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Comment by INTPenis | Hacker News Reader

This really is starting to sound like all the hysteria from the 80s, 90s about Doom, baggy pants, gangster rap music, punk rock music, satanism in the woods, I could go on and on.

Data collection is bad, and I wish I could raise kids without the need for smartphones, but it does feel a bit overkill now all this hysteria.

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It’s not just hysteria because previous hysterias were from a position of ignorance, whereas with TikTok, etc. everyone has experienced the negative effects of social media, and secondly no teens ever said that their listening to rock music was a problem for them, but when surveyed most teens agree social media is bad for them.

Isn't that what they all say? "Normally this would be special pleading but this time is different?"

I’d say it’s more analogous to the debate over whether cigarettes or leaded petrol are harmful.

As a parent today, I often wonder if my concerns are the same as every parent of prior generations and that things will turn out just fine.

But I can’t shake the thought that the impact of social media and addictive games for some kids can’t be written off as just a phase they are going through. I worry so much that they will carry the negative impacts into adulthood.

What impact would it have on their development, relationships and prospects if they were not exposed to all the same things as their peers?

When considering that things in the past turned out "just fine", we should remember the concept of the Shifting Baseline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline

It's also worth considering whether the concerns of previous generations were really as exaggerated as we think. We might believe that things "turned out just fine" simply because this is the world we're used to. However, it's possible that we're actually heading in the wrong direction, and many of those worries were - in fact - valid.

Yes, worries like DnD is Satanic and is going to send us all to hell is - in fact - valid.

Also rock music.

And homosexuality.

Be careful with fire, you risk igniting that huge strawman of yours.

you're welcome to give specific examples you think are valid, those are the three I remember.

If you can actually give ones that are, I'll concede the strawman but until you can, naw.

It's the false dichotomy that makes for histeria. TikTok is either on or off. the alternative, handing control of the algorithm over to the Department of Education, has never been discussed.

I think that rewarding kids to watch garbage they don’t like (or do like: it doesn’t actually matter) is a bridge too far. I cannot think of anything from the 80s-90s in my youth that would compare in any way. I mean; for adults this is pretty horrible as well, but they can decide themselves, but for kids it should be forbidden imho.

This has nothing to do with being exposed to the same content as their peers (which is indeed often needed to grow up). Give them pocket money and/or chores and not this bollocks.

The effect is real, every generation will feel an effect that is slightly new and relevant to their time.

But if it's going to lead to the complete downfall of society and lethargic adults who cannot deal with life, I doubt it.

I'm playing devil's advocate here because I truly believe that kids should not have smartphones at all. But that's because I was raised without them.

And also I've seen in practice a great example of a relative who raised his first child (male) with no screens, and his second child (female) allowing screen time. The son is now 15 and the girl 9 and the difference is shocking. Most well behaved, calm, focused young man I've ever seen. Compared to a little animal who snarls at you for taking away her phone at dinner time.

You could use the same reasoning about anything that is called “addictive and toxic”. Sometimes something really is addictive and toxic and should have curbs on it. Instead of talking about what it sounds like we should discuss what it actually is. Is this app more like 80s satanism and is really much ado about nothing or is it more like social heroin?

Well, watching content you like (it seems young people do on TikTok) is one thing, giving rewards to watch whatever content really is another. It’s grooming a new generation for the race-to-the-bottom gig economy.

No, it resembles the campaign against drinking and smoking and having sex without condoms: sometimes a bit overbearing but everyone knows the message itself is sound. Tiktok and similar apps or 'services' - Youtube shorts, Instagram reels, etc - do to video what Twitter did to online discourse and the world would be a better place without them. Maybe not for the 'influencers' who are on it but who cares, they are part of the problem both by feeding the machine as well as by serving as bad role models. Go ahead and ask some children what they want to be later and be dismayed by how many of them say they want to be 'influencers'.

That said I'd prefer for parents to keep their children off Tiktok and the like or - better still - keep them smartphone-free until they're at an age where this is no longer feasible or legally possible (~16). If they do have phones make sure you have control over which apps they run and for how long they can use these, on Android that can be accomplished using something like Timelimit [1]. This is what I use (server and clients), to good effect.

[1] https://codeberg.org/timelimit

I could not disagree more. To me this is a type of "slippery slope fallacy fallacy", a fallacy, where you call every "slippery slope" type of argument a fallacy.

Just because we have been mistaken in the past doesn't mean that every instance of "hysteria" is irrational. There is a wealth of research demonstrating the bad and detrimental effects of social media.

Given the abundance of real data proving social and educational regressions caused by the overuse of these kinds of apps (by design), I think this panic is more deserving of worry than the others you've listed here (which were all moral panics, I.e. "$THING doesn't align with my belief system!).

Or to the articles point, it’s like the hysteria around cigarettes - and the research is still in early days.

This is the first time I hear of a social network launching the business model to earn points for doom scrolling though.

People are having this conversation and “actual harm” keeps winning: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jonathan-haidt-a...

Thank you for providing a short summary of the main point the link - and therefore also you - is trying to make.

> This really is starting to sound like all the hysteria from the 80s, 90s about Doom, baggy pants, gangster rap music, punk rock music, satanism in the woods, I could go on and on.

With the exception that none of these is proven to fry the teenager mind.

Parents then would have sworn otherwise.

They had no data to back them except a gut feeling, while we are facing a mental health epidemic.

Ever spoken to a Gen Z? Attention span is minuscule

>> This really is starting to sound like all the hysteria from the 80s, 90s

Exactly, same with the hysteria about teenage sex, smoking, drinking, bullying, or recreational use of opiates. The kids are alright.

Maybe that is what we need. Maybe we are in need of a moral panic to address the massive concerns of mental health, surveillance, misinformation and others that built up over the years with the rise of social media, smartphones and the centralisation of the internet.

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