Happy and energetic. Complete reversal in a couple days after getting it back. Repeat for several years.

Aeolun 4y ago

This is no different from me and my mobile phone usage. It directly correlates with the quality of my sleep, and I know I should sleep more, but it’s just too hard to give up.

za3faran 4y ago

I recall hearing a lecture from Dr Leonard Sax where during part of it he discussed the dangers of social media on teens. He also mentioned that girls were especially disproportionately affected than boys. > But of course they continued using the stuff Sorry to be blunt, but why don't you do your duty as a parent and continue the prohibition of those devices except for necessary things?

pxoe 4y ago

why doesn't it really work and why do people come back and do it anyway? It's because cutting off is the most basic non-solution, that doesn't actually try to tackle the problem or fix anything. (Perhaps less so for 'managing use and having time limits', but definitely that for just 'cutting completely off, down to zero' approaches.) In a digital and online world, cutting people off is inhibiting people's communication. It's just plainly unfair. People need the ability to communicate, and venues to socialize in, at any age. And, it is not given that just because someone's 'technically of adult age', that they're gonna have some kind of understanding about digital spaces and how social life can play out within them. Just being in a space, or even having some experience within it, isn't necessarily gonna give explanations, answers and solutions. It is just a thing that's worth explaining and giving guidance on, whomever they may be. Perhaps one useful and applicable distinction that can be made, is between 'interpersonal communication' (in apps like messengers, directly talking to people you know) and 'posting something on a platform' (in apps that are more like "social media", where posts are available to a broader public). Another distinction could be made for 'private platforms/spaces' (like discord) or 'limited/like-minded/focused spaces' (that aren't just the most general platforms, but something bit more specialized for some kind of content or audience), and the bigger platforms/spaces (that are basically just 'you're out there with everyone'. it also could be pointed out that 'having a semi-private group on a big platform might not be too bad - but that it might be still out there and accessible, so there's things to mind'. or, hell, explain what comes with posting on a big platform and what precautions should one take). Explaining the differences and outlining where and what someone would be doing, could help, in a practical way that won't be just 'you can't do anything now'. Cutting off messaging isn't something that should be done, in my opinion - it's too drastic. it's basically saying, 'don't talk to people/you don't get to talk to people', and those people are probably gonna be the most familiar/important people to them. Cutting off social media, could be done, but it's really worth talking through and explaining the difference between 'publishing something for the whole internet and hanging out in that broad of a space' or 'posting something for your friends group to see, and hanging in a private, familiar space' (and perhaps, enticing them to grow and enrich their own social circle and seek something there, not just from random people on big platforms). At the end of the day though, cutting off and prohibiting something can be just circumvented, as people might just do something anyway, and if they don't have the 'why' explained to them, it might be even easier to ignore the limits without much concern. With guidance, that stands on its own, maybe it could be less so.