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.
Comment on Fediverse for teens
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days agoDon’t forget that 20 years ago, no kids had social media
What does the word “social media” even mean?
Because I was definitely on web forums in 2005. I was a preteen back then.
lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world 3 days ago
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
It was only for us nerds.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 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.