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Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

Social media is poison for young minds. My oldest is going into middle school. I'll get him a phone but he will not be allowed to use social media. This includes YouTube. There is no need for it. We already track his iPad use and will do the same with the phone. He does sports, boxing and math tutoring, if he needs more social interaction he can hang out with friends. There is literally nothing on social media that I think a middle school kid needs exposure to in order to become a successful, good, and well rounded person.

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You have the ability to help guide them through social media by helping them understand good and bad. I understand that you might have different beliefs, but social media plays a very critical role in young kids communicating with each other. Covid catalyzed them embracing social media to stay in touch. Youtube also shouldn't be considered social media.

I appreciate your viewpoint but strongly disagree. Children today suffer vastly increasing rates of depression and suicide. I link most of it to social media. My kids talk to their friends just as kids have done for generations. If social media is playing any sort of a critical role in a kids life it's because the parents are not doing it.

YouTube is absolutely social media no different than Instagram or TikTok. Even something like Mr. beast who is generally a good guy can warp and expose kids to a suddenly transexual and borderline pedophile character who abandons his wife and child. Anyone can post anything. My goal is to limit what my kids are exposed to in much the same way parents did before social media. It just means I have to be involved which is something we should all strive to do.

Your comment is fascinating.

Putting aside whether I agree or disagree, did you ever consider sitting down with your kids to teach/coach/guide them through what social media is, the content on it, what's valuable or not? And if you decided not to, what criteria did you use to make the decision? Did you waver in that decision, or do you take time to reevaluate it on a regular basis?

Or is it instead that you categorically believe all social media is rotten.

I used to be on social media a lot. Everything I saw made me believe it is rotten to the core, especially for young kids just figuring out who they are. I'm hard pressed to think of a single positive thing a child could gain from being on social media. Social media is set up for predation at it's core, everyone is playing the likes and followers game. No one likes your post or people attack you and now it's a vector for depression. It's an echo chamber. It amplifies the worst of us. It's full of pornography. Especially if you are a young teenage boy looking for it. So overall for me it's a net negative. I can talk to them about it when they are older, and in highschool

Got it.

I think you're right about the objective quality of most of what's there. It's garbage. I have two girls under age of 5 but this topic will inevitably bubble up to the surface up to the age of 5. We actually pulled YouTube out of rotation for my older one because, much like you fear, one video slightly off the path played more than a couple times directed the algorithm down a black hole of nonsensical kids videos.

I'm telling myself - with time to go - that at I need to know what's going on in social media to help them understand what their friends might be allowed to do or not when we get to that point. And I'll monitor phones/iPads. Not yet sure about full bans on all of social media but we'll see where things are in that moment and evaluate.

Let me flip side this around: do your kids come to you about apps/social media/etc. with curiosities? Surely they hear about things. How do you redirect?

For me the worst part of social media is the echo chamber algorithm. You click on something, algorithm decides you like it and the next thing you know the earth is flat. You can't understand why anyone doesn't think the earth is flat because everywhere you go on social media you are being told it's flat. As far as you know everyone else is seeing the same content you are. Switch out flat earth with your negative item of choice.

Luckily enough my kids don't ask about social media yet although I do ask them every few weeks if their friends are on it. Some of them have YouTube primarily for video game tutorials. One of my kids friends has more but he is in a single parent household and pretty much left to fend for himself. Any games my kids play I generally playa couple times myself to validate. Their main game is Fortnite, groups of their friends play together.

Told my oldest he can have a phone next year when he starts middle school but it's my phone and he can use it as long as he follows the rules. Have not defined what those are yet for him or me.

I really think social media leads to depression, bullying and change in beliefs. I'd rather sit down with my kid when it's time, discuss with him why he can't have whatever I am saying no to and have him be mad at me for a bit rather than he gets involved in something detrimental.

I don't spank my kids so it's always come down to discussion. Has worked well so far but tomorrow is another day.

I can appreciate that you are trying to be proactive about parenting but I disagree with your moral puritanism. Kids who are completely sheltered often don't end up as well adjusted adults in my experience.

I hear what you are saying but I'm not seeking to isolate my kids at all. Today's "moral puritanism" is yesterday's raising kids to understand right from wrong and what makes a good man. They hang out with friends, play on sports teams, take academic extra curriculars. The only thing I limit is social media. Social media is not a nice introduction to different views, it's an aggressive shotgun blast with the worst kind of people peddling their views for likes and followers. kids don't need social media to be well rounded, removing a negative influence is not sheltering.

Serious question, what does it mean to be a good man? Or at least, what/who are you pointing your son to in this regard? I fear we don’t have many forums or role models for being a good man, which is complicated by, IMO, the chorus coming from the left which seeks to demonize “toxic masculinity”. As an atheist I’m seriously considering if we all need some more Jesus in our lives, or some figure (real or not) who can espouse snippets of Good Man conduct.

The value of a "good man" must be set by the parents. It can change based on who those parents are. If parents don't define what it means then the kid will figure it out based on other influences. The negative of this is often seen when there is an absent father. In that case unfortunately the mother has to work twice as hard with no support.

For me, (athiest as well) I'm slightly right of center or probably right smack in the middle of what used to be the center a decade ago. I don't think there is such a thing as toxic masculinity.

I teach my kids that to be a man means: being kind to those less fortunate than you or even to those that you disagree with. I teach them that if someone puts a hand on you or someone you care about then all bets are off, fight until they can't continue or you can't. To lose is to risk death when not in a controlled environment (boxing ring, etc). Don't be a bully either physically or emotionally. No one is better than you. Never let anyone shame you for what you are. Always try your best. Look after the people that rely on you. You live the life that you earn.

There is more but that's the gist. Essentially boys look at their father to learn what a man is. If he is absent or does not give them attention they will seek validation else where.

Note: I'm not an expert, just a guy doing the best he can with 2 elementary school age boys.

Fighting is not good to teach. Have your boys litigate instead. One awkward fall in a scuffle and your head could land bad on a curb and then its over for you, wouldn’t even take much of a fight just a misstep. Then who knows how things might look for you in a court of law if you do walk out of that fight. Plus theres no way to be sure the other party doesnt have a knife or a gun.

My kids are in elementary school. I started my kids in boxing when in 1 week my youngest was sucker punched while jogging in P.E. and my oldest was put in a choke hold from behind for no reason by a bigger kid. They didn't fight back because they were afraid of getting in trouble. So even without fighting back they can get hurt. Told them I was putting them in boxing and that no one has the right to touch you. Some one puts their hands on you, break their face. Any consequences are mine. Lying there saying please stop while at the mercy of someone beating you to death because you didn't fight back or tried to litigate with someone is not great either. Someone goes after you, do your utmost to ensure they can't do it again. My kids understand that now.

Escalating introduces dangerous variables. I’m sorry your school is rife with bullying but honestly, the correct move in these cases is to just run away. Like I said, making a move to continue the fight prolongs the risk you are taking for a bad fall that could break your neck. Its all too easy.

Respectfully disagree. If you spend your life running away it changes your psyche. It changes the way you interact with the world, fear becomes the driving emotion. As my dad, who used to lead special forces groups used to say, it "leaves little grey marks on your soul". As long as the odds are not against you, stand and fight. You do whatever you think is right though, I understand your point and where you are coming from.

Social media is an important way for kids to communicate to a group of people outside of their immediate friends. Kids born before broadband did not have the option to communicate in the same way, and trying to live that way now will do more harm than good. It's similar to trying to using a dumb phone that is not capable of group messaging as your only form of communication. Mental health issues are very complex and social media is only a communication platform at its core.

YouTube is not social media because there's no real network of friends. You have creators making content for users to consume. There are comments under videos, but there's no friends feature or direct messaging. Anyone can't post anything. The rest of the world is going to continue to use social media, limiting access won't change that. My perspective mostly agrees with this Unicef report.

https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/done-right-internet-us...

Respectfully, do you have kids and if so how old are they? At what age did you give them social media? Social media is absolutely just a communication platform but it allows anyone to communicate their biases and view points to your kids. It's very much not important. Kids can grow up to be well rounded and happy people without it.

I am giving you perspective from someone that had social media limited. Not having a social media presence caused other kids to leave me out of things. I missed a lot of context on drama that happened online, and was always late in learning about things.

I don't have kids but I have been tutoring kids for the last 14 years, since I was basically a kid. I do individual tutoring for mostly high school, and occasionally middle school kids. Some of the have been with me from 7th through 12th grade, and a couple have even asked me to help them prep for finals even after starting college. They end up trusting me with things they wouldn't tell their parents, because I'm still someone they see as an authority figure. Because of cultural reasons, the kids I've tutor think of me and address me as an older brother. I've noticed covid catalyzed the shift to using digital platforms to keep in touch.

I don't have children, but empathize with the feeling of wanting to be protective. It took a lot of effort to make sure some of kids I tutored weren't taken advantage of by people like Andrew Tate. Telling them not to watch didn't help, pointing out the problems with Tate's message and taking time to dissect it did. Doing that also helped them learn how to identify similar manipulation tactics from other creators. It's important to separate the platform from the users.

I think we disagree on the importance of teaching kids how to use these tools. It feels sort similar to countries banning people from accessing AI tools like ChatGPT. The ban won't slow down AI development, those banned countries are simply left behind.

That's the thing, social media is full of people like Tate pushing all sorts of views. All the things you missed out on with social media that you rightly describe as drama were not important. I don't even have that much of an issue with Tate, he's just obviously trying to get people to pay for his membership. Some of the ideas he pushes are far less dangerous than the other stuff being pushed out there. I do disagree strongly with you taking positions and counseling kids that you are simply supposed to be tutoring. Ask your parents is a perfectly acceptable answer. You were essentially using your position of authority to push your viewpoint on impressionable minds. You may think you were doing right but in reality it was not your job and you were undermining parental roles. If I discovered my kids tutors were doing this I would react poorly.

Their parents trust me to talk to their kids about things they didn't feel comfortable about. Their parents ask me to look out for their kids and implicitly understand that I'm told things that they aren't. I think it's a cultural difference in the role of education between Asian cultures and others. I was even occasionally asked by parents to take a bigger role than I was sometimes comfortable with, for certain things. I was not undermining the parent's roles. I understand your reservations, but they're misguided at best. The parents were who encouraged their kids to call me big brother and have shared their appreciation to me privately.

>Not having a social media presence caused other kids to leave me out of things. I missed a lot of context on drama that happened online, and was always late in learning about things.

and?

Social exclusion is harmful to the development and mental health of teenagers too.

So if hanging out smoking cigarettes was the only way to socialize you would...?

The only people I follow on youtube are my friends.

> Mr. beast who is generally a good guy can warp and expose kids to a suddenly transexual and borderline pedophile character who abandons his wife and child

Can you expand on this? Who are you talking about?

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