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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 do

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...
KaiserPro 3y ago
I did too, but I would gently point out that you had to actively look for it. something rotten was a known site for that kinda stuff. You only went there if you were doing "illicit browsing" shall we say. It was pretty difficult to stumble over a video of something visceral. Moreover, the internet wasn't real when we grew up. The internet is real and omnipresent, filled with the mountains of clickbated bullshit, and only ever three videos away from some sort of porn(if you're lucky).
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  We had chatroullette too for our more sporadic visceral disturbances, also live leak existed then.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    You did not have Chatroulette (2009) and Liveleak (2006) 25 years ago.
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  SomethingAwful.com and rotten.com were two separate sites, as a historical note.
  - KaiserPro 3y ago
    sorry yes, thank you for the correction.
alfor 3y ago
Just look at birth rate, depression, etc. You will see we are in a dead end. I don't think this law will change the trend unless there is major concerted effort. Boys have access to so much porn and gaming that they are checking out of real life. Girls have their problems too with social media.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Porn and gaming? Really? Boys had this in spades for 35 years. Longer if you count the pinball wizard/hustler magazine under the bed era.
  - alfor 3y ago
    One smugled magazine in the 90' are now replaced with infinite video of increasing hardcore stuff delivered to the phone in the bedroom.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    There's a world of difference between a 90's Hustler magazine and near infinite modern internet porn. They're practically incomparable.
mmkos 3y ago
You really can't speak for everyone. You can maybe say this particular cohort is fine despite seeing some of this content while young, but certainly not because of it.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
And 40 years ago kids were watching bootleg copies of Faces of Death. Yes, kids get to that stuff. The problem is FoD doesn't even hold a candle to the manipulative shit that social media does to kids.
- kcplate 3y ago
  It was not all that easy to get a copy of Faces of Death back then, so it was something you might have saw once maybe twice but that violent real death before your eyes was not something that you ever became de-sensitized to because those visuals were exceedingly rare by the scarcity of the content at the time(at least in the US). So that morbid curiosity itch was scratched and then you moved on. Short of the few weird kids that watched that shit over and over, you probably never watched the whole thing. I know I think I watched 10 mins back in the day before it was turned off and we went out to find some beer instead. Now, real violence and death is a search term away and available every minute, hour, and day. But agree…even that exposure to violence now pales in comparison to the amplification of the negative peer pressures that kids today experience due to social media. At least back in the day when you were away from your peers you could escape it and gain respite. Now its constant.
haswell 3y ago
There’s some survivorship bias here. Not everyone who was exposed to disturbing content is unaffected or can move past it so easily. And in 2024, it’s far more likely to encounter something you had no intention of seeing. It’s worth thinking about the social climate right now as the long tail of the last 25-30 years of technology advancement. Mass shootings are so common now they often don’t even register on people’s radar. These effects are so complex that we’re still trying to figure out how to measure them, but we should take seriously the power and danger of the instant wide distribution of the worst elements of humanity. I grew up on the old Internet, and made some of my most important friendships using it. It shaped who I am today, mostly for the better. But I don’t think we can let nostalgia or even the many benefits blind us to what the Internet has become or the real harms that come along with those benefits.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  > And in 2024, it’s far more likely to encounter something you had no intention of seeing. Strongly disagree. I haven't stumbled on "goatse" level shock imagery in years. Sure you might encounter stuff you had no intention of seeing, but that's only because you're being funnelled into link farms or other for-profit crapware flooding the internet. It's very rare to stumble on something disturbing.
  - KaiserPro 3y ago
    In the last year I have seen (on facebook no less): various levels of war crime the killing of people at close quarters (with the last sound that they made, which still haunts me) A sniper killing someone taking a poo. These were nestled in amongst memes, which were fun and engaging. None of them had content warnings. goatse wasn't all that shocking to me, because he is very much alive. 2 girls one cup is at least a ramp into skat, rather than straight in. Now, if a 16 year old saw that, I'd probably not worry too much, I wouldn't be happy. But if my 10 year old, or 6 year old saw that, I'd have a whole load of emotional clean up to do.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    Goatse is tame as fuck by modern internet standards.
luplex 3y ago
I don't think the main problem with social media is the occasional inappropriate content. The main problem is that most of the "appropriate" content is soul-sucking, biased, addictive and empty of substance.
- geraldhh 3y ago
  > most of the "appropriate" content is soul-sucking, biased, addictive and empty of substance sounds a lot like tv
  - hgomersall 3y ago
    We carefully vet what our 6yo watches on TV. You're right - not much passes muster.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Or really all other media. If you think print isn’t also biased, addictive, and lacking substance you need to read less nyt and more chomsky
  - bear141 3y ago
    While a lot of this can definitely sound like an old man yelling at the sky, tv compared to scrolling tiktok, is like caffeine compared to crack cocaine.
rozap 3y ago
imo there's a difference between goatse type momentary shock sites that we grew up with and social media that pervades every waking minute of a kid's life. Yea, the former is gross, but the latter seems like it has real lasting psychological ramifications with regard to popularity contests, body image, etc. all the things that kids already struggle with, social media turns up to 11.

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...

KaiserPro 3y ago

I did too, but I would gently point out that you had to actively look for it. something rotten was a known site for that kinda stuff. You only went there if you were doing "illicit browsing" shall we say. It was pretty difficult to stumble over a video of something visceral. Moreover, the internet wasn't real when we grew up. The internet is real and omnipresent, filled with the mountains of clickbated bullshit, and only ever three videos away from some sort of porn(if you're lucky).

kjkjadksj 3y ago
We had chatroullette too for our more sporadic visceral disturbances, also live leak existed then.
- vel0city 3y ago
  You did not have Chatroulette (2009) and Liveleak (2006) 25 years ago.
singleshot_ 3y ago
SomethingAwful.com and rotten.com were two separate sites, as a historical note.
- KaiserPro 3y ago
  sorry yes, thank you for the correction.

alfor 3y ago

Just look at birth rate, depression, etc. You will see we are in a dead end. I don't think this law will change the trend unless there is major concerted effort. Boys have access to so much porn and gaming that they are checking out of real life. Girls have their problems too with social media.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
Porn and gaming? Really? Boys had this in spades for 35 years. Longer if you count the pinball wizard/hustler magazine under the bed era.
- alfor 3y ago
  One smugled magazine in the 90' are now replaced with infinite video of increasing hardcore stuff delivered to the phone in the bedroom.
- vel0city 3y ago
  There's a world of difference between a 90's Hustler magazine and near infinite modern internet porn. They're practically incomparable.

mmkos 3y ago

You really can't speak for everyone. You can maybe say this particular cohort is fine despite seeing some of this content while young, but certainly not because of it.

HumblyTossed 3y ago

And 40 years ago kids were watching bootleg copies of Faces of Death. Yes, kids get to that stuff. The problem is FoD doesn't even hold a candle to the manipulative shit that social media does to kids.

kcplate 3y ago
It was not all that easy to get a copy of Faces of Death back then, so it was something you might have saw once maybe twice but that violent real death before your eyes was not something that you ever became de-sensitized to because those visuals were exceedingly rare by the scarcity of the content at the time(at least in the US). So that morbid curiosity itch was scratched and then you moved on. Short of the few weird kids that watched that shit over and over, you probably never watched the whole thing. I know I think I watched 10 mins back in the day before it was turned off and we went out to find some beer instead. Now, real violence and death is a search term away and available every minute, hour, and day. But agree…even that exposure to violence now pales in comparison to the amplification of the negative peer pressures that kids today experience due to social media. At least back in the day when you were away from your peers you could escape it and gain respite. Now its constant.

haswell 3y ago

There’s some survivorship bias here. Not everyone who was exposed to disturbing content is unaffected or can move past it so easily. And in 2024, it’s far more likely to encounter something you had no intention of seeing. It’s worth thinking about the social climate right now as the long tail of the last 25-30 years of technology advancement. Mass shootings are so common now they often don’t even register on people’s radar. These effects are so complex that we’re still trying to figure out how to measure them, but we should take seriously the power and danger of the instant wide distribution of the worst elements of humanity. I grew up on the old Internet, and made some of my most important friendships using it. It shaped who I am today, mostly for the better. But I don’t think we can let nostalgia or even the many benefits blind us to what the Internet has become or the real harms that come along with those benefits.

AlexandrB 3y ago
> And in 2024, it’s far more likely to encounter something you had no intention of seeing. Strongly disagree. I haven't stumbled on "goatse" level shock imagery in years. Sure you might encounter stuff you had no intention of seeing, but that's only because you're being funnelled into link farms or other for-profit crapware flooding the internet. It's very rare to stumble on something disturbing.
- KaiserPro 3y ago
  In the last year I have seen (on facebook no less): various levels of war crime the killing of people at close quarters (with the last sound that they made, which still haunts me) A sniper killing someone taking a poo. These were nestled in amongst memes, which were fun and engaging. None of them had content warnings. goatse wasn't all that shocking to me, because he is very much alive. 2 girls one cup is at least a ramp into skat, rather than straight in. Now, if a 16 year old saw that, I'd probably not worry too much, I wouldn't be happy. But if my 10 year old, or 6 year old saw that, I'd have a whole load of emotional clean up to do.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Goatse is tame as fuck by modern internet standards.

luplex 3y ago

I don't think the main problem with social media is the occasional inappropriate content. The main problem is that most of the "appropriate" content is soul-sucking, biased, addictive and empty of substance.

geraldhh 3y ago
> most of the "appropriate" content is soul-sucking, biased, addictive and empty of substance sounds a lot like tv
- hgomersall 3y ago
  We carefully vet what our 6yo watches on TV. You're right - not much passes muster.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Or really all other media. If you think print isn’t also biased, addictive, and lacking substance you need to read less nyt and more chomsky
- bear141 3y ago
  While a lot of this can definitely sound like an old man yelling at the sky, tv compared to scrolling tiktok, is like caffeine compared to crack cocaine.

rozap 3y ago

imo there's a difference between goatse type momentary shock sites that we grew up with and social media that pervades every waking minute of a kid's life. Yea, the former is gross, but the latter seems like it has real lasting psychological ramifications with regard to popularity contests, body image, etc. all the things that kids already struggle with, social media turns up to 11.