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Comment by saturn5k | Hacker News Reader

Having a 7 year old kid, I'm outraged at reading this. There is no single benefit to individuals or society from apps like these, they hijack our brain on the lowest level and makes us junk content feeding zombies.

It's not just the consumers, but entire generations of "influencers" and "content creators" wasting their lifes on creating something that will give them instant recognition and will be forgotten the moment it is swiped to the next video.

Apps like these are causing mental decline, addiction and behavioral problems on a large scale, but the parents just dont care. As long as the kid is quiet with the smartphone in hand. So sad.

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> There is no single benefit to individuals or society from apps like these,

Then hopefully you make sure your kid is not using it, right? There are ways to restrict phones and make sure to communicate the dangers directly.

I think social media as it stands, is too dangerous for kids. You would need to have some kind of social media app that checks your real age somehow, and then it's exclusive for kids only. When you mix literally everyone in the same network, then kids are exposed to adult stuff (and I just mean more complex ideas and concepts that might be safe for adults but not kids). Until then, I think the only solution is to ban kids from using social media, which will be hard until the kids-only alternative happens.

> There are ways to restrict phones and make sure to communicate the dangers directly.

Your child is / will be better at using the tech than you, so you have to assume you are doing this against a threat actor more competent than you, with most likely more time to spend circumventing it.

> You would need to have some kind of social media app that checks your real age somehow, and then it's exclusive for kids only

You live in a reality where these checks are not foolproof, so you've just created a banquet for predators.

> I think the only solution is to ban kids from using social media [...]

Which doesn't work

Parental oversight is the only solution to technology-based ethics issues of this nature.

The OS vendors need to have their feet held to the flame until they produce parent-friendly interfaces that allow oversight of what their children are doing with their devices.

Regular inspection and attention to your kids is key to raising them to be safe from these dangers. It is the child left in the dark corners of the room with nothing but a world of strangers influencing their minds that is the problem.

OS vendors: give parents better tools, or face the repercussions for the insane generation the current broken tools are producing.

I’m pretty sure that’s what people said about TV.

When Pokémon came out, a local priest organized a public burning of these devils toys. Today they are collectibles, revered by people from all over the world.

The Simpsons was what was causing the downfall of America, and today the first 5-10 seasons are considered some of the best produced media of all time.

It seems impossible but in 20-30 years, there will be commentators in the cultural elite discussing the brilliance of some of these TikTok’ers.

Well, the issue here is that you are comparing apple to oranges.

If we were to compare tiktok to something it would be like the internet, Facebook or YouTube not toys.

If it's the blackout challenge it would be:

Eat a California reaper challenge, cinammon challenge, how to make crystals nor toys.

Now I think we can see that things aren't going to be retroactively so rosy.

"but this time it's different!"

That’s a heuristic which like all heuristics will fail to work in some cases.

This is one of them - we’ve never had private hostile organizations with immense budgets trying to manipulate and help themselves to the private information of regular people at global scale before.

You might be interested in taking a look at "Adolescent mood disorders since 2010: A collaborative review" [0] by Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge which goes into detailed studies and datasets showing a rise in recent years in teen suicide, as well as the associations between heavy social media use and bad mental health outcomes, particularly for girls [1].

[0] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1diMvsMeRphUH7E6D1d_J7R6W...

[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-...

The shift from editor-moderator content (which is what TV, radio, Pokémon cards, the Simpsons, etc. all are) to user-generated content with little oversight is quite a large one. There are certainly positive sides to it, but I think you can just brush aside the negative sides with "some nutjob in the past said crazy things about Pokémon cards".

Dangerous content on TV and from responsible YouTube etc. creators is filled with the cliché "don't try this at home kids, it's dangerous and you can hurt yourself!" warnings for a reason, it's because we learned that kids are kinda stupid and will copy stuff they see on TV. Some people seem to be re-learning that lesson.

None of these were being weaponized by the Chinese government.

Great many of the “proper jobs” are even less socially useful than TikTok. Many of them have negative value, eg working for TSA or dealing debts. We just used to pretend they aren’t.

Recommended read :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

I think the problem with kids+social media in general will always be: allow them flat and accept all risks, or restrict them and risk that either the kids use them on concealed devices obtained through friends, therefore say goodbye to their trust towards you, plus even less chances to supervise their use, or they actually don't use them and hence are discriminated by their peers for not being online or not carrying that shiny new device every cool kid today has. If you want to restrict the use your kids make of social media, you should bring them to a school where cellphones aren't allowed or where there is strict control over their use, possibly also outside of class, and where they're encouraged to find many alternatives to have fun, ie they should be immersed in a different world otherwise they would be treated as different. Any deviation from what is perceived "normal" behavior among their peers will turn against them in the form of discrimination and bullyism. Being discriminated by peers seems ridiculous of a problem to us adults, but can severely damage the kid self esteem for life, so don't underestimate that danger.

This aside, I can't be of any help with experience; I became well aware of all those difficulties very soon (having a shitty life roughly from 5 to 35 helps a lot) and decided that, although I love kids, a girlfriend and two cats were enough:^)

> Having a 7 year old kid, I'm outraged at reading this. There is no single benefit to individuals or society from apps like these, they hijack our brain on the lowest level and makes us junk content feeding zombies.

Personally as a patent I think this is the same kind of refusal to accept responsibility that had my generations parents claim video games where all just horrible and brain melting, the generation before claiming that TV was rotting the minds of the youth and the generation before that yelling a young ones for listening to the devils rock music on the radio, then the generation before that proclaiming that books where destroying the mindset of the youth.

Yes, there is bad content everywhere, but your job as a parent is to help guide your kids to listening to the right radio channels, reading the right books, filtering good from bad tv, and helping them navigate social media as well as things like Tiktok.

My niece watches tiktok dances and likes videoing herself repeating them and sharing those videos with her friends. That seems no more brain hijacking than my brother who in his youth used to record himself playing cover songs of songs he’s hear on MTV and sharing that with his friends. For him that launched a life long passion for music and for her it might be the start of a passion for dance. It’s understandable to want to protect children, but you also have to realize that you might end up being the parent who “protected” the next would-be Ed Sheeran from “the dangers of pop music” or the equivalent for the next generation all because you refused to see the world through their eyes.

Full disclosure, I’m quite fond of TikTok myself, following primarily Gardning TikTok’s these days. I don’t think it’s hijacked my mind, but my garden has had the benefit of others sharing their creativity and knowledge.

I think there are a couple of differences with TV or video games or prior technology.

The first is that with prior media, it's produced by giant media companies who are averse to being sued. I can't recall a TV show ever encouraging me to choke myself until I passed out, or make lichtenberg figures in wood, or etc. There's only a few TV producers; the message can be sent with a few lawsuits. TikTok is taking the line that they aren't liable for content others upload, so you'd have to sue individual content creators. Good luck with that, especially when some of the producers are teens, who are in never-ending supply and not prone to following rules.

The second is that there hasn't historically been a reward for doing dumb things someone sees on TV. You might want to do a Dukes of Hazard car jump, but the reward was basically just personal satisfaction. There was no credible chance that doing it would land someone a spot on the TV show. Tiktok is different; I can see how a child would think that imitating Tiktoks could credibly allow them to become a top Tiktok-er. It's the difference between Jackass movies starting with "These people are professionals, don't try this at home" and starting with "Send us your videos of imitating the stunts, and we'll pick the best to be in our next movie".

I don't think TikTok is inherently evil. I do think the current structure is a bad fit for children, who generally understand neither the dangers of thoughtlessly imitating someone, nor the likelihood of them ever being famous. It's in the same vein as those home improvement loans that become part of your mortgage; it's fine to sell them, it's not fine to sell them to people who don't understand what they're signing up for.

> The second is that there hasn't historically been a reward for doing dumb things someone sees on TV

Jackass.

Sorry, i don’t mean that as an insult. I’m just pointing out a counter example to your claim.

Ye. I installed TikTok to see what it was all about and the default feed is a bit terrifying. It was some mix of antisocial incitement, lightly dressed teenage girls and "dudes being cool" videos.

The climate seems way worse than Facebook/Instagram. And that says alot.

I wouldnt normally comment in the Nth “social media bad” post on HN, but for anyone who doesnt use the stuff - TikTok’s main feed is entirely algorithmic. My feed (just went thru 20 videos) is all movie & restaurant recommendations, programming, Valorant (video game), finance, and cats. I think the disconnect here is that TikTok uses a lot of subtle signals like watch time / rewatches apart from likes/follows to place content. When I see something like an underaged girl dancing (very rare now, but common when I first installed) I make sure to instantly swipe rather than watch it until its end.

My 2c: I think TikTok is actually a great product and a ourely algorithmic feed that helps people discover new things is clearly desirable! But people should know what the driving behaviora are that dictate the content being served, and parental controls should be present for kids.

> I wouldnt normally comment in the Nth “social media bad” post on HN

Sure. I agree. My complaint is somewhat of a "kids these days"-comment. However, just as Aristotle or whatever Greek philosopher allegedly complained about the next generation 2000 years ago allready, he could eventually be right. There could eventually be a worse social media.

My point being, TikTok being better is bad. In the same sense a even better World of Warcraft when I was the target demographic would have been devastating for a chunk of my generation.

> It's not just the consumers, but entire generations of "influencers" and "content creators" wasting their lifes on creating something that will give them instant recognition and will be forgotten the moment it is swiped to the next video.

The problem is this applies to any social media website with algorithmic recommendations. A hashtag can go viral anywhere. What use is it singling out TikTok? At what point is the platform responsible for things its users decide to do to themselves?

The answer almost always boils down to human moderation with a degree of common sense. But how do you scale that to a billion users?

“ The problem is this applies to any social media website with algorithmic recommendations.”

I genuinely see no problem with this. Mass scale so-called-social media increasingly overwhelmingly has no genuine value.

“How do you scale to a billion users?”

How about - don’t? Taking this as some obvious good reeks of Zuckerbergian “we’re connecting the globe.” Yeah, connecting, say, Jihadists around the globe. Facilitating Russian psyop units connecting to Joe 6-Pack in middle America. Connecting billions of $ in advertising to the hyper-specific data of users, to better sell them shit they overwhelmingly don’t need and would never want without being convinced their insufficient without it.

Is it fair to judge a system only by listing its cons? How do you come to the conclusion that the attention-inducing burden of supposedly meaningless content pushed by social media outweighs the benefits of letting Indians, Pakistanis, Israelis, Americans and Australians all chat on the same forum? Or read news instantly from any corner of the world - for the sole reason that an algorithm realised people found it interesting. How do you weigh the benefit of a platform that can raise global attention to a regional problem?

I think that your first example has much, much less value than we typically ascribe it. It would be far more beneficial if we (collectively) started to spend more time talking to/interacting with our neighbors and local community.

In terms of news that an algorithm realizes people find interesting — yeah, overwhelming the most “interesting” news is, if not outright fake or totally misleading, then highly incendiary. Regional issues have been covered for 100+ years by journalists in responsible and nuanced ways. Social media is not required and, I’d assert once more, actively harmful.

But isn’t content cool? You see no point someone sees enjoyment.

It’s sad when teens die, but bring up any other phenomenon and you’ll see it that has its own victims too. E.g. look at love. How many people it killed or mentally crippled? Let’s get rid of it.

In my child/teenhood there was no internet at all and we found numerous ways to put ourselves in unnecessary danger. When I recall these times, I just wonder how almost all of us managed to live to adulthood.

I think that blaming worldwide platforms is pointless, because they are not the cause, they just aggregate the reality that you wasn’t aware of before, under a recognizable name.

Those companies use ML algorithms that inflate the ranking of harmful content, which can lead to this. They hold some responsibility for profiting off of this.

Being upset about events like these deaths is absolutely understandable and probably "correct". Whether you're right about the people/companies and their apps and the harm they are doing or not, I want to address one point directly: what on earth gave you the idea that the parents don't care? Are you suggesting that the parent/s are the (sole?) cause of the death of their child?

I think solution is obvious. Total ban of Internet for anyone under age of 18. Protect the children.

this trend is at least 20 years old.

i don't see how this is tiktoks fault

> Apps like these are causing mental decline, addiction and behavioral problems on a large scale, but the parents just dont care. As long as the kid is quiet with the smartphone in hand. So sad.

Honest question: did it really take having a child to realize this? I mean, most of us here grew up on the Internet and saw the trajectory coming how things devolved from Newsgroups--> Forums --> Myspace. It was day and night each iteration and it wasn't getting better, but significantly and starkly worse way to communicate.

I've been uniquely apathetic about Social media since it was created, and I have never been drawn into it for the aforementioned reasons plus I have a strong background in oratory that forces me to communicate in person; my concerns were that social media presented us with as an intrusive security threat vector, as it's entire buisness model relies on selling data, but I was only secondarily concerned with how vapid people were becoming. I figured it was always there, but it now gave them a platform to draw attention to themselves; so long it was confined to online antics, like on a chan, it will remain there.

Damn, was I wrong about that!

Flash forward to a few years ago and that Black Mirror episode (Nosedive) encapsulated what a lot of us felt inside as these things grew in popularity to the point of replacing people's entire identity. Flash forward a bit more and you get Social Dillema by the very people who created the thing (after they made their money of course) sounding the alarm: Tristan Harris. Flash forward another few months and you get Jan 6th, and all the implications that came with it, and this all started as a dumb LARP'ing thing on 8chan!

I struggle to see the threat of smart phone useage itself as a threat, because I have so many and rarely use them (I only have calls and text notifications on them for what and who I speak with); I often forget to bring them with me when I go out or simply just leave it in my backpack as I go on about my day, but I've seen struggling to see how people didn't see this coming.

It takes a nutmeg snorting, tidepod eating contest or I guess blackout challenge to get people to realize just how pointless, and quite frankly cancerous, this entire part of the tech Industry is.

> Apps like these are causing mental decline, addiction and behavioral problems on a large scale, but the parents just dont care. As long as the kid is quiet with the smartphone in hand. So sad.

I think it's over usage and a clear dependence on them; we all were around when gore was still a shock factor thing, and hung around chans; does that mean we all became depraved menaces to Society? Some maybe, but most of use learned that there is a clear divide between online and in real life behaviour that shouldn't be crossed: what I think failed for so many was that there was never any downtime where you spent time away from these apps and people started to emulate that behaviour in their everyday and THAT is what I think is the issue: people, young or otherwise, seek validation and acceptance from others. It's a hardwired survival mechanism, and that is what these corps have exploited for their own monetary gain.

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