[HN Gopher] Surgeon General says 13 is 'too early' to join socia...
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Surgeon General says 13 is 'too early' to join social media
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 171 points
Date : 2023-01-29 18:17 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Be careful my friends: it would be terrible for us embrace
| medical advice that agrees with our prejudices but ignore similar
| advice on subjects we don't like like sex ed and sleep and stress
| and bullying...
| anthonyskipper wrote:
| Same could be said about religion. Probably more true in that
| case.
| robryan wrote:
| Maybe you can restrict social media in terms of connecting to
| everyone, but I don't think you can or should stop 13 year olds
| from being able to talk to their friends with the various group
| messangers.
| olliej wrote:
| Based on my dad 60ish is also not a good age
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| [flagged]
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Isn't the surgeon general in a position where they can amplify
| the best scientific information on social media / technology
| addiction and help parents / kids understand the risk of
| engaging?
|
| Perhaps that type of voice could help create the next D.A.R.E.
| program, but for this issue given the efficacy of prevention
| programs.
| superfrank wrote:
| I hear what you're saying and agree, but D.A.R.E. probably
| isn't the best example since a lot of studies have found that
| it was ineffective in preventing drug use.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448384/
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Sure that's fair. I don't know the modern equivalent. I guess
| it is called "Keepin' it REAL". Which is what I was thinking
| in terms of efficacy from previous literature by the surgeon
| general.
|
| https://cdc.thehcn.net/promisepractice/index/view?pid=4186
| https://real-prevention.com/keepin-it-real/
|
| I mostly found this guidance in here:
|
| https://addiction.surgeongeneral.gov/sites/default/files/sur.
| ..
|
| > Well-supported scientific evidence demonstrates that a
| variety of prevention programs and alcohol policies that
| address these predictors prevent substance initiation,
| harmful use, and substance use related problems, and many
| have been found to be cost-effective. These programs and
| policies are effective at different stages of the lifespan,
| from infancy to adulthood, suggesting that it is never too
| early and never too late to prevent substance misuse and
| related problems
| karaterobot wrote:
| Are parents going to deny their kids access to social media?
| Among the parents I know, none of them do this even if they admit
| it's probably bad for their kids. The social pressure from the
| kids' peers is the number one reason they give: their kids will
| be left out, and social alienation is viewed as worse than social
| media. Perhaps a coordinated effort would make a difference, I
| don't know. I'm skeptical.
|
| Despite saying lawmakers are "paying attention", there's no talk
| of regulation in this article, so presumably a voluntary effort
| on the part of parents is the only actionable plan they are ready
| to discuss. As the article notes, social products are not _de
| facto_ designed to keep kids out, and have not done a good job of
| it so far, so I am also skeptical they will improve in the future
| without any legal pressure.
| irrational wrote:
| I think so. We don't buy our kids smartphones. We tell them
| that they can have one when they can buy it themselves. That
| tends to happen around 16-17. At home we block social media at
| the router level. They have Chromebooks from school, but social
| media is blocked on those by the school district. We've never
| had any of the kids complain about social alienation.
| digitallyfree wrote:
| I'm curious how your kids collaborate with other students for
| schoolwork if social media is disallowed. When I was in
| elementary and high school I regularly used MSN/Facebook/etc.
| for group projects and study sessions, and from what I know
| today's students mostly use Discord. Having a student's
| Facebook group for the class/school was also very common and
| people would discuss assignments and events. Obviously the
| kids do fool around on those services but they also use it
| for legitimate purposes like how corps today use MS Teams.
|
| If a student did not have access to those services I would
| not want to work with them on say a group assignment because
| it would be very difficult to keep things organized. I would
| not want to go out of my way to go to their house/make phone
| calls to keep them in the loop.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Kids don't use facebook. There is still imessage and school
| email, schoology, gsuite etc. No one is doing schoolwork
| over the twitter or instatok that we know of.
| jcelerier wrote:
| they are going to be _very_ inadapted when they end up in
| college or later. this is also restricting them from career
| opportunities, e.g. community & socials management etc. I
| know people who flat-out say that they wouldn't trust someone
| with no social media presence.
| ahoya wrote:
| The people you're describing are called morons. I don't
| want my kids to work for morons.
| irrational wrote:
| That hasn't been my experience. We have a 25 year old, 23
| year old, and 21 year old that had absolutely no problems
| adapting to college.
|
| I have no social media presence and it has never affected
| me in the slightest.
| TideAd wrote:
| And if they did complain, what then?
|
| Are you worried about the social lives they might be missing
| out on? About the friendships they might have had if they had
| a phone with Snapchat on it? A lot of social life for kids
| happens online.
| type-r wrote:
| > A lot of social life for kids happens online.
|
| I think that's a big part of the problem. I want to
| encourage more of that social life to happen in person. I
| would feel bad if I was causing them to miss out on IRL
| events.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| What about the social lives they might be missing out on by
| being obsessed with Snapchat?
| est31 wrote:
| It depends really whether you as a kid _can_ have a
| social life at all without being on social media. If your
| school is one of those no-digital-devices places where
| tech workers send their kids to, then you 'll manage. But
| most schools aren't like that. Instead, there, children
| heavily rely on online services to communicate. I'm a
| late millenial, so I didn't have 100% the same experience
| as a kid growing up now has, but even for me, I felt it
| on my own skin. A lot of social interaction was
| inaccessible to me due to me not being on Facebook by
| choice. When some event was planned, I didn't immediately
| know about it.
|
| Also there is the practicality point. In the old days,
| kids could reach each other from their own volition, back
| when kids walking on the sidewalk alone wasn't a reason
| to call CPS. Back when said side walks existed in the
| first place.
| logifail wrote:
| > Also there is the practicality point. In the old days,
| kids could reach each other from their own volition
|
| Our eldest travels into the nearest town by train, on his
| own, to get to his school. He's done this since he was
| 11.
|
| Our youngest walks to her primary school, on her own,
| since the first week she started at primary school.
|
| > [..] back when kids walking on the sidewalk alone
| wasn't a reason to call CPS.
|
| Why any parent wouldn't trust their child to go for a
| walk unsupervised but would trust them to be on Snapchat
| unsupervised is completely beyond me.
| sweettea wrote:
| It's not a matter of not trusting the child to go for a
| walk unsupervised -- it's not trusting CPS to consider it
| acceptable.
| est31 wrote:
| I was exaggerating a little, but the issue still exists.
| There has been a change in general societal mindset
| around deeming the outsides as dangerous for children,
| even during the day. This mindset might not exist
| everywhere, but where it is prevailing, it is forced onto
| parents who let their kids out in the sense that they are
| looked negatively upon.
| ahoya wrote:
| That's the point. you want them to miss out. Missing out
| means they don't have to be depressed and have their
| attention spans attacked. This online social life is
| unhealthy and bad for them and they will grow up retarded
| socially if you don't protect them from it.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| Then nothing. I am not worried about these things at all.
| We have a 25 year old, a 23 year old, and a 21 year old and
| their social lives were never impacted. And the 25 year old
| has thanked us for keeping her off of social media until
| she was older and more mature.
| logifail wrote:
| > About the friendships they might have had if they had a
| phone with Snapchat on it? A lot of social life for kids
| happens online.
|
| A lot of things are said (and done) - often in haste -
| online, which one would simply never experience in a face-
| to-face interaction.
|
| We support our kids participating in lots of team sports,
| not because they're amazingly talented (although they're
| all better than I was when I was that age!), but because we
| believe it's good for them, physically _and_ socially.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _We support our kids participating in lots of team
| sports, not because they 're amazingly talented (although
| they're all better than I was when I was that age!), but
| because we believe it's good for them, physically and
| socially._
|
| This is the way to do it. People forget that while _some_
| teenage social life occurs online, not _all_ of it does,
| and the part that can be done in-person is a lot
| healthier than what 's online. In real life, are people
| going to be comparing themselves to Instagram posts?
| Unlikely, but even then, there will be a lot more nuance
| of something like, say, going on an international trip,
| where a friend can tell you the good and bad rather than
| showing only the good on an IG photo and making the
| viewer feel bad because they didn't go on such a trip.
|
| Real life interaction simply has less ability to lack
| nuance, which I think is a good thing.
| sitkack wrote:
| You aren't blocking HN. Are you also blocking Reddit?
| yumraj wrote:
| Ditto. My old got cellphone in 9th grade, and all usual ones
| are blocked via pihole at home.
|
| Now in 12th, he does use Discord to communicate with a
| limited set of friends. But that's it.
|
| I've said it before, the difference is that we don't use any
| of the social media ourselves, so kids are OK. If parents use
| them but ask kids to refrain, obviously it's not going to
| work.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| > I've said it before, the difference is that we don't use
| any of the social media ourselves
|
| You wouldn't classify HN as social media?
| yumraj wrote:
| Touche!
|
| But, I'm pretty sure the Surgeon General did not have HN
| in mind while making that comment. :)
|
| HN is a social media, but it lacks certain _capabilities_
| that make it OK. First and foremost, there is no DM, then
| it 's heavily moderated both by users as well as by DanG,
| and then it is text based. Also, based on my observation,
| the karma/like acquisition is not what drives people's
| comments here.
|
| So, while you're correct that it's a social media, it's
| not the cesspool of poison that the usual ones, that come
| to mind when we use the term social media, are.
| beej71 wrote:
| I'd say it's a subclass of social media. There's dopamine
| social media and non-dopamine social media.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| I want to thank you for your socket guides etc. I learnt
| TCP/IP programming from those way back in the 90's!
| Presuming I am talking to the correct Beej here of
| course.
| irrational wrote:
| I wouldn't. It's not social without a social network. A
| social network implies that we are not all anonymous
| strangers. It implies we know people's real names and
| other personal information about them. To the best of my
| knowledge, I have never interacted with the same person
| twice on HN (or Reddit). That's basically the opposite of
| social or a network. When everyone is anonymous, and
| might even be a bot, it isn't social media. Mostly
| because it is not social.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| > Ditto. My old got cellphone in 9th grade, and all usual
| ones are blocked via pihole at home.
|
| Can't they get around this by turning off Wi-Fi?
| yumraj wrote:
| Yes, he can, and maybe he did (I can't say with 100%
| certainty that that is not the case) but I believe that
| is where parents not using these social media comes into
| play. And, remember, Discord is allowed which I believe
| meets some of the needs.
|
| Also, any excessive data usage would show up in the
| family plan, which gives me confidence.
|
| I have always vocally expressed my hate for FB so maybe
| that helped.
|
| But all kids are different, and maybe what worked here
| won't work for everyone.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Discord is social media too, though I would put it
| somewhere between HN and Facebook/Twitter in terms of
| harmfulness.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| I put my own work around in for that. Wireguard VPN on
| the phone, that connects back to home. Tasker profiles to
| enable the Wireguard VPN connection anytime the wifi is
| not connect to the home network. Pihole blocking still
| active via that method.
| irrational wrote:
| Not if it has a VPN, like circle (which is what we use),
| installed.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I would probably try out Discord for yourself if you never
| have, you can find anything Pihole is likely blocking
| indirectly via Discord, just saying.
| yumraj wrote:
| Ah thank you. Yes, I have never used Discord and don't
| know its capacities. I definitely should educate myself
| :)
|
| But the kid is now in senior year of high school so in
| worst case I did protect them for as long as I could. I
| won't have much control from next year anyway..
| Tade0 wrote:
| > "If parents can band together and say you know, as a group,
| we're not going to allow our kids to use social media until 16 or
| 17 or 18 or whatever age they choose, that's a much more
| effective strategy in making sure your kids don't get exposed to
| harm early,"
|
| I'm surprised by this statement considering he's a parent.
|
| You can't really prevent a teenager from doing something if they
| set their mind on it. All we can really do is educate.
|
| My take is that every social media outlet starts a death spiral
| once its first generation of users starts being parents of
| teenagers.
| yazzku wrote:
| I think the point is that if the nearby group of parents all
| agree on it, the kids don't feel as much social pressure to be
| on the platform.
| layer8 wrote:
| > You can't really prevent a teenager from doing something if
| they set their mind on it. All we can really do is educate.
|
| So also give them access to tobacco and booze?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> So also give them access to tobacco and booze?_
|
| Depends where you live, but in some EU countries, teens start
| drinking and smoking and already give up on cigs and beer
| before American teens even start.
|
| It's pretty common to see 14 year olds smoking and drinking
| beer outside in public despite these being officially allowed
| when you're 18.
|
| Teens will always try to do what adults tell them is
| forbidden and bad for them, because doing forbidden things is
| enticing and makes you look cool and rebellious.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| Your first sentence contradicts your last.
|
| I think every year that a teenager doesn't start drinking
| alcohol is a net benefit. They black out at college parties
| at 20 so what? By that time their brain is more developed.
| I think Europeans have a very unhealthy attitude towards
| alcohol and their kids pay the price of it. And they do not
| give up alcohol at all. On the contrary, they don't know
| how to party without alcohol for the rest of their life.
| kelipso wrote:
| The argument that you shouldn't ban something because
| people will do it anyway is very unconvincing. If it's the
| difference between 5% of people doing something harmful vs
| 95% of people, of course I'll take the 5%.
|
| Furthermore, you won't have parents afraid of banning
| social media or phones for kids because it's a practical
| requirement for a social life in current age or something
| like that
| m4tthumphrey wrote:
| More like educate them about the issues of tobacco and booze.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Yes, why not? The drinking age is 16 where I grew up and my
| parents said, if you want to smoke or drink, don't hide it,
| and if you ever want to experiment with anything do it here
| in the home where people you can trust are around. And that's
| what I did, never lied to my parents once. The first time I
| smoked pot they knew about it, I never got blackout drunk
| anywhere, never did any hard stuff or used anything
| irresponsibly, still don't.
|
| What I do vividly remember is having US exchange students in
| uni age 21+ who binge drank themselves into oblivion
| everywhere, catching up on everything at once without anyone
| around.
| layer8 wrote:
| The argument wasn't about a specific age limit (it's 16 for
| alcohol where I live as well, and TFA actually mentions 16
| as a possible age limit for social media), it's that the
| parent commenter was implying that restricting access would
| make no difference.
|
| No argument that education is important, and that some
| would seek and find a way around the restriction, like they
| do with alcohol. But I'm sure that restricting access to
| social media under a certain age like it is the case for
| alcohol would significantly reduce the use of social media
| in the affected age group.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| even if it did which I don't genuinely believe given how
| ubiquitous and easy access is, it's a bad idea for the
| same reason I gave for alcohol. The world is full of
| social media, just like it's full of drugs, and teenagers
| need to learn how to navigate that world because in
| adulthood they will be surrounded by them.
|
| kids need to take to learn control of things that are
| harmful and how to engage them rather than be kept away
| from them. This avoidance behavior to me seems to be a
| consequence of now endemic helicopter parenting. If you
| hide things from kids, they don't gain the confidence of
| dealing with them or coming to you on their own terms.
|
| The goal shouldn't be to reduce social media usage, it
| should be to equip teenagers with tools to be resilient
| and take control of the way they use social media. It's
| in a sense like bullying. Yes, you can shield your kids
| from exposure to it, or you can teach them to confront
| it. What's better long term?
| woodruffw wrote:
| Maybe not "give them access," but I think we tend to
| underestimate adolescents' abilities to select out of
| behavior. From personal experience: I was able to access
| alcohol at a pretty early age, and thus avoided a lot of the
| "typical" American young adult experience with it (not
| drinking until college, at which point you black out at your
| first party.)
|
| Tobacco is a step further in terms of addictive potential,
| but I think the US could generally learn from Europe's
| approach to adolescent drinking.
| tehcheat418 wrote:
| I think early alcohol consumption is also associated with
| alcoholism. Seems like a bit of gamble to not strongly
| discourage it in adolescence. (https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/p
| ublications/AA67/AA67.htm#:~:tex....)
| woodruffw wrote:
| Associated, yes, but the causation is not clear: it could
| be the case that early drinking predisposes adolescents
| to alcoholism, or that adolescents who would be
| predisposed to alcoholism as adults are reflected in
| early drinking statistics.
|
| These surveys are also done on American adolescents, who
| are more likely to obtain and consume alcohol illicitly
| than their European counterparts. It would be interesting
| to see comparative statistics on the two.
|
| Finally: this bulletin mixes up different demographics:
| you have (1) COAs who are more likely to become
| alcoholics themselves, (2) adolescents who engage in
| binge drinking, which is generally correlated with
| alcoholism in adulthood, and (3) an unmeasured population
| of drinking-but-not-binging adolescents.
| twblalock wrote:
| Outside of rare circumstances they already have access.
| layer8 wrote:
| Typically they only have limited access. I'm sure they
| would stop having access if they'd start binging it like
| social media, under most circumstances.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| My experience is that it's much more effective to advocate
| _for_ the alternative activities that would be done _instead
| of_ using social media.
|
| I also think focusing all our attention to the broadest
| instance ("social media" as a whole) is just as lazy as
| focusing on the broadest audience ("teenagers" as a whole).
|
| One of the most frustrating social behaviors teenagers
| experience from adults is "infantilization": when an adult
| refuses to accommodate or even recognize a teenager's own
| autonomy, discipline, and maturation; instead placing them at
| the same social level as an infant. Teenagers are not babies,
| and they know it. They are not likely be fully mature, and they
| are definitely not fully _immature_.
|
| To broadly declare that teenagers are endangered by social
| media is no more helpful than broadly declaring children are
| endangered by water. In either context, simple avoidance is not
| a practical solution, nor is it intrinsically desirable.
| klabb3 wrote:
| We need more granular language to talk about these issues. Anyone
| with moderate proficiency in online communities know that there
| are major differences between eg instagram and a private discord
| chat to play Minecraft with your friends.
|
| Perhaps we should look at online media as games, with different
| rules and incentives, and find out which rules are good for us
| and which ones aren't.
|
| Public people oriented social media (instagram & Twitter being
| canonical examples) clearly stand out to me as the most
| problematic. Worse, the content promotion algorithms are opaque
| and not customizable, which makes it very difficult to research
| their influence. Upstream, >99% of these companies' revenue come
| from advertisers, it's likely that they constitute the largest
| stakeholder in our children's online experiences (and our own, of
| course).
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I agree that looking at "social media" in the context of game
| theory would be incredibly useful.
|
| Talking about "social media" as if it is one cohesive thing is
| lazy and unhelpful. The same goes for "teenagers".
| rdl wrote:
| I don't have children, but I think if I did, I'd ease them into
| social media by paying them run a social media profile for a cat
| -- from the perspective of the cat, with no humans or PII
| visible, solely the cat. This would accomplish a few goals:
| familiarity with the tools, exposure to the annoyances of the
| process in a relatively safe environment, and probably dislike of
| the whole thing due to it being "a job" before it's a hobby or
| personal interest.
| [deleted]
| vfclists wrote:
| [flagged]
| rightbyte wrote:
| I don't get your angle here. I guess that the biggest share of
| produced anti-worm meds is used on animals? What was he trying
| to say.
| gus_massa wrote:
| It depends on the country you live. In some countries it's
| used (almost) only for animals, because the health conditions
| of humans is so good that you don't need dewormers. In other
| countries there are national plans to give most of the
| population dewormers because it's an endemic problem.
|
| Many of the papers claiming that ivermectin was good against
| covid-19 were produced by hospitals running these national
| programs. You are already giving ivermectin to a lot of
| people, so you it's almost free to count the deads in the
| people getting ivermectin and compare it to the death of the
| general population. (In my opinion they use bad statistics to
| get the results, there are a lot of bias that they can't fix.
| Double blind randomized controlled trial or it didn't
| happen.)
| vfclists wrote:
| https://edition.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/08/22/ivermectin-.
| ..
| bigbillheck wrote:
| That clip doesn't want to play for me, but ivermectin's
| great if you or your pets (or livestock, I guess) have
| nematode trouble. Doesn't do a whole lot for the famous
| virus tho.
| vfclists wrote:
| Nope. The Surgeon General should have corrected her by
| saying that Ivermectin was a drug approved for human use
| but he went along with the horse dewormer bullshit.
|
| I guess you could say all the Africans who used
| Ivermectin were consumers of horse-dewormer.
|
| The issue is his integrity and honesty as a state medical
| official. If he can't be relied upon to speak the truth
| in one area, how can he in another?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Every part of this recommendation is too broad.
|
| "teenagers aged 13 to 16-18" is way too broad a category. What
| developmental characteristics are shared among that entire group?
| Which of those characteristics make an individual "too
| vulnerable" to benefit "safely" from "social media"? Are those
| traits really unique to children, and not adults? Is the use of
| "social media" itself entirely separate from learning how to
| "safely" interact with "social media" later?
|
| The same goes for "social media" itself. Are we talking about
| public forums, direct messaging, group chats, content creation,
| media consumption, or something else? What moderation techniques
| and goals are involved? What subjects do the spaces in question
| focus on? If we can't get specific here, our only choice is to
| ban everything from 4chan, to Tinder, to Snapchat, to SMS, to
| IRC, to landlines, to physical letters, all the way down to
| chatting unsupervised in a public park!
|
| And what is the "risk" posed? That a child will feel
| disproportionately leveraged judgement from their peers, and fall
| into depression? That a child will view traumatic content and get
| PTSD? That a child will start an unhealthy or dangerous
| relationship with an adult? That a child will build political or
| religious beliefs that contradict their parents' ideology? That a
| child will build an addictive relationship to the media itself,
| and avoid healthier activity? That a child will learn how to use
| technical computing skills to circumvent parental, school, or
| government censorship? Every one of these concerns is considered
| valid by a significant group of adults, and considered _invalid_
| by another.
|
| We all know that leaving people alone to leverage something as
| powerful as computer networks is dangerous. That leverage goes
| both ways, and the metaphorical fulcrum is most often positioned
| nearest to the individual user, and farthest from the network
| itself. Even though this subject is vitality important, we must
| recognize that the only way to interact with it at all is through
| _context_.
|
| The more context we have, the more control we have over the
| leverage that these tools provide, and the better equipped we
| become to maximize safety and utility.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| Growing up in early 90s we had a computer lab where we would go
| as part of kindergarten and first grade to play logo draw and
| Oregon trail. That feels way different to the type of tech
| exposure kids are getting these days with social media.
|
| There is something fundamentally different about making things
| "social" than just doing something harmless offline, like playing
| a game with the family, writing a story, using MS paint, math
| blaster.
|
| When things became social, it's like we were all given
| sledgehammers and told to go smash the candy store and raid it
| for whatever we wanted.
|
| Maybe I'm being nostalgic for the early / mid 90s when we didn't
| have these devices glued to us and little red notification icons
| hijacking our dopaminergic circuitry.
| gsatic wrote:
| Fundamental difference is there is
| click/like/upvote/view/follower count next to everything. These
| counts never existed on the old Internet. Kids were never
| getting judged with the whole planet scoring their thoughts
| like today. And people werent programmed to think collecting
| Likes and Followers is the point of the whole story.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Thankfully, there's still 4chan. At least one place to talk
| without a click/like/upvote/view/follower count.
| api wrote:
| The problem with social media isn't the social part. It's the
| media part.
|
| Media comes from the root of mediate. Social media is a huge
| system sitting between people and mediating their
| communication. The main goal function for most of it is to
| maximize engagement, which means amplifying and prioritizing
| the most toxic interactions.
|
| It's like having someone sitting between you and your friends
| steering the conversation toward whatever is the most negative,
| hateful, or ridiculous.
| reeckoh wrote:
| +1 to offline computer labs. Our primary school had one in the
| '90s, but they only let us in for an hour or two each week.
|
| The teachers didn't know how to use the computers, and the
| parents mostly felt that it was a waste of time which would rot
| our child brains. Still, the school had paid a bunch of money
| for it as part of an initiative to get rid of the library's
| card catalog system, so it had to be used.
|
| The teachers tried to convince everyone to play math and typing
| games, but most kids played with a sort of photoshop-lite
| program, stuck magnets onto the CRT screens, or played Oregon
| Trail.
|
| It wasn't an efficient process, but just about everybody in our
| district was a proficient typist by middle school. When I got
| to college, I was surprised by how many people typed on their
| laptops like they type on their phones, with rapid index finger
| pecks.
| MattDemers wrote:
| We figured out pretty quick how to use Windows' internal
| network messenger, and that was pretty cool (in terms of
| being able to chat with peers without the teachers knowing).
|
| It still blows my mind that kids are using Chromebooks and
| Ipads daily on an elementary level.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > , I was surprised by how many people typed on their laptops
| like they type on their phones, with rapid index finger
| pecks.
|
| What kind of people do you hang around. I don't know anyone
| who commonly uses their index fingers to type on their phone.
| It's mostly thumbs.
| reeckoh wrote:
| Good question - I'm even typing this with thumbs now!
|
| Thinking back, it was during a time when most phones were
| small enough to fit comfortably in one small hand. People
| would hold it with one hand, and use the other to tap.
|
| Modern phones are too heavy and bulky for that, so I think
| we use both hands to hold and use them. Or maybe the
| finger-pecking was unrelated to phone use, who knows.
| jgavris wrote:
| Oh how I miss the computer labs with Kidpix, Oregon trail,
| Mavis Beacon, and maybe later Marathon LAN parties (when the
| instructor left the room for an hour)...
| baremetal wrote:
| In middle school we had quake 1 too. But only during recess
| or before school.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Growing up in 00s, we had internet porn, scams and gambling
| _everywhere_... still we turned out fine.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| An as empty-nester who gave their child a phone at 10 years old,
| I would say make the minimum age for social media 16, just like
| driving. We gave our child a phone to give her a competitive
| technology edge and to keep track of her movements for safety.
| However, social media is like crack cocaine for kids. We found
| out when we would take her phone away as punishment, and she
| became a monster. She constantly had FOMO. It's also nearly
| impossible to limit their screen time while in the possession of
| the phone. There should definitely be some sort of age
| restriction, whatever it is.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Have you tried that with adults though?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| > It's also nearly impossible to limit their screen time while
| in the possession of the phone
|
| Was this a few years ago before Screen Time on iOS? Or was
| Android? We have a very locked down ipod touch and it works
| well most of the time.
| ergonaught wrote:
| We occasionally "grounded" our teenaged daughters from their
| devices for various reasons. This primarily cut them off from
| social media. After a week away from it, even they acknowledged
| how much healthier and happier they were (mentally/emotionally).
| A few days after device usage resumed, those things tanked. We
| pointed it out a few times. They saw it, too, even brought it up
| themselves. But of course they continued using the stuff. It
| reminds me of the vast hordes of young people vaping who wouldn't
| be caught dead hitting a cigarette, apparently aware that this is
| idiotic but doing it anyway.
|
| It's fun times to be a human.
| nimajneb wrote:
| This is my fear with my daughter, even though I'm addicted to
| electronics as well. I've trying to decrease my usage, but it's
| hard.
| Wolfbeta wrote:
| Same as it ever was.
|
| "One wants to do everything and one can do nothing, one is
| always thinking that from to-morrow one will begin a new life,
| that from to-morrow one will set to work as one ought, that
| from to-morrow one will put oneself on a diet; but not a bit of
| it, on the evening of that very day one will over-eat oneself,
| so that one can only blink one's eyes and can't say a word--yes
| really; and it's always like that." -- "Hlobuev", Gogol, N.
| Dead Souls (1854)
| d_sem wrote:
| It's quite recent to have multi-billion dollar tech companies
| develop algorithms that are this affective of hijacking
| attention.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Food is more powerful
| Karellen wrote:
| ObSMBC
|
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/addicted
| User23 wrote:
| Addictions are insidious. I recall that brief era when Internet
| addiction was a concern. Then virtually everyone got addicted
| so it's just normal.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Social media is basically internet era alcohol. Except alcohol
| has been around for a heck of a long time and the internet has
| been a culturally important thing for maybe a quarter century.
|
| Just like in previous times when we discovered alcohol, various
| cultures also found ways over time to deal with the fallout.
| Some cultures don't do so well with it.
|
| The same happened with various other chemicals like opium,
| tobacco, and crack, which all have had societal reactions over
| time. The contraceptive pill is another one, and I'd argue so
| are processed foods.
| superfrank wrote:
| > Social media is basically internet era alcohol.
|
| I've always used sugar and high fructose corn syrup as my
| analogy.
|
| In the early days of the internet we didn't have what we now
| call social media, but we had things like blogs and message
| boards that allowed for some connection with other people.
| Those things had some of the elements that make modern social
| media toxic, but they were mixed in with other good things
| and we consumed them much slower.
|
| Over the past few decades, we've slowly refined social media
| to what it is today. In an attempt to retain customers we've
| boiled it down to its most addictive and unhealthy parts and
| pushed customers to consume more of that quicker than ever
| before.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| But more insidious
| lordnacho wrote:
| I'd say the fact that the internet is clearly useful in
| certain ways is a thing that allows some of the downsides
| to travel along.
|
| With something like recreational drugs, the upsides are
| just pure hedonism, you do them because they make you feel
| a certain way and the downsides aren't inextricably
| connected. Plus the downsides are pretty awful, whereas
| with internet stuff it's awful but in a way that doesn't
| require an ambulance. Basically social media addiction is a
| flu that millions of people catch and mostly live with,
| whereas drug addiction is a thing fewer people catch but
| some of them die from it, like Ebola.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Social media is basically internet era alcohol
|
| God I wish, I'd probably use it more if it had any similar
| benefits as alcohol.
| mertd wrote:
| What are the benefits of alcohol?
| ilostmyshoes wrote:
| [dead]
| ben_w wrote:
| Social lubricant. People are often more at-ease when
| slightly tipsy.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Well, HN is also social media. I find at least some benefit
| in it, learning about new technologies.
| warning26 wrote:
| You're getting downvoted, but this raises a good point;
| how _does_ HN avoid becoming a toxic cesspool?
|
| It shares many attributes/features with other social
| media. Does it just come down to excellent moderation on
| the part of u/dang? Is it the lack of instant reply
| notifications? Is it that thread depth is capped? Only
| allowing downvotes for power users? Some combination of
| all those?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I think HN does become a cesspool for some specific
| subject matters that are controversial or anti-vc. Other
| than those subjects high moderation tools and extensive
| limiting of identified toxic contributors helps imo.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I believe so, it's hard to have flamewars as well since
| most users are limited from responding too fast. All of
| the above are good ways to increase the quality of
| discourse here.
|
| In a way, based on the alcohol analogy, HN is kind of
| like an evening beer with friends at a biergarten, you
| drink socially, not too much to even get very inebriated,
| and if you try to, mechanisms exist to stop you, such as
| the biergarten owners kicking you out. You're not getting
| (or are supposed to get) drunk at a biergarten, generally
| speaking.
|
| On the other hand, many other social media are more like
| clubs. Sure, you _can_ drink less, but the entire
| environment is _designed_ to get you to drink more. This
| is analogous to places like Twitter or Instagram which
| are _specifically designed_ for you to use them as much
| as possible, like through only allowing short replies
| (thus stripping nuance and incentivizing short angry
| replies) or gamifying like counters and incentivizing
| heavily cherry picked and edited photos.
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| I've found a clear split between sites which are topic-
| focused and sites which are person-focused. Also smaller
| communities tend to be better. That said, Hacker News is
| unusually good even for a topic-focused site.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| > "When we do things that are addictive like use cocaine
| or use smartphones, our brains release a lot of dopamine
| at once. It tells our brains to keep using that," she
| said. "For teenagers in particular, this part of their
| brain is actually hyperactive compared to adults. They
| can't get motivated to do anything else."
|
| /me checks how much time I spent on hn this week-end and
| decides it's maaaybe time to "log out"
| gerad wrote:
| I think it's closer to smoking. All the cool kids do it,
| minimal buzz/reward, takes lots of time/money, totally
| addictive.
| derefr wrote:
| I think the analogy flows through the idea that, like
| drinking in bars, posting on (some kinds of) social media
| _can_ be used to make friends and /or deepen existing
| relationships; and that people often _excuse_ a pattern of
| abuse of {alcohol, social media} as actually having this
| goal.
|
| Something this analogy through-line makes me notice, is
| that we have clear cultural images of what a healthy use of
| alcohol looks like -- going out for cocktails with friends;
| having wine with dinner; etc; vs. what alcohol abuse looks
| like -- day-drinking, drinking alone, drinking until you
| pass out, etc. But we don't (yet) have similar cultural
| images for what healthy vs. unhealthy/abusive social-media
| participation looks like.
| voldacar wrote:
| Vaping doesn't deposit nitrosamines, polycyclic hydrocarbons
| and tar in your lungs though? I don't see how it warrants
| comparison
| ergonaught wrote:
| The "At least I'm not shooting heroin into my eyeballs"
| argument doesn't float.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Nobody is making that argument. They're making the argument
| that the danger of vaping isn't at the same scales as the
| danger of cigarettes. Or rather, they're pointing it out,
| because that fact is not particularly controversial.
| manmal wrote:
| Nicotine itself incurs DNA damage and is suspected to be a
| carcinogen.
| pksebben wrote:
| I've yet to find conclusive research backing this up. Got
| any sources?
| stirfish wrote:
| Analysis of nicotine-induced DNA damage in cells of the
| human respiratory tract
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22001448/
| ilostmyshoes wrote:
| [dead]
| devwastaken wrote:
| Social media for teens are effectively casinos. They're
| designed to do that.
|
| Those who vape would also smoke, vaping is far healthier to do,
| it's cheaper, and it tastes better. You also can't government
| regulate liquid like you can cigarettes.
| agentwiggles wrote:
| > you can't government regulate liquid
|
| You certainly can, my city just passed a ban of all flavored
| tobacco products which will include vaping.
|
| I disagree with the ban, but that's beside the point here.
|
| I'm actually curious to see how things play out. The first
| thing that occurred to me was that vape shops might start
| selling unflavored liquid and also sell flavoring which you
| would have to mix in yourself. Not sure that would be
| passable under the legal regime or not.
|
| Interestingly, statehouse Republicans attempted to pass a law
| which would have negated my city's ban. This was vetoed by
| the state governor though.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I've noticed that effect for so many things that have become
| cultural norms, from the food we eat to how we spend time with
| our friends.
|
| Seems really sad that we're forced to choose between our own
| wellbeing and participating in broader culture.
|
| Have to point out, though, it seems the one place where
| everything isn't toxic seems to be (certain forms of)
| orgnanised religion.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Hmm? To me organized religion seems to be the most toxic of
| all - megachurches and Internet-only pastors are the ones
| whipping up their followers into believing people that are
| not like them are existential threats worthy of being killed.
| The healthier forms of religion are the ones that explicitly
| _un_ -organized: Unitarian Universalists, Quakers, your local
| community church that serves as a gathering place for like-
| minded folks but isn't interested in imposing their beliefs
| on others.
|
| Maybe the lesson there is that _organization_ is the evil,
| given that it seems to pop up in so many contexts (megacorps
| < small businesses, megachurches < community organizations,
| public schooling < small private/parochial/charter schools,
| big government < grassroots organizations). Would make sense,
| since an organization, by definition, is about subsuming what
| individually makes you happy so you can be a part of
| something bigger. The bigger the organization grows, the less
| it can fit the authentic selves of the people who support it.
| akkartik wrote:
| The essential prisoner's dilemma of humanity:
|
| * As a group grows it gets worse at serving each
| individual's needs.
|
| * Large groups outcompete and disrupt small ones.
|
| I think the trick is for small groups to be illegible to
| the outside world.
|
| Fish school, birds flock and animals herd partly to avoid
| predators. I wonder if multiple schools/flocks/herds are
| always superior to a single one, as long as each of them is
| above some critical threshold.
| chowells wrote:
| Organization from the bottom up works fine. The problem
| comes with hierarchies that exist to reinforce power. If
| you naturally construct a hierarchy to coordinate, great.
| Let the hierarchy die when the need to coordinate is over.
| When someone co-opts that hierarchy to increase their own
| power and reduce that of others, you've got a problem.
| saurik wrote:
| > Let the hierarchy die when the need to coordinate is
| over.
|
| That doesn't happen.
| memling wrote:
| > Have to point out, though, it seems the one place where
| everything isn't toxic seems to be (certain forms of)
| orgnanised religion.
|
| Perhaps what we are seeing is a generalization of religion in
| which certain aspects of social concern have effectively
| become religious exercise. This might be a challenging thesis
| to sustain, but where parallels can be found it might give
| some broader insight into the present moment.
| ergocoder wrote:
| The last surgeon general also said masks didn't reduce covid
| spread. He reversed his words a month later. Prop to him for
| reversing his words.
|
| But still. Maybe we should wait until more research is out.
| xlii wrote:
| This is something that's on my mind lately.
|
| My kids nag me constantly for Facebook/WhatsApp/TikTok etc. Main
| argument is that peers are using those media and they feel
| excluded.
|
| The thing is that all parties involved is way below required
| 13yo. I do have arguments which are heard but it is not like
| reality stops being it especially when there is no alternative
| outside of school-owned Teams account that has most social
| activities disabled.
|
| It feels like there's no win in this fight, except for maybe
| suing FB for not checking carefully enough and allowing young
| minors to use their platform.
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| Incidentally 31 may also still be too young.
| coding123 wrote:
| 43 soon, and I still don't think it's a good idea.
| cmsonger wrote:
| In my case "50s is 'too early to join social media'". So right
| there with you. :) (Though to be honest, joined back in the
| 00's then left in the early 2010s.)
| LarryMullins wrote:
| What's the best age to get addicted to heroin?
| bdw5204 wrote:
| I think the "you must claim to be at least 13 to be able to
| participate in an online discussion site" law makes sense as it
| functions as an IQ test of sorts to keep under-13s who are not
| ready to be on the internet off the internet. But I'm not in
| favor of increasing the age as I think its reasonable for teens
| to be able to openly admit that they're teens.
|
| The problem with most of the social media platforms is their
| hostility to anonymity. A teen with a Twitter account or a Reddit
| account should absolutely be an anon so that their posts while
| they're still figuring life out aren't tied to their real name
| and it would be good if social media companies and search engines
| would help people destroy the evidence of any embarrassing stuff
| they posted under their real identity as a teen for the same
| reason that we as a society typically expunge the criminal
| records of teenagers who commit crimes.
|
| But social media companies have been making it harder and harder
| to be anonymous. For example, Twitter started locking new
| accounts and forcing them to provide a phone number a few years
| ago ostensibly as an "anti-bot" measure. This is actively harmful
| and should be discontinued. Likewise, Google needs to allow users
| who wish to remain anonymous to turn off all of their account
| security measures other than a password. Security measures such
| as tying accounts to phones are helpful for adults who have their
| identity and their finances tied to these accounts but it makes
| these services unsafe for minors as it allows the platform to
| know the identities of their underage users which is a possible
| security risk.
|
| Minors should also be educated in terms of basic measures to
| protect their anonymous accounts from deanonymization attacks and
| on the dangers of meeting their "internet friends" in real life.
| All of this used to be standard advice for "heavily online" youth
| in the 90s and 00s. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be in
| the 20s other than the preference of some social media outlets
| that users use their real identity for ad targeting purposes and
| the insistence of certain powerful people who can't handle
| criticism that anonymity is bad because they get criticized by
| anons who otherwise wouldn't feel safe challenging them (i.e.
| online anonymity is also good because it allows adults who'd
| otherwise feel unsafe speaking truth to power to feel safe enough
| to do so).
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Seems like Twitch has been pushing lately for some channels to
| only allow chat if the typist gives Twitch their phone number ?
|
| Thankfully, there's still 4chan ! (/s ... or is it ?)
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > the skewed and often distorted environment of social media
|
| Where is the unskewed and undistorted social environment that is
| implicit here?
| klyrs wrote:
| Talking to peers in the cafeteria or playground is not subject
| to a corporation boosting attention to the kids that it finds
| most profitable.
|
| More generally, taking your "no true scotsman" approach to kids
| safety would suggest that it's fine to let kids play in a lead-
| dust sandpit because you can't eliminate 100% of environmental
| lead.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Gone with the advent of the internet. We're just still getting
| used to this new reality after over 20 years.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| I fully agree.
|
| But should the surgeon general also make comments about how code
| reviews need to be empathetic? I mean. If the surgeon general is
| gonna make statements about what is "healthy" for other social
| issues, where does he stop?
| rpmw wrote:
| He also claimed that water is indeed wet.
| zahma wrote:
| Not only wet but soaked with forever chemicals and hormones.
| Where to begin to save the children?
| [deleted]
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| My generation grew up with everyone having ICQ accounts at 12-13.
| slavboj wrote:
| Given how the office of the surgeon general has been so obviously
| politicized and their recommendations based on political
| considerations, I am reluctant to take their advice in and of
| itself as evidence of anything health related. It's likelier
| based on the administration's desire to put pressure on their
| political opponents at social media companies than any actual
| health considerations.
| LanceH wrote:
| I read this as an excuse to take further control of the
| internet and ignore the 1st amendment.
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