Comment by dartharva | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dartharva | Hacker News Reader

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That devolves into the age-old debate of restriction vs regulation. What devices should children have access to, and what devices are a problem? A laptop can just as well be used as badly as a cellphone in this context. Video games on home consoles can have just as much of a psychological effect as hate-mongering social media. I have had similar opinions (even reflected them in a past comment), but upon some feedback and introspection I've come to realize that forbidding kids from accessing something as ubiquitous as cellphones can't be viable. There is no set standard where you can draw a line that an individual is mature enough to handle social media, and there's no set consensus about when and how harmful it is that it would warrant bans. A handful of researches and surveys show that a section of children may face self-esteem issues from Instagram, but that's really not much to go on.

btw, I share the same bewilderment for children participating unrestricted in social media. I just don't have an answer to a practical standard of restriction. It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society. So what it should boil down to, in my opinion, is to make social media spaces as safe, civil and habitable with laws, as you make the open world that children are exposed to. Regulate these platforms stringently, with constant supervision from public bodies, just as the police monitors real-life public spaces.

Wow, what a dystopian nightmare of a world you're suggesting.

> It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society.

So, perhaps the same argument should apply to unfettered access to online porn as well, yes? If not, why not?

Perhaps we should allow kids unfettered open access to porn as well.

I fully understand that the above is a provocative argument and am not suggesting we do that, but IMHO there is only a very fine line between the two since both are very addictive and at a young age can result in psychological harm.

> there is only a very fine line between the two

Is there, really? Watching porn is not something you see people admitting to publicly. In the majority of the world it has originally been considered a taboo (or an outright crime), or at most a guilty pleasure. Porn is not a way of socializing or keeping up with trends or discussing politics, social media is. The two have fundamentally different purposes and reason for existence.

Please note that I am not making any case for allowing children to use social media. I have myself kept away from it, and I indeed consider it just as poisonous for the mind as you do. My point was that it's inconsequential now to try to put bans on the overall broad concept of social media. For better or worse, social media is already an essential part of the world's collective information infrastructure. Society has already shaped itself to accommodate its dominance. Even if you cut access to one platform, there will always be another to take its place. But social media, as a concept, can't go away. It's too late for that now, and the right way to go now is to regulate mainstream social media such that it becomes a safe space for people of all ages.

I don’t disagree with the latter part, 2nd para, of your comment.

My original comment was that the parents’ role is sorely missing from all the narratives and it needs to be there. That is all. I fully support regulating any and all social media. It’s not either/or, it’s both.

Hacker News etiquette is to take the strongest form of people's arguments. There's a lot of space between "ban then from cellphones" and "give them completely unfettered, unmonitored access to everything". Your comments jump between one and the other with no in between.

You're not exactly being charitable to the person you're arguing against, but taking your slippery slope at face value, we already have a generation of adults who basically grew up with unfettered access to online porn, and sensationalist headlines notwithstanding, we're basically fine, or at least not any more fucked up than baseline. (The first half of the 20th century saw people grow up with decades of carnage, so the baseline is pretty lenient.)

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