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My teenager bought their phone using gift cards accumulated through Christmas and birthdays. A phone plan through Ting costs them about $20/month. By the way,

My teenager bought their phone using gift cards accumulated through Christmas and birthdays. A phone plan through Ting costs them about $20/month. By the way, do you know what they do with their friends in person? Sit around on their phones watching tiktoks and browsing instagram then making comments to each other about it. They have no idea how to socialize without their phones. I mean look at the example they have to follow though, it's literally all around them. Adults do the same thing constantly. The social pressure to conform to it is ridiculously high and for an easily influenced teenager, astronomical. A child or teen that's outside of this norm is instantly visible and vulnerable; they are bullied relentlessly.

mustacheemperor 4y ago
As someone just out of adolescence and born in the tail-end of the millennial generation it's hard to know how to interpret takes like this. On one hand, I do think social media is deleterious to mental health - I can vouch, for the positive impact on my own the more I distance myself from it! On the other hand, >Sit around on their phones watching tiktoks and browsing instagram then making comments to each other about it. They have no idea how to socialize without their phones. Sounds so similar to the complaints levered at my friends and I for "not knowing how to play outside" because we wanted to shoot bad guys on the PS2 in the basement on the weekend. Or "not knowing how to socialize normally" because we talked over AIM all the time. When my oldest brother was a little kid, similar complaints for sitting in front of the TV. Or the older TV show trope of the teens tying up the home phone line. I think there is some unique evil to the algorithm/recommendation driven social media of today, but it's hard not to also see that these criticisms all fit a pattern that seems to have been ongoing for decades, and wonder where on the spectrum the truth lies.
- y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
  I'm of the "Oregon Trail Generation" and I can relate to the things you said about video games and instant messaging because we had them as kids and into our teens also. I was still able to disconnect from those things and socialize without the devices aka "go outside". In fact my friends and I would get bored after a couple hours of console gaming or instant messaging, so we'd need to disconnect just to keep sane. That aspect of it has changed these days to where if you remove the devices, it's like removing a vital organ and they can no longer function as human beings.

mustacheemperor 4y ago

As someone just out of adolescence and born in the tail-end of the millennial generation it's hard to know how to interpret takes like this. On one hand, I do think social media is deleterious to mental health - I can vouch, for the positive impact on my own the more I distance myself from it! On the other hand, >Sit around on their phones watching tiktoks and browsing instagram then making comments to each other about it. They have no idea how to socialize without their phones. Sounds so similar to the complaints levered at my friends and I for "not knowing how to play outside" because we wanted to shoot bad guys on the PS2 in the basement on the weekend. Or "not knowing how to socialize normally" because we talked over AIM all the time. When my oldest brother was a little kid, similar complaints for sitting in front of the TV. Or the older TV show trope of the teens tying up the home phone line. I think there is some unique evil to the algorithm/recommendation driven social media of today, but it's hard not to also see that these criticisms all fit a pattern that seems to have been ongoing for decades, and wonder where on the spectrum the truth lies.

y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
I'm of the "Oregon Trail Generation" and I can relate to the things you said about video games and instant messaging because we had them as kids and into our teens also. I was still able to disconnect from those things and socialize without the devices aka "go outside". In fact my friends and I would get bored after a couple hours of console gaming or instant messaging, so we'd need to disconnect just to keep sane. That aspect of it has changed these days to where if you remove the devices, it's like removing a vital organ and they can no longer function as human beings.