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Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

> “If parents can band together and say you know, as a group, we’re not going to allow our kids to use social media until 16 or 17 or 18 or whatever age they choose, that’s a much more effective strategy in making sure your kids don’t get exposed to harm early,"

I'm surprised by this statement considering he's a parent.

You can't really prevent a teenager from doing something if they set their mind on it. All we can really do is educate.

My take is that every social media outlet starts a death spiral once its first generation of users starts being parents of teenagers.

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My experience is that it's much more effective to advocate for the alternative activities that would be done instead of using social media.

I also think focusing all our attention to the broadest instance ("social media" as a whole) is just as lazy as focusing on the broadest audience ("teenagers" as a whole).

One of the most frustrating social behaviors teenagers experience from adults is "infantilization": when an adult refuses to accommodate or even recognize a teenager's own autonomy, discipline, and maturation; instead placing them at the same social level as an infant. Teenagers are not babies, and they know it. They are not likely be fully mature, and they are definitely not fully immature.

To broadly declare that teenagers are endangered by social media is no more helpful than broadly declaring children are endangered by water. In either context, simple avoidance is not a practical solution, nor is it intrinsically desirable.

In America, there is a broad infantilization push that started from the 90s till now. I remember not being able to walk outside of my neighborhood, while my fiance who is not american walked to school as a preteen. While social media is toxic for teens and adults really, so there is clearly some value in the observation somewhere, this is stemming from the infantalizing culture of America today.

“You can’t really prevent a teenager from doing something if they set their mind on it.”

While true about any human, this mindset is wrong when the conclusion is “I won’t even try to change the problem.”

Education is the wrong answer because education only delivers information. What we need is leadership and wisdom in application.

Properly-applied leadership CAN prevent teenagers from engaging in self-destructive behaviors. Education is not the answer, it is half of the strategy, but perfect education by itself will not solve this issue or any other public health crisis facing our youth.

What is "leadership and wisdom in application?" That's a bit vague.

> You can't really prevent a teenager from doing something if they set their mind on it. All we can really do is educate.

So also give them access to tobacco and booze?

Maybe not "give them access," but I think we tend to underestimate adolescents' abilities to select out of behavior. From personal experience: I was able to access alcohol at a pretty early age, and thus avoided a lot of the "typical" American young adult experience with it (not drinking until college, at which point you black out at your first party.)

Tobacco is a step further in terms of addictive potential, but I think the US could generally learn from Europe's approach to adolescent drinking.

I think early alcohol consumption is also associated with alcoholism. Seems like a bit of gamble to not strongly discourage it in adolescence. (https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA67/AA67.htm#:~:tex....)

Associated, yes, but the causation is not clear: it could be the case that early drinking predisposes adolescents to alcoholism, or that adolescents who would be predisposed to alcoholism as adults are reflected in early drinking statistics.

These surveys are also done on American adolescents, who are more likely to obtain and consume alcohol illicitly than their European counterparts. It would be interesting to see comparative statistics on the two.

Finally: this bulletin mixes up different demographics: you have (1) COAs who are more likely to become alcoholics themselves, (2) adolescents who engage in binge drinking, which is generally correlated with alcoholism in adulthood, and (3) an unmeasured population of drinking-but-not-binging adolescents.

Yes, why not? The drinking age is 16 where I grew up and my parents said, if you want to smoke or drink, don't hide it, and if you ever want to experiment with anything do it here in the home where people you can trust are around. And that's what I did, never lied to my parents once. The first time I smoked pot they knew about it, I never got blackout drunk anywhere, never did any hard stuff or used anything irresponsibly, still don't.

What I do vividly remember is having US exchange students in uni age 21+ who binge drank themselves into oblivion everywhere, catching up on everything at once without anyone around.

The argument wasn’t about a specific age limit (it’s 16 for alcohol where I live as well, and TFA actually mentions 16 as a possible age limit for social media), it’s that the parent commenter was implying that restricting access would make no difference.

No argument that education is important, and that some would seek and find a way around the restriction, like they do with alcohol. But I’m sure that restricting access to social media under a certain age like it is the case for alcohol would significantly reduce the use of social media in the affected age group.

It didn't do that with alcohol and tobacco in my corner of the world and it was partly because some parents didn't really give a shit.

And that's the thing: as a teenager if you don't have access to <disallowed thing>, there's surely at least one kid in your class, whose parents are either largely absent or particularly lenient, and who will provide you with whatever you need.

In the case of social media I'd imagine a secret separate phone without parental restrictions and SIM card swapped out for the time being. Maybe even a separate SIM card, should the first one be restricted on the provider level. Or just rooting the device and rendering any control moot. There's always this one guy who'll help you out if your parents are too strict in your view.

Of course there's going to be some reduction, but you have to ask yourself: what's the plan when the kid turns eighteen and you can't legally control their internet usage - not when they have a SIM card on their name? You just let go of any restrictions on that day?

even if it did which I don't genuinely believe given how ubiquitous and easy access is, it's a bad idea for the same reason I gave for alcohol. The world is full of social media, just like it's full of drugs, and teenagers need to learn how to navigate that world because in adulthood they will be surrounded by them.

kids need to take to learn control of things that are harmful and how to engage them rather than be kept away from them. This avoidance behavior to me seems to be a consequence of now endemic helicopter parenting. If you hide things from kids, they don't gain the confidence of dealing with them or coming to you on their own terms.

The goal shouldn't be to reduce social media usage, it should be to equip teenagers with tools to be resilient and take control of the way they use social media. It's in a sense like bullying. Yes, you can shield your kids from exposure to it, or you can teach them to confront it. What's better long term?

More like educate them about the issues of tobacco and booze.

>So also give them access to tobacco and booze?

Depends where you live, but in some EU countries, teens start drinking and smoking and already give up on cigs and beer before American teens even start.

It's pretty common to see 14 year olds smoking and drinking beer outside in public despite these being officially allowed when you're 18.

Teens will always try to do what adults tell them is forbidden and bad for them, because doing forbidden things is enticing and makes you look cool and rebellious.

Your first sentence contradicts your last.

I think every year that a teenager doesn't start drinking alcohol is a net benefit. They black out at college parties at 20 so what? By that time their brain is more developed. I think Europeans have a very unhealthy attitude towards alcohol and their kids pay the price of it. And they do not give up alcohol at all. On the contrary, they don't know how to party without alcohol for the rest of their life.

I'm Australian, the legal age is 18 here we have a pretty big binge drinking culture here but I think there are some differences.

There is a pub culture here, for example my university had pubs and bars on campus there was a lot of activities like Trivia nights etc. with heavy drinking involved. Pool tables at pubs were pretty common. During Uni I'd often hang out with my friends for a few hours drink beer shoot pool, grab a kebab on the way home, that was a pretty typical night out. Sports involved a lot of drinking as well, I played cricket while I was in university. I'd go to the pub with my cricket team after every game.

I think the American experience, especially around University is more focused around house parties and drinking games (unless the keg party, ping pong ball, cup flipping you see on TV shows is just a Stereotype).

> And they do not give up alcohol at all. On the contrary, they don't know how to party without alcohol for the rest of their life.

The don't give it up, but they use it in moderation. The prevalence of alcoholism is generally higher in the US than in Europe:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholis...

The US especially leads in alcoholism among women.

And Americans know how to party without alcohol? Not in my experience

The argument that you shouldn't ban something because people will do it anyway is very unconvincing. If it's the difference between 5% of people doing something harmful vs 95% of people, of course I'll take the 5%.

Furthermore, you won't have parents afraid of banning social media or phones for kids because it's a practical requirement for a social life in current age or something like that

Outside of rare circumstances they already have access.

Typically they only have limited access. I’m sure they would stop having access if they’d start binging it like social media, under most circumstances.

I think the point is that if the nearby group of parents all agree on it, the kids don't feel as much social pressure to be on the platform.

We prohibit children from drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco, and while it doesn't work perfectly, it sure has made them use these substances less. I'm a bit disappointed how timid his opinion is. He should be calling for laws against children's device use instead of calling for parents to do it.

I don't think parents will ever do it, not in such quantity that it would matter. Also, if it's primarily the parents' responsibility to do this, it will be the more well-off, more educated and more intelligent parents who will have the resources to do this. The children who need the most help with this problem will again be left to deal with it themselves.

> You can't really prevent a teenager from doing something if they set their mind on it.

By the time they hit their teenage years, it's basically too late. You have to start earlier instilling authority and respect and trust in their parents. Not a popular opinion here, but religion plays a role in guidance as well.

So the best way to get teenagers to stop is to join them?

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