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Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#271

Post by iforgot22 »

juliusgeo wrote: post #264
iforgot22 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeschooling is too far for my liking. Kids really need to be around other kids. If anything, my siblings and I needed a bit more of that, because our neighborhood had 0 kids and my parents kept forcing us to hang out with their adult friends. But it was still ok, we still had real enough childhoods. I started going to Catholic church in college, against my parents' wishes. I realized that everyone does have problem…

I can understand your POV perhaps surprisingly well, as my father was secular growing up and then chose to join Protestantism in college (against his parents wishes). I wonder if at the end of the day it's just teenagers wanting to rebel. My dad's parents were secular, so he became Christian, and I became secular again. I can definitely relate to not enjoying support groups where the suffering is "valorized" to a cer…

The flip flopping of religion is maybe just that. It wasn't really the case for me, cause my parents were Catholic but became quietly atheist, and I didn't know until they started complaining to me. But it happens a lot.

It seems to work for WASP. Superiority (or I guess family pride) is also big where my parents are from, Iraq and Iran. But my parents didn't take it in moderation, so the outcome wasn't good in the end for them.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#272

Post by sinuhe69 »

My kids don't have smartphones until they're 17. I keep them busy with maths, programming, robotics and other things they like. It seems to work. But now my older son is 17 and he hangs out with his friends on Discord all the time, sometimes it's even affecting his health (sleep) and his schoolwork. But it's less the effect of social media and more the effect of his age.

However, I don't know how it will be in later years, whether he will be able to develop a healthy habit of using devices or not, and I'm a bit worried.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#273

Post by jacobgkau »

superfrank wrote: post #243
worik wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best thing my parents ever did for me was cultivate a sense of familial superiority. Odd! It was the worst thing my parents did for me, I believed them. Took a long time to realise I am, we were, quite ordinary.

Same. I think cultivating a sense of superiority is the wrong approach and could lead to other unhealthy behaviors. Cultivating a sense of self esteem and self acceptance is a better approach, IMO. "I don't drink because I'm better than you" seems like a problematic mindset. "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different" seems like a m…

> "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different"

That was basically my high-horse libertarian mindset in high school when I saw other kids using cannabis-- I straight-up said to at least one, "I'm not going to do that, but I don't mind if you do." I thought I was being socially liberal and polite.

Spoiler alert, everyone else "wanted to do something different" and no longer cared about me after I respectfully removed myself from "the cool stuff" without condemning it. Today, I'm much more vocally negative towards cannabis users.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#274

Post by iforgot22 »

Rastonbury wrote: post #270
iforgot22 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8th grade was when all this stuff became mainstream for me. That was the iPhone 3GS release year. Social life went to crap very quickly for everyone. Should be "wait until 18th."

I was of similar age then, before that it was nokias and Bluetooth, Facebook was where you could upload stupid shit and not go viral and people's walls were just rage and 9gag memes. With tiktok I think teenage social media and addiction and the self esteem stuff is a different beast. Many people talk about screen time and age limitations, if a parent doesn't want to go that far there should to be algorithmic limits…

It's definitely different (and worse) today, but even back then I felt like it was robbing everyone of their childhoods. Kids spent an enormous amount of time there, they were on phones in school or in social settings, and the "bathroom wall" gossip thing was big.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#275

Post by iforgot22 »

superfrank wrote: post #243
worik wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best thing my parents ever did for me was cultivate a sense of familial superiority. Odd! It was the worst thing my parents did for me, I believed them. Took a long time to realise I am, we were, quite ordinary.

Same. I think cultivating a sense of superiority is the wrong approach and could lead to other unhealthy behaviors. Cultivating a sense of self esteem and self acceptance is a better approach, IMO. "I don't drink because I'm better than you" seems like a problematic mindset. "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different" seems like a m…

"You do you" doesn't work at some point. The drinking kids will exclude the one kid who refuses, even if only passively (sober surrounded by drunk). It really matters who the peers are. Fortunately, there are always ways to find new peers.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#276

Post by NetOpWibby »

pj_mukh wrote: post #268
lacker wrote: post #260

As a parent of an 11-year-old, messaging is the hardest thing to handle. If you allow kids to message their friends, their friends will send all sorts of inappropriate content, exposing them to essentially everything bad on the internet. If you don't allow kids to message their friends, then they will miss out on fun events that all of their friends are doing. At least at our local public school, when I talk with par…

I do wonder what the dumb hammer of a blanket school ban is going to do. A bunch of states are trying that.

People are incredible inquisitive and intelligent about finding ways around bans. Kids are this, intensified. They literally have nothing but time.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#277

Post by jacobgkau »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #266
ikiris wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest thing I can find is in the floods cause rain sense, so please post the links To put this in perspective, people said the same moral panic about tv and that has also been rigorously proven false yet disagreed with by laymen.

TV is vastly different, it’s tailored to demographics of watchers and at the time the understanding of psychology when it comes to marketing and retention was substantially less developed than it is now.

These days, it also serves to encourage people to build worldviews around fictional scenarios much the same as social media encourages building worldviews around fictional information.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#278

Post by iforgot22 »

jacobgkau wrote: post #273
superfrank wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I think cultivating a sense of superiority is the wrong approach and could lead to other unhealthy behaviors. Cultivating a sense of self esteem and self acceptance is a better approach, IMO. "I don't drink because I'm better than you" seems like a problematic mindset. "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different" seems like a m…

> "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different" That was basically my high-horse libertarian mindset in high school when I saw other kids using cannabis-- I straight-up said to at least one, "I'm not going to do that, but I don't mind if you do." I thought I was being socially liberal and polite. Spoiler alert, everyone else "wanted t…

Exactly, people don't live in isolation.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#279

Post by jacobgkau »

paulcole wrote: post #18
more_corn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, take a quick peek at your home’s Internet access logs. You’ll almost certainly find opportunities for some parenting / teaching moments.

Isn’t the teachable moment to realize your kids are going to see those things no matter what I do? Kids on the internet see all sorts of stuff and almost all of them end up fine.

I would've ended up a lot more "fine" if my parents hadn't given up on parental controls almost immediately after I learned to circumvent them. Some of the things they'd have had to tell me would've been embarrassing for all parties involved, but I genuinely believe it would have improved my socialization and overall happiness during critical parts of my development, with ramifications continuing to this day. Instead, they took the opposite approach and praised me as "good with computers" when they failed to impart either voluntary discipline or mandatory access controls on my computer usage.

I do appreciate your overarching message, but I also agree with others that there is a ton to worry about, and I think it can be a disservice to assume things will work out "fine" when they could potentially work out better if parents make different choices. Things "working out fine" is more how to get to sleep at the end of the day when not everything has gone to plan, as opposed to the first line of defense.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#280

Post by [deleted] »

lolinder wrote: post #150
ozim wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gorilla in the room are other f*ng parents. You can prevent as much as you want but then kids go to school nd everyone else has accounts they should not have or devices they should not have and your kids are angry at you because now you are the bad guy.

The best thing my parents ever did for me was cultivate a sense of familial superiority. Other families had the TV on all the time, but we read books instead because we were 'better'. Other kids did drugs and drank, but we were better than that. Peer pressure didn't have much of an impact on me because I was raised to believe that I was better than 'that' for most values of 'that'. And my parents never had to force m…

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