Porn is not the worst thing on Musical.ly

I’m not agreeing with this; but the main reason I can see is that not having one when every other kid you know does will cause some issues in your peer groups. I’d expect to be mocked for it, myself. But then I’m biased: I had a smartphone that I researched, purchase, carrier unlocked and then turned into a “global” firmware from 2005, when I was 15! Having a computer in my pocket when no one else did was awesome, heh.

As someone who's also under 18, I relate very strongly with this. I'm watching myself, and everyone around me get caught up in the virtual world. I find myself spending hours on a computer/my phone and feeling sick and upset afterwards. Whenever I'm in a group of kids my age, 90% of the time we'll instinctively go for our phones. This behavior is scary to me.

That's not to say that technology is 100% negative. I'd be the last to deny the benefits of it. But, seeing myself and everyone else in my generation getting sucked into devices that just bring discontent is concerning to me.

If your mother does your laundry you have no secrets from her

I understand that your reply was well intended and I apologize for sounding offended. I only wanted some clarification because I was confused.

While I can't really speak for previous generations, I would like to quote one of the replies above:

"The difference being that you're not engulfed in all of that for hours/days at a time like you are with today's technology. It doesn't constantly follow you around to the dinner table, to your school, to the toilet. 15 years ago, most people had a family computer and you'd go on it and if there was something you weren't supposed to see, you'd still do it but with the added fear of looking back over your shoulder hoping your parents wouldn't catch you."

To the best of my understanding, previous generations also had several interactions with technology and culture (i.e. radio, pop media, television) but they were not as intrusive as the internet. The internet is everywhere and is used by almost everyone unconditionally. This may have been the intention behind its eventual design progression but it has resulted in exposing very young kids to terrible content. This has serious implications, which I attempted to unsuccessfully convey in my original comment by recounting my own experiences.

I was very recently like one of the adolescents I mentioned: uncaring, naive, addicted to the stimulus of receiving an empty text message accounting for nothing. When I detached myself from these technologies, I began to instantly feel more empowered and tried to get some of my peers to stop as well. However, their reactions ranged from being bewildered to even being upset that I would suggest such a thing. They are essentially zombies being swallowed up by an ever pervasive force that they themselves don't fully comprehend.

With television the actors were some idealized figures that were polished by an entire marketing team, but with Youtube or Twitter we have regular people holding no reservation when doing stupid things for attention. Children are witnessing and practicing the words of these people who themselves have no clue what they're doing.

Tangentially, I'd like to point out that social media in particular has degraded our abilities to face confrontation and provide rational refutations. Just yesterday I was discussing some matters with a few peers and the moment a controversial topic sprout up half of them went on glancing at their phones apathetically and the other half just blurted out their opinions without any defense. Questioning their beliefs, I realized that they were mostly superficial and held only because some guy on Facebook or Snapchat had posted something about it.

Here's an example conversation:

What do you guys think about insert name

That's a horrible person!

Absolutely despicable!

Why?

I don't know, everyone on the internet says they are, so they must be

I am aware that this type of mentality is intertwined with our evolutionary inclination to 'fit in' with the crowd, but the internet is abusing this behavior.

I didn't say fully developed, I said fully capable which in context is to mean that they are capable of going out on the open net without anything they see permanently warping their worldview inaccurately. Its reasonable to shield children from negativity in the world they have no capability of understanding and will end up with warped ideas. At beginning adolescent age that capability is reached, and if they are further shielded from the world they'll form an inaccurate and unhelpful worldview most likely. At best their development will be delayed.