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It blows my mind that parents let their children use these platforms with these safety features. I just found out yesterday that my cousin lets their 5ish year

by jjice 12d ago

It blows my mind that parents let their children use these platforms with these safety features. I just found out yesterday that my cousin lets their 5ish year old have a TikTok account, but they have to allow or deny anyone who follows. How absurd is that. It doesn't block anything about what they view (I assume they relied on this safety feature), and there's no way that vetting who can follow (family and friends) is safe enough. The alternative is my younger cousin not having access to TikTok at five years old. Seems like a completely fine alternative. I imagine the average person just doesn't think about the potential implications of giving your child a TikTok account at that age.

izzydata 12d ago
5 years old is crazy, but by the time they are 15-16 it becomes difficult to restrict them from things their peers all do. There needs to be a wider push from all parents or more of a consensus from society that these platforms are dangerous.
- Grombobulous 12d ago
  Yes, the platforms need to be regulated more for minors. But also, prohibition has never been a very effective method with teens. Just look at how college kids drink when they get to college. The sudden removal of parental restriction has a lot to do with that if you ask me. I think this is better approached with broad education, and stronger regulations on the platforms themselves. Part of the problem is that many parents aren’t educated themselves about what is good and bad for their kids. Examples include things like nutrition, screen time, even simple stuff like when to wean from bottles and keeping suffocation risks out of cribs.
  - Forgeties79 12d ago
    > Part of the problem is that many parents aren’t educated themselves about what is good and bad for their kids. Examples include things like nutrition, screen time, even simple stuff like when to wean from bottles and keeping suffocation risks out of cribs. I would argue that more is being asked now of parents than in previous decades at least. You’re asking every parent to fight multi-billion dollar international addiction platforms on top of working, parenting, etc.
    - Grombobulous 12d ago
      I totally agree with you, and that’s where platform regulation and privacy regulation has been failing parents. Most people really can’t fathom the amount of data that tech platforms are slurping up, and they can’t fathom the sophistication of the data science that goes on involving their content feeds and data and metadata collection/targeting.
  - intended 12d ago
    Drinking is down for young adults and teens. My pet theory is that Covid broke the chain of party and drinking culture being passed down. (This is entirely speculative, and based on a single chart I saw.) The relevance to your point being that removal of parental restrictions don't seem to be doing that anymore. Education is definitely a good idea, but do note any plan that depends on education gives up the next 5-10 years before results are seen. Works great for societies and countries that think that far ahead. America in particular has an extra challenge, since Big Tech is based here, and threats to revenue streams will be met with immense opposition.
    - esseph 12d ago
      > Drinking is down for young adults and teens. My pet theory is that Covid broke the chain of party and drinking culture being passed down. Weed took its place.
      - esseph 12d ago
        Edit: study above says I am wrong in that it hasn't been a 1:1 exchange of alcohol for thc
        asdff 12d ago
        Yeah theres also way more whippets now
        esseph 12d ago
        I haven't seen one since 2001. They don't have any of the paraphernalia around here in head shops either.
        asdff 11d ago
        I see them all the time on the side of the road from people tossing them out of their cars. Massive tanks too like bigger than a 2 liter of coke with all sorts of flavors, even with a hand strap.
- ryandrake 12d ago
  You're not going to achieve coordinated, collective action by placing the burden of acting on the individual. It never works. If collective action has to happen to solve some problem, it needs to either 1. be so strongly incentivized such that it's the only sensible thing for individuals to do, or 2. be mandated top-down and enforced. You can't just shout "My solution relies on everyone independently doing X!" It never works.
  - izzydata 12d ago
    I agree that probably won't happen that way. There also won't be much in the way of regulation until society slowly realizes the dangers. I think we are currently in the process of finding out now that there have been people on social media from birth and are now adult members of society.
lynx97 12d ago
Instead of sueing the platforms, the parents should be subjected to CPS, on a daily basis.
- mcmcmc 12d ago
  Ah yes, all parents should constantly be monitored by the state for compliance with standards, gotta love small government
- esseph 12d ago
  Go after the drug dealers ffs Are you a friend of Larry Ellison by chance? His ideas don't stop at kids.
  - lynx97 11d ago
    Do you believe the war on drugs is actually working? Very good example you brought up there. Question is: Can we make the world safe by just arresting every bad guy... Ooooor, maybe, just maybe... Individuals are responsible for their own decisions? Besides, its only a "dealer" if the product they are selling is illegal. Have you talked to your political representative about making social media sites illegal. How do you argue that, exactly. "That sites needs to be outlawed because it breaks my back button!!!111!"?
    - esseph 11d ago
      We don't sell alcohol or weed or controlled substances to children. That's how we do it today. They get their license pulled if they do.
      - lynx97 11d ago
        True. However, if your child ends up developing a dependance on alcohol, do you seriously place the responsibility for that on the dealers who sold them the booze? I'd call that a lazy excuse for very bad parenting.
order-matters 12d ago
I feel the average person is not equipped to understand the implications. being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years. Even if it is not your "field" we all have a brain and if you like knowledge then you recognize it's useful to know about it. The average person, especially the below average person, is better off trusting others than their own judgement - since most people know more than them. You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to.
- doctorpangloss 12d ago
  > You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to. This is absolutely true. > being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years. People in Russia and China have almost 30 percentage points more tertiary education levels than Americans do. Nonetheless social media is even more pervasive and popular in China than anywhere else in the world. Like with the panic about video game fixation, harmful time wasters are almost certainly an effect, not a cause, of something else.
  - stackskipton 12d ago
    >People in Russia and China have almost 30 percentage points more tertiary education levels than Americans do. Nonetheless social media is even more pervasive and popular in China than anywhere else in the world. Like with the panic about video game fixation, harmful time wasters are almost certainly an effect, not a cause, of something else. I don't know about Russia but China social media is no where close to American Social Media. There is generally time limits, content restrictions and other things that make the two not similar. When people go "Social media is a problem", they are generally referring to western social media where it's profitability over any external harm they are doing.
    - immibis2 12d ago
      It used to be a meme to point that American TikTok was all (pre-AI) slop while Chinese TikTok was delivering children math and physics lessons.
foobar_______ 12d ago
I try to be open-minded to other parenting techniques... but I just don't have the brain power to internalize how any remotely self-aware human let's a 5 year old use tik tok. Poor kid.
Aurornis 12d ago
I have kids. We’re social. Spend a lot of time meeting new parents all the time. I have never heard of a 5 year old with a TikTok account. I think your cousin is so far into the outlier end of the parenting tail that nothing they do is going to make any sense in the context of common parenting practices.
- boothby 12d ago
  Alternative theory: your bubble is small, and you socialize with parents who have similar values to your own. And I'm gonna guess that your income or wealth is in far outlier territory. I've seen kids raised like this; in my generation the concern was kids glued to TVs all day, and some of those kids turned out okay. But in my family, it's the parents who grew up glued to screens who are raising the most screen-addicted kids.
  - nchmy 12d ago
    yeah, this is what is happening. the parent comment is in a bubble. The world is overflowing with terrible/highly ignorant parents
    - HDBaseT 12d ago
      Yeah, like the parents who strangle their kids to death.
      - cwmoore 11d ago
        Or throw them to the wolves at age ~18
sajithdilshan 12d ago
I think the blame is on the parents that allowed a 5 year old to have a TikTok account. No safety feature or regulation can compensate for bad parenting.
thinkingtoilet 12d ago
It's two things. When you step outside the HN bubble, very few people have any idea of the dangers and history of these apps. Also, life is objectively harder for parents these days. Often times, both parents are working, and they're working longer hours and getting paid less than previous generations so a lot of parents just dump their kids in front of screens. I'm not saying that's good. It's objectively bad, but that's the reality.
doright 12d ago
I know someone similar who gave their kid a phone at age 6. 95% of the time I see them they're on TikTok. Child safety features are not going to solve this problem. All it takes is one parent giving their kid a phone with an adult account and all that progress is undone. I am convinced it is going to take a cultural shift for any positive change to occur - self-policing and, if necessary, social stigma. This kind of behavior of giving young children phones will have to be outmoded in a generation or two. Until then, there is going to be a lot of growing pains.
- stickfigure 12d ago
  You sound so certain that these other parents are being negligent. Despite the fact that my 9yo doesn't have a phone or tiktok, I'm going to argue the other side's case. You're right "we don't know what it does to kids brains". But that means we should give parents discretion. Some parents want to run an experiment where they give their kids constant tiktok. Maybe we'll find out in a generation or two that this was bad, good, or a nothingburger. I'm in my 50s. I have watched sooo many moral panics evaporate to nothing. TV, video games, D&D, heavy metal music, porn, literal satanism, and now everyone's favorite whipping boy, social media. Let it go. Parent your own child, let other people parent theirs.
  - deleted 12d ago
    [deleted]
  - asdff 12d ago
    You should be able to recognize there are big differences between modern day social media and tv/videogames/dnd. For one you were not watching TV every waking moment of your life including while using a public bathroom. So just imagine that. There are people out there who no longer even think. Every spare second is spent scrolling because it really can be spent like that with the lack of friction that a constantly connected mobile device offers. No, this time it really is different. There was never a time where you would just not think for an entire day, maybe if you were holed up in a crack house or opium den. If you can't see that, wake up, look around and be shocked how more people aren't getting hit by cars or crashing off the road, and somehow can still string together a sentence of coherent thought. Maybe that fades too soon; functional literacy already declines by the year.

by jjice 12d ago

izzydata 12d ago

5 years old is crazy, but by the time they are 15-16 it becomes difficult to restrict them from things their peers all do. There needs to be a wider push from all parents or more of a consensus from society that these platforms are dangerous.

Grombobulous 12d ago
Yes, the platforms need to be regulated more for minors. But also, prohibition has never been a very effective method with teens. Just look at how college kids drink when they get to college. The sudden removal of parental restriction has a lot to do with that if you ask me. I think this is better approached with broad education, and stronger regulations on the platforms themselves. Part of the problem is that many parents aren’t educated themselves about what is good and bad for their kids. Examples include things like nutrition, screen time, even simple stuff like when to wean from bottles and keeping suffocation risks out of cribs.
- Forgeties79 12d ago
  > Part of the problem is that many parents aren’t educated themselves about what is good and bad for their kids. Examples include things like nutrition, screen time, even simple stuff like when to wean from bottles and keeping suffocation risks out of cribs. I would argue that more is being asked now of parents than in previous decades at least. You’re asking every parent to fight multi-billion dollar international addiction platforms on top of working, parenting, etc.
  - Grombobulous 12d ago
    I totally agree with you, and that’s where platform regulation and privacy regulation has been failing parents. Most people really can’t fathom the amount of data that tech platforms are slurping up, and they can’t fathom the sophistication of the data science that goes on involving their content feeds and data and metadata collection/targeting.
- intended 12d ago
  Drinking is down for young adults and teens. My pet theory is that Covid broke the chain of party and drinking culture being passed down. (This is entirely speculative, and based on a single chart I saw.) The relevance to your point being that removal of parental restrictions don't seem to be doing that anymore. Education is definitely a good idea, but do note any plan that depends on education gives up the next 5-10 years before results are seen. Works great for societies and countries that think that far ahead. America in particular has an extra challenge, since Big Tech is based here, and threats to revenue streams will be met with immense opposition.
  - esseph 12d ago
    > Drinking is down for young adults and teens. My pet theory is that Covid broke the chain of party and drinking culture being passed down. Weed took its place.
    - esseph 12d ago
      Edit: study above says I am wrong in that it hasn't been a 1:1 exchange of alcohol for thc
      - asdff 12d ago
        Yeah theres also way more whippets now
        esseph 12d ago
        I haven't seen one since 2001. They don't have any of the paraphernalia around here in head shops either.
        asdff 11d ago
        I see them all the time on the side of the road from people tossing them out of their cars. Massive tanks too like bigger than a 2 liter of coke with all sorts of flavors, even with a hand strap.
ryandrake 12d ago
You're not going to achieve coordinated, collective action by placing the burden of acting on the individual. It never works. If collective action has to happen to solve some problem, it needs to either 1. be so strongly incentivized such that it's the only sensible thing for individuals to do, or 2. be mandated top-down and enforced. You can't just shout "My solution relies on everyone independently doing X!" It never works.
- izzydata 12d ago
  I agree that probably won't happen that way. There also won't be much in the way of regulation until society slowly realizes the dangers. I think we are currently in the process of finding out now that there have been people on social media from birth and are now adult members of society.

lynx97 12d ago

Instead of sueing the platforms, the parents should be subjected to CPS, on a daily basis.

mcmcmc 12d ago
Ah yes, all parents should constantly be monitored by the state for compliance with standards, gotta love small government
esseph 12d ago
Go after the drug dealers ffs Are you a friend of Larry Ellison by chance? His ideas don't stop at kids.
- lynx97 11d ago
  Do you believe the war on drugs is actually working? Very good example you brought up there. Question is: Can we make the world safe by just arresting every bad guy... Ooooor, maybe, just maybe... Individuals are responsible for their own decisions? Besides, its only a "dealer" if the product they are selling is illegal. Have you talked to your political representative about making social media sites illegal. How do you argue that, exactly. "That sites needs to be outlawed because it breaks my back button!!!111!"?
  - esseph 11d ago
    We don't sell alcohol or weed or controlled substances to children. That's how we do it today. They get their license pulled if they do.
    - lynx97 11d ago
      True. However, if your child ends up developing a dependance on alcohol, do you seriously place the responsibility for that on the dealers who sold them the booze? I'd call that a lazy excuse for very bad parenting.

order-matters 12d ago

I feel the average person is not equipped to understand the implications. being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years. Even if it is not your "field" we all have a brain and if you like knowledge then you recognize it's useful to know about it. The average person, especially the below average person, is better off trusting others than their own judgement - since most people know more than them. You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to.

doctorpangloss 12d ago
> You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to. This is absolutely true. > being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years. People in Russia and China have almost 30 percentage points more tertiary education levels than Americans do. Nonetheless social media is even more pervasive and popular in China than anywhere else in the world. Like with the panic about video game fixation, harmful time wasters are almost certainly an effect, not a cause, of something else.
- stackskipton 12d ago
  >People in Russia and China have almost 30 percentage points more tertiary education levels than Americans do. Nonetheless social media is even more pervasive and popular in China than anywhere else in the world. Like with the panic about video game fixation, harmful time wasters are almost certainly an effect, not a cause, of something else. I don't know about Russia but China social media is no where close to American Social Media. There is generally time limits, content restrictions and other things that make the two not similar. When people go "Social media is a problem", they are generally referring to western social media where it's profitability over any external harm they are doing.
  - immibis2 12d ago
    It used to be a meme to point that American TikTok was all (pre-AI) slop while Chinese TikTok was delivering children math and physics lessons.

foobar_______ 12d ago

I try to be open-minded to other parenting techniques... but I just don't have the brain power to internalize how any remotely self-aware human let's a 5 year old use tik tok. Poor kid.

Aurornis 12d ago

I have kids. We’re social. Spend a lot of time meeting new parents all the time. I have never heard of a 5 year old with a TikTok account. I think your cousin is so far into the outlier end of the parenting tail that nothing they do is going to make any sense in the context of common parenting practices.

boothby 12d ago
Alternative theory: your bubble is small, and you socialize with parents who have similar values to your own. And I'm gonna guess that your income or wealth is in far outlier territory. I've seen kids raised like this; in my generation the concern was kids glued to TVs all day, and some of those kids turned out okay. But in my family, it's the parents who grew up glued to screens who are raising the most screen-addicted kids.
- nchmy 12d ago
  yeah, this is what is happening. the parent comment is in a bubble. The world is overflowing with terrible/highly ignorant parents
  - HDBaseT 12d ago
    Yeah, like the parents who strangle their kids to death.
    - cwmoore 11d ago
      Or throw them to the wolves at age ~18

sajithdilshan 12d ago

I think the blame is on the parents that allowed a 5 year old to have a TikTok account. No safety feature or regulation can compensate for bad parenting.

thinkingtoilet 12d ago

It's two things. When you step outside the HN bubble, very few people have any idea of the dangers and history of these apps. Also, life is objectively harder for parents these days. Often times, both parents are working, and they're working longer hours and getting paid less than previous generations so a lot of parents just dump their kids in front of screens. I'm not saying that's good. It's objectively bad, but that's the reality.

doright 12d ago

I know someone similar who gave their kid a phone at age 6. 95% of the time I see them they're on TikTok. Child safety features are not going to solve this problem. All it takes is one parent giving their kid a phone with an adult account and all that progress is undone. I am convinced it is going to take a cultural shift for any positive change to occur - self-policing and, if necessary, social stigma. This kind of behavior of giving young children phones will have to be outmoded in a generation or two. Until then, there is going to be a lot of growing pains.

stickfigure 12d ago
You sound so certain that these other parents are being negligent. Despite the fact that my 9yo doesn't have a phone or tiktok, I'm going to argue the other side's case. You're right "we don't know what it does to kids brains". But that means we should give parents discretion. Some parents want to run an experiment where they give their kids constant tiktok. Maybe we'll find out in a generation or two that this was bad, good, or a nothingburger. I'm in my 50s. I have watched sooo many moral panics evaporate to nothing. TV, video games, D&D, heavy metal music, porn, literal satanism, and now everyone's favorite whipping boy, social media. Let it go. Parent your own child, let other people parent theirs.
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
- asdff 12d ago
  You should be able to recognize there are big differences between modern day social media and tv/videogames/dnd. For one you were not watching TV every waking moment of your life including while using a public bathroom. So just imagine that. There are people out there who no longer even think. Every spare second is spent scrolling because it really can be spent like that with the lack of friction that a constantly connected mobile device offers. No, this time it really is different. There was never a time where you would just not think for an entire day, maybe if you were holed up in a crack house or opium den. If you can't see that, wake up, look around and be shocked how more people aren't getting hit by cars or crashing off the road, and somehow can still string together a sentence of coherent thought. Maybe that fades too soon; functional literacy already declines by the year.