I dunno I'm just gonna drop a 50 minute video link on this one and bounce, 'cause if I chronically post my dogshit opinions every time one of these boomer ass articles gets posted here and gets upvoted a million times by the masturbatory elder millennial ex-redditor linux userbase, then I'm gonna be here for a fuckin eternity
I turned out perfectly fine without a phone until age 15, and I'm 17 now, I don't really use social media other than reddit, Lemmy and YouTube on my phone and I barely use it, since I'm more likely to use my iPad at home exclusively.
I feel as though more parents need to do the same mine did, restrict access to smartphones until ages the kid is more likely to explore the world more, specifically for safety, but still teach them to concentrate on stops while on public transport, on where they walk, etc. and not use their phone on the go apart from when time is able to pass and be stationary.
I cringe at the fact kids a third or less my age are allowed phones, I shouldn't even be allowed since my brain is still developing, i cant imagine the levels of braindead these children will be when they get to my age, since people my age are already horrific enough...
Socialization is a slow process. Many people who have good families and rich environments still have problems learning how to have face to face conversations. Look how many people on this site talk about not wanting to have a conversation over the phone or talk to a stranger in a shop.
What does this have to do with smartphones and the internet? The internet is a means of gathering information first, and a form of communication second. I don't get what socialization has to do with the first one. If you want people to be comfortable communicating on the internet (or via phone or whatever) then presumably they need to start earlier.
As for people struggling with phones, that's because a) lots of people here are autistic, and b) voice phones are not an ideal form of communication anyway. Either way the answer is practice, not shying away from the problem.
Okay first who said eight hours? I am not saying there shouldn't be limits, just that banning the internet completely is a bad idea. Second communicating with technology is an essential social skill in itself, and being able to use technology and apply critical thinking to things you read is absolutely essential. Lots of people work from home using technology. Almost everyone will have to use technology to do research e.g. in college.
Socialization is a slow process. Many people who have good families and rich environments still have problems learning how to have face to face conversations. Look how many people on this site talk about not wanting to have a conversation over the phone or talk to a stranger in a shop.
That's my original comment. Never said anything about banning the internet.
Okay now you are just being obtuse. You realize lots of kids these days don't have or use regular computers, right? Smartphones are now the only way to access some services as well, and are important in case you get lost. You can't call your parents or 999 on a laptop now can you?
well since social media can affect attention spans negatively, as I've observed with myself recently, I don't think the effects of such would translate positively into social or educational circumstances, arguably the most needed situations in a child's life at that time, even if they are almost an adult.
sure, alcohol and drugs do still affect a child quite intensely, though I'm saying that, is social media and the endless dopamine harvesting NOT a drug? if you think about it, it extracts, makes a person want to come back for more, causing addiction, further extracting more, losing its effectiveness and making it almost impossible to quit from there.
people may say it isn't addictive, but its just that it isn't as noticeable since it is a society-wide phenomena which is seen as positive.
no, I'm not confused at all, I am meaning that the smartphone is the most accessible way to utilise social media, meaning due to its formfactor, it is the most convenient way to access it.
are you more likely to use a desktop PC using android x86 (just an example) or use a smartphone? its almost like using a smartwatch to use Photoshop, its not the same as using a desktop, you know what I mean?
except they don't have the same software. Phones use ARM, not x86.
(amusingly, if you had just said "Android", you would have seemed less insane. still insane, since you could have just said 'linux', but less. But even saying that would still make you insane, since the operating system isn't the social media, and isn't what you were talking about.)
I do understand that fact, but I used it as an example since you can utilise android apps with the same or similar user experience as a smartphone, I'm more using it as an example of form factor compared to chip architecture, as the latter wouldn't be fitting at all. Apologies for the confusion.
If you were in any way correct, we should be banning cars and trucks from the USA, because they're the most accessible way drugs are transported. To stop drugs, we should ban cars. Cars are making it far too easy to get that nose candy.
Yeah, no. Hardware has nothing to do with this.
(I'm not even going to start with how insane your mentioning android x86 is; like somehow that esoteric version of an OS has something to do with social media. I'm guessing you think everything uses apps, and social media doesn't run through web pages?)
sure, alcohol and drugs do still affect a child quite intensely, though I'm saying that, is social media and the endless dopamine harvesting NOT a drug? if you think about it, it extracts, makes a person want to come back for more, causing addiction, further extracting more, losing its effectiveness and making it almost impossible to quit from there.
I don't think you understand what drugs are or can do. They don't all just blindly increase dopamine. They have many other effects on the mind and body that social media does not. This whole concept of dopamine detoxes and addiction = dopamine needs to die too. It's not based on solid scientific understanding as addiction is far more complex than this and comes in multiple, separate forms. Even drugs like amphetamines that primarily interact with the dopamine system don't always lead to addiction (ask anyone with experience of ADHD meds). Thinking dopamine is only about addiction and vice versa is like thinking electricity is only for heating and that all heating must be done using electricty.
Raising children without access to the internet is both backwards for their education and actively dangerous. The internet has allowed minors in bad situations to escape or get help multiple times. It's also made people realise their parents or guardians are insane or abusive including those who are members of dangerous religions and cults, are homophobic, or are abusive for other reasons. School in some countries is also packed full of propaganda, and even when it isn't they can't always help and are sometimes a source of abuse themselves. Restricting access to information isn't a good thing.
I managed to almost completly keep my children away from it for now (8 and 10). But it is a struggle. And I will soon lose that struggle. So many children at age 8 or 9 have smartphones for fs sake.
I plan to slowly introduce them to stuff like this, so they will be able to deal with it. I did so rather successfully with the other bullshit, like Roblox. They are only allowed to play it when I am in the room, and I check that they follow that rule (they do).
Feels like walking on the edge though. Still unsure when to open the TikTok thing. Too early is bad, but too late and they will somehow already he on tiktok and I just don't know about it.
the main thing for you is to stay off your phone as well. Kids watch their parents closely and humans have an in built need for "fairness", if they see you addicted to it they will never stop wanting to do the same.
I'd add the "have clear rules" concept to this and enforce the rules. Don't be wishy washy. But communicate the rules and be prepared to explain the rules.
But also accept that theory and practice are not the same. Imo you should allow them enough, that they don't isolated from their friends experiences. That is why I allow them to play Roblox under supervision or why I set up a Minecraft Server so that they can play online with their friend in a safe environment (but only on weekends for a fixed time period).
That's sort of true, but "rules for thee and not for me" just kicks the can down the road. They're going to copy you, so it's really important to set a good example, at least when your kids can see you.
It’s not “rules for thee and not for me,” unless you consider that true for things like drinking alcohol.
It’s protecting children from something they are not cognitively developed enough to be dealing with.
The difference is that it's easy to point to reasons why a child shouldn't be drinking alcohol (illegal, liver immaturity, etc), and less easy to point to why they shouldn't be on social media, esp. if their friends are using it.
Where the line is more fuzzy, I think parents should set a more strict standard for themselves, at least in front of their children.
I think the line is, TikTok pulls a video at random it thinks you’ll want to watch. This means that you may be exposed to basically anything a person felt like filming. This includes violent or pornographic content, which children should not be exposed to.
Being a parent is telling your children no sometimes. Being a parent means that you should vet the media that your child is being exposed to, which is impossible on a platform like TikTok, and sometimes make the decision for them that they are not old enough to be exposed to certain material.
It really feels like folks don’t want to be parents - they want to hand the iPad over to the screaming toddler so that they can be babysat by their own phone. I don’t understand why one would have children, if they weren’t interested in doing the work of parenting those kids.
if you're a responsible parent that keeps an eye on what their child is doing.
Unfortunately you can't run a society based on how people should behave. That's the entire reason we have a legal system and the means to implement safeguards for our population.
So why do locks exist, if society runs on how people should behave? Why do we have a court system, if we assume no crimes will ever be committed? Why do we have laws?
Yup. I have kids (three under 10), and the only time my kids use my phone is when I'm literally there with them, letting them pick a video (usually Pat and Mat, Bert and Ernie, or similar). It's not every day, and never more than 30 min, usually like 15-20 min, and we take turns picking.
I'm not letting my kids have their own phone until I trust them with one, and that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon with how many of our other rules they break.
You can type in coherent sentences so it's no surprise your kids don't fall into the reported finding, your kids are off to a better start than average, I presume.
Yeah, parents are getting ruined by social media algorithms too.
Our government seems to be moving towards an "we only care about the children, but everyone, including adults, upload your government papers" approach.
Y'all got any of those protections for adults? I remember reading regulations that companies couldn't show children advertisements. Can I have some of that regulation too?
I just can't stop being cynical that there is little focus on homeless or underpaid adults, or other adult issues, but the one problem we're focused on just so happens to include everyone giving up anonymity on the Internet.
We do need to help kids with social media, but there's a lot of other challenges they will soon face as adults that we're ignoring.
Uhh, yes, in fact I'd say most. There's entire systems of childhood health legislation, education, labor, you name it. This is an availability bias showing through. Think about it for five minutes and I bet you can come up with a dozen examples.
What a great way to dismiss an entire problems based that affects our society. It's easier to just hand wave it away as someone else's problem than to actually consider it...
When a problem becomes systematic it's now a societal and cultural problem and not an individual responsibility problem. Individual responsibility isn't working so it's now down to the society this is occurring in to solve the systematic problem in a systematic way.
No I get that, but this is different honestly. Look up rates of teenage depression/anxiety/suicide attempts, it's a stunning correlation with the advent of smartphones and social media. Millenials got out just in time.
They're both focused on profit. The only reason you see the other one as scary is because it's owned by the scary scary Chinese. Red scare all over again.
In 2019, Douyin limited users in teenager mode to 40 minutes per day, accessible only between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Then, in 2021, it made the use of teenager mode mandatory for users under 14.
Unironically yes, at least the US government is something we can openly criticize and attempt to change while living within its borders. Try criticizing the Chinese government from within China, let me know how that works out for you. I'll take homegrown American spyware any day.
Literally proven to ruin attention span in children and essentially cause ADHD, can also easily cause depression by constantly seeing (usually) fake people flaunting their (usually) fake life and wealth.
Not to mention the proliferation of insane conspiracy theories, absolute nonsense and usually harmful 'advice' of one kind or another, 'being rich is the only thing that matters so here is a scam to show you how!' of all kinds of flavors...
Having recently been diagnosed with ADHD I've taken part in several classes on ADHD to learn more about it. And the consensus is that no external factors like that cause ADHD. However, I'm sure this topic of algorithm driven addictive short form videos for a very young audience is being studied more now than ever so who knows what the consensus on that will be in the future. Causing ADHD or not, I don't think it's healthy either way.
Yeah it can certainly cause problems, it's just not ADHD.
ADHD doesn't even really mean short attention spans, it's more of the inability to willingly direct attention. It's the same way people incorrectly use "OCD" to mean liking things clean and/or orderly.
I have ADHD and I've had times where I've done the same thing for 14 hours straight (even forgetting to eat) when my brain decides it wants to latch onto that thing. You just need to be sufficiently stimulated, hence why stimulants can work as a treatment.
ADHD doesn't even really mean short attention spans, it's more of the inability to willingly direct attention. It's the same way people incorrectly use "OCD" to mean liking things clean and/or orderly.
Both of these are the product of needing constant stimulation. I understand your point that hyper-focus is also part of ADD/ADHD, and I certainly am not going to make claims about how your brain is changing structurally without evidence behind it.
So this is mere conjecture for a mechanism:
What these apps (with short format video being the worst) do is train your brain to expect a constant stream of dopamine hits. Novelty (presumably even trash novelty like TikTok) triggers dopamine, your brain becomes dependent on that steady stream of dopamine fix, and your body starts craving it once you remove that pattern of behavior.
This is very similar to ADHD, which is also strongly connected to problems with how dopamine is regulated. It's not as simple as just not enough dopamine or poor uptake or whatever, but it's reasonably clear that it plays a role.
So both cases are a result of poor dopamine regulation causing a need for stimulation that has a negative impact on ability to function from day to day. They're probably at minimum relatively similar.
This is my understanding of it all as well. Like, if your parents never stfu as a kid or you never had a chance to really be alone and quiet and safe as a baby, your brain, your very concept of self, is hardwired for constant stimulation such that it's uncomfortable not to have it, to the point of sitting their for 14 hours reading Wikipedia pages or whatever because it's more stimulating that it would be to stop and wash the floors or so the laundry, or maybe just talking your fingers in class or letting your mind read every sign and bumper sticker while you're driving. It's also why all the most effective treatments are about emotional regulation.
I'm not going to argue if it's identical to ADHD chemically. I'm not sure we have the level of understanding of the low level mechanisms to differentiate (if it even is actually different), or even that ADHD is "one mechanism" and not a bundle of similar mechanisms of different types of disregulation with similar outcomes, because diagnosis of any mental difference is effectively all about checking boxes on patterns of behavior.
But even if there's something you can point to as clearly a distinguishing factor to say "this isn't ADHD as we've defined it", which I'm not sure you can, I'm not sure how you say they're not similar or related.
That doesn't sound right to me. ADHD is a constellation of shared symptoms, grouped together and given a name for insurance and diagnostic purposes and because the treatment overlaps. The cause of those symptoms are obviously multifactorial, heavily correlated with both genetics and childhood stress. Bad news if your mom or dad didn't ever stfu when you were a baby, hardwired you to be uncomfortable without constant external stimulation and validation.
Schools at least where I live do a much better job of teaching kids to manage their emotions. And I hope parents of young children are doing a better job as well, seems like it to me, but I'm in a well off rural bubble.
I imagine TikTok sets back any progress and I'm glad it's banned. TikTok brain is a real thing. Human beings are meant to be able to focus intensely in one purposeful thing for several hours at a time and with practice anyone can learn to be highly productive and attentive if they can find a time and place to be free from distractions, and anyone can have a super memory if they set aside time and purposefully train their memory; memory is a product of focus.
I tend to watch YouTube on my phone while traveling, waiting, relaxing and don’t feel like turning on the TV… but always in landscape orientation. I can’t stand vertical videos.
