5 ms·

> It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not Yep. The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating

by whstl 3y ago

> It doesn't matter whether you abstain from using Instagram or not Yep. The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating and ostracizing, especially for teenagers. Avoiding the problems of social media requires skills and restraint that even most adults don’t have. It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.

tossandthrow 3y ago
> Avoiding the problems of social media requires skills and restraint that even most adults don’t have. The parent commenter propose that you can not escape the negative consequences of social media, even if you fully restrain yourself, as you have the second order effects from your friends using it. The parent commenter says that this is not an individual problem and cannot be solved on an individual level. It is a macro issue. Just like you stopping eating meat will not really make a dent on global warming. I think that is very insightful.
- pas 3y ago
  Where you put your time/attention/money matters a lot though. For you and your friends/family. And even more for those small(er) alternative services/products/markets/communities.
myspy 3y ago
That's true. We restrict access to Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, FB, they can use WhatsApp, YT, iMessage, Phone and Pinterest. I'm fucking annoyed by other parents that don't set boundaries that way. I have so much discussions about other platforms. Pushing them to physically meet is hard too. We grew up at a time where SMS was a thing when I became 16. I know that keeping up is cool, but social media is a disease. The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn't even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall. I'm annoyed mainly because people around me make bad decisions that have an influence on my own life.
- nicolas_t 3y ago
  One of the criteria I used when choosing my son's school is that mobile phones are not allowed at all in school. It's a primary school (until 12 years old) so you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age but from what I've heard of other parents, smart phones are common already this early. I don't believe in completely forbidding access to everything when my son is older but there's a time to introducing things like this and it's not this young.
  - RGamma 3y ago
    > you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age Elsagate videos got many tens (hundreds?) of millions of views at the time. If you know where to look you can see the cumulative engagement of babies in front of their tablets.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      There's this old stat about video games, oft quoted a decade or more ago in context of Zynga, etc., that one of the largest game market is casual games, and the players are predominantly working-age women. There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices.
      - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
        > There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices. I also wonder what the breakdown of Netflix streaming hours is. I suspect a huge chunk of it is just toddlers and pre-schoolers watching the same episodes of Cocomelon over and over again.
    - RGamma 3y ago
      Edit: E.g. see this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaqTWtLZgs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaqTWtLZgs (What If 10 SPIDER-MAN in 1 HOUSE ??? || Hey All SuperHero , Go To Trainning Nerf Gun !!) 50M views with lovely comments such as "Ujhgjjgfgk", "ĤĎĎ hcl jdjdsewi10000000000", "nnnmkkk", etc. This sort of shit gets billions of views...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wonderwonder 3y ago
Florida has banned social media for under 14's starting Jan, 2025. Generally I am against government overreach and sometimes they make very odd decisions like campaigning to ban lab engineered meat in the state but on this I very much agree. Just remove social media as an option for those that are very young. Its easy to say, that's the parents responsibility and that is a correct statement but most families require 2 working parents these days, most of whom are not tech savvy enough to understand how to limit social media or access to questionable sites. Social media is an addictive, mind altering poison by design. Through the pervasiveness of echo chambers and intentionally addictive features such as endless scrolling and recommendations it seeks to do nothing except turn its users into revenue by keeping them online and seeing / clicking ads. I lost my sister to it as she became so wrapped in the political side of it that any belief besides hers and those she followed meant you were a borderline nazi.
- Shocka1 3y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly, and sorry about losing your sister. It's too bad we won't see the results of Florida's new law for several years to come.
Andrex 3y ago
> The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating and ostracizing, especially for teenagers. Sorry, I see this a lot but: oh well? They'll get over it. Social media on the other hand gets its hooks in deep. If every teenager were guzzling gallons of soda everyday and telling them to stop "alienated and ostracized" them, I'd still do it for the good of their health.
- slothtrop 3y ago
  > oh well? They'll get over it. Alienation and ostracization is not something to be taken lightly.
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    I mean back up for second… We know that kids on social media are suffering depression and etc. So… if you keep your kid off of that drug, you are saying they’re not going to be accepted by the addicts and peers that are suffering? Ok? Good? We know what conformity to the group of damaged friends can do to a kid. I’ll be okay raising the social outcast if the society is this damaged.
    - slothtrop 3y ago
      > We know that kids on social media are suffering depression and etc. We know it raises likelihood, that doesn't mean they're all depressed and anxious across the board, and those afflictions are on a gradient. Younger generations appear to be optimizing for it more effectively. It doesn't make sense to cast society at large as "suffering and addicted". Downstream from that, the downsides of sheltering your children from society loom larger than their being socialized among peers who use social media. > I’ll be okay raising the social outcast if the society is this damaged. You do that.
      - Andrex 3y ago
        > > I’ll be okay raising the social outcast if the society is this damaged. > You do that. You don't hear really about Amish kids killing themselves. Maybe there's something there.
KaiserPro 3y ago
> It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. if thats the case, then surely it would be reflected in the studies? (assuming that the studies are reproducible....)
trgn 3y ago
> It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. If you run against convention too much, even when convention is wrong, you become the zealot guardian, which conjures a family situation with its own distinct pathologies.
- whstl 3y ago
  Exactly.

by whstl 3y ago

tossandthrow 3y ago

> Avoiding the problems of social media requires skills and restraint that even most adults don’t have. The parent commenter propose that you can not escape the negative consequences of social media, even if you fully restrain yourself, as you have the second order effects from your friends using it. The parent commenter says that this is not an individual problem and cannot be solved on an individual level. It is a macro issue. Just like you stopping eating meat will not really make a dent on global warming. I think that is very insightful.

pas 3y ago
Where you put your time/attention/money matters a lot though. For you and your friends/family. And even more for those small(er) alternative services/products/markets/communities.

myspy 3y ago

That's true. We restrict access to Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, FB, they can use WhatsApp, YT, iMessage, Phone and Pinterest. I'm fucking annoyed by other parents that don't set boundaries that way. I have so much discussions about other platforms. Pushing them to physically meet is hard too. We grew up at a time where SMS was a thing when I became 16. I know that keeping up is cool, but social media is a disease. The amount of dumb and uneducated people that couldn't even listen to expert advice during a fucking pandemic is driving me up the wall. I'm annoyed mainly because people around me make bad decisions that have an influence on my own life.

nicolas_t 3y ago
One of the criteria I used when choosing my son's school is that mobile phones are not allowed at all in school. It's a primary school (until 12 years old) so you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age but from what I've heard of other parents, smart phones are common already this early. I don't believe in completely forbidding access to everything when my son is older but there's a time to introducing things like this and it's not this young.
- RGamma 3y ago
  > you wouldn't think that mobile phones would be that common at that age Elsagate videos got many tens (hundreds?) of millions of views at the time. If you know where to look you can see the cumulative engagement of babies in front of their tablets.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    There's this old stat about video games, oft quoted a decade or more ago in context of Zynga, etc., that one of the largest game market is casual games, and the players are predominantly working-age women. There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices.
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
      > There's also this hypothesis I saw the other day, that the above is a misattribution: it's not the working-age women who somehow have time to play so much, but rather babies and kids playing on their mothers' devices. I also wonder what the breakdown of Netflix streaming hours is. I suspect a huge chunk of it is just toddlers and pre-schoolers watching the same episodes of Cocomelon over and over again.
  - RGamma 3y ago
    Edit: E.g. see this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaqTWtLZgs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaqTWtLZgs (What If 10 SPIDER-MAN in 1 HOUSE ??? || Hey All SuperHero , Go To Trainning Nerf Gun !!) 50M views with lovely comments such as "Ujhgjjgfgk", "ĤĎĎ hcl jdjdsewi10000000000", "nnnmkkk", etc. This sort of shit gets billions of views...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

wonderwonder 3y ago

Florida has banned social media for under 14's starting Jan, 2025. Generally I am against government overreach and sometimes they make very odd decisions like campaigning to ban lab engineered meat in the state but on this I very much agree. Just remove social media as an option for those that are very young. Its easy to say, that's the parents responsibility and that is a correct statement but most families require 2 working parents these days, most of whom are not tech savvy enough to understand how to limit social media or access to questionable sites. Social media is an addictive, mind altering poison by design. Through the pervasiveness of echo chambers and intentionally addictive features such as endless scrolling and recommendations it seeks to do nothing except turn its users into revenue by keeping them online and seeing / clicking ads. I lost my sister to it as she became so wrapped in the political side of it that any belief besides hers and those she followed meant you were a borderline nazi.

Shocka1 3y ago
I agree wholeheartedly, and sorry about losing your sister. It's too bad we won't see the results of Florida's new law for several years to come.

Andrex 3y ago

> The other problem is that not having social media and mobile devices can be alienating and ostracizing, especially for teenagers. Sorry, I see this a lot but: oh well? They'll get over it. Social media on the other hand gets its hooks in deep. If every teenager were guzzling gallons of soda everyday and telling them to stop "alienated and ostracized" them, I'd still do it for the good of their health.

slothtrop 3y ago
> oh well? They'll get over it. Alienation and ostracization is not something to be taken lightly.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  I mean back up for second… We know that kids on social media are suffering depression and etc. So… if you keep your kid off of that drug, you are saying they’re not going to be accepted by the addicts and peers that are suffering? Ok? Good? We know what conformity to the group of damaged friends can do to a kid. I’ll be okay raising the social outcast if the society is this damaged.
  - slothtrop 3y ago
    > We know that kids on social media are suffering depression and etc. We know it raises likelihood, that doesn't mean they're all depressed and anxious across the board, and those afflictions are on a gradient. Younger generations appear to be optimizing for it more effectively. It doesn't make sense to cast society at large as "suffering and addicted". Downstream from that, the downsides of sheltering your children from society loom larger than their being socialized among peers who use social media. > I’ll be okay raising the social outcast if the society is this damaged. You do that.
    - Andrex 3y ago
      > > I’ll be okay raising the social outcast if the society is this damaged. > You do that. You don't hear really about Amish kids killing themselves. Maybe there's something there.

KaiserPro 3y ago

> It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. if thats the case, then surely it would be reflected in the studies? (assuming that the studies are reproducible....)

trgn 3y ago

> It is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. If you run against convention too much, even when convention is wrong, you become the zealot guardian, which conjures a family situation with its own distinct pathologies.

whstl 3y ago
Exactly.