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Comment by vletal | Hacker News Reader

FOMO? Potential social isolation?

I have just a 2yo and a t-6m so I do not have to worry about these things. Yet the way you handle it sounds a bit too strict. You sure that maybe strict limits on screen time and YouTube together with speaking about what they consume would not teach them more?

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Everyone's insane so I must be as well. Come on man. I totally agree with the OP, take personal responsibility. You raise your children not Zuck.

Louis CK had great comments about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c

An individual's personal responsibility only goes so far to shape the social norms that your kid will be exposed to. If the thing you don't want your kid doing becomes a norm, then abstaining may come with additional consequences of sizable consequence.

Society is made of individuals. Leave the decision to an individual and the equilibrium of right will be reached quicker. We don't need one huge entity to tell us what's wrong or right. We don't need governments to babysit us.

Let's use an example. Let's say now the norm becomes to allow kids to drink alcohol and smoke weed. Would you allow your kids to do it? Same principles, in my opinion, stand with Instagram or any other tool / toy / gadget.

It's not that easy or simple. Not by a long shot. You might find Eleanor Ostrom's 1990 "Governing the Commons"[1] interesting - it details exactly how individuals can work together to reach "equilibrium" and it doesn't involve governments or selfish (in the economics sense) individuals. She won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for the book and her subsequent related work. The title of course is a play on the title of the classic "Tragedy of the Commons" article advocating for privatization over centralized government oversight. I won't spoil the book but she addresses the "privatize the commons" approach as well. Her conclusions might surprise you.

[1]https://archive.org/details/governingthecommons

A lot of parents do give some leeway in letting their kids get away with those things in order to let them fit in. Mostly, the reason kids don't do those things more is exactly because we had the government ban those things for kids.

But, alas, Instagram is not a regulated drug, and I see little reason why most parents' reactions wouldn't be more similar to those they have for video games or watching movies than it would be to the use of an illegal drug.

A more apt comparison might be a parent who doesn't let their kid go to the movies or play video games with their friends.

> Mostly, the reason kids don't do those things more is exactly because we had the government ban those things for kids.

I completely disagree. We don't allow those things because we know kids shouldn't be doing it. If there were no drinking age laws kids would still not be drinking and smoking weed because parents wouldn't allow it. That was kinda my point. (let's not talk about the outliers, obviously some kids smoke and drink)

I'm not sure that underage drinking is an outlier, at least here in the US. In fact, the majority of college students in the US violate drinking age laws.

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh...

> If there were no drinking age laws kids would still not be drinking and smoking weed because parents wouldn't allow it.

In places with more relaxed drinking laws, we do often see more kids drinking. 42% of 15 year old boys were weekly drinkers in the UK in 2002.

https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/382840/...

> Most young people begin using alcohol between the ages of 12 and 16, an age at which they gain increasing independence and spend more time outside the home unsupervised. At the same time, the direct influence of parents diminishes and friends become increasingly important.

You seen the pollution people create left to their own free will?

You sure that your "we do not need governments to babysit us" ideology goes well with the rest of the tread you seemingly agree with?

I was actually asking an honest question. I do not think I'm giving up on my responsibilities. It's just that does serving as a proxy to YouTube really help better than some reasonable weekly limit?

As somebody who was raised similarly to the OP's "sane" way, I would certainly prefer being "insane" to the social isolation I ended up in. Of course, there were countless other factors that made me who I am, but this is still something to consider.

I would refrain from using Louis CK as any sort of a moral compass. For obvious reasons.

He's arguably the greatest comedian of all time. I think there's definitely a thing or two to extract from his wisdom.

So should a person's mistakes be held against them for the rest of their life? Especially given what he did, which seemed very mild compared to the reaction.

I think OPs comment is accurate. He does lose his ability to be used as a moral compass. He might still be funny and have interesting insights but he is not a moral compass.

Hmm I heavily disagree. I think that just because someone did something fucked up in the past doesn't mean they can no longer be trusted or their moral compass/judgement is somehow permanently broken.

Perhaps this is the case for me because what he did wasn't really messed up from what I know about the story, just weird.

I will concede that in some situations, and from my perspective these would almost entire involve sexual assault, I'd consider a person unredeemable.

In a situation where someone has indeed done some fucked up stuff - they need to prove that their moral compass has been fixed in order for them to be trusted again. I don't think you get a pass because you've been quiet for a couple years. So I disagree with you.

You should probably go read up on what he did - pretty messed up power dynamics. (https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/what-about-the-careers-of-lou...)

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

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