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Well, other bad influences were reading Bukowski or Ginsberg too young but I mostly agree.

This is the change that has never occurred in human history. Every thread brings up that all complaints about this new media were applied to past forms of media.

I started reading Bukowski when I was around 13 or so. Many of the titles were available at the local library. I don’t think it was bad though. If anything, it was a cautionary tale of what substance abuse can lead too. And his poems were great.

Good. I like Bukowski too. At 13 I was more of a Kerouac guy. I know a girl who clearly idolizes and emulates Bukowski's lifestyle though.

My point was more that there were still ways for bad influences to reach people.

> Now, with TikTok, the only limit is what TikTok will ban. Which isn't much. The population segment of kids who aren't supervised in any way used to have an inherent limit. Not any more.

This may be new-ish but I’m not sure it’s that new. I grew up with the early web in the late 90s/early 2000s, and it’s always been pretty unfiltered. It wasn’t centralized in the way TikTok is, but plenty of us grew up on the web with little supervision, and web circles were/are much wider than the neighborhood.

Surely the scale and speed of information flow has greatly increased since the late 1990s and early 2000s so as to not be comparable to today.

difference is tiktok and short video algos exploit ppls worse natures. like i know a few ppl whose feeds became e-thots doing dances in bikinis bc they wouldnt go seek it out but tiktok showed them that and their watch metrics or whatever were better. or ppl whose feed became far right shit bc it showed them some of that.

there's a lot of stuff we know isn't good and won't consciously choose to go watch. but short video shows us some of that and we subconsciously engage with it more instead of consciously choosing so we watch more and more.

this is hard for adults to deal with but way worse for kids with shitty impulse control.

Early internet was populated mostly by educated people and there were very little (if at all) monetary influence to drive engagement. So i guess these two factors are sufficient for internet to be much safer place.

4chan dates from 2003, for reference.

It may be the case that algorithmic feeds and social networks that have one giant global context tend to expose stuff like this in ways that would have been less likely on the early web. 4chan has always been pretty awful but you wouldn’t have seen it unless you were on 4chan, which for most people was “never”. The norm at the time was to be in multiple different communities, and there typically wasn’t much overlap.

By contrast, TikTok is all one big space, and if the algorithm wants you to see something you’ll see it. That part is new.

Maybe that falls under “monetary influence to drive engagement” in which case I suppose I agree.

Banning "undesirable topics" isn't the solution, but only a band-aid. We need to teach children critical thinking skills and allow them to make their own decisions. The former might be easier, but the latter is the most beneficial in the long run.

"Critical thinking" as thought is kinda "trust CNN and not random rager's blog". You need judgement and wisdom for actual critical thinking, which children do not have.

I would say it is a really hard problem, because it boils down to trust the trustworthy -- and who to trust is left as an exercise to the reader.

Children literally don't have the developed cognitive capabilities to critically think, nor should they be making their own decisions every time. This is an absolutely inane suggestion.

I don't know when it started happening, but why do we continue to let these companies off the hook for their absolutely terrible externalities? Banning these topics if your platform allows children, preteens, etc is absolutely an effective solution if said companies refuse to rectify the problem.

Why should society bare the costs because a company wants to make money at the costs of a child's mental health? How is that just or even fair? Have we truly devolved into a new feudal age where no company can do wrong and we simply have to blame ourselves for their faults? These apps are designed to be psychologically addictive and fuel outrage/fear to drive advertising revenues... why is this acceptable? Why are we blaming parents and not the executives who signed off on these decisions?

> Children literally don't have the developed cognitive capabilities to critically think, nor should they be making their own decisions every time

[citation needed]

Also, since children don't have the cognitive abilities to critically think, maybe some responsibility should fall onto the parent? You can deflect blame all you want and call for TikTok to go around swinging their banhammer, but your "think of the children" alarmism is short sighted. It's impossible for TikTok to blanket ban an entire topic without causing major damage in the process.

I won't move into "mind reading" territory, but I suspect people who are so trigger happy to ban things online to "protect children" have a guilty conscience due to the lack of effort they put into their own child's development.

The internet boogeyman can only influence your child so much... Raise your kids, people!

I feel like this falls on parents, once again.

What is a valid use-case that a child/teenager requires a phone?

I would argue that don't need unrestricted internet access too, but education has largely moved online.

Phone is literally only way how they can organize social life. Houses don't have landlines anymore. Teenager without phone means no socialization outside organized activities.

> no socialization outside organized activities The point of those is to restrict influence and keep an eye on things.

Also, why can you socialize with the neighbors. Parents used to be super comfortable with "tommy is coming over for dinner or spending that night"

Is that still the case? I don't have any anecdotes on this.

That assumes there kids of the same age in neighborhood with similar lifestyle. Which is quite a lot to ask these days.

There are less kids overall.

Kids today have more activities, so you won't meet them just by randomly going outside.

They do a lot more activities at home on computer, again you won't meet them randomly outside.

Parents are not even allowed to let their 6-7 years old outside alone, meaning they would had to be with them. Meaning kids won't get habit to he outside nor will find friends outside, even if some kids are around.

And if those other teenagers have phones, they expect you to organize it all by phone. They have own friends they socialize with and coordinate via phones. It is rude to just show up without calling first and you need phone to be reachable by other in the first place.

And other kids will not call on parents home. They are shy or scared.

When kids went to Timmy, pwople assumed landlines. Before landlines, it was accepted to just show up. Today, expectation is phone.

the problem is that social media is like Heroin and not even the parents are immune.

There is a difference in reading an article in a newspaper with critical thinking and lumping through a social media page where the whole purpose is not the content but to keep you glued to the screen.

> We need to teach children critical thinking skills and allow them to make their own decisions

The timescale of this process is ~15-20 years. "Critical thinking", "common sense" and "being an adult" all refer someone that has cultivated the ability to filter information independently.

I would argue that many 18+ people don't fully develop this skill. See cults, propaganda, conformity for datapoints.

I agree that we SHOULD teach children critical thinking. But MAYBE if you give them a smartphone and social media you should expect this type of result.

In general, I think that the move from TV (where CNN had "authority") to the internet (influencers have the power) can explain some social trends that are going on. Ex. conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen these days with youtube videos slowly hypnotizing you.

> The timescale of this process is ~15-20 years.

Yes, it won't happen overnight. This requires a culture shift. But banning things to coddle children's mind even further will hinder the process.

> I would argue that many 18+ people don't fully develop this skill. See cults, propaganda, conformity for datapoints.

I agree. Which is why I initially said we should teach children critical thinking skills.

> But MAYBE if you give them a smartphone and social media you should expect this type of result.

This is a parental issue. And if a child has incompetent parents, then no proposed solution matters at the end of the day.

> In general, I think that the move from TV (where CNN had "authority") to the internet (influencers have the power) can explain some social trends that are going on.

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> Yes, it won't happen overnight. This requires a culture shift.

I meant that it takes 15-20 years for critical thinking to develop. I don't think you can teach a kid critical thinking (at least anything that is useful against internet content). The best mechanism is teach them dogma/fear mongering "don't talk to strangers".

> But banning things to coddle children's mind even further will hinder the process I agree with banning content. The technology needs to be eliminated. I realize this is an extreme view, but little value comes from giving kids tech. Tell them to go play outside and explore the world.

> And if a child has incompetent parents, then no proposed solution matters at the end of the day. Yup, the best you can do is TRY to be a good parent and maybe help out with friends that are struggling.

> ? You notice how everyone is politically divided? People are anxious about the future? It's never not been the case that "things are bad" and "life is unpredictable", what is different is the hysteria around "it's the end of days".

All that is social media. Prior to internet, TV told us what to think. It was a unified message - communism bad, nazis bad, etc. Even opposition media was mostly investigative and finding really messed up stuff to "correct" the system. Because these were professional journalists creating an elegant narrative of the world around us. Obviously, 24hr news was the downfall of that. But even there, it was left and right.

Enter the internet, which democratized free speech (GOOD). But ANYONE can say ANYTHING (BAD). Which is how you get ridiculously outlandish conspiracies, niche political movements and just general hate towards everything.

So this social trend of desperation and hopelessness, that's social media.

There is an insane lack of self awareness in this post.

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> This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely.

I find it astonishing that this is the limit of "bad". There are people alive today who were at lynchings in the US as children and cheered them on.

Setting cats on fire by comparison was a harmless past time.

Very true, I picked this example as a thing that kids could theoretically be doing right now. You don't have to go very far back at all to get into the really heinous stuff. There's a big complicating factor in what parents would have actually prevented as a bad influence too, children cheering on at lynchings were accompanied by everyone else in the town cheering at lynchings. If there was a disconnect between parents tolerance of lynchings and child exposure to lynchings it didn't last very long.

> Previously, bad influences were limited to what your local neighborhood kids were telling your kid. This could be bad, they could be torturing cats or something, but that wasn't likely. And that floor could be raised by society as a whole improving.

It also worth noting that in the past there were more supervisory resources: homemakers. Now both parents tend to work and have far less capacity to manage those bad influences.

> The problem is much of America (and much of the world) is completely boned on this front by living in places that just don't form a community, like suburbs, or just low-density non-walkable areas in general

Why do you think you’re less likely to form a community in suburbs? I live in SF in an apt with a walk score of 98 and I don’t think there is much of a “community” here at all.

More likely bad influences were excessive alcohol, drugs, teenage pregnancies, minor crime, violence. Those are all less frequent then they used to be.