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I'm glad computers came in and saved you from your otherwise-inevitable life of cartel involvement, but I don't see what this has to do with the en-masse mental

by kulahan 4mo ago

I'm glad computers came in and saved you from your otherwise-inevitable life of cartel involvement, but I don't see what this has to do with the en-masse mental poisoning of children? I'm not even talking about politics yet. Cyber-bullying is insane. Either way, I genuinely don't believe "let's just hope parents... start doing better?" is a solution.

999900000999 4mo ago
Parents do need to do better. Work on building self confidence. My family relentlessly called me stupid and lazy to the point where a cyberbully would of been an upgrade. You can always turn your phone off. A lot of God awful parents treat their kids like trash and blame everyone else when Timmy doesn't get into Harvard. Of all the people I've met with rough upbringings not a single one blamed anything outside of bad parenting. Being a parent ( especially a step parent) is extremely hard. 100 years ago bad parents blamed dime novels. 50 years ago it was rock music.
- kulahan 4mo ago
  I am not sure I understand the simultaneous arguments that being a parent is very hard AND that parents should just do better and help isn’t needed AND this problem has been going on for over a hundred years (it hasn’t - this is the first time we’ve ever had a generation actually turn out dumber). Could you clarify that, and maybe take into account the fact that this is indeed completely unprecedented? If you have time, I also would love to hear how “parents should do better” fits into a plan where parents DO do better.
  - 999900000999 4mo ago
    Bad parents are always gonna find an excuse. Honest to God when I think of my childhood if people would’ve just left me alone for 30 minutes, I would’ve had a much easier time. Turns out you don’t need to get into a great college to make a lot of money. If anything, my screwing around all day with video games has probably led to my great 6 figure career. There’s absolutely no way to implement age gates all over the internet without fundamentally locking it down. Do you want a future where a website that chronicles the history of slave revolts is denied an operating permit? This is about controlling the free speech of adults, not anything else.
    - kulahan 4mo ago
      So if it were a genuine approach from an adult simply looking to protect children, what would it be? As I said at the beginning, I don’t think it’s a good solution, just the only one we have. Again, please incorporate the fact that children are, for the first time EVER, dumber than their predecessor generation. It is a literally unprecedented step backwards. Who cares if kids can access data about slave revolts if they’re simply too stupid and pacified to do anything with the knowledge? Do you think people who spend all day hearing from their “totally-not-LLM” peers online that everything is scary, they are OWED an easier life, and that the true problems are things like social issues - ignore the climate and starving children, will be the ones to rise up and fix a problem?
      - 999900000999 4mo ago
        The government could start by undoing cuts to food aid programs. https://frac.org/hunger-poverty-america https://frac.org/hunger-poverty-america >Children: 14.1 million children lived in households that experienced food insecurity, a slight increase from the 13.8 million children reported in 2023. This is something the government can actually fix without eliminating the first amendment. Rampant food insecurity in young people probably has more to do with declining test scores than social media.
        kulahan 4mo ago
        Unfortunately, this is incorrect. There has not been significantly increasing food insecurity since ~2004. This food aid problem was created incredibly recently, and is unlikely to have anything to do with the topic at hand at all. Please, try to stay on topic. I doubt you honestly thought that was the issue.
        999900000999 4mo ago
        If you want my ultimate opinion on if the government should highly regulate the Internet with forced ID requirements, my answer is no regardless of the justification. Because then you need to ban VPNs to stop users from bypassing ID verification. My point is the government should fix issues within it's power to solve. Food insecurity is solvable, and kids who know where they're next meal is coming from will be nicer people. Online and off.
sdfsdfsd3443f 4mo ago
We need to calibrate the incentives. Parents can be held accountable for neglect and abuse. Giving your kids phones and letting them use it without supervision is abuse. Enforce it. Denormalize this bullshit. I have knives in my kitchen. Do I give it to them and let them run around the neighborhood? I could but there are consequences and I would be held accountable for it. Social media = knives or as some other commenter pointed out, similar to letting your kids play in traffic.
- kulahan 4mo ago
  The mere existence of something dangerous is an irrelevant comparison unfortunately. We didn’t invent knives and then immediately see an entire generation get dumber. You’ll have the burden of needing to explain how any innocuous comparison you make still holds when we’ve never seen that kind of reversal in all of the time we’ve been watching as a society.

by kulahan 4mo ago

999900000999 4mo ago

Parents do need to do better. Work on building self confidence. My family relentlessly called me stupid and lazy to the point where a cyberbully would of been an upgrade. You can always turn your phone off. A lot of God awful parents treat their kids like trash and blame everyone else when Timmy doesn't get into Harvard. Of all the people I've met with rough upbringings not a single one blamed anything outside of bad parenting. Being a parent ( especially a step parent) is extremely hard. 100 years ago bad parents blamed dime novels. 50 years ago it was rock music.

kulahan 4mo ago
I am not sure I understand the simultaneous arguments that being a parent is very hard AND that parents should just do better and help isn’t needed AND this problem has been going on for over a hundred years (it hasn’t - this is the first time we’ve ever had a generation actually turn out dumber). Could you clarify that, and maybe take into account the fact that this is indeed completely unprecedented? If you have time, I also would love to hear how “parents should do better” fits into a plan where parents DO do better.
- 999900000999 4mo ago
  Bad parents are always gonna find an excuse. Honest to God when I think of my childhood if people would’ve just left me alone for 30 minutes, I would’ve had a much easier time. Turns out you don’t need to get into a great college to make a lot of money. If anything, my screwing around all day with video games has probably led to my great 6 figure career. There’s absolutely no way to implement age gates all over the internet without fundamentally locking it down. Do you want a future where a website that chronicles the history of slave revolts is denied an operating permit? This is about controlling the free speech of adults, not anything else.
  - kulahan 4mo ago
    So if it were a genuine approach from an adult simply looking to protect children, what would it be? As I said at the beginning, I don’t think it’s a good solution, just the only one we have. Again, please incorporate the fact that children are, for the first time EVER, dumber than their predecessor generation. It is a literally unprecedented step backwards. Who cares if kids can access data about slave revolts if they’re simply too stupid and pacified to do anything with the knowledge? Do you think people who spend all day hearing from their “totally-not-LLM” peers online that everything is scary, they are OWED an easier life, and that the true problems are things like social issues - ignore the climate and starving children, will be the ones to rise up and fix a problem?
    - 999900000999 4mo ago
      The government could start by undoing cuts to food aid programs. https://frac.org/hunger-poverty-america https://frac.org/hunger-poverty-america >Children: 14.1 million children lived in households that experienced food insecurity, a slight increase from the 13.8 million children reported in 2023. This is something the government can actually fix without eliminating the first amendment. Rampant food insecurity in young people probably has more to do with declining test scores than social media.
      - kulahan 4mo ago
        Unfortunately, this is incorrect. There has not been significantly increasing food insecurity since ~2004. This food aid problem was created incredibly recently, and is unlikely to have anything to do with the topic at hand at all. Please, try to stay on topic. I doubt you honestly thought that was the issue.
        999900000999 4mo ago
        If you want my ultimate opinion on if the government should highly regulate the Internet with forced ID requirements, my answer is no regardless of the justification. Because then you need to ban VPNs to stop users from bypassing ID verification. My point is the government should fix issues within it's power to solve. Food insecurity is solvable, and kids who know where they're next meal is coming from will be nicer people. Online and off.

sdfsdfsd3443f 4mo ago

We need to calibrate the incentives. Parents can be held accountable for neglect and abuse. Giving your kids phones and letting them use it without supervision is abuse. Enforce it. Denormalize this bullshit. I have knives in my kitchen. Do I give it to them and let them run around the neighborhood? I could but there are consequences and I would be held accountable for it. Social media = knives or as some other commenter pointed out, similar to letting your kids play in traffic.

kulahan 4mo ago
The mere existence of something dangerous is an irrelevant comparison unfortunately. We didn’t invent knives and then immediately see an entire generation get dumber. You’ll have the burden of needing to explain how any innocuous comparison you make still holds when we’ve never seen that kind of reversal in all of the time we’ve been watching as a society.