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Comment by gitowiec | Hacker News Reader

I'm very happy that USA schools are trying to fight unsocial media. This is an example the world should take. For example, there is such a thing as parenting burnout. I as a father of 6 yo child which uses smartphone very rarely just to play two games we approved, am thinking too much about moment my child will start school. The moment where she will see most children have smartphones, use them without supervision and watch stupid videos. Support from schools would help me to worry less and allow me to feel that my child is safe.

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I'm not sure what's really new here, and if it's such a problem. When I was a kid, there were similar discussions. Kids watch too much TV, play too many video games, watch porn VHS when parents are away. In the end, it wasn't such a big deal.

I don’t think tv ever radicalized white supremacists and terrorists like youtube has, the personal recommendation systems amplify everything

People have been radicalized by all kinds of things: religion, crowds, friends, books, and likely broadcast television too. The amplification capability is just more widely available and there's more fringe content.

Never thought I'd have so many friends and acquaintances who doubt the world is ball shaped, the moon landing, or suspected 9/11 was an inside job. Yet I do and some of them actually came to these beliefs because of school research papers and debate classes.

Computers aren't really new. Addition and writing have been around for a long time. There's nothing that a computer can do that can't theoretically be accomplished by a team of people with abaci and carrier pigeons.

The entire value proposition of modern computation is about scale and cost. It's the same things, but with much higher quantity and intensity. Something that can be tolerably safe at 1 unit/day may be very dangerous at 1000 units/day. I would be surprised if pre-teen porn consumption has only risen by 1000x in the past 30 years.

It's all 100x faster and 1MX more.

Yet humans are the same biological systems.

At what point does it go from entertainment to obsession to something like heroin? There's a point where it does, and we could probably figure out a metric.

It's disingenuous to pretend 'oh there's nothing new here'

I don’t remember being able to do this at school while in a classroom. So I guess that part is new. And likely a problem if that’s the only venue for required learning.

I don't know about the US, but in my country, smartphones are forbidden inside schools. If they're not, it's not a social network issue.

Were you playing too many video games and watching too much porn while at school, or at home? Were those video games engineered with the help of psychologists to addict you as much as possible?

I may be older than you so ... TV (we only had broadcast) sucked during the day since it apparently targeted housewives. That, as it turns out, sent us outside to play, ride our bikes.

Video games had not arrived — when they did they cost a quarter to play. That kind of limited the time spent there, ha ha. Personal computers were expensive so even when they arrived, we of course did not have one.

Porn was finding a magazine in the trash can behind an office building.

The thing that saddens me the most about all of this stuff (the internet especially, perhaps) is that kids aren't out trying to fly a kite any more.

You say it wasn't such a big deal, yet here we are in a thread discussing a mental health crisis that most of us agree is occurring. Maybe they were right and if we listened we wouldn't be here now.

Who are they're going to sue next? City planners for their contributions to social problems?

Would that be unreasonable?

Because it's not like there is no history of government policy / decision makers managing to create or exacerbate social problems.

e.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

When will they sue themselves for failing to the teach children who want to learn?

That's a great idea, yes.

Is this not a palatable alternative to shrugging your shoulders and saying, "I guess we're just fucked"? Determine root causes and pursue with full vigour, utilizing all available tools. Even if you fail, you're sending important signal to stakeholders.

Anti-social media?

When I was raising my daughters the smart phones didn't come until their peers hit middle school (their teens). They did the odd web-surfing (desktop) thing while in elementary school though.

Are smart phones really in the elementary schools now?

Smartphones are most definitely in elementary schools by now, correct.

What's more, most of them will have TikTok and/or SnapChat installed.

They definitely are. What’s more, elementary kids already know what porn is and how to find it. My son was exposed to porn by other kids in 4th grade!

My spouse has overheard 4th grade boys talking about their inappropriate behavior on Omegle.

This is probably a very european viewpoint, but I find it amazing how shocked people are by children seeing porn, but don't bat an eyelid when kids are exposed to violence on television or in movies.

The biggest example from my own childhood was WWE (WWF at the time). The simplicity of the scripts etc seemed to be explicitly targeted towards kids who would then, predictably, try to copy the wrestling moves on their friends.

It's a million times more harmful than seeing the human body sans garments.

Obviously there are specific types of porn that I'd be mildly concerned by my child being exposed to, but generally speaking it's the violence and inherently problematic power structures within that are the fundamental issue, not the nudity.

Porn isn't mere nudity, and much of it is extremely violent. It is designed to flood the brain with dopamine. Brains, especially developing brains, which are constantly flooded with dopamine begin to produce less dopamine to offset the flood. Low levels of dopamine cause all kinds of psychological and emotional issues.

Is mainstream porn extremely violent? I am legit asking as someone who typically only looks at furry porn.

Mainstream has everything.

Mainstream isn't terribly violent, but it's also not really a good representation of sex that women seem (in my experience and what my lady friends have told me) to typically enjoy. Lots of vids of roided out guys jackhammering until a woman is raw and her mascara is covering her face.

But there isn't really just 'mainstream' anymore. Weird face-slapping or gagging or bukkake stuff is a click away from the front page, frequently in 'suggested videos'.

I was exposed to porn in 4th grade in 2001. Internet porn on the family desktop in the kitchen by 2003. My parents never stood a chance; I knew so much more about computers than they did.

It's a different animal for sure now. It had a subtle but very negative effect on my ability to start intimate relationships. I can't imagine what it would've been like if I was in highschool seeing OF girls on reddit. In the 2000s, there was a distance between the girls I knew and women I saw in professional porn. But now I know college-age women who have given OF a try. Definitely would have further warped my perceptions.

Can you elaborate on how it would have warped your perceptions?

From what I can see, todays porn is no longer an ideal but more reflective of reality, to the point where people that one interacts with in daily life could have produced it (e.g. OnlyFans).

For example, for me when I was in high school/college Playboy ran a series called Girls of the ACC where they recruited contestants from our local state school. This was over 20 years ago, and to me isn’t so different from the effect of OnlyFans, letting “normal” people participate in pornography.

Normal people isn't the same as normal behaviors.

It's not so much just about body-types, but what to expect from intimacy and how to obtain it. I had exposure in my life to women who exerted control on men by withholding intimacy and sex. You know, stuff like "If he wants sex, he has to give you/do XYZ". This was terrifying because as soon as I started getting crushes and feeling attraction, it was an overwhelming emotional force. If I liked a girl, then the sun rose and set with her. If she asked me for something I felt helpless to say anything but 'yes'. It was psychologically excruciating to feel so strongly about these girls.

When it quickly became clear that the girls I wanted didn't feel that same way about me, it did not change the way I felt about them. Combined with the experiences I had of the 'control men with sex' ethos, my powerful emotions for women seemed like a huge liability. There were a few very painful experiences where a couple of my middle-school crushes toyed with me. Flirting with me then turning around and laughing with their friends about what a virgin I was. Looking back, there were girls who were interested in me, but I failed to recognize it[0],[1].

I sort of developed this idea that in my relationships, sex must be established at the beginning as something that won't be 'used against me', and I sought out relationships with sex at the forefront of my mind. If intercourse wasn't going to be established as freely engaged in more-or-less right away, I took that as my sign it was a no-go.

Meanwhile, I found early on that porn was quite enjoyable. Between that, my painful emotional experiences, and popular media almost always culminating relationships in sex, I got the message that sex was 'the good part' of a relationship.

I started evaluating women mostly in terms of how much I would enjoy the sex, not the overall time spent together. It seemed like the only logical defensive position to take. This is where I think OF would be mind-breaking. I'll come back to this shortly.

I largely sought out non-committal-style FWB type relationships. This turned out to be very impractical and I did not find many women who wanted to start a relationship based on sex. In particular, most of the women I was attracted to were turned off by that approach to a relationship. However, I did find a couple, and those relationships really revolved around their sexual aspects. The nuclear core was how much sexual pleasure we were capable of achieving (they were also porn consumers). I'm fortunate that we weren't really drug users, but the sex was kind of like a drug. Chasing higher highs. They were excellent at first, just what I wanted. But the focus on pleasure became unsustainable: I felt my penis wasn't big enough for her taste, she felt like she wasn't petite enough for my taste, etc.

At some point, if you're chasing "the most pleasure" moving into BDSM and/or involving other people (threesomes, DP, orgies, etc.) start to seem like logical next-moves. We got about ankle-deep in this before things got incredibly emotionally messy. But I did recognize that this stuff was kind-of distant from the normal experience. This wasn't "what everyone is doing", it's just what they wish they were doing. Pornstars and rockstars and pro athletes were the only people that get to enjoy these zeniths of sexual pleasure.

I have been fortunate enough to realize that a holistic view of sex is more like "You can make someone feel really good. Find someone who you like to do everyday things with, share hobbies with. Believe it or not, there are women that like the things you like, and long-term, it's more fun and rewarding to share a hobby[2] than see how hard you can make each other cum."

But if OF had been available, and I was 17-23 seeing 18-25 year old girls doing anal and FFM, MMF, gapes, etc. as it is possible to now without paying a cent, I think the effect on me would have been about the same, but multiplied exponentially. Instead of that kind of thing being the purview of rockstars and pornstars, knowing it would be a challenge to find a woman who wanted that kind of lifestyle, I'd be wondering why it's so hard to find one. I'd think that they look so normal, so like the girls that are my peers.

Or, god forbid, younger me falls for a girl he meets somewhere, then she rejects him, and then he finds out she has an OF. That's an absolute black hole of self-loathing.

[0] e.g. A girl from a class asked me if I liked The Mars Volta. In hindsight it was an obvious attempt at flirting. But I was cool. "What? No they're whiny posers. I only like serious punk like Anti-Flag and Rise Against and AFI". Someone please invent a time machine so I can give myself a black eye then explain it doesn't matter what I like THE CUTE GIRL IS INTERESTED IN YOU.

[1] I think the fact that I was watching porn warped how I thought women would express interest. Sex is something that happens after you figure out you get along. But, given that I was watching fairly hardcore porn, I think I figured a girl who might want sex would signal it in a clearly sexual way. 'Intimacy' is probably a better term than 'sex', but I've already written a small essay so I won't get into that.

[2] Or even build a life together, but again, outside of scope.

That perception distortion is relatively easily solved with things like nudist beaches and home sex tapes. Should probably have parents making home sex tapes and swapping with other parents to give to their kids to give accurate perception.

Surely this is a troll post.

No. Its genuine and I've never understood why this wouldn't work.

Oddly, porn is one of the less harmful things an elementary kid can be exposed to. Empty addiction loops are much more damaging, porn just isn't interesting with no sex drive.

I work somewhere that sees moms with their little littles (under 3) fairly often. THAT age group is addicted. It's terrifying.

multiple first graders in my childs class have phones, I regularly see children that can’t walk using their parents phones to watch youtube while being pushed in strollers

That is 100% on the parent, not "social media"

yes but they are also addictive, that’s on social media - it’s bad for adults and it’s normalizing bad patterns for children

Yes my kids have been talking about the pervasive phone use in their elementary school

Unrestricted phones too it seems

The UK telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, publishes some useful annual research on this topic [1]. According to the media use and attitudes report 2023 [2]:

> Smartphone ownership shifts markedly in [the children aged 8-11] group, which correlates with the children’s transition to secondary school … As reported by parents, more than half of 8-11-year-olds (55%) owned a mobile phone, a significant increase on children aged 3-4 and 5-7 (both at 20%).

[1]: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-re...

[2]: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/255852/...

First, at 6 why does your kid even need to know what a smartphone is? At 6, a phone should be to "call people", period.

Second, it can be expensive and therefore not an option for everyone but there are schools with solid phone/media policies. My kids go to a school where phones are forbidden until 9th grade.

If 6 bothers you, the number of toddlers/infants I see using phones and tablets would really concern you. I'd say a good half of the kids who are brought into the store where I work end up on a tablet or phone without an adult. Including the little littles.

Because for a lot of parents it is a way to get their kid to engage with something other than the parent.

What little kids want and need is other little kids, but we do so little of that and seem to have structured our society to make it hard for kids to get together. When we set up play dates for our kids there is zero interest in devices unless it's to play a game together with the other kids, and even that is rare.

They also lean less on the parents when other kids are around because playing with other kids is what they really want.

When you look at the stupid videos, a good chunk of them give a sense of social presence. That's what the kids are craving. Pseudo-social media is a fake substitute, like artificial fruit flavoring.

I think the issue is more when other kids aren’t available. For example, you have to go to bank to speak to an advisor about something.

The "phone" part of a smartphone may not be of any importance to a kid, but are they even that to average adults any more? I'm not even sure when I last used that aspect on mine for anything other than SMS-based 2FA.

I wouldn't trust the general web to be age-appropriate for under-12s these days, including all advertising in any apps, but that doesn't mean I can't sympathise with parents desperate for some distraction.

My parents had it relatively easy with me: when I was five, I was using a Commodore 64, learning to read from its user manual and just starting to notice that the loading screens for some games counted oddly, going "…, 8, 9, A, B, …"

The worst that any of that meant for my parents was the incredibly minor point that that I was aware enough to notice the dual meaning of "Jet Set Willy".

Smartphones are just safer computer. By their nature they are more locked down than general PCs.

With the right apps and restrictions, a smartphone is basically just a handheld console no different from a gameboy in functionality.

To an extent, although iPod touch and iPad mini would then be potential alternatives that may be better suited.

Unfortunately there is also too much pressure for constant analytics for me to feel at ease with the modern world, even in cases where I know from the inside that GDPR is being taken 100% seriously.

I'd be in favour of a change in the law such that analytics was banned, and/or software was required to function offline…

Your comment is condescending against OP's parenting style. It is difficult to control how your child perceives phones, as managing their exposure to them is impossible, especially when taking your child outside where they'll see people using them in public. They may also visit a friend whose parents let them use a phone, so again, it's an uphill battle.

I wouldn't call it condescending but yes, I dispute the fact that "well it's how it is. Nothing parents can do." I have no problem expressing judgment or opinion on how others raise their kids.

My 8 year old has never used a tablet. He thinks phones are just to call people. He just knows that people use them for dumb things just because they can't bare to be alone with their thoughts for 2min.

Yes it is a "battle" and it requires time and effort. It's not impossible. Uphill battle for sure, one that I will probably lose, but still worth fighting.

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