The question we’ve stopped asking about teenagers and social media
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
And yet again, YouTube somehow escapes scrutiny. Funny how that always seems to happen.
Either that, or YouTube runs a better PR campaign, I guess.
I've never used Instagram or Tiktok so can't comment.
I'm sure there were people complaining about YouTube being nothing but trash when the easiest things to find on the platform were car accident videos and pirated Family Guy clips and you had to spend more than a few minutes on the platform to find the interesting content.
> His real concern were platforms that are specifically engineered to “keep the child’s eyes glued to the screen for as long as possible in a never-ending stream of social comparison and validation-seeking from strangers”—platforms that see the user as the product, not the customer. “How did we ever let Instagram and TikTok become a large part of the lives of so many eleven-year-olds?” he asked.
How are you surprised by this? YouTube is an entirely passive platform for the vast majority of its users. It wouldn't have a lot of the problems being talked about in this article because of that.
We have a YouTube time limit here at home and I often login to the kids accounts to prune their subscriptions and attempt to block the most egregious morons.
This article isn't about that, it's about the impact of more interactive platforms, which have the potential to affect people much more deeply.
Questionable. It purports to ask a question, to which both active and passive use are relevant, then focuses on only one of those. Selective presentation is itself a kind of bias.
In fact, why are kids before high school getting cellphones? And even if they do, why are they being allowed to use these apps?
I’m not saying the responsibility does not lie with these companies, but for some reason parents’ role seems to be entirely missing in all these narratives.
btw, I share the same bewilderment for children participating unrestricted in social media. I just don't have an answer to a practical standard of restriction. It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society. So what it should boil down to, in my opinion, is to make social media spaces as safe, civil and habitable with laws, as you make the open world that children are exposed to. Regulate these platforms stringently, with constant supervision from public bodies, just as the police monitors real-life public spaces.
So, perhaps the same argument should apply to unfettered access to online porn as well, yes? If not, why not?
Perhaps we should allow kids unfettered open access to porn as well.
I fully understand that the above is a provocative argument and am not suggesting we do that, but IMHO there is only a very fine line between the two since both are very addictive and at a young age can result in psychological harm.
Is there, really? Watching porn is not something you see people admitting to publicly. In the majority of the world it has originally been considered a taboo (or an outright crime), or at most a guilty pleasure. Porn is not a way of socializing or keeping up with trends or discussing politics, social media is. The two have fundamentally different purposes and reason for existence.
Please note that I am not making any case for allowing children to use social media. I have myself kept away from it, and I indeed consider it just as poisonous for the mind as you do. My point was that it's inconsequential now to try to put bans on the overall broad concept of social media. For better or worse, social media is already an essential part of the world's collective information infrastructure. Society has already shaped itself to accommodate its dominance. Even if you cut access to one platform, there will always be another to take its place. But social media, as a concept, can't go away. It's too late for that now, and the right way to go now is to regulate mainstream social media such that it becomes a safe space for people of all ages.
My original comment was that the parents’ role is sorely missing from all the narratives and it needs to be there. That is all. I fully support regulating any and all social media. It’s not either/or, it’s both.
You can certainly make it harder by not giving your kid a cell phone, or giving them a dumbphone. But the article makes a good point that it's a tricky line between protecting your kid and effectively ostracizing them. Especially during the pandemic. Could you imagine being a kid who can't see their friends, can't text them, can only send them emails? You'd have effectively no social contact.
And you can't govern by telling people to be better parents. If one set of parents has a social media addicted child, that's on them. If ten million parents have a social media addicted child, you have a policy problem.
In the short term, very. In the long term, as in once the kids are off to college and so on, who knows. But, overall I think much more effective than the households/kids with unrestricted access.
> your kid and effectively ostracizing them.
This is an interesting one. If the kids are educated as to why a certain action is being taken, as opposed to just No then kids can accept the policy and be fine with it. Messaging such as Signal or iMessage is allowed, but I just don't understand as to why kids have to share million selfies each day. So anything out of the Zuck-factory is a complete no-no. Bottom line, I'd rather ostracize kids in the short term than cause longer term psychological harm.
> If ten million parents have a social media addicted child, you have a policy problem.
I never said don't do policy, but that is not a substitute for better parenting.
Let me ask this, will the same parent who allow their kids unfettered access to social media allow their kids similar access to porn websites? I'm pretty sure they won't. Which is why it's not either/or, it's both. This is why I said that the narrative is incomplete.
Based on my own experience, not so much. I managed to sign up for & use facebook on a dumb phone against my parents wishes, and I wasn't particularly technically proficient at the time. I only got caught when I logged into the account on the family computer, and angling the screen away from my parents made them suspicious.
They also implemented various blocks, both on the router and with software on the PC. This taught me about DNS, proxies, VPNs and Tor, and led to me seeing a lot of messed up things, since I was so curious to see what they didn't want me to see.
Simply preventing your kid from doing something leads to them learning how to sneak past you. As you said,
> If the kids are educated as to why a certain action is being taken, as opposed to just No then kids can accept the policy and be fine with it
That said, I'm sympathetic to your viewpoint. I would certainly not provide unfettered access to social media to my children (if I had any). And there should be some amount of advertising/training around healthy digital habits. But it's a little more nuanced than just blaming parents for being incompetent.
My parents explained the reason for not allowing me some music: I listened nonetheless as I found the rule unreasonable. DARE explained drugs were bad, but they weren't being honest about the stuff they were saying. My mother forbid me from eating hard candy for years because I choked one. It embarrassed me and I did it nonetheless if she weren't around. I know I'm not the only one that does this. In other words, explanations are only helpful if they are truthful and seem reasonable to the child. Forcing a child or teen to be an outcast isn't generally reasonable. (the child choosing is fine).
Messaging such as Signal or iMessage is allowed, but I just don't understand as to why kids have to share million selfies each day. So anything out of the Zuck-factory is a complete no-no. Bottom line, I'd rather ostracize kids in the short term than cause longer term psychological harm.
You know, messaging isn't realistically better if they are being ostracized. You could teach someone rules about it and keep an eye on activity. Some things will simply be out of your control, though. Being ostracized can very easily cause long term psychological harm and it easily leads to bullying as well - after a while, you wind up out of the loop and have trouble talking to your peers. Folks go to therapy to learn how to undo this. You probably recognize it in folks that have overly strict parents.
Because their friends use it, and you are raising adults who will almost certainly use it so you might as well let the children learn some things.
In fact, why are kids before high school getting cellphones? And even if they do, why are they being allowed to use these apps?
Because if you don't allow the middle schooler to have one, it seriously changes who they can effectively be friends with as it affects how easily they can communicate with others. It happens to adults, too: Some basic jobs wouldn't hire folks without a phone (Don't know if that is still the case) and folks aren't generally as close to people they cannot easily communicate with.
They are allowed to use the apps in part because of ignorance and in part because kids will be kids. I watched a good amount of TV shows that my mom disallowed and bought music she disapproved of: I expect similar things with kids and apps.
There is simply no way for a parent to know everything a child does, especially as they age into pre-teen ages.
But the other side of this, and I honestly think a much bigger driver than anyone wants to give it credit for, is that it allows parents to surveil their kids to an unprecedented degree, and for better and for worse, parents are not going to pass up an opportunity to keep better track of their kids.
You'd never get a kid to keep a device on them that only tracked them. The fact it can also play games or go online is basically a bribe to be monitored.
The problem can be isolated to algorithmic feeds [0]. They encourage consumption over action, take you in unwanted directions and induce FOMO through overchoice and unrealistic standards. If you can eliminate them, these services magically become tools rather than escapes.
There are a lot of issues using the Like/View/Click/Upvote count as a feedback signal of what to learn, pay attention too and emulate. Also the whole imposed subscribe/follow model.
Unless "action" excludes things like "liking", commenting, and posting, this isn't true. Most feeds start out by trying to encourage "like" interactions because that's generally the easiest thing to directly optimize for. Next they encourage things like getting the viewer to post their own content, or leave a comment, or share the post.
I'd be happy to write more about how these algorithms work if you're interested.
That's a data point that seems to have gotten lost in most of the coverage. Although you might argue that data based on what teenagers report is dubious at best anyway.
Most access was still from a PC though
My Instagram user ID is sub 1,000,000 :)
The really cool kids in college had hacked iPhones from Italy and USA. I think iPhone 5 was the first officially available for us ... I managed to import an iPhone 4 but missed the jailbreak by 3 days and couldn't use cellular on my phone for years. It was basically an expensive iPod touch. Good times.
In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [0] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not just overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [1]. I have to wonder if it's related.
> These revelations sparked a media firestorm. Instagram Is Even Worse Than We Thought for Kids, announced a Washington Post article published in the days following the Journal's scoop. "It's Not Just Teenage Girls: Instagram Is Toxic for Everyone," claimed an op-ed in the Boston Globe. Zuckerberg's public comments about his platform's effects on mental health appear to be at odds with Facebook's internal findings, noted the New York Post.
I find it interesting to see the traditional media's position here considering... Facebook effectively beats them at their own game! Advertising revenues are down for every legacy news outlet while Facebook is growing its add business year after year. So of course they are not going to be thrilled about that particular company.
> In a defiant post published on his Facebook account, Mark Zuckerberg pushed back, stating that the motives of his company were "misrepresented." The very fact that Facebook was conducting this research, he wrote, implies that the company cares about the health impact of its products. Zuckerberg also pointed to data, included in the leaked slides, that showed how, in eleven out of the twelve areas of concern that were studied (such as loneliness and eating issues), more teen-age girls said that Instagram helped rather than hurt.
Especially with lockdown, I can see how social media probably helped teenagers. And that's the tip of the iceberg; for LGBTQA+ youth it can literally save a life.
Also, notice how Zuckerberg is "defiant" when he contradicts large media conglomerates?
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obe...
What percentage of people can do something to improve their appearance? 32% doesn’t seem like a high number to me. You’re looking at photos of well dressed, fit people. Why shouldn’t that motivate a person to do something to improve himself or herself?
The subreddit "instagramreality" shows just how unattainable and unrealistic images on social media can be.
There's zero way that people can look as "good" as many of the popular instagrammers.
Pictures on Instagram are not only often of models with eating disorders, but are then modified with apps to further 'beautify' the picture by airbrushing skin and accentuating curves. It's not motivational to see unrealistic standards that half the population can't achieve.
Come on now. Don't bodyshame people are lean or fit.
Talking to strangers and to brands is pure poison. It’s the common thread between all of the problems on all of these platforms.
Imagine social media where every account is private by default, there are no brand accounts, and a user can only have ~1000 “friends”. The feed would be a purely chronological list of their updates, no algorithm.
Then it’s closer to a digital version of real life. Not an endless stream of ads and arguments.
Title should be changed.
Secondly it's trivial to keep early teens off of social media, and (from my experience), the later that they start using social media, the less of an impact it has on their wellbeing.
12+ year olds are fully capable of downloading a game from torrents and applying the crack, going to Facebook or Instagram is trivial to them. You could try not to give them a phone - and they will most likely try to buy or steal one. You could try to block the network and they will look up a Youtube tutorial about VPN apps - and now some Chinese company is reading their personal data...