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Comment by malux85 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know for sure but I can guess why it would be worse for teens.

During your teenage years there’s a lot more FOMO as you are trying to establish yourself in your peer group and the social hierarchy in general. This must-check-that-notification then compelled them to react to it, which generates more notifications in a feedback loop.

Compare that to now, when I’m in my mid 30s, if an app generates too many notifications I will revoke its permissions to notify me very quickly, all of my social interactions are more asynchronous and slower and deeper, since I’m not being interrupted by notifications all the time and am communicating on my own terms

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I think as parents, our job is to help teach them that this FOMO is fake and unnecessary, that the perceived "social hierarchy" is meaningless and nobody will care about it after high school is over. So they don't have to wait until they are 30 to figure it out on their own.

I completely disagree. It's important to teach them to time-box and have the self discipline to try and control these things - but participation in the social structures of peers and society during the formative adult years is crucial to developing the social skills of being an adult. To dismiss them as meaningless is very naive.

Arguing that the social heirarchy is meaningless is utter nonsense because our work structures, family structures, political structures, friend structures, distribution structures, financial systems AND ENTIRE CULTURE is built upon social hierarchies, and while you might argue that the social heirarchy at high school is meaningless once highschool is over, the skills gained in navigating it will persist through the persons entire adulthood.

Agreed. The internet is full of sad men who didn't successfully figure out how to talk to girls in high school / college. There's a critical window for learning how to be social that if missed is difficult to recover from, because the lack of confidence and early success quickly causes them to fall even further behind.

Parents shouldn't be so dismissive of teens and their attempts to fit in and be socially normal. It's extremely important, possibly more important than academics.

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