Comment by garrickvanburen
4 days ago
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.
> 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.
You're presuming a great deal here.
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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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
>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.
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.
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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> Kids prefer being IRL with other kids w/ or w/o screens.
Who are these kids you speak of?
Last sentence is just…so inaccurate