Good on these parents for trying to raise their kids off social media. I can say with confidence social media only hurt me in middle and high school, and I wish my parents had had stronger opinions on me using it
I am so thankful that I got out of school before social media blew up. We had Myspace, and Facebook opened up to everyone I think my junior year of HS, but smartphones didn’t become a thing until my senior year, and they weren’t that prevalent either.
Same! I didn’t even have a computer till the year I graduated high school because they cost too much then. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people had them. We were the odd family in the neighborhood. Not that anyone cared. Once I got one, the only social media type stuff that I remember using was AIM, Photobucket, and shudder LiveJournal. I couldn’t imagine navigating the internet today where everyone has figured out exactly how to exploit you for everything without you even knowing because you are too young to understand still.
Lemmy is the only social media I use. I intend for my kids to not touch any of it.
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It most definitely is social media.
I grew up with access to social media. I got an Android 4.1 tablet when I was 8. Actually, I wish my parents had less strong opinions on it.
That’s because they went the other way around.
My dad wanted me to have a Facebook account, which I created, and then was upset at me when I deleted it when I was 12 because of the dumb hateful “jokes” floating around there.
Then later he again urged me to at least use Messenger, as if he didn’t have a plan with unlimited SMS and phone calls…I am an adult now, but not much has changed. It only went from Facebook to TikTok.
I was disgusted with them and kept telling everyone how good ICQ and forums were, but they still hurt me, haha.
Experts: social media is harmful for kids
Schools: let’s use social media as an official communication platform!
WTF.
It doesn’t sound like the school is actually using it as an official communication platform (thank goodness), just that all of the student run clubs use it as their means of communication, which is just driven by where the majority of them like to communicate. Obviously this is a sign of the issue, which is that most teens are on social media all the time, so that it becomes their preferred mode of communication.
While I’m at it, the ongoing dialog
Life as a teen isn’t easy anyway
Glad that shit is over for me. We only had MySpace and MSN Messenger. Must be so much worse now
I’d say so with those constant little dopamine hits. Shit, I’m 40 and I’ve had to put a bunch of efforSHIT IM ON LEMMY AGAIN!
Oh fuck you just reminded me I’m supposed to be working
I mean I got along without it, i just played video games and masturbated most of the time
Sounds like you’re older though. Social media wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous a decade ago as it is now.
There was separation between online and everything else. But for these kids, online is everything. The spaces are nearly equal in experience and importance.
I grew up when social media was already ubiquitous, in the 2010s. Still mostly video games, walks and studying.
Yeah I suppose so, but all I mean is, kids are pretty good at finding ways to entertain themselves
Life without the internet made me feel alone and isolated with no recourse by which to find resilience to my abusers. While I can’t say I’d be different with social media and the internet to advise me they were lying to me and treating me unfairly for their own benefit, I’d at least have that perspective, and it wouldn’t be ingrained that I am just broken and should unlife and stop burning resources that could be better used elsewhere.
These days, I have management skills and a support system, but I still deal with suicidality every day, and am incapable of seeing any value I produce to the world (or see it insignificant compared to my footprint), and the internet and social media have figured largely in my comprehension of the mechanics of my mental illness (especially when dealing with professionals who are less interested in understand me as affirming their own ideology, not a new problem, but the current batch is particularly egregious).
It is, as I see it, a human right for people to be informed when they need to make life decisions (with concurrence from the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and without access to public information, kids rely on authorities who are either ignorant or complicit in feeding them false information. They should have access not only to the internet, but also to a robust community of people with differing ideas.
Fail to provide this and you get grown-up crackpots like me, who wonder every day if it’s time to check out.
