4 ms·

I agree, but I also wonder how feasible that is for a lot of parents. The older I get, the more astounded I am at the fact that nobody in my family has social

by Mezzie 4y ago

I agree, but I also wonder how feasible that is for a lot of parents. The older I get, the more astounded I am at the fact that nobody in my family has social media brain rot. Or political brainworms. My grandparent's generation is mostly dead, sadly, but there are 3 living generations ranging in age from 0 to 78 and dozens of people and we're all fine. This is regardless of educational level (ranging from HS dropouts to MDs), political affiliation (everything from center Dem to anarchists, socialists, and even some Christian conservatism for spice), or religion. If I had to pinpoint the difference, it's that we were all raised by and surrounded by adults that understood the interaction between technology and daily life. But most people becoming parents don't have that, the Internet just crashed into their life and upended a lot of what they thought they knew without leaving anything in its place. I also question that it's solely based on the parents because the older I get (I'm in my mid 30s), the more I think access to non-parental adults with this ability is the key to our relative stability, particularly tech-knowledgable adults that openly disagree with each other. Kids do stupid shit, especially when they're adolescents. They will disobey their parents/ignore their advice because it's part of growing up and figuring out their own values and boundaries, but when an entire group of adults who don't agree on politics, religion, or worldview all agree that something is a bad idea, then that idea becomes a cultural taboo. I don't think my paternal cousins and I have ever voted for the same things and I'm the weirdo gay heretic socialist to their traditional Catholic, but both I and my cousins are going to agree on the important of things like basic op-sec and when to tell people what online. So even if their kids rebel hard, the rebellious adults are going to reaffirm 'don't put your hand on the stove/do things like delete metadata from photos'. I don't know if there's enough cultural knowledge communicated to the parents for them to parent effectively even though I agree that's their job.

ojosilva 4y ago
My idealistic, engineer self tells me that the State should reward parents that go through parenting training, workshops and "performance" reviews. This is something that is normally done for social-serviced families already, but too late, when they are deep in the road to failure and despair. Such wide-spread public parenting-aid would be expensive, have flaws, generate political push-backs and there are not enough studies on effectiveness yet. OTOH, social/public financial support for families, including money stipends, tax breaks and plenty of paid vacation days help reduce parenting stress, which in turn tend to have a positive effect with kids at home -- something some countries are significantly better at than others. The importance of parenting is underestimated in society.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  I would love to see more such efforts, but I don't know if Americans could do that at this point. The question of who could make such a curriculum would immediately be hijacked by political and other interests. Our government doesn't (broadly speaking) have the knowledge necessary. The most powerful group that does have that knowledge is Big Tech itself, and handing people like Zuckerberg the ability to choose how to teach the parents just seems like a bad idea.

by Mezzie 4y ago

ojosilva 4y ago

My idealistic, engineer self tells me that the State should reward parents that go through parenting training, workshops and "performance" reviews. This is something that is normally done for social-serviced families already, but too late, when they are deep in the road to failure and despair. Such wide-spread public parenting-aid would be expensive, have flaws, generate political push-backs and there are not enough studies on effectiveness yet. OTOH, social/public financial support for families, including money stipends, tax breaks and plenty of paid vacation days help reduce parenting stress, which in turn tend to have a positive effect with kids at home -- something some countries are significantly better at than others. The importance of parenting is underestimated in society.

Mezzie 4y ago
I would love to see more such efforts, but I don't know if Americans could do that at this point. The question of who could make such a curriculum would immediately be hijacked by political and other interests. Our government doesn't (broadly speaking) have the knowledge necessary. The most powerful group that does have that knowledge is Big Tech itself, and handing people like Zuckerberg the ability to choose how to teach the parents just seems like a bad idea.