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Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

With all due respect to Jonathan Haidt, this is actually a good thing. Let me explain.

For the first time in human history, children, having unfettered access to the internet, are confronted with myriad ideas. Some, nay most, that they probably disagree with, that don't make them feel especially good, or are even perhaps unsettling. Truly, they have become uncoddled.

Rather than framing this as a bad thing, we should take it as a sign that it's working. We shouldn't then say, "Social media is making them feel worse" - that's exactly the mentality of the coddled mind. We should be implementing policy that increases internet and in particular social media use for children. After all, being confronted with uncomfortable ideas, especially ones that make you feel worse, in fact makes you stronger.

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So you’re saying that while online adults are finding themselves in increasingly radicalizing bubbles and echo chambers that isolate them from other points of view and even distort their sense of “truth” and “fact”, kids are somehow having the exact opposite experience in the same online world?

The internet does not seem to expose people to a “myriad of ideas” that challenge them. It lets them shop for the community that exactly aligns with their preconceptions and reduces their need to find compromise with the disagreeable meatbags that are physically around them. This is as true for teenagers as it is for adults, but it also steals from teenagers a traditional opportunity to learn critical mediation and coping skills.

In other words, it quite specifically coddles them and makes them grossly ill-prepared for adulthood in a diverse world riddled with small and large conflicts.

When I first read your comment, I was shocked when there was no “/s” at the end.

> So you’re saying that while online adults are finding themselves in increasingly radicalizing bubbles and echo chambers that isolate them from other points of view and even distort their sense of “truth” and “fact”, kids are somehow having the exact opposite experience in the same online world?

Correct. If they were having the same experience, I'd expect opposite results to Alternative #13 (see article). Given that's not the case, I have to conclude that adults and children do not indeed share that experience.

The coddling pattern of behavior describes people who encountering ideas that made them feel bad, react by wanting distance themselves from that idea. We seem to have a case where kids are encountering things that make them feel bad and Haidt is making a case for distancing kids from it? Makes no sense.

Is this like the psychological version of “beating makes a kid strong,” which has ample evidence against it?

Also what social media have you been on that helps people engage productively with ideas they disagree with?

Wouldn't you agree that coddling makes people weak?

Coddling is not universal (especially in context). You can't be coddled on the internet, while you may be physically. People who have plenty of money growing up, aren't universally degenerate. So no, I don't agree, anymore than I would agree that beating them makes them strong.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the overly-simplistic strawman, when the issue is complex. Primarily, it's an issue that needs to be identified and mitigated to avoid tragedy and to what degree. That is the discussion that follows acknowledgement and western society isn't there yet.

I think it’s not “coddling” that happens outside of social media and “anti-coddling” that happens on social media.

Seems incredibly simplistic.

It takes time, education, and nuance to understand the horrors of the world. Exposing a mind to those horrors without any preparation cannot be healthy, ya?

Fifth Element can serve as a Hollywood moral high bar.

From what I understand of this, what they mean when they say “social media” in this context is more like amped-up high school politics. It’s a platform for gossip, bullying, cliques-forming, etc.

If you’re thinking of the stress from that as a kind of training regiment, what would someone look like who thrives in that environment? What does success look like? Less coddled is an interesting take on that.

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