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> The Scandinavian country already has a minimum age limit of 13 in place. Despite this, more than half of nine-year-olds, 58% of 10-year-olds and 72% of 11-yea

> The Scandinavian country already has a minimum age limit of 13 in place. Despite this, more than half of nine-year-olds, 58% of 10-year-olds and 72% of 11-year-olds are on social media, according to research by the Norwegian media authority. I think my life today would be significantly better if I hadn’t been exposed to unsupervised internet access at around 10 years old with the Nintendo DSi web browser. Who knows how people growing up on TikTok brain-rot streams will turn out. I don’t look back fondly on my early experiences with the internet.

tyleo 2y ago
This is interesting because I had the opposite experience… though I think I’m a little older than you. Maybe the internet was more innocent in my time. In any case, I feel like this is definitely needed now. I wouldn’t want to grow up as a child with the current rampant social media use among young people. I feel like I got out just in time as the fat was closing.
- caseyy 2y ago
  The popular internet was very innocent in the 90s and early 00s. Much less addiction and anxiety-inducing, which are gateways into depression. Though in the 00s, the internet also had a lot of shock content if you strayed just a bit from the golden path. I think some of the things I have seen as a kid significantly worsened my childhood. But it was better overall. Seeing shock content is like eating a spoon of salt. The mind has defence mechanisms for it. You consume it, you are disgusted, and you never want to do it again. Consuming social media is like eating fast food. Sure, you’re less happy after you eat it, but it’s not awful, and maybe you can imagine buying another burger in the future. Which one does more damage? A constant diet of fast food or a spoon of salt once? I also heard some drug addicts talk about how they tried the hard street drugs but the consequences were about as bad as the high was good, so they didn’t get addicted to them. Instead, they first got addicted to mild ones. The internet is worse these days because it gets us addicted in a very pleasant way. It is fun, and consuming social media or news media on it seems like a way to be informed and in touch with current events. But then slowly people develop cravings. Now they are a bit anxious if they miss a day, there is fear of missing out. And now they’re a bit anxious if they spend only a few minutes a day. And then maybe an hour is not enough to keep up with everything that’s happening online. If everyone’s first experience of the social media was clockwork orange style 12-hour blast of forced doomscrolling tied to a chair, then fewer people would get addicted. But because the negative effects are so mild, the internet and social/news media are insidiously addictive in a way the way they were not 20 years ago. We teach our children not to do drugs, and to keep healthy diets. But we let them hang out with the drug dealer and fast food restaurant stand-ins (people and companies in the business of addiction) online without supervision in most cases. Many will fall into addiction in those circumstances. P.S. Another example is the proverbial boiling frog. Put it into hot water and it will hop out to save its life. But condition the water just right and turn up the heat just slowly enough, and it will happily boil.
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  The internet was mostly a beautiful place in the early 00s. At the same time if you were looking for terrible things (and I mean the worst things) they were easy to find which really is no longer the case. You have to be on private channels/onion sites/freenet etc. to find those things now.
  - tyleo 2y ago
    > At the same time if you were looking for terrible things (and I mean the worst things) they were easy to find which really is no longer the case. I think that this is true. I have friends tell me they children blown to bits on Instagram. I’ve also heard that the experience of creating a new X account shows grim content before it grow accustomed to your preferences.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
n_ary 2y ago
I had entirely opposite experience. At 10, I was hanging around irc where folks made various adult jokes but were very friendly and helpful. Getting mod was a dream! Also, I learned most of my shell-fu from irc. I also spent some time roaming around other generic channels but a lot of those were barren lands. It took me many years before my parents got tired of computer at home hype and just left it alone and I reined over it and installed linux and tried to figure out how to get around. There were days, when I would install windows, print some docs(or if printer went out of ink, wrote the docs by hand on my school notebooks), reinstalled linux, tried things until I got stuck. There were plenty other interesting things but I still cherish my irc days.
- kelipso 2y ago
  No offense intended but it makes me wonder what your social life was like and is like. Internet is not a substitute for a social life and it seems to me that early exposure to the internet stunts your social growth significantly.
cchi_co 2y ago
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tyleo 2y ago

This is interesting because I had the opposite experience… though I think I’m a little older than you. Maybe the internet was more innocent in my time. In any case, I feel like this is definitely needed now. I wouldn’t want to grow up as a child with the current rampant social media use among young people. I feel like I got out just in time as the fat was closing.

caseyy 2y ago
The popular internet was very innocent in the 90s and early 00s. Much less addiction and anxiety-inducing, which are gateways into depression. Though in the 00s, the internet also had a lot of shock content if you strayed just a bit from the golden path. I think some of the things I have seen as a kid significantly worsened my childhood. But it was better overall. Seeing shock content is like eating a spoon of salt. The mind has defence mechanisms for it. You consume it, you are disgusted, and you never want to do it again. Consuming social media is like eating fast food. Sure, you’re less happy after you eat it, but it’s not awful, and maybe you can imagine buying another burger in the future. Which one does more damage? A constant diet of fast food or a spoon of salt once? I also heard some drug addicts talk about how they tried the hard street drugs but the consequences were about as bad as the high was good, so they didn’t get addicted to them. Instead, they first got addicted to mild ones. The internet is worse these days because it gets us addicted in a very pleasant way. It is fun, and consuming social media or news media on it seems like a way to be informed and in touch with current events. But then slowly people develop cravings. Now they are a bit anxious if they miss a day, there is fear of missing out. And now they’re a bit anxious if they spend only a few minutes a day. And then maybe an hour is not enough to keep up with everything that’s happening online. If everyone’s first experience of the social media was clockwork orange style 12-hour blast of forced doomscrolling tied to a chair, then fewer people would get addicted. But because the negative effects are so mild, the internet and social/news media are insidiously addictive in a way the way they were not 20 years ago. We teach our children not to do drugs, and to keep healthy diets. But we let them hang out with the drug dealer and fast food restaurant stand-ins (people and companies in the business of addiction) online without supervision in most cases. Many will fall into addiction in those circumstances. P.S. Another example is the proverbial boiling frog. Put it into hot water and it will hop out to save its life. But condition the water just right and turn up the heat just slowly enough, and it will happily boil.
dyauspitr 2y ago
The internet was mostly a beautiful place in the early 00s. At the same time if you were looking for terrible things (and I mean the worst things) they were easy to find which really is no longer the case. You have to be on private channels/onion sites/freenet etc. to find those things now.
- tyleo 2y ago
  > At the same time if you were looking for terrible things (and I mean the worst things) they were easy to find which really is no longer the case. I think that this is true. I have friends tell me they children blown to bits on Instagram. I’ve also heard that the experience of creating a new X account shows grim content before it grow accustomed to your preferences.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

n_ary 2y ago

I had entirely opposite experience. At 10, I was hanging around irc where folks made various adult jokes but were very friendly and helpful. Getting mod was a dream! Also, I learned most of my shell-fu from irc. I also spent some time roaming around other generic channels but a lot of those were barren lands. It took me many years before my parents got tired of computer at home hype and just left it alone and I reined over it and installed linux and tried to figure out how to get around. There were days, when I would install windows, print some docs(or if printer went out of ink, wrote the docs by hand on my school notebooks), reinstalled linux, tried things until I got stuck. There were plenty other interesting things but I still cherish my irc days.

kelipso 2y ago
No offense intended but it makes me wonder what your social life was like and is like. Internet is not a substitute for a social life and it seems to me that early exposure to the internet stunts your social growth significantly.

cchi_co 2y ago

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