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Don't give your kid a smartphone or laptop without only whitelisting certain sites. If they somehow get a device without permission, it gets donated.

swader999 3y ago
Isolating them from their peers can be just as mentally devastating. I don't think there is a good solution to this.
- youreincorrect 3y ago
  They can deal with it. In middle school, I was called a faggot, relentlessly, for not owning a Jansport backpack. I am 100% serious. They'll find friends, I'm pretty sure of it.
  - kzrdude 3y ago
    I still hope that one day we'll find a way to stop that (to a big extent).
    - karaterobot 3y ago
      Some day, we'll all have Jansport backpacks.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Still using mine from 5th grade 20+ years later. The oldest thing I own.
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    But if they don't have social media, how will they see other kids calling them names for not owning the right backpack outside of school? Think of the harm to their socialization!
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    I was called plenty of unpleasant stuff, including that. I didn't find any friends and I left at sixteen because of it. I'm not so sure. At thirty, I'm still fairly socially isolated outside of work.
  - standardUser 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      If that is suffering than every child will always suffer, because an very normal part of childhood is someone finding a reason to bully someone else. It's part of developing understanding of social structures and your place in them, some kids will inevitably decide they must be at the top of the pecking order in their little personal hierarchy. You physically cannot prevent children from making up ways to pick on each other, there's like a doctor Seuss book about this for heaven's sake. This isn't saying "stop trying to prevent bullying" but rather "if you are afraid of your child being bullied because they aren't on social media, them being on social media will not stop them from being bullied" and social media makes bullying worse because now it follows them around instead of possibly stopping at 3pm
    - bart_spoon 3y ago
      A key difference here is that Jansport backpacks don't come with the additional baggage of huge risks to mental and emotional health, self-esteem, and increased suicide risk. It's interesting that you are framing immersing children in externalities as the choice to avoid suffering.
    - youreincorrect 3y ago
      Children suffer. Adults suffer. Everyone suffers. I'm left with choosing which suffering my daughter will incur more of, either suffering "isolation" in making it harder for her to find friends by disallowing her from using social media for some time, or suffering the body image and other mental health and emotional disorders that could come from too much social media use at an early age. To some extent, I would love to give her the choice between the two herself, but most parents are going to be protective about certain things and make decisions like these for their children. Also, my point wasn't even that I suffered therefore she should as well. My point was that children will bully each other over the most capricious shit imaginable, including whether or not you have the right backpack. At the time, I wished my mom would have just bought me a Jansport backpack (she wouldn't because we were poor), and now I look back on it as silly (and I'd guess those same bullies would have found another reason to make fun of me, like not having Nike shoes). Further, having a smartphone and Instagram or Tiktok account aren't magical antidotes to social isolation at a young age. But yes, I overcame my own suffering fairly easily.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    And what about the ones that didn't? Otherwise you're just talking about survivorship bias.
    - youreincorrect 3y ago
      I flatly refuse any argument that assumes buying your kid a smartphone and allowing them on social media will solve their problems of social isolation. If a child is socially isolated from their peers, that is sad, and I personally do not know how to help them. But I still don't buy the argument that FB, Insta, TikTok, etc. are the solution because, what, their peers are on them? Also, if some of these kids are being bullied, social media can exacerbate the problem. I allude to this in another comment where I speculate that if my mother had bought me the backpack, I think these kids would have still bullied me over something similar.
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        At least with schools there was the school day and trip there and home. After that you were probably alone and not constantly connected even on weekends.
  - inconceivable 3y ago
    hmm.. by the time i was a junior in high school i remember everyone just carried around a binder and a book for their next class or two. i can't remember if it was because having a backpack became uncool, or the school mandated no backpacks because of columbine. i do specifically remember trenchcoats were not allowed and one very likeable and somewhat popular kid had to give his up (that was sort of his "look"). anyone remember?
- xpe 3y ago
  Sounds like MAAD: Mutually Assured Attention Destruction.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sibeliuss 3y ago
  You're probably not thinking hard enough here.
- TheFreim 3y ago
  I didn't have a cell phone while all my friends did, I wasn't isolated.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- JohnFen 3y ago
  That isn't isolating them from their peers.
  - dathinab 3y ago
    it is guaranteed at least subtle socially isolating them
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      No more so than it's isolating them by giving them a curfew, telling them they can't hang out in certain places, not giving them a car, etc. That level of "isolation" seems innocuous at worst to me (even though it may seem like the end of the world to the kids).
      - yamtaddle 3y ago
        Every kid through history was horribly isolated before we got smartphones and social media, I guess. They're already spending the best hours of every weekday for like 3/4 of each year with their peers. More, if they do any other activities that involve other kids. Seems like quite a bit. I'm skeptical that they'll be harmed if they can't catch up on the latest bullying-memes, creep shots of other students, and tips for getting old guys to send you money online (all real examples, and none of them one-offs—trends) at 1AM on a school night.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        If your kid is never isolated, how can they possibly develop healthy behaviors around boredom and isolation?
        dathinab 3y ago
        I hope you understand and just decided to pretend not to that _social_ isolation is not about physical isolation or boredom or having free time with nothing to do. While the "simplest" way to archive social isolation is to be physically isolated you can be social isolated while having people around you 24/7.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  “Teenage suicide is at an all time high… I sure wouldn’t want my kid to stop being terminally connected to those kids and whatever could possibly be causing that!”
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  It's fair to call out that if one kid doesn't have a phone and everyone else does, it may be hard on them. Phones are a way to be "in" and in the know, if you don't have one then you may be on the outside looking in. A few things. 1. Fuck being on the inside. Work with your kid and their self-esteem and their friends to realize that shit-talking and drama online is shallow, painful and makes you a worse person. 2. Work with the parents in your kid's social circle to talk to them about social media impact, and maybe make sure that in-person time after school is happening. Alternatively, "just" get your kid involved in after-school programs that require social activity. Band, choir, sports, hobby clubs. 3. Don't cut off social media/computing entirely. Abstinence from it full-time would be really hard to enforce. Yes, look at putting parental controls. Yes, consider limiting which apps they can have. Put time limits on it, and yeet any unapproved devices.
  - swader999 3y ago
    At around thirteen it's almost impossible to get into calm rational discussions with things as emotionally charged as this.
- dathinab 3y ago
  Not sure why you are down voted but this is really a really really big issue. This is why "large scale action" e.g. from school or better regulators are needed and why parents only can act very limited. Don't force social isolation on your children just because idk. "this game is bad". Even if they social circle is "good" and doesn't start excluding or harassing them because of this (totally can happen, you can't really choose with whom you are in a class) it still is leads to a subtle isolation which might by itself not cause any mental issues, but can amplify existing issues, prevent mental scare from being healed etc. And such issues don't always come from "big bad thing" sometimes small bad things wrongly processed as a child can be enough to cause life long mental issues if the child has never the chance to reprocess/recondition/overcome them. EDIT: Just to be clear doesn't mean children should have unchecked social media/game/etc. access.
  - psyfi 3y ago
    Not allowing your children to own a phone ≠ Force social isolation.
    - swader999 3y ago
      It can in many circumstances. I live rural and we don't have a land line. It's hard to get the kids over to their friends as much as they want. My solution is to talk to the other parents. We all agreed to no tik too. I turn our wifi off after bed time. We have a phone contract with our 14 year old that stipulates the usual be nice and don't live on your phone rules. They swim, ski, kayak and play school volleyball and badminton so there's lots of opportunities for that sort of interacting but I think it would be pretty harsh to cut them off of their phones. If I could get 3/4 of their friends parents to agree I would for sure until they are 16.
    - dathinab 3y ago
      social isolation isn't a yes/no question it's a gradient and in many situation it is pretty much guaranteed to at least cause slight degree of social isolation, in some (like very rual) it might cause a large degree of social isolation similar having a phone isn't a yes/no question, things like parent control exist, even through they often slightly suck
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bart_spoon 3y ago
  Not being on Tiktok is not social isolation nor is it mentally devastating. I think many here are projecting their own addictions when they make these hyperbolic assertions.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    And conversely without understanding the isolations modern children experience that your counterassertions fall short explaining the current situation we're in. If your solution is "go play outside with other kids" and the park is empty because all other kids are busy doing isolated things or on tic tok, then you have a problem.
    - bart_spoon 3y ago
      The park isn't empty though. The sports teams aren't empty. The after school groups aren't empty. The church groups aren't empty.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  Aren't there at least a few studies that indicate better long-term mental health outcomes among kids who don't use social media until later in life? Sorry for the lack of citation, but if that is true, wouldn't that pretty much obviate this problem? If, on balance, the outcome is better, then whatever short terms shocks they may experience are better than the alternative.
- boeingUH60 3y ago
  Abstaining from social media is not isolation. There are more healthy ways to interact with friends without the perils of social media platforms.
- rsync 3y ago
  I don’t have time right now to go into details but it was surprisingly simple, from a filter rules perspective, to create an “iMessage only” access point. So there is no isolation from peers, but also no other usage of the device. We turn it off completely at 9pm. Edit: oh, the other important detail is that they have no-data SIM cards. Tello sells text and talk only sims for $8/mo or whatever. Weirdly, when they are away from home, apple finds a way to tunnel blue bubbles through (sms only) … not sure how … bottom line is, at home, it’s iMessage or nothing.
- omginternets 3y ago
  Thankfully, there are other ways of interacting with one's peers, most of which create more meaningful connections than social media. To put it more bluntly: if social media is the only thing standing between a child and total isolation, that child has far bigger problems. Maybe sign your kid up for little league?
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    Little league? Social media? Are we talking children or teenagers? What's frequently missed is that most organization of meet-ups, birthday parties, talking to romantic interests, going to concerts et al, all happens on social media and in group chats now, and has done for the best part of fifteen years in the West. For the prior generation, if you aren't online, you aren't cool, and you won't know about cool things that are happening. The current generation seems to have a fascination with dumb phones and eschewing tech obsession if the media spin is to be believed versus the numbers on social media apps. Both can be valid things that are occurring though, but I'm willing to bet that the dumb phone movement is a small one or a LARP for elitist cool points.
    - omginternets 3y ago
      >What's frequently missed is that most organization of meet-ups, birthday parties, talking to romantic interests, going to concerts et al, all happens on social media and in group chats now, and has done for the best part of fifteen years in the West. Yeah, no. People still talk to each other. I leave it to you to exercise some adaptability and find suitable workarounds. This is a small problem. I guarantee you that you solve harder ones on a daily basis.
      - hammyhavoc 3y ago
        As neither a parent nor a teenager, I find this a weird one to leave with me. I merely repeated some valid concerns, to which you presented no solutions, just snippiness. What workarounds am I looking for? And for whom? Why aren't the people concerned looking for their own workarounds?
- wonderwonder 3y ago
  How are they isolated? If kids are involved in sports and extra curriculars they will have plenty of social interaction. Nothing on social media is good for young minds. Everything is a pitch trying to sell some sort of viewpoint. I'm the parent, I'll provide morals and insight into topics I think are important that aren't or shouldn't be covered in school. I don't need Jim.lottahoes78 teaching my kid anything.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    > Everything is a pitch trying to sell some sort of viewpoint. What about cities? What about stores? What about TV? What about magazines? What about the radio? What about school? What about music? What about books? Whilst I agree with you, where do we draw the line? Personally, having worked in advertising/marketing for over a decade and grown completely disenchanted with it and pivoted to just doing creative shit, I don't think we should advertise to kids, period. It's exploitative and gross.
    - wonderwonder 3y ago
      I agree with you. Marketing to kids is wrong. I think social media is more insidious though. They are not selling products they are selling view points and often at the expense of others. Believe this or you're a Nazi. Don't drink this beer. Social media is the battlefield of the culture wars and I don't want my kids to be casualties.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Our state banned billboards like 80 years ago. Make that happen in your state. They are valueless.
      - bart_spoon 3y ago
        Which state is that? I didn't realize that was a thing in the US, but it sounds great.
        3y ago
- Utkarsh_Mood 3y ago
  I dont really think them not being on social media is akin to 'Isolation' from their peers. Thats really overblowing the situation. There are hundreds of other ways to meet your friends.
  - km3k 3y ago
    I don't get why a lot of this discussion assumes children can't communicate with peers without social media. Calling and texting are still a thing. So is coordinating during school to plan meetups after school. Besides, I think very few people are saying children should have a total ban on all forms of social media and communication. We need to find methods to restrict/reduce social media and then ease those restrictions as the children mature, with a focus to minimize the negative aspects of social media usage and still allow communication with peers. For example, when our children were small, we didn't allow phones or social media, but allowed them to text/call friends with our phones. As they got older, we introduced Google Voice via family desktop computers so they had their own number for texts/calls, but given that it was on a desktop computer, it had limited usage. After that, we introduced a family smartphone that was shared among our younger children so they could text and have some limited social media, mainly group chat apps based on their clubs/sports. Once they became teenagers, we allow them their own phone, but still had restrictions on apps installed, types of websites available and time spent. Gradually over time, we introduce new apps, discuss app usage and review how things are going with the goal of increased independence over time. For managing restrictions, we've used a lot of things, but never found a perfect solution. Bark works pretty well for signalling us of potential problems while giving our children a level of privacy. I use a Firewalla router to manage home internet access restrictions and Google Family Link to manage mobile devices. Both are mainly used to restrict time-based access (no middle of the night access) and for temporary restrictions to allow us to focus on things like homework and family events. I can see why a lot of parents put no restrictions up or just ban too much. It takes a lot of work to create a nuanced set of restrictions that gradually give more independence as the child matures. Unfortunately, we've seen friends of our children who have had a lot of issues due to totally unrestricted internet access. We need to find and foster more middle grounds for easing children into social media and related technologies. Neither full unrestricted access nor total bans are helpful.
- zo1 3y ago
  Sure there is: Identify the degenerate behaviour and punish it. Whatever that may be and 51% of us can agree on. If that's tik tok, all social media, YouTube, infinite scroll, use generated media websites, drug misogyny and degenerate sex promoting lyrics, violent fps games, drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, ads aimed at children, pictures of swastikas, hormone altering medicine, or whatever, so be it. If you don't ban it at the source and society-wide, then parents are left with very little means to protect their children's development and growth into good individuals that reflect their beliefs. I don't get how we're being so laissez-faire and willing to just "see where it goes" when it comes to our society and our future as a species. We're at a critical juncture right now and need to make a decision; we can't fence sit any longer while the winds of peer pressure randomly drag us wherever and based on nothing more than who shouts the loudest or who cancels dissent the best. /rant
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    You may be right. But free speech and free markets have done a lot of good, along with the bad. Trying to rein them in gets a lot of pushback, because the alternatives have been pretty terrible too.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  I had 14 friends on myspace back in its heyday. I could not play runescape because my computer was too old. I had dialup until 2008. It actually was not mentally devastating. Hell, I still have all those friends and we barely have a way to communicate NOW. When you go to school 8 hours of every day and see your friends, you don't really need a stupid app to interact with them. Hell, blocking out social media doesn't prevent you from texting or messaging your friends! Discord though is social media IMO, anything that forms a "group" that can have leaders and followers and bullies is social media.
  - boring_twenties 3y ago
    > you don't really need a stupid app to interact with them Yes, you do, because they will not want to interact with you if you're not on the preferred app. This is the case even with adults: I somewhat regularly meet people who will flatly refuse to talk to you if you don't have a green bubble, or an Instagram account, or whathaveyou. These are educated professionals in their 20's and 30's.
    - citizenkeen 3y ago
      Hang out with less shitty people.
    - graboidhunter 3y ago
      > I somewhat regularly meet people who will flatly refuse to talk to you if you don't have a green bubble, or an Instagram account, or whathaveyou. These are educated professionals in their 20's and 30's. Find better friends?
      - boring_twenties 3y ago
        I didn't say they were my friends, I said the opposite, people I just met
        km3k 3y ago
        That's a good indicator that they're people to avoid.
- yumraj 3y ago
  Purely for argument sake: would the above apply if peer kids were in gang, or into drugs or alcohol or whatever? Social media is no different from those, IMHO of course.
- schnable 3y ago
  This is why regulation is useful even though it's imperfect. If it's against the law for under 18s to use social media, parents no longer need to justify allowing their kids access because all of their peers allow it. By necessity, more traditional means of socialization will reemerge.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  That's what soccer leagues are for. Or chess club for the non-athletically inclined.

swader999 3y ago

Isolating them from their peers can be just as mentally devastating. I don't think there is a good solution to this.

youreincorrect 3y ago
They can deal with it. In middle school, I was called a faggot, relentlessly, for not owning a Jansport backpack. I am 100% serious. They'll find friends, I'm pretty sure of it.
- kzrdude 3y ago
  I still hope that one day we'll find a way to stop that (to a big extent).
  - karaterobot 3y ago
    Some day, we'll all have Jansport backpacks.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Still using mine from 5th grade 20+ years later. The oldest thing I own.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  [flagged]
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  But if they don't have social media, how will they see other kids calling them names for not owning the right backpack outside of school? Think of the harm to their socialization!
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  I was called plenty of unpleasant stuff, including that. I didn't find any friends and I left at sixteen because of it. I'm not so sure. At thirty, I'm still fairly socially isolated outside of work.
- standardUser 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    If that is suffering than every child will always suffer, because an very normal part of childhood is someone finding a reason to bully someone else. It's part of developing understanding of social structures and your place in them, some kids will inevitably decide they must be at the top of the pecking order in their little personal hierarchy. You physically cannot prevent children from making up ways to pick on each other, there's like a doctor Seuss book about this for heaven's sake. This isn't saying "stop trying to prevent bullying" but rather "if you are afraid of your child being bullied because they aren't on social media, them being on social media will not stop them from being bullied" and social media makes bullying worse because now it follows them around instead of possibly stopping at 3pm
  - bart_spoon 3y ago
    A key difference here is that Jansport backpacks don't come with the additional baggage of huge risks to mental and emotional health, self-esteem, and increased suicide risk. It's interesting that you are framing immersing children in externalities as the choice to avoid suffering.
  - youreincorrect 3y ago
    Children suffer. Adults suffer. Everyone suffers. I'm left with choosing which suffering my daughter will incur more of, either suffering "isolation" in making it harder for her to find friends by disallowing her from using social media for some time, or suffering the body image and other mental health and emotional disorders that could come from too much social media use at an early age. To some extent, I would love to give her the choice between the two herself, but most parents are going to be protective about certain things and make decisions like these for their children. Also, my point wasn't even that I suffered therefore she should as well. My point was that children will bully each other over the most capricious shit imaginable, including whether or not you have the right backpack. At the time, I wished my mom would have just bought me a Jansport backpack (she wouldn't because we were poor), and now I look back on it as silly (and I'd guess those same bullies would have found another reason to make fun of me, like not having Nike shoes). Further, having a smartphone and Instagram or Tiktok account aren't magical antidotes to social isolation at a young age. But yes, I overcame my own suffering fairly easily.
- pixl97 3y ago
  And what about the ones that didn't? Otherwise you're just talking about survivorship bias.
  - youreincorrect 3y ago
    I flatly refuse any argument that assumes buying your kid a smartphone and allowing them on social media will solve their problems of social isolation. If a child is socially isolated from their peers, that is sad, and I personally do not know how to help them. But I still don't buy the argument that FB, Insta, TikTok, etc. are the solution because, what, their peers are on them? Also, if some of these kids are being bullied, social media can exacerbate the problem. I allude to this in another comment where I speculate that if my mother had bought me the backpack, I think these kids would have still bullied me over something similar.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      At least with schools there was the school day and trip there and home. After that you were probably alone and not constantly connected even on weekends.
- inconceivable 3y ago
  hmm.. by the time i was a junior in high school i remember everyone just carried around a binder and a book for their next class or two. i can't remember if it was because having a backpack became uncool, or the school mandated no backpacks because of columbine. i do specifically remember trenchcoats were not allowed and one very likeable and somewhat popular kid had to give his up (that was sort of his "look"). anyone remember?
xpe 3y ago
Sounds like MAAD: Mutually Assured Attention Destruction.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sibeliuss 3y ago
You're probably not thinking hard enough here.
TheFreim 3y ago
I didn't have a cell phone while all my friends did, I wasn't isolated.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
JohnFen 3y ago
That isn't isolating them from their peers.
- dathinab 3y ago
  it is guaranteed at least subtle socially isolating them
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    No more so than it's isolating them by giving them a curfew, telling them they can't hang out in certain places, not giving them a car, etc. That level of "isolation" seems innocuous at worst to me (even though it may seem like the end of the world to the kids).
    - yamtaddle 3y ago
      Every kid through history was horribly isolated before we got smartphones and social media, I guess. They're already spending the best hours of every weekday for like 3/4 of each year with their peers. More, if they do any other activities that involve other kids. Seems like quite a bit. I'm skeptical that they'll be harmed if they can't catch up on the latest bullying-memes, creep shots of other students, and tips for getting old guys to send you money online (all real examples, and none of them one-offs—trends) at 1AM on a school night.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        If your kid is never isolated, how can they possibly develop healthy behaviors around boredom and isolation?
        dathinab 3y ago
        I hope you understand and just decided to pretend not to that _social_ isolation is not about physical isolation or boredom or having free time with nothing to do. While the "simplest" way to archive social isolation is to be physically isolated you can be social isolated while having people around you 24/7.
SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
“Teenage suicide is at an all time high… I sure wouldn’t want my kid to stop being terminally connected to those kids and whatever could possibly be causing that!”
unethical_ban 3y ago
It's fair to call out that if one kid doesn't have a phone and everyone else does, it may be hard on them. Phones are a way to be "in" and in the know, if you don't have one then you may be on the outside looking in. A few things. 1. Fuck being on the inside. Work with your kid and their self-esteem and their friends to realize that shit-talking and drama online is shallow, painful and makes you a worse person. 2. Work with the parents in your kid's social circle to talk to them about social media impact, and maybe make sure that in-person time after school is happening. Alternatively, "just" get your kid involved in after-school programs that require social activity. Band, choir, sports, hobby clubs. 3. Don't cut off social media/computing entirely. Abstinence from it full-time would be really hard to enforce. Yes, look at putting parental controls. Yes, consider limiting which apps they can have. Put time limits on it, and yeet any unapproved devices.
- swader999 3y ago
  At around thirteen it's almost impossible to get into calm rational discussions with things as emotionally charged as this.
dathinab 3y ago
Not sure why you are down voted but this is really a really really big issue. This is why "large scale action" e.g. from school or better regulators are needed and why parents only can act very limited. Don't force social isolation on your children just because idk. "this game is bad". Even if they social circle is "good" and doesn't start excluding or harassing them because of this (totally can happen, you can't really choose with whom you are in a class) it still is leads to a subtle isolation which might by itself not cause any mental issues, but can amplify existing issues, prevent mental scare from being healed etc. And such issues don't always come from "big bad thing" sometimes small bad things wrongly processed as a child can be enough to cause life long mental issues if the child has never the chance to reprocess/recondition/overcome them. EDIT: Just to be clear doesn't mean children should have unchecked social media/game/etc. access.
- psyfi 3y ago
  Not allowing your children to own a phone ≠ Force social isolation.
  - swader999 3y ago
    It can in many circumstances. I live rural and we don't have a land line. It's hard to get the kids over to their friends as much as they want. My solution is to talk to the other parents. We all agreed to no tik too. I turn our wifi off after bed time. We have a phone contract with our 14 year old that stipulates the usual be nice and don't live on your phone rules. They swim, ski, kayak and play school volleyball and badminton so there's lots of opportunities for that sort of interacting but I think it would be pretty harsh to cut them off of their phones. If I could get 3/4 of their friends parents to agree I would for sure until they are 16.
  - dathinab 3y ago
    social isolation isn't a yes/no question it's a gradient and in many situation it is pretty much guaranteed to at least cause slight degree of social isolation, in some (like very rual) it might cause a large degree of social isolation similar having a phone isn't a yes/no question, things like parent control exist, even through they often slightly suck
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bart_spoon 3y ago
Not being on Tiktok is not social isolation nor is it mentally devastating. I think many here are projecting their own addictions when they make these hyperbolic assertions.
- pixl97 3y ago
  And conversely without understanding the isolations modern children experience that your counterassertions fall short explaining the current situation we're in. If your solution is "go play outside with other kids" and the park is empty because all other kids are busy doing isolated things or on tic tok, then you have a problem.
  - bart_spoon 3y ago
    The park isn't empty though. The sports teams aren't empty. The after school groups aren't empty. The church groups aren't empty.
karaterobot 3y ago
Aren't there at least a few studies that indicate better long-term mental health outcomes among kids who don't use social media until later in life? Sorry for the lack of citation, but if that is true, wouldn't that pretty much obviate this problem? If, on balance, the outcome is better, then whatever short terms shocks they may experience are better than the alternative.
boeingUH60 3y ago
Abstaining from social media is not isolation. There are more healthy ways to interact with friends without the perils of social media platforms.
rsync 3y ago
I don’t have time right now to go into details but it was surprisingly simple, from a filter rules perspective, to create an “iMessage only” access point. So there is no isolation from peers, but also no other usage of the device. We turn it off completely at 9pm. Edit: oh, the other important detail is that they have no-data SIM cards. Tello sells text and talk only sims for $8/mo or whatever. Weirdly, when they are away from home, apple finds a way to tunnel blue bubbles through (sms only) … not sure how … bottom line is, at home, it’s iMessage or nothing.
omginternets 3y ago
Thankfully, there are other ways of interacting with one's peers, most of which create more meaningful connections than social media. To put it more bluntly: if social media is the only thing standing between a child and total isolation, that child has far bigger problems. Maybe sign your kid up for little league?
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  Little league? Social media? Are we talking children or teenagers? What's frequently missed is that most organization of meet-ups, birthday parties, talking to romantic interests, going to concerts et al, all happens on social media and in group chats now, and has done for the best part of fifteen years in the West. For the prior generation, if you aren't online, you aren't cool, and you won't know about cool things that are happening. The current generation seems to have a fascination with dumb phones and eschewing tech obsession if the media spin is to be believed versus the numbers on social media apps. Both can be valid things that are occurring though, but I'm willing to bet that the dumb phone movement is a small one or a LARP for elitist cool points.
  - omginternets 3y ago
    >What's frequently missed is that most organization of meet-ups, birthday parties, talking to romantic interests, going to concerts et al, all happens on social media and in group chats now, and has done for the best part of fifteen years in the West. Yeah, no. People still talk to each other. I leave it to you to exercise some adaptability and find suitable workarounds. This is a small problem. I guarantee you that you solve harder ones on a daily basis.
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      As neither a parent nor a teenager, I find this a weird one to leave with me. I merely repeated some valid concerns, to which you presented no solutions, just snippiness. What workarounds am I looking for? And for whom? Why aren't the people concerned looking for their own workarounds?
wonderwonder 3y ago
How are they isolated? If kids are involved in sports and extra curriculars they will have plenty of social interaction. Nothing on social media is good for young minds. Everything is a pitch trying to sell some sort of viewpoint. I'm the parent, I'll provide morals and insight into topics I think are important that aren't or shouldn't be covered in school. I don't need Jim.lottahoes78 teaching my kid anything.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  > Everything is a pitch trying to sell some sort of viewpoint. What about cities? What about stores? What about TV? What about magazines? What about the radio? What about school? What about music? What about books? Whilst I agree with you, where do we draw the line? Personally, having worked in advertising/marketing for over a decade and grown completely disenchanted with it and pivoted to just doing creative shit, I don't think we should advertise to kids, period. It's exploitative and gross.
  - wonderwonder 3y ago
    I agree with you. Marketing to kids is wrong. I think social media is more insidious though. They are not selling products they are selling view points and often at the expense of others. Believe this or you're a Nazi. Don't drink this beer. Social media is the battlefield of the culture wars and I don't want my kids to be casualties.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Our state banned billboards like 80 years ago. Make that happen in your state. They are valueless.
    - bart_spoon 3y ago
      Which state is that? I didn't realize that was a thing in the US, but it sounds great.
      - 3y ago
Utkarsh_Mood 3y ago
I dont really think them not being on social media is akin to 'Isolation' from their peers. Thats really overblowing the situation. There are hundreds of other ways to meet your friends.
- km3k 3y ago
  I don't get why a lot of this discussion assumes children can't communicate with peers without social media. Calling and texting are still a thing. So is coordinating during school to plan meetups after school. Besides, I think very few people are saying children should have a total ban on all forms of social media and communication. We need to find methods to restrict/reduce social media and then ease those restrictions as the children mature, with a focus to minimize the negative aspects of social media usage and still allow communication with peers. For example, when our children were small, we didn't allow phones or social media, but allowed them to text/call friends with our phones. As they got older, we introduced Google Voice via family desktop computers so they had their own number for texts/calls, but given that it was on a desktop computer, it had limited usage. After that, we introduced a family smartphone that was shared among our younger children so they could text and have some limited social media, mainly group chat apps based on their clubs/sports. Once they became teenagers, we allow them their own phone, but still had restrictions on apps installed, types of websites available and time spent. Gradually over time, we introduce new apps, discuss app usage and review how things are going with the goal of increased independence over time. For managing restrictions, we've used a lot of things, but never found a perfect solution. Bark works pretty well for signalling us of potential problems while giving our children a level of privacy. I use a Firewalla router to manage home internet access restrictions and Google Family Link to manage mobile devices. Both are mainly used to restrict time-based access (no middle of the night access) and for temporary restrictions to allow us to focus on things like homework and family events. I can see why a lot of parents put no restrictions up or just ban too much. It takes a lot of work to create a nuanced set of restrictions that gradually give more independence as the child matures. Unfortunately, we've seen friends of our children who have had a lot of issues due to totally unrestricted internet access. We need to find and foster more middle grounds for easing children into social media and related technologies. Neither full unrestricted access nor total bans are helpful.
zo1 3y ago
Sure there is: Identify the degenerate behaviour and punish it. Whatever that may be and 51% of us can agree on. If that's tik tok, all social media, YouTube, infinite scroll, use generated media websites, drug misogyny and degenerate sex promoting lyrics, violent fps games, drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, ads aimed at children, pictures of swastikas, hormone altering medicine, or whatever, so be it. If you don't ban it at the source and society-wide, then parents are left with very little means to protect their children's development and growth into good individuals that reflect their beliefs. I don't get how we're being so laissez-faire and willing to just "see where it goes" when it comes to our society and our future as a species. We're at a critical juncture right now and need to make a decision; we can't fence sit any longer while the winds of peer pressure randomly drag us wherever and based on nothing more than who shouts the loudest or who cancels dissent the best. /rant
- amanaplanacanal 3y ago
  You may be right. But free speech and free markets have done a lot of good, along with the bad. Trying to rein them in gets a lot of pushback, because the alternatives have been pretty terrible too.
mrguyorama 3y ago
I had 14 friends on myspace back in its heyday. I could not play runescape because my computer was too old. I had dialup until 2008. It actually was not mentally devastating. Hell, I still have all those friends and we barely have a way to communicate NOW. When you go to school 8 hours of every day and see your friends, you don't really need a stupid app to interact with them. Hell, blocking out social media doesn't prevent you from texting or messaging your friends! Discord though is social media IMO, anything that forms a "group" that can have leaders and followers and bullies is social media.
- boring_twenties 3y ago
  > you don't really need a stupid app to interact with them Yes, you do, because they will not want to interact with you if you're not on the preferred app. This is the case even with adults: I somewhat regularly meet people who will flatly refuse to talk to you if you don't have a green bubble, or an Instagram account, or whathaveyou. These are educated professionals in their 20's and 30's.
  - citizenkeen 3y ago
    Hang out with less shitty people.
  - graboidhunter 3y ago
    > I somewhat regularly meet people who will flatly refuse to talk to you if you don't have a green bubble, or an Instagram account, or whathaveyou. These are educated professionals in their 20's and 30's. Find better friends?
    - boring_twenties 3y ago
      I didn't say they were my friends, I said the opposite, people I just met
      - km3k 3y ago
        That's a good indicator that they're people to avoid.
yumraj 3y ago
Purely for argument sake: would the above apply if peer kids were in gang, or into drugs or alcohol or whatever? Social media is no different from those, IMHO of course.
schnable 3y ago
This is why regulation is useful even though it's imperfect. If it's against the law for under 18s to use social media, parents no longer need to justify allowing their kids access because all of their peers allow it. By necessity, more traditional means of socialization will reemerge.
mixmastamyk 3y ago
That's what soccer leagues are for. Or chess club for the non-athletically inclined.