Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomsthumb | Hacker News Reader

Author claims it isn’t social media, then proceeds to describe the use of what is effectively social media applications where students communicate with their school and teachers. The apps are noted as a problem due to their notifications and because it’s more difficult to leave school at school since the app is on their phone. Curiously, this is similar to what Jonathan Haidt points out as one of the big negatives of social media.

View on HN

I wouldn't consider the school texting you your marks to be "social media".

This example was used in the article to show how the kids are randomly sent stimulations for which they are not prepared. Plausible, but unproven (not that this article pretends to be science; it's a collection of useful anecdotes with some reflections on them).

The article explicitly mentions that students use an app called Remind. I would not call this, along with the web portal etc, social media per se, but it does approximately fulfill the ISocialMedia interface.

I think there's an important distinction. Social media are by definition social, so what happens there is public.

Getting your marks sent to you when you are in a different context is private; you can feel shame or stress and in fact not know how you rank vs your peers.

The social stress isn't that new, and as far as marks went both my parents grew up under systems where the marks were posted outside the classroom and class ranking was also public.

I was really struck about the "prepared" part -- a lot of this should be considered spam: I don't need to know my marks (or bank balance etc) in realtime; I want to be able to get that info when I am ready to ask for it. The continual barrage of requests for attention is itself stressful. Having access to uninterrupted quiet (and boredom, especially for younger kids) is important for mental health and creativity.

Social has its own positive place as well. HN is a form of that.

disagree that social = public.

Sorry, I don't mean "public" in the sense of "universally accessible".

I'm using the sociological sense where "private" means "to one's self" and "social" or "public" mean "part of a common experience or utterance with at least one other person" because I think that's the important distinction in this thread.

I don't think the author is being inconsistent; rather, you've gotten the exact point the article was trying to make. One assumes the problem is social media, but the deeper problem is that the engagement tactics of social-media apps are more widespread than adults might realize.

I'm not sure why anyone's surprised, either. Getting a reply to a critical work email is a little like getting a report-card grade, and it can arrive at any time of day.

How can social media be a subset of the more widespread problem and the title of the article be correct? The article also does a poor job of framing the school apps as part of a wider problem with those technological behaviors. Looking back over the piece, I can’t find it. The argument appears much more to be “no, not social media, it’s school” without the framing.

The assumption when people say X is the problem is that it's the ROOT problem. So if you take it that way then everything is consistent including this author's title.

Yeah, that's basically it.

Not that we need analogies (yet) in this discussion, but if someone dies in a plane crash, their autopsy report will probably say something like "blunt-force trauma to the brain" as cause of death. That is absolutely correct, but it's also absolutely true that the person would still be dead even if the Flying Spaghetti Monster had intervened and prevented the blunt-force trauma to the person's brain.

Delete Facebook/Instagram from the world, and kids will still be anxious.

I think the primary contrast is with the prevailing narrative that goes something like this: "These narcissist kids are just obsessed with Instagram and Facebook and if they stopped sharing selfies they'd be fine." Social media to the general public = Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.

By contrast, many adults would think of school-related apps as "like work", so ok.

is such an app being made mandatory? are parents/students being strong armed into surrendering thier phone numbers or other PII's ?

You don't have to strong-arm them to surrender their phones.

You just say "assignments will be posted on App" and then the students are required to use it (or bum off of a friend).

i am also wondering what hapens to the "kennys" of the nation that canT afford smart phones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com