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Comment by bigyikes | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone disagree with the premise that phone and social media addiction is bad for kids (and probably adults too), and yet we still find ourselves in this position.

What are we to do? Banning phone use on an individual basis is a recipe for social suicide. Some kind of collective action is needed.

Legislation against phone use for minors is one option, but I wouldn’t expect it to receive widespread support. Banning social media for minors might be workable, but it wouldn’t fully resolve the issue.

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As a parent of three I’d suggest that it’s probably the best to teach them to use them as tools not entertainment.

As I quoted elsewhere, any extremist or reductionist position makes things worse for them.

Nerd dad here. This is hard. You can lead a horse to water but can't make them drink. Meta Quest is the only tech that's being used as a tool in my house. Everything else are used as toys. I've even tried to restrict games heavily and it still was tough. Basically, some kids will not seek out education things even if they are installed. This was not my upbringing. I would eventually bore of games and looked for educational things like Dangerous Creatures, Microsoft Bob, Encarta, etc. But I am not seeing the same in my kids.

Crap time is fine. Not everything has to have educational value or they will get burned out. Variety is the problem.

Their comment implies that very little time is spent in educational content (all the time is “crap time”), which is the other extreme.

What do you mean by variety is the problem?

Well I should say lack of variety. Games are healthy, communications are healthy, education is healthy. Too much of any of those at the sacrifice of any other is not.

I have two boys 10 and 12. Same upbringing, same household culture, same screen time rules. The young one loves programming in Scratch, building levels in Roblox, creating music, exploring all kinds of creative projects. The older one has tried it all out, but prefers to just play games.

Yeah I only played games as well. They teach you how to solve problems. I am grateful for this.

I can already see this disparity forming between my two boys, 7 and 4. It's remarkable how different they are for kids brought up in identical conditions.

It is hard, but don't forget that toys are learning tools too! You can learn a lot without overtly feeling like you're studying. An example is playing a "learn math" game vs playing Slay the Spire which innately includes a lot of math you have to grasp. Or Hue to understand color theory and color grading without it ever feeling like a "lesson". Kerbal Space Program for basic physics, Portal for momentum and logic (Portal 2 can be great for coop sessions where they figure out how to collaborate and communicate through tough problems that seem impossible).

A lot of the lack of curiosity is because so many kids are taught to view curiosity as boring, rather than fostering that curiosity as just another form of play.

There are even things like minecraft plugins/servers where text is translated to a language of your choice, and everyone is encouraged to use only that language to collaborate which can be such an exponentially fast way to learn languages without ever feeling like it's a chore.

So don't be afraid to seek out things that blur the lines between education and play! Foster that creativity and curiosity.

I've done most of those things but they don't take. For some reason, grind games, pointless games take. Some educational games took but not many. Not enough.

I think in order for parents to do this, they must themselves use their phones as tools and not entertainment.

Kids are great at spotting hypocrisy, and if parents are seen zombie-scrolling through Instagram for hours, and then they tell their kids not to zombie-scroll because it's bad for you, well the kids will know their parents are totally full of shit.

It's impossible for parents who are themselves addicted to smartphones to tell their kids not to be addicted to smartphones. The parents need to cure their own addiction first.

100% agree with this on all points.

This is probably true, but doesn’t stop kids developing addiction on their own. It might encourage them to get started, but once hooked the inputs/outputs are the same.

Social media is both a tool and entertainment. It's not entertainment that's wrecking kids. It's being in a global and immutable social circle.

In the 90s, if you were a nerd in high-school, you get a chance to re-invent yourself in college, and another at your first job. Heck, you can re-invent yourself between different groups of friends. Now, we ask kids to define themselves completely, wholly, all at once, finally, in front of everyone. Got broken up with? It was pretty hard to tell someone in the 90s their lives weren't over, but it's impossible now. There is an (apparently) permanent record of all your failures and lack of successes.

Tons of kids grew up glued to their Nintendos. I played an _insane_ amount of Starcraft. Our generation did not have the same negative effects that the current generation is having with social media.

What we need is physical community based social media - ie: a facebook with only your high-school, which becomes inaccessible upon graduation.

That's Discord, Messenger groups, iMessage groups, ...

> Now, we ask kids to define themselves completely, wholly, all at once, finally, in front of everyone. Got broken up with? It was pretty hard to tell someone in the 90s their lives weren't over, but it's impossible now. There is an (apparently) permanent record of all your failures and lack of successes.

For what it's worth, none of this has been my experience at all. I'm not even really sure what the first sentence means exactly.

I think what it meant is that, in the social networks today, you have to behave “consistently” all the time. If you wrote something today and then say the opposite tomorrow, people online would probably attack you for being untrustworthy or something like that, and refuse to accept your points. But in reality, nobody can be consistent all the time. We’re all different from minute to minute, and it’s perfectly natural to change your opinions however often you want.

> What we need is physical community based social media - ie: a facebook with only your high-school, which becomes inaccessible upon graduation.

That’s a really interesting suggestion. It reminds me of haolez’s comment yesterday (abridged by me) [0]:

> I was a CTO and was a member of a group chat for CTOs. We had very insightful and rich discussions about topics that affected our roles, like vendor reputation, frameworks, team management, talent acquisition and so on.

> The group became popular and the admin […] merged all group chats into a single one of thousands of users. […] What ended up happening was that the discussions plummeted in quality, where a very noisy minority would take up most of the space in the discussions. There were some high profile CTOs that stopped engaging at that point.

> This left me wondering if there is enough demand for smaller social networks with very limited visibility that can foster rich and insightful discussions (although this sounds like forums from the nineties).

———

Both of you get at the same point - private and manageable (and moderatable) communities are probably a much better option to allow everyone freedom to interact without feeling insignificant (due to size), and with the right moderation, can be a place which allows healthy conflict, discovery and rule-bending, and the other things that we were able to get up to as kids without our parents knowing, while maybe being moderated by a third party who isn’t acting as an authority figure (people won’t get in trouble for reasonable rule-testing), maybe even some sort of private task-specific bot which looks only for egregious bullying, hate, and scheming?

I really like your suggestion and would love to see it fleshed out.

The one thing that I feel differentiates from current-day is that I would like to see automatic enrollment (or ability to enroll) for everyone from the target audience, e.g. not student-run and only one clique, but nothing wrong with it also allowing private sub-areas. There shouldn’t be a technological or social barrier to entry, it should be up to each person (child, in this example) to log in and participate. That would probably help a lot of the shy or socially awkward kids bridge the gap.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40673691

If you were in any sort of closed community (religious, political, niche industry, etc), the fear of not being able to reinvent yourself was always there. Now its everywhere is the difference.

I hope that by the time my 2 year old is in middle school, it’s fairly normal for parents to keep their kids off of social media and smart phones.

To the OP's point, without some collective support, I don't anticipate this happening.

In fact, you'll likely have to deal with this as early as elementary school.

At least among my peer group, there’s clear support for holding off on smart phones for kids until at least high school, so I have hope.

Like the other commenter in this thread who says "... not social suicide ..." I would suggest just implementing the rules yourself regardless of what society is doing. The trend (as you can imagine) is definitely still going younger and younger. And unless you have the funds to fight off the marketing teams of Google and Apple, I imagine that will continue.

My kids are fine. Even with their parents fighting tooth and nail to keep them off devices as much as possible, they will still be on them sometimes (in your home or out of it). Maybe my kids are just weird to not be craving social media - just being able to send text messages to her friends seems to be enough for my 14 year old currently. Is that the same thing? My observations say "definitely not".

They complain about it sometimes, (and I complain about their usage sometimes) but nobody is really angry and everybody is really reasonable. Your mileage may vary.

"My kids are fine." ... "Your mileage may vary."

It almost certainly does. People are wildly different in their susceptibility to alcohol, gambling etc. We should expect the same wild variability when it comes to social networks.

For everyone's sake, I hope you're right.

From what I’ve seen right now it depends on SES.

Fussellian middle class in a suburban school: will call your kid poor and bully them if they don’t have a recent phone by 6th grade (often much earlier)

Fussellian upper-middle in expensive private school: may not have a phone themselves until high school (handy for keeping in touch when at college-application-building extra curriculars), won’t make fun of kids whose parents don’t give them phone.

I think you unlocked some core memories for me.

When I was a kid I moved from a rich suburban New England town to one that was considerably more working class. When I lived in the rich town, no one talked about how much money the other kids' parents had, I guess because everybody was rich. When I lived in the working class town, everybody knew who the rich kid was and who the poor kids were, and where you shopped could get you admired or bullied. Wearing clothes from K-mart was a fast track to becoming a pariah.

What does “Fussellian” mean?

Fussell’s definition of the various classes in America in Class.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class:_A_Guide_Through_the_A...

His “Middle” is characterized by a lot of class-anxiety and especially the twin characteristics of wanting to appear like the upper-middle or upper classes, while having very wrong ideas about how those two classes “signal”.

His upper-middle is basically professional-class (doctors, lawyers, professors, bankers, finance) prep school sorts. Same as the main demographic covered in Birnbach’s The Official Preppy Handbook

In the same situation, I really hope so too.

It's not social suicide for a kid or teen not to have a smartphone (or to limit usage), so it's solvable individually.

Curious, do you have teens? Most people saying things like this don't, but if you do, curious if you've tried this and it works/ed out for you?

It worked when I was a teen (not very long ago) and nearly everyone else had smartphones. I think the people who consider it social suicide are unconvinced that smartphones are a problem to begin with, which like I said is fine if they want that.

Were you popular? I feel like social dynamics must play a role. I mean I'm pretty sure blue vs green bubbles are a big deal in some circles let alone social media.

Moderately, or at least, not socially dead. Only played video games on weekends, including a Minecraft server with friends, which in hindsight still became a bit of an addiction I would've been better without. I was popular in college, and I did have a phone then but barely used it. Having a Facebook account mattered in college purely for class groups, events, and group chats where people coordinated stuff. One thing I don't know is what replaced that (if anything).

So basically, having a PC at home was more than enough.

Another factor is how long ago we’re talking, too. 2024 is quite a bit different vs., for example, 10 years ago.

HS was 10 years ago, college was after. Since 7th grade, most kids had smartphones and were using them all hours of the day. Most people used Facebook, and by hs Minecraft was huge. What changed, aside from old games/platforms getting replaced?

I've heard Insta has a bunch of stuff that can replace FB's remaining uses (not just photo sharing, events and such) but I've never gotten into it so don't really know.

IG doesn't seem to have the equivalent. Events for instance, https://help.instagram.com/448430800019943 says "This feature is only available to professional accounts on Instagram."

Just checked, I'm still in the largest school-wide FB group from college. It ceased posting in 2019 despite technically having over 100K members still. Gonna assume FB groups aren't a thing anymore and it's moved to Discord, but I'm still curious.

n=1 but i didn't have a smartphone until halfway through senior year of hs (2013-2014) whereas most of my peers had one from 2010 onwards. i wouldn't say socially stunted but popularity wise i would say not a full member of the social groups i was tangentially in, not in any group chats, etc.

deep 1-1 connections for the most part because yeah i was texting and messaging people but other than that...i think it's probably only worse now. there are group chats/discords for each social group probably and not having a smartphone would mean you can't participate.

I'm willing to bet that social dynamics around phones at high school in 2024 are markedly different from 2014.

yeah i agree, if it wasn't clear what i meant to say was that i functionally didn't have a smartphone until high school was over, and as a result i think i was socially excluded from a lot of things - the social groups from hs seem to have survived college (which may be a quirk of my specific hs) whereas i only talk to two people who i was deeply close with.

and i think it's even worse now.

Two years ago a coworker became the parent to a teen overnight after his wife's son moved in with them as the sons father booted him to make room for a new wife and kid. Of course this comes with behavioral problems, nothing serious just being rebellious and doesn't listen and the mother levies punishment as needed. Of course kids think they are slick but unfortunately for him his new stepfather is technologically very literate. So every few weeks I hear a new tale of angsty teen son vs parents.

Today he told me the son was banned from phone use for two weeks as a punishment for something. Son hands the phone to the mother last night but she doesn't look at the phone. He asks her to check the phone screen and wouldn't you know - it was missing its sim card. Kid sim swapped to an old phone a friend gave him. Didn't work, mother confiscated his sim card. WiFi? Well the Unifi system he has setup in his house has a separate ssid for the stepson and his gadgets that gets shut off after 10PM on school nights and if he is punished, remains off until the sanctions are lifted. Kid is blacked out on personal devices but is still allowed to - watch TV if he is done with homework or go out with friends in meat space with strict curfew.

The son deals with it because he has no other choice. And I have heard no complaints that he is dying a social death. Just stick to your guns and show them who is in charge - you, the parent.

Taking away the phone for 2 weeks is different than never having a phone for the entirety of high school though.

Says the hot gril...

...Seriously I have a hard time seeing it your way. Can you elaborate on your rational? Change my mind?

No. No I don't think I will.

It's practically considered child abuse these days to not give them a smartphone. I'm only slightly exaggerating. I think kids would be better off without them altogether.

What? Giving them the phone. Or not giving them the phone?

Yes.

Clarified.

Having a way to call for help or contact parents is immensely useful, even if it didn't exist when you were young. (Also, when you were young, there were probably pay phones, but those are gone now.)

Smartphones have many other very useful functions.

The real problem is social media.

obviously unaware about today's youth

'social suicide' is a vague term but my daughter has been spending a fair amount of this summer break texting groups of friends and/or playing online multi-player games with friends. Nothing good would come of my taking away her phone.

yeah, I limit video game time for my kids but don't take it away as that's how they play with their friends currently. So outside time and sports during the day and I let them have game time with friends after dinner. Seems to be a good balance

It obviously depends on circumstance - she doesn't have endless phone time but it's summer and this week she has few other plans.

I don't wish her only social interaction to be on her phone but the fact remains that if I took it away forever it would mostly impact her ability to play with her friends. I don't personally believe that it would be good for her mental health.

Yup, I agree. Kids need to be able to talk with friends. Especially over summer when they cant always see them in person at school. I have zero issues with phones, its just the social media apps I am against.

My kids have a Facetime video chat they all jump on while they game so they can see each other and talk, pretty great actually.

Idk how to say this exactly, but one thing I've learned from playing online MP games is that people aren't socializing on them, they're just being antisocial as a group.

I'm sure it varies. The peals of laughter coming from her room suggest her experience is different.

I laugh at the funny HN comments. It is still a solitary activity.

It depends on whether the laughter is about the game itself or some personal experience a friend has shared over VC. Cause the loudest room on our dorm floor was always the League+Melee room, and it wasn't cause they were sharing funny stories, it was because Falcon did a moonwalk short-hop reverse-knee fast-fall L-cancel.

They are laughing because someone got killed by Glitch. Fortunately I do have conversations with my kid.

That's a function of the games you play. Online games are a 3rd space for hanging out with your friends. Like sure if all you're doing is joining public matches on CoD or whatever then yeah it's pretty antisocial but hoping on Discord with your friends and playing Minecraft / Roblox / Fortnite / the current meme game de jour then it's a great time. My friends and I currently have a long-running game of Don't Starve Together going.

And it's one of the few activities you can do with friends when you're stuck home on a school night.

Oh our main thing was Minecraft. Must be the longest running popular video game ever.

Minecraft isn't even close to World of Warcraft. Several times the billions and been around since 2004.

This really isn't the case anymore. People are socializing in Valorant, they're socializing in Lethal Company, they're socializing in Roblox. Very little of this "antisocial in a group" stuff, which I assume you're mostly referencing to stuff like COD players screaming in mic at others (but mostly themselves), mostly because there are now better tools to detect and ban those participating in such.

They've really become digital third places, especially when IRL third places have been overly monetized or destroyed.

I was the Minecraft server admin of my high school, csgo was big in college, I know how it is. Not referring to public matches like CoD. Just cause we were unaliving mobs and building stuff together doesn't mean we were socializing.

It doesn't, but many people do socialize in current games rather than just mindlessly unaliving mobs.

That is nonsense, I was at school with mobile phones before the iPhone (before touchscreens, non-Java-applet apps, 3G, etc.) and it absolutely would've been even then. I mean maybe you'd have gotten away with it being active on MSN, but it'd have been a problem for sure (you arrange to meet someone and then just go there and hope they show up at the right time and don't want to change plans?) and I think far more so today without even considering social media like Instagram & TikTok & whatever that 'everyone' is using.

(They weren't allowed actually at school though, weren't even supposed to be in your locker, so I always think it's a bit weird when it occasionally pops up debate about banning them from schools or that X school has banned them - curious when and why they allowed them, or maybe they were just always allowed to begin with?)

Regular dumb phones were useful then and are still useful, just for coordinating. Smartphone is a superset of a GameBoy Advance now. Literally kids in my school were emulating GBA on their iPhones. There are in-betweens nowadays like a smartphone with parental controls.

>> then just go there and hope they show up at the right time and don't want to change plans

Why make plans in the first place then? Changing plans at the last minute is really inconsiderate behavior.

Because you're 12 or whatever and do have a phone and so-and-so just texted that everyone (omg, right) is actually going to be down by the river instead, are you coming?

Of course you are, but tanseydavid thinks he's meeting you in town and doesn't have a phone...

Teens don't plan things this way. It's more like, a few are together somewhere, someone is coming late, and the group is a moving target.

I'm only just old enough for it, but before mobile phones (I mean, they existed, but we were schoolchildren not businesspeople, before small relatively cheap Nokias I suppose) we'd 'call on' people to see if they were in and if so did they want to do whatever/go wherever... Thinking about it now, I think mobiles probably had quite a role in changing that: we got phones and then just started texting (hey wuu2 do u wnt 2 go in2 town l8r) instead.

I imagine now it's just straight to the latter, (albeit with less txt spk and more memes & emoji) because children get phones and start making their own plans at about the same age. (And not by coincidence probably - they're arranging to meet friends and going out alone, so parent wants to be able to contact them, to stay in the loop, etc.)

its called spontaneity, and that's a healthy thing.

if you find out about something interesting that you didn't know before, why should you not be able to change your plans to go see or do it?

hey, i just got some free tickets for that show, so how about we cancel dinner and go there?

My social life suffered greatly being one of the only kids in my highschool without a cellphone. This was the early 2010s in the United States.

Imagine being a teenager and trying to include someone lacking a cellphone to your social group. It adds a huge amount of friction.

Including someone without a cellphone means you give up the ability to be spontaneous (assuming the kid needs to adhere to an agreed-upon schedule to be picked up by a parent), and trivial things become a literal telephone-game ordeal.

It also means almost invariably that the kid is relying on a friend's phone to communicate parents / a ride, unless that kid is so privileged as to own their own car.

Could you imagine if every time you hung out with a friend, they asked to borrow your phone, open Facebook Messenger (or whatever sensitive messaging app you use), and to contact a parent?

It also means the kid isn't included in group chats, which means they just aren't part of conversations other kids are having. You can't have a rich social life with someone you can only talk to in classes you share and for 20 minutes during lunch break.

The "green bubble" phenomenon is bad enough as it is. I don't like it, but for all practical reasons, owning a cellphone is necessary for a kids social life in the United States.

I agree that a cellphone for call/text only is important. I had one too. If you need blue bubbles nowadays, fine, handmedown iPhone with parental controls will do that.

> Could you imagine if every time you hung out with a friend, they asked to borrow your phone, open Facebook Messenger (or whatever sensitive messaging app you use), and to contact a parent?

What if the parent could handle such eventualities - based on trust in the child - with no freaking out ?

I'm not sure what you mean.

The point of this quotation is that a cell phone is a very personal thing. It's anxiety inducing and burdensome to hand over your cellphone to someone.

And that's not the mention the power dynamic between the kids with the cellphone and the kid without.

Sorry for ambiguity. What I meant is, what if the parent trusts the kid to do the right thing, and so the kid does not have to call in to the parent for an okay to hang out with a friend ?

This kind of independence might be a social plus for a kid. Something like "I don't need a phone cos I can go where I want until dinnertime". No helicopter parenting.

This only works if the kid lives somewhere with robust public transportation between their and their friends houses, or if they own their own vehicle.

Assuming neither, they're probably getting picked up and dropped off by a parent or other family member, with dropoff/pickup schedules arranged in advance.

It's less, "I don't need a phone cos I can go where I want until dinnertime," and more, "My mom will be driving 25 minutes to pick me up at 4PM, and my friends spontaneously decided to go bowling. I can only ask her when she gets here, but that would mean she needs to drive another hour and fifteen minutes."

It sounds bad for me to be anxious, when friends use each other’s phones. Why should I be anxious?

It is common for people including teenagers to use phones for personal and private things, like internet searches and private messages to other friends.

I can imagine someone who doesn't have their own phone being clumsy (or careless) and accidently dropping it and breaking the screen.

What an appalling, broken social life you want to condemn children to.

I grew up before smartphones and I spoke to people around my own age. I arranged my own travel without parents checking in on me. Bullying assholes didn't need groups to amplify their message which was a good thing.

How are things better now exactly?

Good for you.

I'm describing how things are, not how I want things to be.

OP's comment has nothing to do with what he "wants" for his kids.

I would spend long hours talking to my friends on the landline growing up. These helped form deep relationships that were pretty much (atleast for me) impossible to make in the limited amount of time you met them at school. I presume something similar happens around cellphones where you miss out on a lot of discussions and have no context for a lot of the conversations that happen the next day. They really need to be collectively banned, it’s not possible to solve this at an individual level.

I'm not so sure. I see my 10-year-old daughter use her iPad and its very constructive, she's on screen sharing/video with her friends quite a lot, its healthy socialization. I imagine it becomes a problem when the child can't regulate their usage. But that's where we can use screentime and parental controls.

> ... it becomes a problem when the child can't regulate their usage.

That's now every child. Also, that was very much an intentionally designed effect -- it's no secret. Let that sink in. Your 10 year old is up against multi billion dollar companies who control the very tools you want to use to curb her addiction? (No, she is... We all are.)

Doing math on Matific is great (or similar activities). It's the exposure to Social Media that is the cesspool of the internet, where the kids are open to receive messages from anyone and everyone, and have the algorithm showing them every garbage under the sun.

People forget that the purpose of Social Media is to spend more and more time. "User Engagement" is the key.

All it takes is one fateful string of recommended videos, access to Instagram (“everyone from school is on it!”) and things change in a heartbeat.

Legislation is absolutely happening! Check it: https://www.compactmag.com/article/ending-big-techs-child-ex...

social media ban for kids goes into effect in Florida in 2025.

I already forbid my kids from using any social network.

They can use youtube with supervision.

Social media is poison for young minds. Older minds too but thats another issue.

Here in my local state we banned all phones at school!

Everybody I've spoken to thinks its a great idea. Even the kids. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-06/mobile-phone-ban-canb...

Yes, I really wish the law made it so that anyone under at least 16 (but ideally 18) is banned from using a smartphone. There’s no reason parents should have to be the “bad guy” in millions of homes across the US, we should just be able to say it’s against the law.

The parents that actually care need to get together and decide collectively on timeframes for phone use so the kids can text/social with time limits. Then enforce it with on-device parental controls.

Maybe 45 minutes before school each morning and 1 hour the evening or something.

Consider what those who aren't glued to the phone are actually missing out on. More than ever, kids are choosing not to go out and spend time with friends, instead doomscrolling, binge-watch tv and chat on instagram or whatever. That's not a bristling social life, but it does behave as a surrogate for one.

When kids hang outside of school, as was always the case, they usually live nearby. Notwithstanding that dumbphones and managed social media use are options, unless you think teens are all monsters (which would not be solved by phones anyway), it's not a lord of the flies situation of shunning people without phones.

I think there's a culture of inactive shut ins and we're acting like this should be cause for FOMO. I expect kids would be happier if they actually physically see some friends more regularly anyway.

What do we do? Treat it as any potentially dangerous tool that you let (not give) your child use.

Learn safety, responsible usage and set limits. Let them demonstrate they can handle it before unattended use.

If we're to pass any sort of legislation, it shouldn't be against the kids, they're the victims of exploitation by greedy monopoly/oligopoly algorithms, we should legislate against companies like Meta, Snapchat, etc. the TikTok ban unless they sold off to an American firm that could be subject to US legislation was actually not the worst idea in the world (albeit I highly doubt the current Congress would've actually done anything constructive after the theoretical sale)

> Banning phone use on an individual basis is a recipe for social suicide.

Is it really? Or is this one of those irrational fears?

I asked this question in a thread a few days ago and got downvoted. I’d probably have better luck preaching sobriety in a bar ha but I really think society needs to wake up to the toxicity of technology much like we did cigarettes.

> I really think society needs to wake up to the toxicity of technology much like we did cigarettes.

That's why I'm pretty wary of some other comments along the lines of "you just need to teach your children to think of phones as tools and regulate their screen time". I feel that's like telling kids "You just need to keep it to 3 or 4 cigarettes a day."

Sure, some kids may do OK with this (I happen to think they're really in the minority), but social media is fundamentally designed to addict people. That is literally the goal of social media companies. So I'm just a bit dubious that kids, especially young kids e.g. in middle school, have the ability to regulate that.

I think a lack of self-confidence and a lack of a strong group of friends is the actual issue here.

If you have both, your friends are always there to let you know how much you are loved.

Soooo you just don't think that phones (with social media apps) are addictive and harmful for kids? The research on this is pretty clear.

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