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Comment by hammyhavoc | Hacker News Reader

Little league? Social media?

Are we talking children or teenagers?

What's frequently missed is that most organization of meet-ups, birthday parties, talking to romantic interests, going to concerts et al, all happens on social media and in group chats now, and has done for the best part of fifteen years in the West. For the prior generation, if you aren't online, you aren't cool, and you won't know about cool things that are happening.

The current generation seems to have a fascination with dumb phones and eschewing tech obsession if the media spin is to be believed versus the numbers on social media apps. Both can be valid things that are occurring though, but I'm willing to bet that the dumb phone movement is a small one or a LARP for elitist cool points.

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>What's frequently missed is that most organization of meet-ups, birthday parties, talking to romantic interests, going to concerts et al, all happens on social media and in group chats now, and has done for the best part of fifteen years in the West.

Yeah, no. People still talk to each other.

I leave it to you to exercise some adaptability and find suitable workarounds. This is a small problem. I guarantee you that you solve harder ones on a daily basis.

>People still talk to each other.

At Church on Sunday? No, that has collapsed.

At other social civic meetings... um, no not there.

Social gathering and civic interaction in the US has become highly commercialized and put into non-public places such as social media.

Got kids? Enroll them in youth sports. You'll meet and talk with other parents at games and practices. It's how I ended up joining an indoor soccer league.

Check out your local recreation center. It's how I joined a local fencing club.

Check out meet ups in your area. It's how I join a language exchange group that meets weekly.

Check out your local library. They often have book clubs, kid and adult events, and more.

There are tons of options that people used before social media which still exist today. It's trivial to find them. The biggest problem is that many people don't want to move out from behind the screen.

Most libraries are gone here in the UK, FWIW. Post-pandemic, most rec centers are struggling or gone too.

Hospitality in general is struggling here. Pubs disappearing too.

Meet ups. Hobby clubs (chess, cycling, etc.). User groups (Linux, Mac, Python, etc.). Take some lessons for a sport. Take a fitness class. Art classes. Group music lessons. Volunteer for non-profits. Find a local artist group, a local woodworking group. Local business groups like a chamber of commerce.

Basically, find anything which interests you that places you in a context where you bump into the same group of people regularly. From that, connections with develop.

For many, the biggest challenge isn't finding a place to be but actually getting themselves out there in the first place.

As neither a parent nor a teenager, I find this a weird one to leave with me. I merely repeated some valid concerns, to which you presented no solutions, just snippiness.

What workarounds am I looking for? And for whom? Why aren't the people concerned looking for their own workarounds?

Your "concerns" are little more than whining about minor inconvenience.

If you value convenience over the well-being of your children, you'll have a convenient life and children who are unwell.

Do what you think is best, but don't pretend it's impossible to live well without social media. It's laughable. It deserves snippiness.

I don't think you really understand the extent to which restricting kids from social media can isolate them from their peers.

Even if you have a teenager who is social at school and through extracurriculars, many meaningful social interactions are happening online or through social media.

For example, almost every team/club these days has a "group chat", where kids spend time bonding outside of practice / organized events. Even if your child shows up to every organized event, they still may feel isolated due to being excluded from the conversations happening outside of practices.

Also, social media is the predominant force that is shaping Gen-Z culture. Being excluded from such a large driver of your peer's culture can definitely create feelings of isolation. Imagine if you had grown up in a household where music wasn't allowed, and how that could have made conversations with your peers more difficult. And social media is a significantly bigger cultural force than music was when you were a kid.

These are just a couple of examples, if you'd like I can list more ways that social media is semi-necessary for many kids to avoid feeling excluded.

I'm not saying this is necessarily always a bad thing (there are definitely strong arguments to be made for abstaining from some elements of society), but I would make sure you're communicating with your child and that you understand their social situation.

I barely use social media at this point and am very socially isolated as a result. Although not sure how much I care about my own isolation.

Countercultures always look really small. If everyone was actually doing it it wouldn't be much of a reaction to the prevailing culture of everyone being connected and having snippy political discussions in neighborhood discussion groups.

All of this organization doesn't actually happen on social media in my social group. We pretty much all just text each other, and everyone I know and care to spend time with does this. The people who are utterly reliant on Facebook to organize their lives have filtered themselves out of my friend group.

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