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Comment by j4yav | Hacker News Reader

I feel like there must be some generation coming that feels like being highly online is weird and embarassing, having grown up and seen the way their parents and other adults behave, and use the internet more as a utility rather than a place to try to primarily live. What makes this hard I think is how addictive it is for children, so by the time they might realize how embarassing it is they have already been addicted by devices their parents gave them.

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I can see it to some extent in gen Z. Once alpha ages a bit, I could totally see that being their counterculture.

What makes it hard is the stigmatization of letting children roam free unsupervised, and the isolating nature of suburbs coupled with both parents being working parents.

Kids can’t go anywhere and are stuck at home. None of their friends are within walking distance. What do you expect them to do?

No, I would say this is a totally different issue actually.

It doesn't matter where kids go these days because every single one of them has an internet connected cell phone at their side.

When they are with their friends, they are still with the internet. Their actions are moulded by it, as well they should be. If anything you do could be captured in video and posted online forever, you're going to change your behavior to reflect that reality.

Looking at my nephews, it’s highly unlikely to happen. From what they’ve told me, if you’re not online and at least aware of the “latest trends”, you become an outcast in school. Their way of trying to be less cringe and protesting is just being on “less mainstream apps”. Which yields the same results but with different colors. Not having any social media is also pretty awful as you’ll just be an outsider again. I wish there was some sort of a national effort where parents would unite and not let their children be on social media.

Maybe it will just be a counterculture thing but I could imagine a group of people thinking it’s really lame to follow all the latest internet trends. We need a version of punk rock that hates the internet.

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