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Not speaking from personal experience. My kid is only 4. Your argument seems like exactly what my parents would have said about me spending so much time on TV,

Not speaking from personal experience. My kid is only 4. Your argument seems like exactly what my parents would have said about me spending so much time on TV, computers and electronics instead of studying, playing outside, sports etc. Almost exactly like your last paragraph.. “I’m personally glad that I grew up without infinite channels on TV, computers and its games, cell phones and your SMSes. I’m worried about your generation. You guys are exposed to a lot of junk and things that waste your attention.” - Dad. Yet, here we are…. May be kids of now will just need to be educated about the real impact and not be treated as if they are in glass houses?

aurareturn 3y ago
I think there are magnitudes and cliffs for this stuff. TV --> has quality control, professionally done, goes through a team of editors/creators before making it onto the screen Early internet --> Mostly harmless content, can find dark stuff if kids look for it but it's pretty hard to find. More dangerous than TV but not too bad. SMS --> just chatting with people you know. Not afraid. TikTok, IG Reels, Youtube Shorts, Snapchat, Twitter: Good luck to you. Your kid is going to see a ton of deep fakes, edited images of unrealistic body proportions that the influencer won't disclose, heaps of radical and extremist views, undisclosed sponsorships masquerading as advice, targeted ads that anyone can buy, etc. The magnitude is much higher now - hence I think laws need to come in to make it easier for parents to get back some control. Go ahead and try to teach your kid who is going to spend hours each day seeing hundreds of videos each day - probably tens of thousands in a year. What are you going to do? Watch 100 Instagram Reels per day with your kid and explain each and every single one? As an adult, even I'm easily influenced by this stuff.
- freedomben 3y ago
  You make a fair point. I think you have won me over philosophically. However, there is still the pragmatic and realistic approach to consider. Personally, I think moving to a world where internet content is gated behind ID checks is a terrible and horrible precedent to set that is going to have ramifications far beyond simply protecting teens who are under 16. As a parent of teenagers who are falling into this trap right now, it is something I am gravely concerned about. I am no tech, lightweight, and blocking and even regulating. This stuff is pretty much impossible. Short of helicopter parenting your child at all times. Nor do I think that sort of heavy-handed regulation is necessarily healthy, although that depends very much on the age in my opinion. But what does a world look like where every website and app has to, for liability reasons alone, assume that everyone is underage before proving that they are not?
- vel0city 3y ago
  Also TVs since 2000 in the US were all required to support v-chip which allowed parents to set restrictions on content. Getting around v-chip could often be somewhat complicated. Meanwhile it is usually pretty trivial to get around parental control software on computers.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    My parents couldn't switch inputs on the TV, there's zero chance they could configure a v-chip without my help. Most of my friends' parents were the same way. I don't think this technology had the impact you think it had.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  > Early internet --> Mostly harmless content, can find dark stuff if kids look for it but it's pretty hard to find. More dangerous than TV but not too bad. In the early 90's the dark stuff was mixed in with the porn. If you were looking for porn on the internet before it was available on web browsers, aka on usenet or anonymous FTP, you got exposed to the dark stuff. And I'm fairly confident that a large percentage of teens using the Internet in the pre-WWW age were looking for porn.
- odessacubbage 3y ago
  as a parent you have all the control. why does your kid need a tablet? why do they need a smart phone like at all? these devices did not just magically materialize in your home, the tooth fairy didn't put them there. you chose to plop your toddler in front of a screen because electronic vicodin was easier than parenting and then you chose not to lock down their devices with the abundant parental controls you are given and then you decided you couldn't be assed to teach them basic internet safety habits or how to develop healthy skepticism and that seeing isn't always believing. really the only thing your children have been '''exposed to''' is your own laziness and utter unwillingness to offer them direction. the world will continue to exist whether we like it or not, and some day our kids will have to live in it just like we do. we can either prepare them for what's really there, warts and all or we can hide them away only toss them to the wolves when they turn 18 with the delusion that this somehow preserved their innocence. i personally believe giving them the grace of a childhood to learn how to deal with the bumpy parts of life is a much kinder option.
- smileysteve 3y ago
  Your look back fails at VHS tapes or home video though. It also fails at abusive or addicted family members.
KaiserPro 3y ago
I understand what you are getting at, but to inject some nuance: TV, print, radio, music and to a lesser extent games are all subject to some level of industry or statutory content regulation. For example, in America, you're very unlikely to have a kids TV channel suddenly switch to videos of people being killed in industrial accidents. new media, not so much. Watershed, age constraints and company ending fines existed (and in some cases still do) for violating those rules. Large new media companies, such as facebook, youtube and tiktok can literally serve porn to kids and not have any legal ramifications. If a cable broadcaster knowingly broadcast frontal nudity before watershed, it would be fined. (yes, cable TV has less restrictions) but thats the point, regulation has not kept up with the pace of change. that has been a deliberate decision. My kids are >5 < 12. They aren't allowed on insta/tiktok. They can have youtube, but its only when supervised. even then its 1/3 chance that they land on something toxic as shit. The world has changed, and the guard rails that we had as kids have been removed. There is an argument about freedom of expression, I get that. But we need to think about whether its right to allow large corporations to profit from showing horrific content to minors. (adults, I don't give a shit, do what you want) The problem is, I'm not sure of the best mechanism, with the least bad outcome.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  25 years ago us kids were watching viral content on the internet that wasn’t even acceptable to go on youtube then or now. Still today, we are now your young doctors and lawyers and young business executives, despite all the quite disturbing viral content that characterized the early 2000s internet. I think we did fine and I think the kids will be alright too.
  - nozzlegear 3y ago
    Who is us kids? I assume you’re talking about 4Chan? I wasn’t watching what I’d describe as disturbing viral content 25 years ago.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    25 years ago most people didn't even have a broadband connection in their home much less any kind of mobile data plan. 25 years ago kids didn't walk around with challenging to audit handheld computers. The computer, if your family had one, was that one big thing shared with the whole family that an adult could pop their head in and see what the child was up to. That some kids (an incredibly tiny fraction) did have unrestricted access to the internet and turned out fine isn't indicative of the general population of kids having this kind of exposure and being fine. If in 1999 you had internet fast enough to really download many many hours of videos without being audited by a parent you were probably the 1% of 1% of 1% of child populations. A high percentage of households didn't even have internet at all. In 2000 only 1% of US households even had broadband internet. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-bro...
heresie-dabord 3y ago
> May be [sic] kids of now will just need to be educated about the real impact Education about the real impact will not happen if there is profit to be made in forsaking education.
msluyter 3y ago
I think the empirical evidence is fairly clear, actually.[1][2] Having struggled with various forms of screen addiction myself, I find it sort of odd that a lot of people are so laissez faire about giving children the most addictive device ever created.[3] Whether or not this law is a good idea, I think it's incumbent on parents to monitor and limit screen time and access to social media. Which is difficult! When my wife and I are tired, setting my daughter down in front of an ipad is the easiest way to get a break. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X19300880 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23522... [2] https://jeanmtwenge.substack.com/p/yes-its-the-phones-and-social-media https://jeanmtwenge.substack.com/p/yes-its-the-phones-and-so... [3] Sure, it's not technically "the device," itself, but rather what it makes possible.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  It's risky to describe the claims of social studies profs as clear empirical evidence, given the history of the field. Twenge makes some unscientific arguments in her blog post, like constantly conflating correlation with causation despite her evidence not being able to show that. She also seems to think that if she knocks down a series of counter-arguments, then that means that her own argument must be correct. Given that Haidt's identical claims already turned out to be based on very poor quality evidence [1], their argumentation must be examined carefully before rushing to action. Still, assume for a moment that it's a correct causal inference despite the major flaws in their evidence base. There's another tricky aspect to this. The Twenge/Haidt argument is really only about teenage girls. Although Haidt is basically honest about this (see [2]), Twenge is not. The opening of her article you cite talks about teenagers in general, but the first figure only shows data for girls and women. Then the second figure is even captioned "Figure 2: tech adoption, teen depression" but the legend actually says "Depression, girls". A few paragraphs later she's making claims about "individuals" whilst providing evidence that's once again specific to teenage girls. Her article is full of sloppy conflations like this. Anyway, needless to say, neither politicians nor academics are willing to only ban social media for girls. This would upset the left so the argument morphs seamlessly into "social media should be banned for all teenagers" which isn't a story found in their data. This punishes boys for the mental health problems of girls, but is that just? There's also a more subtle logical problem with this argument. It assumes that teenagers are a fixed group, and thus any change in their behavior must be due to some immediate alteration to their environment. But it's not: "teenage" is a sliding window that people constantly pass through. In other words it's possible that these depressed teens have always been somehow messed up, and simply aged into the categorization they're looking at. By implication the true answer could be found in earlier periods, even as far as back as changes to childrearing practices in the late 80s/early 90s rather than something that changed specifically in 2012. One theory posits that it's something to do with the rise of extremely early daycare for infants (e.g. for children less than one or two years old), and they also have a variety of correlations to bolster their case. It may be that social studies academics simply cannot answer such questions. [1] https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evidence-that-social-media-is-causing-the-teen-mental-health-crisis/ https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evide... "Haidt's compendium of research does point to one important finding: Because these studies have failed to produce a single strong effect, social media likely isn't a major cause of teen depression. A strong result might explain at least 10 percent or 20 percent of the variation in depression rates by difference in social media use, but the cited studies typically claim to explain 1 percent or 2 percent or less. These levels of correlations can always be found even among totally unrelated variables in observational social science studies. Moreover the studies do not find the same or similar correlations, their conclusions are all over the map." [2] https://www.afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic https://www.afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epi...
HumblyTossed 3y ago
> May be kids of now will just need to be educated about the real impact and not be treated as if they are in glass houses? The problem with this argument is that TV had ads and while they are manipulative, they are absolutely no match for the shit that Meta, YouTube, etc pull. Kids (and quite obviously lots of adults) simply do not have the ability to deal with that.
yawboakye 3y ago
tv, computer, radio, social media, and more broadly the internet, are mediums of communication and distribution. what tv content/substance did you grow up with? is that in and way comparable to the content/substance kids these days grow up with? the ban is on the medium but the import is on the content. too much junk on the internet these days. it doesn’t help that (1) they’re way cheaper to produce, and unfortunately (2) highly rewarded (by the platform owners) for their ability to keep users glued. until it’s possible to have strong and reliable filters, the only way to protect tender minds is through controlled exposure.
indigo0086 3y ago
Agree and disagree. Kids can't really understand the negative impact of the things made to alter their mind, and since their parents are responsible for them, it's their job not to just explain, but to do their best to limit or participate in their usage. This is only difficult if your children are not in your presence 24/7 (public school, hanging out at malls, etc).
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  > This is only difficult if your children are not in your presence 24/7 (public school, hanging out at malls, etc). So you're just saying it is difficult.
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    It's the paradox of being a parent that is commonly hoisted upon you. If you hang too close you're a helicopter parent. If you aren't around and they do something wrong idiots scream "where are the parents!?"
lupusreal 3y ago
What if it was the responsibility of parents to make sure their kids didn't smoke cigarettes, but it was legal for stores to sell cigarettes to kids? Responsible parents could tell their children they are forbidden from buying them, explain all the reasons why it's bad, and then kids could just walk into a store and buy them anyway. Putting it all on parents doesn't work, parents aren't capable of supervising 24/7 and it isn't reasonable to act like they are or should be.
- reacharavindh 3y ago
  That's a fair point. The more I think about it, I can see the argument for protecting someone against a known bad thing at a point when they cannot comprehend how bad it really is. The magnitude is different from watching TV, porn magazines, or video games. However, I do worry that the earlier list can be gated because of their physical nature. However, Kids are going to end up being exposed to Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, and whatever else unless one cuts off Internet access altogether, at which point the losses pile up more than the wins.. There is no easy solution than to admit this problem will exist, and we talk often to the teenager and give doses of reality however possible.
smileysteve 3y ago
Lol at the infinite channels on TV part really highlighting. As an adult, I don't have cable, I use an antenna. Yes, I have streaming some streaming services. As adults and/or parents we can make decisions that help our kids (and they might help us too) I also use Adblock. The TV argument is the same as devices too; We had one family TV growing up; I still refuse to have a TV in my bedroom. In conclusion, seems like we've hit the generation where our parents used TV to parent and so now we don't know how to parents -- or, for many people, be.
ricardobeat 3y ago
Did you get exposed to far right propaganda, dehumanizing women, incitations of violence, practical suggestions of suicide, cartoons about rape followed by pregnancy and a miscarriage, or similar content on TV when you were a kid? This is the kind of shit that’s everywhere on YT now, and your kids will stumble upon (father of one here). The “faces of death” stuff we had access to once in a blue moon is not even close.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

aurareturn 3y ago

I think there are magnitudes and cliffs for this stuff. TV --> has quality control, professionally done, goes through a team of editors/creators before making it onto the screen Early internet --> Mostly harmless content, can find dark stuff if kids look for it but it's pretty hard to find. More dangerous than TV but not too bad. SMS --> just chatting with people you know. Not afraid. TikTok, IG Reels, Youtube Shorts, Snapchat, Twitter: Good luck to you. Your kid is going to see a ton of deep fakes, edited images of unrealistic body proportions that the influencer won't disclose, heaps of radical and extremist views, undisclosed sponsorships masquerading as advice, targeted ads that anyone can buy, etc. The magnitude is much higher now - hence I think laws need to come in to make it easier for parents to get back some control. Go ahead and try to teach your kid who is going to spend hours each day seeing hundreds of videos each day - probably tens of thousands in a year. What are you going to do? Watch 100 Instagram Reels per day with your kid and explain each and every single one? As an adult, even I'm easily influenced by this stuff.

freedomben 3y ago
You make a fair point. I think you have won me over philosophically. However, there is still the pragmatic and realistic approach to consider. Personally, I think moving to a world where internet content is gated behind ID checks is a terrible and horrible precedent to set that is going to have ramifications far beyond simply protecting teens who are under 16. As a parent of teenagers who are falling into this trap right now, it is something I am gravely concerned about. I am no tech, lightweight, and blocking and even regulating. This stuff is pretty much impossible. Short of helicopter parenting your child at all times. Nor do I think that sort of heavy-handed regulation is necessarily healthy, although that depends very much on the age in my opinion. But what does a world look like where every website and app has to, for liability reasons alone, assume that everyone is underage before proving that they are not?
vel0city 3y ago
Also TVs since 2000 in the US were all required to support v-chip which allowed parents to set restrictions on content. Getting around v-chip could often be somewhat complicated. Meanwhile it is usually pretty trivial to get around parental control software on computers.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  My parents couldn't switch inputs on the TV, there's zero chance they could configure a v-chip without my help. Most of my friends' parents were the same way. I don't think this technology had the impact you think it had.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
> Early internet --> Mostly harmless content, can find dark stuff if kids look for it but it's pretty hard to find. More dangerous than TV but not too bad. In the early 90's the dark stuff was mixed in with the porn. If you were looking for porn on the internet before it was available on web browsers, aka on usenet or anonymous FTP, you got exposed to the dark stuff. And I'm fairly confident that a large percentage of teens using the Internet in the pre-WWW age were looking for porn.
odessacubbage 3y ago
as a parent you have all the control. why does your kid need a tablet? why do they need a smart phone like at all? these devices did not just magically materialize in your home, the tooth fairy didn't put them there. you chose to plop your toddler in front of a screen because electronic vicodin was easier than parenting and then you chose not to lock down their devices with the abundant parental controls you are given and then you decided you couldn't be assed to teach them basic internet safety habits or how to develop healthy skepticism and that seeing isn't always believing. really the only thing your children have been '''exposed to''' is your own laziness and utter unwillingness to offer them direction. the world will continue to exist whether we like it or not, and some day our kids will have to live in it just like we do. we can either prepare them for what's really there, warts and all or we can hide them away only toss them to the wolves when they turn 18 with the delusion that this somehow preserved their innocence. i personally believe giving them the grace of a childhood to learn how to deal with the bumpy parts of life is a much kinder option.
smileysteve 3y ago
Your look back fails at VHS tapes or home video though. It also fails at abusive or addicted family members.

KaiserPro 3y ago

I understand what you are getting at, but to inject some nuance: TV, print, radio, music and to a lesser extent games are all subject to some level of industry or statutory content regulation. For example, in America, you're very unlikely to have a kids TV channel suddenly switch to videos of people being killed in industrial accidents. new media, not so much. Watershed, age constraints and company ending fines existed (and in some cases still do) for violating those rules. Large new media companies, such as facebook, youtube and tiktok can literally serve porn to kids and not have any legal ramifications. If a cable broadcaster knowingly broadcast frontal nudity before watershed, it would be fined. (yes, cable TV has less restrictions) but thats the point, regulation has not kept up with the pace of change. that has been a deliberate decision. My kids are >5 < 12. They aren't allowed on insta/tiktok. They can have youtube, but its only when supervised. even then its 1/3 chance that they land on something toxic as shit. The world has changed, and the guard rails that we had as kids have been removed. There is an argument about freedom of expression, I get that. But we need to think about whether its right to allow large corporations to profit from showing horrific content to minors. (adults, I don't give a shit, do what you want) The problem is, I'm not sure of the best mechanism, with the least bad outcome.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
25 years ago us kids were watching viral content on the internet that wasn’t even acceptable to go on youtube then or now. Still today, we are now your young doctors and lawyers and young business executives, despite all the quite disturbing viral content that characterized the early 2000s internet. I think we did fine and I think the kids will be alright too.
- nozzlegear 3y ago
  Who is us kids? I assume you’re talking about 4Chan? I wasn’t watching what I’d describe as disturbing viral content 25 years ago.
- vel0city 3y ago
  25 years ago most people didn't even have a broadband connection in their home much less any kind of mobile data plan. 25 years ago kids didn't walk around with challenging to audit handheld computers. The computer, if your family had one, was that one big thing shared with the whole family that an adult could pop their head in and see what the child was up to. That some kids (an incredibly tiny fraction) did have unrestricted access to the internet and turned out fine isn't indicative of the general population of kids having this kind of exposure and being fine. If in 1999 you had internet fast enough to really download many many hours of videos without being audited by a parent you were probably the 1% of 1% of 1% of child populations. A high percentage of households didn't even have internet at all. In 2000 only 1% of US households even had broadband internet. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-bro...

heresie-dabord 3y ago

> May be [sic] kids of now will just need to be educated about the real impact Education about the real impact will not happen if there is profit to be made in forsaking education.

msluyter 3y ago

I think the empirical evidence is fairly clear, actually.[1][2] Having struggled with various forms of screen addiction myself, I find it sort of odd that a lot of people are so laissez faire about giving children the most addictive device ever created.[3] Whether or not this law is a good idea, I think it's incumbent on parents to monitor and limit screen time and access to social media. Which is difficult! When my wife and I are tired, setting my daughter down in front of an ipad is the easiest way to get a break. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X19300880 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23522... [2] https://jeanmtwenge.substack.com/p/yes-its-the-phones-and-social-media https://jeanmtwenge.substack.com/p/yes-its-the-phones-and-so... [3] Sure, it's not technically "the device," itself, but rather what it makes possible.

mike_hearn 3y ago
It's risky to describe the claims of social studies profs as clear empirical evidence, given the history of the field. Twenge makes some unscientific arguments in her blog post, like constantly conflating correlation with causation despite her evidence not being able to show that. She also seems to think that if she knocks down a series of counter-arguments, then that means that her own argument must be correct. Given that Haidt's identical claims already turned out to be based on very poor quality evidence [1], their argumentation must be examined carefully before rushing to action. Still, assume for a moment that it's a correct causal inference despite the major flaws in their evidence base. There's another tricky aspect to this. The Twenge/Haidt argument is really only about teenage girls. Although Haidt is basically honest about this (see [2]), Twenge is not. The opening of her article you cite talks about teenagers in general, but the first figure only shows data for girls and women. Then the second figure is even captioned "Figure 2: tech adoption, teen depression" but the legend actually says "Depression, girls". A few paragraphs later she's making claims about "individuals" whilst providing evidence that's once again specific to teenage girls. Her article is full of sloppy conflations like this. Anyway, needless to say, neither politicians nor academics are willing to only ban social media for girls. This would upset the left so the argument morphs seamlessly into "social media should be banned for all teenagers" which isn't a story found in their data. This punishes boys for the mental health problems of girls, but is that just? There's also a more subtle logical problem with this argument. It assumes that teenagers are a fixed group, and thus any change in their behavior must be due to some immediate alteration to their environment. But it's not: "teenage" is a sliding window that people constantly pass through. In other words it's possible that these depressed teens have always been somehow messed up, and simply aged into the categorization they're looking at. By implication the true answer could be found in earlier periods, even as far as back as changes to childrearing practices in the late 80s/early 90s rather than something that changed specifically in 2012. One theory posits that it's something to do with the rise of extremely early daycare for infants (e.g. for children less than one or two years old), and they also have a variety of correlations to bolster their case. It may be that social studies academics simply cannot answer such questions. [1] https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evidence-that-social-media-is-causing-the-teen-mental-health-crisis/ https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evide... "Haidt's compendium of research does point to one important finding: Because these studies have failed to produce a single strong effect, social media likely isn't a major cause of teen depression. A strong result might explain at least 10 percent or 20 percent of the variation in depression rates by difference in social media use, but the cited studies typically claim to explain 1 percent or 2 percent or less. These levels of correlations can always be found even among totally unrelated variables in observational social science studies. Moreover the studies do not find the same or similar correlations, their conclusions are all over the map." [2] https://www.afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic https://www.afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epi...

HumblyTossed 3y ago

> May be kids of now will just need to be educated about the real impact and not be treated as if they are in glass houses? The problem with this argument is that TV had ads and while they are manipulative, they are absolutely no match for the shit that Meta, YouTube, etc pull. Kids (and quite obviously lots of adults) simply do not have the ability to deal with that.

yawboakye 3y ago

tv, computer, radio, social media, and more broadly the internet, are mediums of communication and distribution. what tv content/substance did you grow up with? is that in and way comparable to the content/substance kids these days grow up with? the ban is on the medium but the import is on the content. too much junk on the internet these days. it doesn’t help that (1) they’re way cheaper to produce, and unfortunately (2) highly rewarded (by the platform owners) for their ability to keep users glued. until it’s possible to have strong and reliable filters, the only way to protect tender minds is through controlled exposure.

indigo0086 3y ago

Agree and disagree. Kids can't really understand the negative impact of the things made to alter their mind, and since their parents are responsible for them, it's their job not to just explain, but to do their best to limit or participate in their usage. This is only difficult if your children are not in your presence 24/7 (public school, hanging out at malls, etc).

AlexandrB 3y ago
> This is only difficult if your children are not in your presence 24/7 (public school, hanging out at malls, etc). So you're just saying it is difficult.
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  It's the paradox of being a parent that is commonly hoisted upon you. If you hang too close you're a helicopter parent. If you aren't around and they do something wrong idiots scream "where are the parents!?"

lupusreal 3y ago

What if it was the responsibility of parents to make sure their kids didn't smoke cigarettes, but it was legal for stores to sell cigarettes to kids? Responsible parents could tell their children they are forbidden from buying them, explain all the reasons why it's bad, and then kids could just walk into a store and buy them anyway. Putting it all on parents doesn't work, parents aren't capable of supervising 24/7 and it isn't reasonable to act like they are or should be.

reacharavindh 3y ago
That's a fair point. The more I think about it, I can see the argument for protecting someone against a known bad thing at a point when they cannot comprehend how bad it really is. The magnitude is different from watching TV, porn magazines, or video games. However, I do worry that the earlier list can be gated because of their physical nature. However, Kids are going to end up being exposed to Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, and whatever else unless one cuts off Internet access altogether, at which point the losses pile up more than the wins.. There is no easy solution than to admit this problem will exist, and we talk often to the teenager and give doses of reality however possible.

smileysteve 3y ago

Lol at the infinite channels on TV part really highlighting. As an adult, I don't have cable, I use an antenna. Yes, I have streaming some streaming services. As adults and/or parents we can make decisions that help our kids (and they might help us too) I also use Adblock. The TV argument is the same as devices too; We had one family TV growing up; I still refuse to have a TV in my bedroom. In conclusion, seems like we've hit the generation where our parents used TV to parent and so now we don't know how to parents -- or, for many people, be.

ricardobeat 3y ago

Did you get exposed to far right propaganda, dehumanizing women, incitations of violence, practical suggestions of suicide, cartoons about rape followed by pregnancy and a miscarriage, or similar content on TV when you were a kid? This is the kind of shit that’s everywhere on YT now, and your kids will stumble upon (father of one here). The “faces of death” stuff we had access to once in a blue moon is not even close.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]