Comment on Fediverse for teens
Lembot_0002@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Poor kids. Teenagers need communication with other teenagers, or they would grow up crazy like you.
Comment on Fediverse for teens
Lembot_0002@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Poor kids. Teenagers need communication with other teenagers, or they would grow up crazy like you.
lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world 5 days ago
There are more and more kids who aren’t allowed on social media because of its multifarious harms. Don’t forget that 20 years ago, no kids had social media. By all accounts, kids were doing fine back then. Also, OP said that her eldest daughter, at least, has a friend group, so your concern about their social isolation is probably misplaced.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
What does the word “social media” even mean?
Because I was definitely on web forums in 2005. I was a preteen back then.
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
It was only for us nerds.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
That is true. I remember around that time wishing the Internet were more popular among the general public and wishing that would turn everyone nerdy. The first part has happened, the second not.
lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world 5 days ago
For my part, i don’t consider forums social media. I may be in the minority, but im not as worried about stranger danger or cyber bullying as much as corporate control over content and privacy. i have never used snapchat, but i assume part of their revenue stream involves advertising and selling private data. maybe snapchat is very responsible about these things, but there is no oversight. take facebook, for example: a whistleblower just alleged that facebook targeted teen girls with weight loss and beauty products when it detected that the girls were feeling bad about themselves (say, when they had deleted a bunch of selfies). these exploitative and predatory decisions (to target an individual) are not approved by an ethics board. they are not subject to scrutiny. the only time we become aware of them is when some executive gets laid off and has a sudden crisis of conscience/lucrative book deal. maybe a ban on individualized ads and content feeds for young people would be enough to fix big problems. forums mostly don’t suffer from those problems.
user224@lemmy.sdf.org 5 days ago
Well, realistically, things have changed. Without social media you get quite left out. Easily forgotten even.
lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world 5 days ago
You are right. But if things have changed, they can change again. Many countries are in the process of banning smart phones in schools and are legislating age minimums for social media. In such environments, access to social media becomes much less important. I think a better long-term approach would be to mitigate the risks of social media, and the fediverse is already addressing some of the big problems like corporate control of information and algorithmic curation of content. I like the idea of social media, but i hate the (prevalent) implementation.
ahornsirup@feddit.org 5 days ago
It’s pretty clear that OP’s daughter does feel like she’s missing out on things her friends are doing, that’s why she is asking. Social isolation doesn’t have to be damaging to your mental health, especially if you’re an extrovert.
And bringing up “but in my time…” Yeah, no. Not a comparable situation. If everyone is on social media and you’re not, you’re going to be left out of at least some things, there’s just no way around it.
lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Almost every kid has felt that they were missing out on something because of parental rules at some point. The kids who had no rules were not necessarily the lucky ones, since good parenting always involves setting boundaries. i’m really not making the “in my time” argument because if we fixed the problems with social media i would have no problem letting my kids use something i didn’t have access to. to me it’s about balancing risks: make it safer, then let kids use it! after all, op is opening the door by making this post. she is directly responding to the expressed desire of her kids and trying to find a safe way to let her daughters access the tools they think they need.