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Comment by faded242 | Hacker News Reader

My middle school aged daughter wanted this installed on her phone the other day. I said no way. The last thing she needs her electronic devices doing is serving up tinder for kids, leaving her obsessing over popularity contests, or another avenue for anonymous bullying.

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I'm appalled that everybody carries around a real time yearbook. High school seems to never end. I shudder the effect this app will have on the self esteem of the user.

We didn't know tobacco was harmful back when everybody was doing it. We didn't know cocaine was harmful back when it was the thing. We also don't know about the sort of damage and stress of the human psyche with these engineered digital toxins.

Yes, we know that this (mobile devices, mostly) is causing issues with developing empathy and communication skills.

See "Reclaiming Convestaion": https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Conversation-Power-Talk-Di... for much more detail.

I think that for America, and white america in particular life's non plus ultra is senior year of high school. At the very least country music seems to paint this picture.

I feel like if you look at a country's high school culture, you can get a feel for what their values are.

For example, students from Korea are studious, exam taking machines and there's no "jock" culture. The smartest cookies are the "jocks". "Jocks" are looked down upon.

In contrast, students in USA seem, at least White America, seems uninterested, unmotivated or believe in studying. Everybody's trying to become an NBA or NFL player or a celebrity. People who excel academically are shunned and looked down upon.

Maybe there's an interesting link somewhere.

what does non plus ultra mean? i looked it up but couldn't find a clear definition

contextually it seems like it means "peak"?

It means "nothing further beyond"; life never moves beyond the senior year of high school.

Facebook is nothing like a "real-time yearbook", though.

I think it's actually quite an apt metaphor. Yearbooks are a collection of snapshots-in-time and the kind of trite social cache signalling of shallow observations and pseudo-intellectual "deep" insights about who's going to make what of themselves that only an immature, ignorant, inexperienced kid can make. That's exactly what Facebook is: a forum for the most trite kinds of social engagement and signalling.

...Or it's just a site to keep up with friends through messenger, events, pictures, etc?

You just have to do a bit of work to filter out the crap from your timeline (unfollow/unfriending)

What you are saying might be true, except:

There are too many idiots who go and "tag" photos with people who are not active on Facebook and help create a shadow profile.

There are too many idiots who willingly give Facebook the permission to mine their address book to triangulate the phone number + name + email address + misc. contact info of people who are not active on Facebook and help create a shadow profile.

There are too many idiots who don't think one extra second about filling up the messages they send to other people who are not on Facebook with all kinds of sensitive information and help create not just a shadow profile, but one which can be mined in ways that the idiots don't ever want to acknowledge.

Oh, and there are too many idiots who think that their "right" to use Facebook also gives them the right to send the personal information of other people to Facebook, whether or not those other people consent to such abuse of trust.

So yes, it is just another site. The smart folks who are concerned about tattling on their friends have mostly left. The remnants are mostly idiots, and damn it, I just can't find a way to stop these idiots from being so idiotic other than filling up internet comment threads with not-so-subtle hints about how these idiots are fucking up my life. Do you have any suggestions for how I can stop these idiots from acting in such an idiotic way?

You have important points, but your tone defeats your purpose. Would have liked to read this comment again without the unfunny over-usage of “idiot”.

At best, their behavior is idiotic. But short of consuming our entire vocabulary with ever-further steps of euphemism, there are few if any accurate alternative descriptions of the set of people who trust Facebook.

"Naïve", perhaps, but that excludes the vast swath of people who trust Facebook for more than a rather short duration of time.

I think "Tinder for kids" is a really good break down of what this is. As someone else stated, they are going to be desperately awaiting the next compliment's arrival. Just like a lonely person on Tinder desperately swipes hoping for a match. Good eye!

OR she’ll be the one person in her grade without it, get isolated from social activity, and get detached from her friends. (Coming from first-hand experience of someone whose parents restricted them from video games and social media)

Well then, if everyone else is doing it!.. I don't buy it. People don't have friends based off of if they're on social media, or play specific video games. If they do, you don't want them as friends. It's the same reason I don't let my 3rd grade boy play FPS games even though he REAAALY wants to, and all his friends do. An 8 year old should not be running around in a realistic game shooting people. When his brain is more mature, he will have plenty of time to play such games.

Of course people have friends based on what their hobbies are. In my childhood and teenage years I was only allowed to play computer games during the weekend. While my friends were online chatting and gaming together, I was sitting alone in my room reading books and watching TV. That affected my social skills, the lack of which I still suffer greatly from. I'd be careful with denying kids things that are important in their social circles. The damage done by FPS games or other similar things is nowhere close to the damage done by social isolation.

I mean, do you remember high school? It's been a popularity contest ever since high schools have existed. This is just a different form.

> This is just a different form.

At scale. Significantly different. Societal fabric has enough problems without adding to it.

Also with the brightest brains in the world devoting their phds to make sure you engage.

What social media is today is IMO a significantly different from anything humans have experienced before.

That’s not to say it’s necessarily bad, but for the last 5 years or so the evidence seems to be pointing in that direction.

If she bought her own phone and pays the monthly fees she can do whatever she whants. If not, what imaginary phone are we talking about again?

I know, I know, this may be a reason I do not have kids. They would throw me out on the first day...

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