Now in 12th, he does use Discord to communicate with a limited set of friends. But that’s it.
I’ve said it before, the difference is that we don’t use any of the social media ourselves, so kids are OK. If parents use them but ask kids to refrain, obviously it’s not going to work.
You wouldn't classify HN as social media?
But, I'm pretty sure the Surgeon General did not have HN in mind while making that comment. :)
HN is a social media, but it lacks certain capabilities that make it OK. First and foremost, there is no DM, then it's heavily moderated both by users as well as by DanG, and then it is text based. Also, based on my observation, the karma/like acquisition is not what drives people's comments here.
So, while you're correct that it's a social media, it's not the cesspool of poison that the usual ones, that come to mind when we use the term social media, are.
Just because you don’t know the real world identity of the other nodes doesn’t mean that a network doesn’t exist.
Can’t they get around this by turning off Wi-Fi?
Also, any excessive data usage would show up in the family plan, which gives me confidence.
I have always vocally expressed my hate for FB so maybe that helped.
But all kids are different, and maybe what worked here won’t work for everyone.
I’m sure there’d be push back in middle school but we’ll be able to refer to the older kid. Fingers crossed..
Also, I had used the family thing with the older kid, so app installations required patent approval. So that at least forces usage of web apps if the kid is trying to bypass some restrictions, which in itself reduces the damage caused by these social networks.
HN has elements of all 3, but to a lesser degree than Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.
Discord has the potential to have some of those to an extent, but especially if the user is simply using a server for them and their friends, practically none of those apply. It’s much closer to a simple group chat.
But the kid is now in senior year of high school so in worst case I did protect them for as long as I could. I won’t have much control from next year anyway..
Just wanted to post this in case someone else has no idea and they let their kids on that platform. Chances are high most people on Discord are fine, but bad can be found anywhere online.
Are you worried about the social lives they might be missing out on? About the friendships they might have had if they had a phone with Snapchat on it? A lot of social life for kids happens online.
This is hard to believe to the point of me thinking your kids were in a plato's cave. It was not possible to have a normal social life without social media as a teenager over the last 10 years. Full stop. You will miss out on events because you can not be invited the normal way. Whether that's a big deal or not is certainly debatable, but claiming that it doesn't exist is ostrich behavior.
A lot of things are said (and done) - often in haste - online, which one would simply never experience in a face-to-face interaction.
We support our kids participating in lots of team sports, not because they're amazingly talented (although they're all better than I was when I was that age!), but because we believe it's good for them, physically and socially.
This is the way to do it. People forget that while some teenage social life occurs online, not all of it does, and the part that can be done in-person is a lot healthier than what's online. In real life, are people going to be comparing themselves to Instagram posts? Unlikely, but even then, there will be a lot more nuance of something like, say, going on an international trip, where a friend can tell you the good and bad rather than showing only the good on an IG photo and making the viewer feel bad because they didn't go on such a trip.
Real life interaction simply has less ability to lack nuance, which I think is a good thing.
Also there is the practicality point. In the old days, kids could reach each other from their own volition, back when kids walking on the sidewalk alone wasn't a reason to call CPS. Back when said side walks existed in the first place.
Our eldest travels into the nearest town by train, on his own, to get to his school. He's done this since he was 11.
Our youngest walks to her primary school, on her own, since the first week she started at primary school.
> [..] back when kids walking on the sidewalk alone wasn't a reason to call CPS.
Why any parent wouldn't trust their child to go for a walk unsupervised but would trust them to be on Snapchat unsupervised is completely beyond me.
Yes, it happens, but its exceedingly rare.
I think that's a big part of the problem. I want to encourage more of that social life to happen in person. I would feel bad if I was causing them to miss out on IRL events.
If a student did not have access to those services I would not want to work with them on say a group assignment because it would be very difficult to keep things organized. I would not want to go out of my way to go to their house/make phone calls to keep them in the loop.
I've known people who say this. Trust me: They're not worth associating with. Most/all have unhealthy social problems. And none have worthwhile positives that you'd miss out on by not being part of their circle.
I have no social media presence and it has never affected me in the slightest.