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As a parent, I’m concerned about social media, and it has been more or less impossible to stop my teens from using it. They were jailbreaking and using VPNs and

• mock-possum 3y ago
  Yeah, what a weird spooky coincidence that someone like DeSantis would make a move that’s cut off kids’ means to countermand their parents’ information lockout. Send them to a private school, or even better, homeschool, control what kind of people they make friends with, keep them busy with church and Sunday school and bible study, burn the books and defund the public libraries, control what music they listen to and what shows and films they watch and the games they play… and, of course, control their means of communication. Heaven forbid your child ever be exposed to anything that might make them question the reality of this little garden of Eden you’ve imprisoned them in.
  • dahart 3y ago
    I’m not in favor of the DeSantis law for the above reasons. You appear to be against this law as well, so I’m a little baffled why you’ve turned that on me and imagined a whole lot of stuff I didn’t say. Am I correct in deducing that you are not a parent yet? I’m not religious, but this law we’re commenting on is coming from a group of people that are pandering to religion, and this law is a direct part of that effort. I didn’t try to control my kids “information” other than when they were young trying to make the really nasty stuff not come up first or by default or on accident. They weren’t security conscious, because they were kids, so white/black lists preventing malware, phishing, and viruses seemed prudent. They also didn’t have a ton of self control, and games are infinitely more tempting than school work, chores, and even self-care and sleep, so screen time limits are useful. For example, we had multiple pee in the pants and on the couch accidents because our kids were so focused on playing games they wouldn’t stop to go to the bathroom. Google used to have a bad habit, when “safe mode” was turned off, of taking an innocuous search about human bodies and returning very hard core porn. We had an accident with one of our kids who searched carefully and incrementally for “naked ladies on the beach” and got back a list of pictures and videos of anal sex gang bangs. This was with a kid younger than 10, and the very week this happened to us, Google announced in a press release that it would start returning results that were more closely aligned with the literal search query, and it was instantly obvious to us what they meant and why they needed that. So anyway, this is all to ask, maybe cool your jets so you’re not attacking people who might otherwise agree with you? Parental controls have legitimate functions that are not about cutting kids off from the world, and if/when you have kids you will come to understand it and probably try to use some parental controls too. Parental controls are not on & off; the term represents a whole spectrum of goals and options. Even the most absolute and strict use of parental controls, which is rare among any parents I know, is automatically less of a totalitarian option than disallowing any screen time or mobile device use.
• thomastjeffery 3y ago
  I'm an exmormon who grew up in Utah. I have seen a very significant amount of positive engagement over social media with people who desperately need it. My state's version of this law is to force ID-verification for porn sites. For that stated purpose, it isn't even remotely effective. But what about convincing a child to admit to their parents (or Mormon Bishop) that they watch pornography? That's where it gets truly concerning.
• ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
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  • kevingadd 3y ago
    Yes, because gender issues didn't exist until the internet did. They definitely didn't exist decades or centuries ago: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-his...
    • ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
      [flagged]
    • hackable_sand 3y ago
      Good read! I learned something really cool today :) Here's something for you! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Bugis_society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Bugis_society
  • rymiel 3y ago
    Did you even read what they said? Your fantasy is debunked by the post itself. It's also debunked by reality, but oh well
  • dahart 3y ago
    We did consider the idea that online activity might have contributed. That was before we recognized that the issues were present long before her online activity ever began, and before we understood how our child’s perspective, and before we knew more about the stats and indicators. Now that we’ve thought about it for a few more years, and been working through the issues with professionals, and talking a lot with our children, and listening to a lot of talking points from all sides (some educated and evidence based, and some not very educated at all), we feel a little embarrassed about our initial naïveté, regretful about the ways we failed to support our child even when we thought we were being supportive, sorry for all the kids going through this that don’t have any support system, and concerned about the damage that these culture wars are having on our society and democracy. Social media might be contributing to gender issues and other kinds of social dysphoria in the sense that I am pretty sure the vast ocean of ignorance, prejudiced attitudes, and hate speech my kids find online have increased their fears about participating in society and reduced their confidence in being able to freely show who they are. Non-binary gender and sexuality is only a “problem” because some people say it is, and a lot of those people are online being mean. Personally I feel like the political tribalism going on in our country is a much worse problem than gender issues by many orders of magnitude. Anyway, I’m just glad my kids have some family and friends and adults near them, both online and IRL, who are accepting and loving and committed to civil rights for all…
• mixmastamyk 3y ago
  If there were anything else that harmed over 90% of kids while potentially helping a remainder we’d generally prohibit it. I’ve known and worked with folks facing mental health issues over the decades and usually these kind of issues come from within. The idea that instagram is a cure-all for teen self-harm is not supported. Anecdata—we knew a teen recently with very supportive parents and a smartphone and it didn’t stop a suicide attempt. Direct intervention did.
  • dahart 3y ago
    I did not even suggest that Instagram helps with teen self-harm at all. It’d be great if we could discuss this without straw men or sniping argumentation. My kid found support from friends online, at a time when she felt like she wasn’t getting the right amount from the people in her life, which to my chargrin, included me. Direct intervention has helped, and online activity alone wasn’t going to stop everything. Direct intervention alone wasn’t going to stop everything either, and it’s important to know that the wrong kinds of direct intervention can make the problem worse. (I’m worried the DeSantis law is the wrong kind of direct intervention, for example.) Since you work with people with mental health issues, then you know full well that neither my story nor yours is a one-and-done situation. A single intervention is never the start nor the end of the story, and preventing suicide for people with depression & dysphoria is a continuous effort with lots of different forces pulling and pushing.
    • mixmastamyk 3y ago
      That was a unimportant random example, congrats for running with it. Should have been in quotes I guess. Change to “social media.”