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Teens Who Say No to Social Media

wsj.com

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Re: Teens Who Say No to Social Media

#61

Post by prostoalex »

mmilano wrote: post #24

Why are links to hidden/payed content allowed here?

Because the criteria for paywalls are publisher-dependent, and can involve reader's country, IP range, referral source, browser history or some quota of free articles available per month. Articles from sources with extremely restrictive paywalls (ft.com, nature.com) just don't get many upvotes, so the problem is self-correcting.

Alternative solution would be to link to a paywall-free blog post rehashing the contents of the article that includes a token link to the original (huffingtonpost.com or businessinsider.com), but HN's policy at this point expresses strong preference for the original.

Re: Teens Who Say No to Social Media

#62

Post by newscracker »

hourislate wrote: post #41

Having trouble getting the article in its entirety but I don't allow my kids to use facebook or any other of the other social media services. I want them to have some level of privacy for as long as they can. They can txt, call or meet their friends. They don't need facebook to do that. Some great info on the subject can be found in "Future Crimes" - Marc Goodman . Everyone should give it a read. An excerpt from the…

> Advertisers know every last intimate detail about a Facebook user’s life and can thus market to him or her with extreme precision based upon the social graph Facebook has generated.

> …

> Your friends see that you support their message, but what neither of you see is what happens with the data generated with each and every Like—data that are captured, dissected, and sold to marketers and data brokers around the world.

Companies like Facebook (and Google), prominent and huge in online advertising, do not help "Advertisers know every last intimate detail about a Facebook user’s life". These companies guard their users' data and keep it close to themselves so that they have the advantage of tracking, building profiles through other websites (with like buttons and commenting) and their own properties, and targeting the users with ads that the users are more likely to engage with (and thus make more money). They may share information with the ones paying to advertise on these platforms, but that's only in aggregate and does not include personal information of users. This may change in the future (more so with the changes in WhatsApp's policy).

Facebook has a help page titled "Common Myths About Facebook" [1] that states that advertisers do not have access to personal information (unless the user permits it) and that it does not sell users' information to anyone. Similar and longer explanations are on a note titled "Ad Targeting and Your Privacy: Keeping you informed on ad targeting updates" [2] and Facebook's Data Policy. [3] (In all these pages, do a 'find on page' or use Ctrl+F or Cmd+F to look for 'advertisers' to reach the relevant points quicker)

Either Facebook is blatantly lying (which is a possibility I would seriously consider) or the author of this book has misunderstood things…or it's a mix of these two.

I do not like online tracking and the collection of personal and behavioral information online (with the resulting targeted ads). I do not like companies that engage in these. However, for now, leave aside unethical behavior by their employees or the possibility of being hacked and having information stolen. With that context, can anyone with more knowledge clarify why people keep saying that personal information is shared with advertisers (or worse, sold to them) by these companies? I can understand that personal information may be shared with various governments or government organizations.

[1]: https://www.facebook.com/help/369078253152594/

[2]: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and-privacy/ad-targe... (Dated February 27, 2013)

[3]: https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy (Dated January 30, 2015)

Re: Teens Who Say No to Social Media

#63

Post by rdiddly »

mk89 wrote: post #25
soufron wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, tools also have a meaning by themselves.

What's the meaning of a knife, then?

I get your point, I think - a knife's "nature" if it has one, depends on its use. But a knife is an example of a simple tool with many purposes. What about a complicated, specialized tool built for only one or two purposes? Worse yet, what about a complicated tool serving multiple people's divergent and conflicting purposes?

Re: Teens Who Say No to Social Media

#64

Post by saiya-jin »

Animats wrote: post #60

As a horse owner, I see teens who don't use phones very much. They all have smartphones, and some even have riding breeches (traditionally pocketless) with smartphone pockets on the thigh. They make and receive calls, and they text, but they don't use their phones much unless communicating. They talk to each other, the adults, and the horses. It's the total opposite of the nearby Starbucks near the high school, which…

Or travel with them and show them the world, even if in short glimpses now and then. Not some 5-star resorts or similar bubble-sque places, but real countries, real people, like backpacking but with kids and relatively safely. Keep the experience physically and mentally at least a bit demanding.

and climbing for staying fit

Re: Teens Who Say No to Social Media

#65

Post by rhizome »

Animats wrote: post #60

As a horse owner, I see teens who don't use phones very much. They all have smartphones, and some even have riding breeches (traditionally pocketless) with smartphone pockets on the thigh. They make and receive calls, and they text, but they don't use their phones much unless communicating. They talk to each other, the adults, and the horses. It's the total opposite of the nearby Starbucks near the high school, which…

Sounds more like underparenting, but at any rate I'm not sure you can expect noobs off the street to know how to conduct themselves in a horse barn, a learning curve you acknowledge with "everyone who spends a lot of time around horses is very aware."

As far as the disparity in phone usage goes, people with horses are doing an actual activity, improving their horse skills, and generally consuming their time with personal development. AKA "hobby," I guess! This is a luxury these days, especially if the regular horse people you see at the stables need rides to get there (99% of under-16s where I come from).

Lots of teens have parents who work too much, which puts horse activities on the "no chance" list. In this way, phones can be seen as a latch-key and support network for children and teens with (relatively) absentee parents. Now, not all of them are this way, but network effects work in IRL society too, not just on the internet.

Re: Teens Who Say No to Social Media

#66

Post by rhizome »

ams6110 wrote: post #43
thisisbad wrote: post #32

I'm not a teen (22yo) and I've deleted all my social media presence years ago. Now, I only use text to schedule in person meetings. I am less stressed, more productive and healthier.

My son deleted all his accounts when he graduated from high school. Said he was sick of it all and wanted to start off college without it.

Did he create new or other ones after he arrived at college?

Re: Teens Who Say No to Social Media

#67

Post by rhizome »

sannysanoff wrote: post #27
mk89 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the meaning of a knife, then?

there are people obsessed with knives as such (collecting them, playing with them, carrying them all the time, imagining they save the world/themselves with knife). Knives have their power over them. And that's just knives, not even intellectual toys like products of multi-billion industry we're talking about.

Right, but that's not "meaning in themselves," it's "meaning in context."

Re: Teens Who Say No to Social Media

#68

Post by gcr »

gragas wrote: post #59
gcr wrote: post #30

Does anyone have a link that bypasses the paywall? Even Google doesn't show the full article.

Click on the little "web" link at the top of this page (it's on the same line that says "96 points by prostoalex"). Then open Google's link to the article in an incognito window. That works every time for me.

Ah, the trick must be to use an incognito window.

Thanks.

Re: Teens Who Say No to Social Media

#69

Post by aembleton »

gcr wrote: post #30

Does anyone have a link that bypasses the paywall? Even Google doesn't show the full article.

- Add refcontrol[1] for Firefox, or some alternative for Chrome.

- RefControl > Options > Add Site

- Enter site as www.wsj.com and Action as https://www.google.com

You can also use this trick for ft.com and probably a few other sites.

1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/refcontrol/

Re: Teens Who Say No to Social Media

#70

Post by adiabatty »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #3

I was in school when msn and facebook were big. I lived in the same town as the school, which was a twenty minute drive from the village most of my friends lived in. They eventually forced me to use Facebook, and it changed my social life drastically. The communication benefit group chats gave me was phenomenal. Nowadays facebook lets me organise my climbing life, and makes a handy contact book for acquaintances. I'm…

[scrolls up, notices username isn't "mr_bucket" or similar]

OK, now I'm confused — I've seen plenty of Keeping Up Appearances episodes and I've made a few friends over things that look like social networks if you squint at them hard enough. What am I missing?

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