Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxbond | Hacker News Reader

I don't think parents can just keep their kids off of social media, at least teens. How are they supposed to function socially if they're not even able to enter the spaces where a huge amount of the socializing is happening? What about during the pandemic, when it was virtually all online? If the goal is to promote their mental health and their growth, cutting them off from their peer group doesn't seem like a promising strategy.

It seems silly to blame the parents when the world has shifted around them, outside of their control.

View on HN

The space you call social media, is not a space where children learn social behaviours.

Why do you say that? I'm part of one of the earlier cohorts (I assume) to go through high school on Facebook, and absolutely a huge part of my social life was on Facebook. I organized our senior ditch day on Facebook. My awkward first attempts at flirting were on Facebook.

I'm not saying it's a good or healthy space for teens to socialize, but I do contend it's an important one.

Facebook of your youth is completely different system.

Maybe so, but my claim is that social media is an important part of our social landscape, one that you can't simply deprive a kid of without consequence, not that Facebook is this or is that.

You can absolutely function perfectly fine without social media as a kid or adult.

Hypothesis/opinion: a large portion of the world has no access to the internet or social media and those people are doing better in terms of mental health than those with access.

Also there's a significant amount of kids without access (because their parents don't let them) even in the Western world and they seem to be doing fine (if not better) as well.

It's not that you need to log on to an app to function, it's that to function socially, you need to be in contact with the people in your community. In a community with limited Internet access, of course that happens in person. But that isn't really comparable to not being on the internet in a community that generally is.

I'm sure plenty of teens would do fine without social media, some would probably prefer it because some people prefer limited social contact, but we can't make a blanket statement that we can yank kids offline and it'll all be fine.

The criticism I'm hearing in this thread seems to be, "parents are doing something uncomplicatedly irresponsible, it's obvious kids should be off social media," but frankly the analysis I'm seeing behind that is pretty thin (I'm gathering this is more a gut feeling for people than a reasoned position? Which is valid and all, it just doesn't make for good discussion since it can't be transmitted to or evaluated by another person), and this is a complex issue without such simple solutions.

You don’t need these apps to do what you are asserting though. I am probably a part of the same cohort as you in terms of when social media arrived on the scene. I used Facebook to socialize, but ultimately my meaningful socialization came through in-person contact and was primarily organized through phone calls and texting. Facebook was kind of a sideshow. Later the same was true of Instagram. I eventually got rid of my social media accounts and my social life was unchanged, because almost none of the socialization that goes on in these sites is substantive in any way.

Cool, but since we've had different experiences, can we not both acknowledge our experience might not be representative and that we shouldn't be making proscriptions for how other people raise their children?

Social media is a really broad term.

Facebook of your youth is a social network. TikTok is also a social network. Maybe try launching TikTok for once and let me know whether you’d want to grow up like that.

I can't imagine unironically saying fam or poggers either, but I don't need to, that slang isn't for me. So I don't really see the point.

Help me understand the difference between this conversation and the general phenomenon of looking at what the kids are doing and finding it weird and scary. Because everything I did as a teen was supposed to destroy my generation, too.

Are you comparing slang words to tech engineered addiction machine that is a source of mental illnesses, or am I missing something?

Social media is addictive and harmful. The fact that TikTok looks weird to the olds, is not.

it’s how everyone organizes meeting in real life when it happens, without social media you are very often left out

Many teens did not isolate. They had no reason to. Virtual relationships are low value, and I encourage my kids to do things in person.

Well those are certainly views you're entitled to. Many of my most meaningful friendships have been with people I've never met in person. Teens are/were able both to contract and to spread COVID, which are two excellent reasons they might have isolated during the stay at home/shelter in place advisories.

That said, encouraging your kids to interact in person seems reasonable to me.

> if they're not even able to enter the spaces where a huge amount of the socializing is happening

That’s anti-socializing. That is nothing but huge skinner boxes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

Reply on news.ycombinator.com