Porn is not the worst thing on Musical.ly
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Their phones and apps will be restricted until mature enough to make their own decisions.
At that point things would start to get hella fun on both sides.
That said, I am deeply concerned by how permissive/inattentive parenting may affect other kids considering the prevalence of so many potentially negative influences.
I'm talking about those one-off interactions where a so-called "bad kid" has the opportunity to expose a dozen children to an HD stream of pornography on their iDroid 15x+. It could be on the school bus, bleachers during a school assembly, field trip, locker room, playground, and so on. This is compounded by the permanent availability of adult-themed uncensored music, marijuana legalization, and more.
If I may ask... do you have a plan/approach to addressing/mitigating these issues with your kids without harming their ability for healthy socialization?
Teens should be educated on proper use of the internet, not prohibited from it without trading away their privacy to parents.
But he won't have a smartphone or unsupervised internet access. Neither provide independence, but shackles to kilotons of the worst quality content humanity has ever created.
The studied reason millenials were less likely to drive is not because cars got harder to afford or high school jobs harder to come by, but because of lack of interest (thanks to smart phones)
Even if you don't give your children a smart phone, they're going to be exposed to this behavior from their friends. And there are already articles of children who buy "burners" to keep their privacy from their parents.
Considering a smart phone can be bought for the equivalent of a month's lunch money today, good luck to anyone trying to keep one out of a kid's hands in ~2030.
Right, they should totally trade it to global corporations instead. Did you think this one through?
What about a 16 year old born in a country where the age of consent is 14 and the US’s views on sexuality are considered overbearing and puritanical?
What generation was that, the Boomers? Because I'm from Gen X, and I (and numerous people I knew) had unsupervised access to internet connected devices under age 18. (PC + dialup + CompuServe account, or something similar, though at the very trailing edge of Gen X it might have been a more "direct" dial-up ISP.)
> and guess what, no one died.
I'm pretty sure that people under 18 did die in your generation, whatever generation that was, that could have been avoided had they had access to a smartphone or other internet-connected device, especially the former.
> In fact that was the generation that invented all this stuff.
"All this stuff" wasn't invented by people from exclusively one generation.
The internet has evolved from being a source of knowledge into a cancerous entity that craves complete and utter assimilation of any decency humans might have. While adults might be capable of avoiding the raw, seductive power of the evil this medium permits, I think I speak for the majority of teenagers when I say that we cannot.
Constantly and persistently we are using the internet to perform heinous deeds unimaginable to our guardians. We have been raised in a bubble where our role models are Youtubers who have dropped out of high-school and where the names of famous scholars are annoyances of reality. We no longer look at the stars curious of the natures which lay beyond them, for we believe we have already witnessed and possess any great magnitude of beauty in our phones. We are mostly guided by the one and ever consuming belief that the internet is not an extension of our minds, but rather our minds themselves.
It is a terribly sad revelation that something considered so revolutionary and representative of human ingenuity is actually something wholly malignant to the young of our species. We are mentally and emotionally undeveloped and we have been given a powerful tool without guidance on how to use it.
I say these things not to bandwagon or provoke, but because I despise the creature the internet has given birth to -- me. I am a product of this vile creation and I want this cycle to stop. I do not know how many other teenagers have come to this realization or how many are still wasting away on Snapchat speaking of pointlessly obscure thoughts. But what I do know is that the internet has not enriched our lives but has rather regressed it to the point where we do anything for a couple of minutes on our phones. We are young and have been taken advantage of by political powers which want to advertise and indoctrinate; we hold unrestricted power in a domain of our own making; we are independent only in face when enslaved in heart.
Destroy the internet and free us.
- tv
- mass culture
- the suburbs
- the city
- small town/rural life
- sexual activity when everyone is having it, except you
- the written word
It's relevant, but on a certain level so were the complaints of previous generations.
People like me lamented all sorts of contemporary phenomena. Except for passing fads (which seem to get the brunt of overthought lamentations), those changes didn't destroy mankind.
As you get older, this stuff just becomes funny. Young people rediscover the age-old need for self control and adaptation to problematic environments/cultural contexts. Older people discover the joy of misguided, unhelpful arrogance.
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:
<person 1> What do you guys think about insert name
<person 2> That's a horrible person!
<person 3> Absolutely despicable!
<person 1> Why?
<person 2 and 3> 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'm a product of the internet too. The internet helped me keep friends that would otherwise not stay in touch, helped me make new friends, helped me learn and grow and become my own person. I've had jobs and internships, and I owe the vast majority of the knowledge required in those to... the internet.
If you choose to waste your time mindlessly watching empty YouTube videos, if you choose to spend your time at social events finding the optimal selfie position rather than enjoying yourself... then that's on you. But there are many adolescents that choose to use the internet responsibly.
And that's what a responsible parent understands. That their child is not just an extension of them but an entirely new and different person. Good parents don't bubblewrap their kids when they play on the playground. They educate their kids on how to play responsibly, and deal with the fallout when their kids get hurt.
The internet is not an irresistible and all-corrupting force. It is a tool, and becomes only what you make of it.
I agree with your point of educating kids to play responsibly, but this does not mean allowing them to do whatever they want in a dangerous territory.
> The internet has evolved from being a source of knowledge into a cancerous entity that craves complete and utter assimilation of any decency humans might have.
Is this about decency, or about instant death? You can't move the goalposts like that.
Additionally, I believe we were talking about adolescents, which are entirely capable of operating vehicles or at the very least kitchen utilities. I would indeed allow a teenager to use a kitchen knife unsupervised, with the proper education.
I'm simply not convinced that the so-called "dangers" out there on the internet are so bad you must ignore all the good that the internet can bring. I'm sorry you find the internet indecent, but "the majority of teenagers" you speak for might not really need freeing. Rock and roll and weed and premarital sex still exist, and somehow kids still seem to grow up fine.
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.
In no jurisdiction in the world is 10 considered a fully developed mind.
If I did ever put some sort of parental blockers on my children's devices, I'd try to find some half-assed thing like the blockers I learned to go around and through, to give them a challenge.
And Social Media wasn’t the same 20 years ago.
Furthermore, the sick shit 20 years ago was harder to find and a lot slower to download as well.
Slower to download, yes.
Harder to find? No, not at all. In fact, 20 years ago it was a lot easier to accidentally fall into, even directly off of Google.
There were forums, there was AIM. People were shitty to each other in person. The twelve-year olds that are yelling racial slurs at you and calling you a noob in Battlefield were doing the same to their friends on the couch playing Mortal Kombat.
Every generation needs its existential threat to the wholesomeness of children. Comic books, jazz, rock and roll, hippy counter-culture, rap, and video games are mostly played out. Now it's social media.
Suicide/cutting forums for 12 year olds weren't a thing, and if they were, it was nothing like the hashtags that exist today and only the more techy kids would end up on /b/ or something of that nature. Regardless, kids being exposed to awful things will always happen, and seeing gore or whatever isn't the worst thing that can happen. I think what's worse is the overabundance of information that exists today, most of which is absolute trash that I wouldn't even recommend a 40 year old to consume let alone a 12 year old.
I don't think the writer of the article is being ludicrous by taking away access to certain apps from the poison of the internet. You literally get dumber consuming that stuff. Being called a noob in battlefield is a poor example with what the author is trying to convey
Consider: musical.ly is aimed at kids. Kids have no money. How does musical.ly plan to make money? There is no possible ethical way.