Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The kids with phones are alright

heatherburns.tech

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 458 posts

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#301

Post by kmitz »

I say this is a click bait article. The guy is taking a contrarian view on smartphone use by young people, with weak and very subjective arguments.

> the impetus for the most authoritarian internet regulation in the UK, including the Very strong take with no justification at all. What we observe is that many developped countries with different political orientations are currently taking action against harm caused by social media and more generally by excessive screen time. This is not about political right wing.

>It’s easy to understand why: the upper classes have always objectified their children into possessions. These are groups who, culturally, do not want their children to have agency over their own lives, nevermind devices, nor do they want their young adults to develop essential skills to live their lives as independent adults. They never have. And they never did themselves,

Really sounds like a frustrated person that projects his own problems on the rest of the world. And totally not relevant to the debate about the impact of social media on teenagers.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#302

Post by bcjdjsndon »

alwa wrote: post #72
mcv wrote: post #69

Do people want to restrict 16 year olds with phones? That seems like a really bad idea. For 10 year olds it makes sense, but 16 is nearly adult; they need to really learn this responsibility. And of course they need a phone when they go out like these girls. A bit of a weird tangent from what apparently is harassment in a train or something like that? I admit it's hard to follow what is going on.

Seems wise to experience at least a little bit of “functioning as an adult in the world” independently of phone habits… It seems like, in this situation, we watch primarily non-phone-enabled virtues save the day: a clear sense of right and wrong, assertiveness, courage, steadiness in a tense situation, an attentive social environment with bystanders who both noticed and backed each other up… Even having practiced som…

> if I were a phone-carrying person, I’d be tempted to “just record it and let the internet sort it out.”

Desperate reaching. People who carry phones are bad people, I mean FFS, get real

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#303

Post by Fricken »

criddell wrote: post #288
xorcist wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point. There is no chance tobacco would be declared legal if it was invented today. Don't you agree?

How do you reconcile this idea with the fact that marijuana is being legalized all over the place?

Marijuana is not a recent invention

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#304

Post by [deleted] »

XorNot wrote: post #270
recursive-call wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think generally the argument is that these usually aren’t credible threats, they’re hyperbole, and the police are overstepping by arresting people for saying they’ll do something when they have no evidence that that person would actually do that. A free society doesn’t arrest someone for saying “I’m going to burn down so-and-so’s house.” It waits until you actually go to so-and-so’s house with a can of petrol, and…

Sending death threats has never been legal. The statical lie with the UK numbers is the vast majority of cases are about the use of messaging services in domestic violence cases.

[deleted]

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#305

Post by ClumsyPilot »

j45 wrote: post #20
nrabulinski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except social media as a concept isn’t the issue. I’ve been bullied before social media was mainstream. A little later in life, when internet as a whole was majorly taking off, it helped me actually socialize. I met people some of whom I’m friends to this day, but more importantly - I could meet people to go out with, to talk to. Should we ban schools then? Because school grounds are famously place where the most bul…

Technologies when not learned by the people to use in proper ways, too often can be used against people by people with vested financial interests. Social Media worked out that way. So did device addiction. It's great to find ways to socialize, and those ways existed before, and will also exist after. The exclusion of current forms of social media and connectivity as default doesn't mean better solutions don't step up…

> A large part of this is life coming at parents faster than they can keep up, let alone stay one season ahead of their childs growth.

The amount of administrative tasks, bureaucracy and complexity an adult, let alone a parent, has to navigate on a daily basis has increased 100x since the 70’s. It is very convent for corporations but less convenient for parents. Just look at the amount of legal contract you have to sign relating to data, Eula, etc.

> Parents, legally, are required to provide a safe and growing environment.

True, but be carefull, people might solve the problem in ways you don’t expect.

For example if someone races near a kids playground on electric skateboard at 50 km/h, and authorities keep ignoring the issue, they might just hit an unexpected obstacle

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#306

Post by bombcar »

xorcist wrote: post #284
brabel wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really bad example. From the Wikipedia article: “ No evidence established direct connections between Georgescu's campaign and Russian state actors. There were only assertions that there must have been due to his rapid rise on social media” And: the "National Liberal Party paid for a campaign on TikTok that ended up favoring ... Georgescu" and not Russia as previously presented to the Constitutional Court. Also: On 28…

Not a good counterexample either. The link to Russian intelligence services may not be proven, but nobody seems to dispute that there were paid influencers? Also that this was not declared anywhere and the money was at best grey in origin? In events like these it can be useful to operate on the systems thinking maxim and strictly look at who benefited, as this is interesting in itself without entertaining the suggest…

The problem with all these is that the mythos of democracy depends on pretending that individuals and the people at large are making intelligent decisions based on available true information - instead of what it really is.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#307

Post by ruszki »

bko wrote: post #277
ruszki wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this tends to resolve itself as there is a market opportunity to create a better product If the market is fair and leveled. Which is not the case without intervention as we know for hundreds of years at this point. And governments clearly started to no intervene even when their own laws would require it. > which lifted its restrictions This is categorically not true. Twitter home page is massively censored and coor…

It's censored and there is a ton of controversial opinions being spread? Do you see how these two statements are in conflict? What is being censored? You don't like some speech but that's proof that restrictions on speech have been lifted. Get your narrative consistent at least. There's either vile speech due to lifting speech restrictions or there are still restrictions so these opinions are suppressed. The charlie…

> It's censored and there is a ton of controversial opinions being spread?

> Do you see how these two statements are in conflict?

It's not in conflict. Both can be true at the same time. Also, there is nothing which is not "controversial".

> You don't like some speech but that's proof that restrictions on speech have been lifted.

Still, nothing in conflict. I can have problem with some speech, and I can support full blown free speech at the same time. Also, there is literally nobody who supports uncontrolled free speech. Not even, who lie to themselves that they support that.

> The charlie kirk stuff wasn't censored.

It wasn't "censored" in the sense, that you can find whatever you want. That was true on Twitter always in every single topic, even before Musk. It was censored how you can find it. Which is the case even by government censorship. You can find Mein Kampf even in countries where it's completely banned. You can find weed everywhere, the difference is only how.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#308

Post by nyeah »

fumeux_fume wrote: post #57
nyeah wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA gives an example where kids are at risk and an old person is misusing a phone. It is clearly not advocating for this scenario to occur more often. Can you show anything else to indicate that the conclusion is "toughen them up"?

> Many other people, observing our current policy context, have also called out how smartphone and social media bans for young adults (and we are talking about that particular group here, not toddlers and primary schoolers) risk swaddling them in cotton wool and then releasing them into the world, without critical adulting skills, on the day they hit a magic birthday.

Ok fair.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#309

Post by selimthegrim »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #176
RIMR wrote: post #16

This whole article just boils down to the argument "If badly-behaved adults are allowed to have cameras, why shouldn't well-behaved children have access to for-profit social media platforms designed to addict them and feed them misinformation?" It's complete nonsense. The conversation in the UK right now isn't about whether or not teenagers should be allowed to own cell phones; it's about whether they should be allow…

Did the UK get rid of the Muslim rape gangs already? No one is being raped on social media, yet all the hysteria is focused on social media when it should be focused on a completely different issue that actually harms children in real life on a massive scale - outside and unrelated to the internet.

If you're going to frame it that way, let's talk about the Muslim prosecutor that put them away and the Muslim home secretary trying to deport the ringleader.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#310

Post by bombcar »

nekusar wrote: post #268
achenet wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that generally speaking, the problematic social media tend to be ad-supported websites that focus on user-generated content. so Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit are all social-media, because all are ad-supported, and all are focused on user-generated content. HN is focused on user-generated content, but not ad-supported (okay, technically HN is 'advertising for YC', but in practice, the site isn't op…

The problem is capitalist companies using heavily gamified psychology to prey on people. Mastodon doesn't have this problem. Pixelfed doesn't have this problem. Lemmy doesn't have this problem. Peertube doesn't have this problem. But "social media laws" would hit all of these as well.

Ignoring the capitalism and the money, those still can have the bad effects of social media, just perhaps not amplified for money extraction.
Post reply on HN