Comment by garrickvanburen

Comment by garrickvanburen 3 days ago

15 replies

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I've 4 kids, the youngest is 11.

The rule in the house is; 1) no social media accounts until 13 and 2) one of your parents will be your 'friend' on that account.

This is actually a pretty great expression of "kids keep you young."

But, right now is right now and how kids communicate with each other is constantly changing - social media or not.

So, if you're not a parent to a tween or teens now - I'd say you have little to actually worry about as the landscape will be completely different in a decade.

elevatedastalt 3 days ago

> one of your parents will be your 'friend'

That doesn't do much since they will just keep the spicy posts hidden from the parent.

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  • garrickvanburen 3 days ago

    You're presuming a great deal here.

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    • elevatedastalt 3 days ago

      What am I presuming? Most social media platforms let you have post-level privacy settings.

      If a kid wants to post something that they don't want their parents to see they can exclude them from seeing the post

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      • garrickvanburen 3 days ago

        It’s not necessarily about the parent being excluded. It’s about the kid, the kids friends, and the kids friends parents all knowing that a) bad behavior will get back to the parent and b) screenshots are forever.

        It’s an entire community.

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    • [removed] 3 days ago
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spoonfeeder006 3 days ago

Another thing is how to help them learn self control in the face of the massively sophisticated research into how to get them hooked into SM. Allen Carr's book, Smart Phone Dumb Phone, seems pretty insightful and helps the reader understand the root psychological principles behind tech addiction

Perhaps that would be a helpful resource? Another Allen Carr book, Easy Way to Quit Smoking, has a reputation of helping smokers lose their cravings for cigarrettes after undersanding the falasies behind their cravings

Learning those principles at formative ages would probably go a long way

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giarc 3 days ago

>I'd say you have little to actually worry about as the landscape will be completely different in a decade.

Could be a lot worse though. Imagine if VR/AR does take off and your social media feed is in your eyes 24/7 rather than just when you take out your phone.

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  • garrickvanburen 3 days ago

    VR/AR won't take off. It'll get better, if only in that our moral panic about it will evaporate as it did for comic books and video games.

    Kids prefer being IRL with other kids w/ or w/o screens.

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    • giarc 3 days ago

      Grab any teenager from the street and ask to see their screen time usage on the phone. I bet when you subtract sleeping and school hours (assuming their school has banned phones in classrooms) it will still be nearly double digit hours.

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      • garrickvanburen 3 days ago

        So? There was a time when all the phone-based activities were separate objects and devices. But today, conveniently they’re all in a single device. Aggregate screen time is a useless measure and discrete screen time only matters to help diagnose when something has done wrong. If the kid is wildly successful what doors screen time matter?

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    • wvenable 3 days ago

      > Kids prefer being IRL with other kids w/ or w/o screens.

      Who are these kids you speak of?

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