[HN Gopher] TikTok is the bane of my existence working with midd...
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TikTok is the bane of my existence working with middle schoolers
Author : oldschoolib
Score : 47 points
Date : 2022-11-08 15:55 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| quacked wrote:
| It's so strange that every year that online content gets more
| addicting and exciting, school gets more and more boring and
| standardized. When I was in high school, the big issue du jour
| (this was between 2005-2015) was that all of the elective classes
| at my high school (European Literature, History of the Bible,
| Advanced Creative Writing, etc.) were going to be paved to make
| way for English 9-12.
|
| I've talked to some high schoolers that go to the same school
| recently and it's nothing like when I went. All of the exterior
| doors are now locked with passcodes, everyone is very closely
| surveilled, most of the exciting electives have been cut or are
| on the chopping block, and if you're late to class the teacher is
| supposed to lock you out and you have to report back to the
| office.
|
| I can hardly blame kids for taking every spare second to look at
| their phones. What a nightmare. I'm expecting my first child soon
| and I'm definitely not sending them to full-time school.
| threatofrain wrote:
| School can become more interesting but it will never compete
| with media whose only requirement is to live and die by
| entertainment alone. Releasing the requirement of education,
| especially on such boring topics like history or math, is a
| huge advantage for those seeking eyeball-time.
|
| There's no need to blame children for being interested in their
| phones, and whether you blame anyone or not, TikTok and phones
| in general are always going to win in the battle for fun.
| threads2 wrote:
| send them to school so they can be with their peers, I implore
| you
| flyingfences wrote:
| There are other ways to socialize that don't involve being a
| cog in the machine for half their waking day.
| Extracurriculars can fill that same need: boy scouts, sports
| teams, music lessons, whatever the kid's into.
| zen21 wrote:
| seszett wrote:
| When I was in high school, 1996-1999 (and 1999-2002 I suppose?
| I'm never sure when "high school" ends in English-speaking
| places) the only elective class was Latin, exterior doors were
| closed and guarded and when you were late the teachers often
| sent you to the office. In some especially boring classes with
| boring teachers, some kids would read books (not school books).
| It got progressively more free towards the later years (not
| because of policy changes, older pupils were just less
| supervised).
|
| I never really enjoyed school or authority after primary
| school, but I certainly wouldn't call it a nightmare. It was
| quite fine and I learnt things that I found interesting then,
| and others that I find useful now. I'm not sure having the exit
| doors open during class would have improved anything.
|
| Anyway, I just wanted to give my experience because even though
| we have probably experienced high school in different
| countries, in my experience it has not gotten more boring than
| it used to be. And in the country where I live, it's also very
| different from how it was in mine when I was a kid.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| When will we switch to the Khan Academy model of lecture-online
| and homework-with-tutor/teacher? Then school would have a purpose
| outside of daycare.
| bell-cot wrote:
| In some (vague, old) theories, students in a traditional school
| are learning F2F social skills, developing friendships &
| relationships with a large-ish group of their ~peers, and other
| soft stuff.
| GoOnThenDoTell wrote:
| Free day care is just really hard to pass up
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Idk why this is being downvoted. One only needs to look
| back at the rippling effects that school closures had in
| 2020-2021...
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| Indeed. Bring back the good old days when men were men and
| worked in the fields all day, and women were women and
| watched the kids and fed the family.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| imo this limited definition of peer groups is in fact one of
| the biggest issues with our education model. short of being
| drafted there is virtually no other social or work setting
| where your entire social stratum will be comprised solely of
| people born within the same 12 months and the same zipcode.
| if anything this gives a highly distorted view of society and
| encourages a whole range of maladaptive behaviors & thinking
| patterns. it should be unsurprising that the most intense
| forms of bullying occur in these settings.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Ok, one small problem I have with this entire argument. This guy
| goes on TV and makes a bunch of (atleast) sensationalist
| opinionated claims, with apparently no evidence. And what does he
| cite as a clear indication that Tiktok is ruining our society and
| that we're doomed? Young people want to be social media
| influencers.
|
| Let's leave aside his absurd assertion that this single fact is
| meaningful (it's probably not true, and it's probably not
| important either).
|
| So what does this guy do, what does he aspire to? He's basically
| a thought leader. The middle aged equivalent of a teenage girl
| dancing on tiktok.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| When people my age were kids, many of them wanted to be movie
| stars. I'd agree that this doesn't necessarily indicate a
| problem.
|
| I was going to make a joke about how I wanted to be a ninja
| when I was a kid, and how clearly unlikely that is, but as an
| adult I do actually commonly see job openings for ninjas.
| (Okay, I guess it's actually a joke anyway, just not the one I
| thought of initially.)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Some kids wanted to be stars. And they had creative outlets
| that honed their physical, social and cognitive skills.
|
| The content being promoted, and the social "skills" and
| interactions originating from social media, are more
| prevalent and much, much less useful than someone wanting to
| play sax or act.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| FWIW, the only argument I was making (not speaking for OP)
| is that this specific observation of "80% of my students
| want to be social media influencers" is a weak indicator
| that TikTok (really, every social media platform) is
| _creating difficulties_ for today 's teenagers. There are
| other strong indicators that this is the case.
|
| > 80% of my students want to be social media influencers
| when they grow up (despite having very poor social skills),
| and the other 20% have never given it any thought.
|
| The numbers are made up, so I wouldn't expect that there's
| significance in the spread. My point is that the the
| teacher almost exclusively sees two groups: one who takes
| the option in vogue, and one who hasn't thought about it.
| To me, this suggests that something approaching 100% of
| their students have given this little to no thought, which
| jives with my experience at that age.
|
| I think we'd agree that this is a minor point and doesn't
| really take away from the conclusion drawn in the tweet.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| People said the _exact same_ things about TV and comic books when
| I was growing up.
| namaria wrote:
| Yeah now compare the interminable stream of marvel movies over
| the past few years with what was available in the 90s.
| tsol wrote:
| The problem with this line of thinking is it's true and it's
| not. People said TV would make our brains rot. It didn't. But
| some people certainly are addicted. They said social media
| would make us lemmings. It didn't. But some people certainly do
| questionable things due to social influence. When you have
| countless disruptive technologies like tv and social media,
| they add up.
| Fezzik wrote:
| Social media is dramatically different in that most kids[0]
| now have a social media machine in their pocket and at their
| beck and call all-day-every-day. In years passed during
| school hours kids had much less dragging their attention away
| from school work.
|
| [0] The internet tells me that most American kids have mobile
| phones by age 7.
| flyingfences wrote:
| And they were right then, too. I despise the television.
| nunez wrote:
| idk while i definitely buy tiktok being extremely good at being
| addicting, this thread feels this generation's harbinger of the
| kids being ruined
| tayo42 wrote:
| How do we know if this is really and issue or just another case
| of adults think the children are ruined. I feel like I heard
| stuff like this growing up too, maybe I am actually ruined?
|
| Edit: 30k tweets since joining in 2020 hmm...
| tsol wrote:
| >Edit: 30k tweets since joining in 2020 hmm...
|
| My feeling is that all these cultural problems people complain
| about so often didn't really start with us. They started with
| our parents, or more likely with our grandparents. That's why
| they're so hard to fix, and so often the people calling out a
| problem are somewhat guilty of the problem themselves.
|
| It's like a bunch of alcoholics admonishing the next one for
| drinking slightly more irresponsibly. When did people even
| start this? I don't think anyone can remember. We all know what
| needs to be done, but the vast majority of us can't do it
| ourselves.
| COGlory wrote:
| >Edit: 30k tweets since joining in 2020 hmm...
|
| Yeah this is some sort of subconscious cry for help, I'm pretty
| sure.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Edit: 30k tweets since joining in 2020 hmm...
|
| In _August_. Assuming it was August 1st that 's 830 days or ~36
| tweets a day (Using 29.6K tweet total). That's insane.
| abeppu wrote:
| The video in this tweet makes an analogy with opium, which of
| course is charged historical territory between China and the
| west. In fairness, the US and most other countries haven't made a
| serious attempt to stop or ban 'addictive' interactive apps and
| content. There has at points been pressure, e.g. on YouTube, but
| my understanding is no laws have been passed, etc. If we
| disapprove so strongly of kids being exposed to this stuff, let's
| get some legislation on the books, rather than just one-off
| shaming companies for not meeting our unwritten norms.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| banning tiktok is only a temporary half measure that relies on
| the dopamine system to be foreign sourced
|
| we can make a licensing regime and regulate content selection
| algorithms
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest, also
| called "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat". The film is so
| entertaining that its viewers lose all interest in anything other
| than repeatedly viewing it, and thus eventually die.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something, there's no reason to link to this
| particular tweet. It's not even a full thread. It simply
| discusses this: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tristan-harris-
| social-media-pol...
| lzooz wrote:
| 0 mentions of the parents in the tweet or replies. They aren't at
| fault at all, right?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Fallacy detected: strawmen
|
| Impolite rhetoric detected: sarcasm
| zen21 wrote:
| bell-cot wrote:
| A Modest Proposal...
|
| Give all ~15-year-olds a day-long standardized test. The test is
| mostly a bunch of boring "do lots of not-hard math", "read dull
| stuff & kinda understand it", etc. Kids are encouraged to bring
| their phones - but can't use them in any way that plausibly
| amounts to cheating on the test.
|
| Kids with good scores on the test get admitted to high school.
| Ones with not-so-good scores (whether really dim, horribly
| prepared, or too addicted to their cell phones to pay attention)
| go to a menial labor training camp. Where they get to post
| pictures of the ditches they're learning to dig, potatoes they're
| learning to harvest, bathroom fixtures they're learning to clean,
| etc. all over their social media accounts.
| itsyaboi wrote:
| Excellent idea Mr. Swift!
| philwelch wrote:
| How can you call this a "modest proposal" and not even suggest
| eating the kids with the lowest test scores?
| tehbeard wrote:
| ehhh, probably a higher % of microplastics in those ones. /s
| bell-cot wrote:
| Well...a lot of them will probably be eaten by the internet
| trolls, and end up as Morlocks themselves.
| postalrat wrote:
| Just think of the parents!
| CynicusRex wrote:
| YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j0xzuh-6rY.
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