6 ms·

Social media has ruined society, indeed, but only because the exploitability was always there to begin with. Just look at everyone in this thread opting for let

by Funes- 3y ago

Social media has ruined society, indeed, but only because the exploitability was always there to begin with. Just look at everyone in this thread opting for letting their kids cave in to peer pressure and dodging responsibility for their upbringing because "past a certain point" you can't do shit about it, and God forbid they try to develop themselves into a worthwhile adult without using any of those time-sinking, mindless apps, because then they will be "left out". Left out of what? A vile cesspool of shit in which everyone seems to bathe nowadays, at the expense of their potential? Lack of impulse control, no critical thinking, laziness and general negligence have always been at the root cause of many of societal ailments like this one, and until a large enough group of people chooses to come up with healthier alternatives and sacrificing hedonistic and mindless tendencies, they will keep festering across the globe. In the meantime, I absolutely prefer to be "left out" and interacting solely with similar minded people.

hatenberg 3y ago
Guns kill people but that’s only because the vulnerability of the flesh has always been a problem. Like guns, we have a hard time coming to the right conclusions
- BadHumans 3y ago
  What's the right conclusion?
- dylan604 3y ago
  It seems only Americans are struggling with the guns issue, so your conclusion falls very flat
  - commandlinefan 3y ago
    That's true. America is the only country where people are killed by guns in the entire world.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      That's not at all what I said, and you know it. If you want to be trite and contribute nothing positive to the conversation, I would suggest you are in the wrong place
      - Funes- 3y ago
        >That's not at all what I said, and you know it. It's truly appalling the precision with which my experience here for the past five years can be summed up with these exact words you just wrote. And this thread seems but a reenactment of that.
- ed_elliott_asc 3y ago
  We didn’t have any problems outlawing guns in the UK and various other non-American places.
afavour 3y ago
I’m curious, are you a parent?
- lemoncookiechip 3y ago
  Or a kid? The parent comment is either forgetting what it was like being a kid and doing things behind their parents back, not out of disrespect, but because they're young and it's what young people do, they are their own people as much as one might try to control them. Also, good luck ostracizing a child from their peers for their "benefit"? (I remember a time where not having the same brand of clothes would get you ostracized, much less not being in the known of the current gen media) This argument that social media is destroying the youth is the same old tale as old as time. Everything has been destroying the youth and rotting their brains since before anyone on this page was born. The devil music, violence in media, pot, unorthodox romance, (or you know, being a nerdy teen who spent a bit too long on their PC growing up in the 90s and their parents complained it was rotting their brain, which I'm sure a lot of people here can relate to and have made it their professional life) literally everything is destroying children, which we all were once.
  - carimura 3y ago
    As a parent of young children, I'm trying hard not to be the "but this time is different" guy, but it sure feels like this time is different. Just look around any "real world" setting and almost every single person is staring at their little dopamine-releasing devices.
  - jader201 3y ago
    > This argument that social media is destroying the youth is the same old tale as old as time. Everything has been destroying the youth and rotting their brains since before anyone on this page was born. So therefore nothing will ever truly destroy our youth? Obviously not literally, but I can see how social media can have a much more measured negative impact on youth vs. all the things above. I don’t think any of the other things you mention have ever been blamed for also “destroying“ adults, but I’d argue there is evidence that social media is having a measured negative impact on all of society. But especially youth.
lupusreal 3y ago
Even if parents tried to be fully responsible for keeping their kids off social media, it wouldn't actually be possible for them. What you are proposing is akin to a world in which it is wholly the responsibility of parents to stop their kids from smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor, but whenever the parents weren't around kids could walk into a store and buy them legally. Do you expect 24/7 unceasing parental surveillance? Get real. And as for technological means of surveillance and content control, parents here on HN struggle to make that work. The average parent with average tech skills stands virtually no chance of making it work. Kids have been known to do things like get old phones from somebody in school and use it on the neighbor's wifi. Trying to control their devices and access to the internet is basically impossible.
- Funes- 3y ago
  >What you are proposing I did not propose any of the straw-man nonsense that you wrote after this. Nothing in my previous comment implies such a thing. Come on, now.
  - wwweston 3y ago
    Come on yourself. > Just look at everyone in this thread opting for letting their kids cave in to peer pressure and dodging responsibility for their upbringing It’s entirely reasonable to read this as implying that a key issue is parental management of access to social media. And it might even be reasonable to assume you don’t actually care about this topic at levels beyond the self-gratification that comes from assuming a posture of easy contempt, given that’s the majority of what you’re offering by weight.
- maerF0x0 3y ago
  > keeping their kids off social media, it wouldn't actually be possible for them. This is false binary thinking. I would argue that effortful attempts by parents would meaningfully reduce their kids social media usage. Social medias negative effects is a spectrum/sliding scale of effect based on amount of exposure. Even if they cannot entirely keep their kids off social media, they can dampen the usage. Think about alcohol, as a society we focus on keeping kids off alcohol and in the main it works (until we give them free and full access and they experimentally binge, but most regain selfcontrol in short order).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
falcor84 3y ago
It sounds like you want to live in a digital version of a monastery. It's a nice ideal and can work for some, but the vast majority of us do need to live in the full world, with all its flaws, and even if we don't like it, we need to interact with it in order to improve it.
everdrive 3y ago
>Lack of impulse control, no critical thinking, laziness I agree with you, but I believe these qualities are a bit more fixed that people are willing to admit. I'm not suggesting that we can't do better than we're currently doing. Instead that the impulse control & maturity required to handle smart phones and social media responsibly escapes most of the general population in a way that other technologies have not previously. In other words, you can rightly yell at folks that they need more impulse control, intelligence, etc. But you'll be yelling into the void. Most people lack the mental tools to deal with these things successfully, and will keep coming up short.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
It's hard enough convincing exploitable human nature to be thoughtful and empathetic and kind and generous and diligent in the absence of social media. It's like teaching kids to want to eat green vegetables. Natural selection results in people and animals who are impulsive, selfish, greedy, and lazy, it's only by great effort that people can overcome this and be better animals. We naturally trend towards these base instincts like a child trends towards eating the bread and fruit on their dinner plate, ignoring their vegetables. Even children know that actions have consequences, and can demonstrate some self-control. But social media is like a highly addictive candy bar. Completely unregulated, laden with high fructose corn syrup, MSG, and artificial flavors, and (for the sake of analogy) addictive drugs engineered with the only goal being maximum profit. Human nature can only withstand so much! There's no reason to expect our brains to be strong enough to resist the machinations of millions of brilliant engineers with sophisticated technology trying to overcome our self control.
AlexandrB 3y ago
> Social media has ruined society, indeed, but only because the exploitability was always there to begin with. Sounds a lot like gambling. Perhaps we should regulate it the same way.

by Funes- 3y ago

hatenberg 3y ago

Guns kill people but that’s only because the vulnerability of the flesh has always been a problem. Like guns, we have a hard time coming to the right conclusions

BadHumans 3y ago
What's the right conclusion?
dylan604 3y ago
It seems only Americans are struggling with the guns issue, so your conclusion falls very flat
- commandlinefan 3y ago
  That's true. America is the only country where people are killed by guns in the entire world.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    That's not at all what I said, and you know it. If you want to be trite and contribute nothing positive to the conversation, I would suggest you are in the wrong place
    - Funes- 3y ago
      >That's not at all what I said, and you know it. It's truly appalling the precision with which my experience here for the past five years can be summed up with these exact words you just wrote. And this thread seems but a reenactment of that.
ed_elliott_asc 3y ago
We didn’t have any problems outlawing guns in the UK and various other non-American places.

afavour 3y ago

I’m curious, are you a parent?

lemoncookiechip 3y ago
Or a kid? The parent comment is either forgetting what it was like being a kid and doing things behind their parents back, not out of disrespect, but because they're young and it's what young people do, they are their own people as much as one might try to control them. Also, good luck ostracizing a child from their peers for their "benefit"? (I remember a time where not having the same brand of clothes would get you ostracized, much less not being in the known of the current gen media) This argument that social media is destroying the youth is the same old tale as old as time. Everything has been destroying the youth and rotting their brains since before anyone on this page was born. The devil music, violence in media, pot, unorthodox romance, (or you know, being a nerdy teen who spent a bit too long on their PC growing up in the 90s and their parents complained it was rotting their brain, which I'm sure a lot of people here can relate to and have made it their professional life) literally everything is destroying children, which we all were once.
- carimura 3y ago
  As a parent of young children, I'm trying hard not to be the "but this time is different" guy, but it sure feels like this time is different. Just look around any "real world" setting and almost every single person is staring at their little dopamine-releasing devices.
- jader201 3y ago
  > This argument that social media is destroying the youth is the same old tale as old as time. Everything has been destroying the youth and rotting their brains since before anyone on this page was born. So therefore nothing will ever truly destroy our youth? Obviously not literally, but I can see how social media can have a much more measured negative impact on youth vs. all the things above. I don’t think any of the other things you mention have ever been blamed for also “destroying“ adults, but I’d argue there is evidence that social media is having a measured negative impact on all of society. But especially youth.

lupusreal 3y ago

Even if parents tried to be fully responsible for keeping their kids off social media, it wouldn't actually be possible for them. What you are proposing is akin to a world in which it is wholly the responsibility of parents to stop their kids from smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor, but whenever the parents weren't around kids could walk into a store and buy them legally. Do you expect 24/7 unceasing parental surveillance? Get real. And as for technological means of surveillance and content control, parents here on HN struggle to make that work. The average parent with average tech skills stands virtually no chance of making it work. Kids have been known to do things like get old phones from somebody in school and use it on the neighbor's wifi. Trying to control their devices and access to the internet is basically impossible.

Funes- 3y ago
>What you are proposing I did not propose any of the straw-man nonsense that you wrote after this. Nothing in my previous comment implies such a thing. Come on, now.
- wwweston 3y ago
  Come on yourself. > Just look at everyone in this thread opting for letting their kids cave in to peer pressure and dodging responsibility for their upbringing It’s entirely reasonable to read this as implying that a key issue is parental management of access to social media. And it might even be reasonable to assume you don’t actually care about this topic at levels beyond the self-gratification that comes from assuming a posture of easy contempt, given that’s the majority of what you’re offering by weight.
maerF0x0 3y ago
> keeping their kids off social media, it wouldn't actually be possible for them. This is false binary thinking. I would argue that effortful attempts by parents would meaningfully reduce their kids social media usage. Social medias negative effects is a spectrum/sliding scale of effect based on amount of exposure. Even if they cannot entirely keep their kids off social media, they can dampen the usage. Think about alcohol, as a society we focus on keeping kids off alcohol and in the main it works (until we give them free and full access and they experimentally binge, but most regain selfcontrol in short order).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

falcor84 3y ago

It sounds like you want to live in a digital version of a monastery. It's a nice ideal and can work for some, but the vast majority of us do need to live in the full world, with all its flaws, and even if we don't like it, we need to interact with it in order to improve it.

everdrive 3y ago

>Lack of impulse control, no critical thinking, laziness I agree with you, but I believe these qualities are a bit more fixed that people are willing to admit. I'm not suggesting that we can't do better than we're currently doing. Instead that the impulse control & maturity required to handle smart phones and social media responsibly escapes most of the general population in a way that other technologies have not previously. In other words, you can rightly yell at folks that they need more impulse control, intelligence, etc. But you'll be yelling into the void. Most people lack the mental tools to deal with these things successfully, and will keep coming up short.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

It's hard enough convincing exploitable human nature to be thoughtful and empathetic and kind and generous and diligent in the absence of social media. It's like teaching kids to want to eat green vegetables. Natural selection results in people and animals who are impulsive, selfish, greedy, and lazy, it's only by great effort that people can overcome this and be better animals. We naturally trend towards these base instincts like a child trends towards eating the bread and fruit on their dinner plate, ignoring their vegetables. Even children know that actions have consequences, and can demonstrate some self-control. But social media is like a highly addictive candy bar. Completely unregulated, laden with high fructose corn syrup, MSG, and artificial flavors, and (for the sake of analogy) addictive drugs engineered with the only goal being maximum profit. Human nature can only withstand so much! There's no reason to expect our brains to be strong enough to resist the machinations of millions of brilliant engineers with sophisticated technology trying to overcome our self control.

AlexandrB 3y ago

> Social media has ruined society, indeed, but only because the exploitability was always there to begin with. Sounds a lot like gambling. Perhaps we should regulate it the same way.