Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with this measure on general principles. At the very least phones should not be used in class unless on explicit instruction of the teacher.

But I do have that this is phrased as moral panic around "social media". In general, I hate the entire term "social media" because it smooshes together consumption of user-generated content, production of content, consumption of social network and contribution to social networking.

These are all very different phenomena. Kids watching Tiktok, Reels, Shorts, or whatever, doesn't really bother me at all. Producing the content bothers me a little more, but mostly as a parent -- I don't like the idea of people leaving a permanent record of all the stupid shit that they thought when they were a kid.

The other side of it, social networks, are very much a mixed bag; I'm not certain that the rise of "cyberbullying" or spreading rumors via social media is any worse than it ever has been -- we just have more visibility into it, because instead of a he said/she said about a who started a rumor, you have the screenshot of the rumor being started or spread. Maybe this makes it worse because of the indelibility, or maybe it's ameliorated by the fact that these sorts of rumormongering is so widespread and easy to see.

> Kids watching Tiktok, Reels, Shorts, or whatever, doesn't really bother me at all.

My main concern with this is that it shows a very very unrealistic view of life. It's basically the old "unrealistic role models" debate all over again (and this applies to both boys and girls). Except worse because TV shows and such were at least presented as fiction, whereas this is presented as "real life", even though it's not. And "education" is not going to solve this, because intellectually knowing something and feeling something like this are two very different things.

There are some other concerns as well; here is what I got on YouTube some time ago when searching for "Alan Lomax" (famous for recoding obscure "regular people" playing music throughout the US): https://imgur.com/a/jTQ6xvM

This is just rage-bait designed to make your angry. It has nothing to do with what I searched for. I don't have an account, don't store cookies, and even if YouTube was somehow tracking me: I more or less only use it for music stuff, sometimes comedy or programming videos. Certainly not politics.

None of the above is strictly new per se. George Galloway was around with fairly inflammatory rhetoric before social media really took off, but level and amount of exposure do matter a great deal.

And while almost all journalistic mainstream journalistic outlets do care about some level of balance of viewpoints (even though this is not perfect), this is just non-existent for a lot of online stuff.

You make very good points. I would depart from you on kids watching reels and shorts.

I believe infinite feeds to be a very dark feature for adults and kids alike. We should not get our kids used to mindlessly scrolling until their brain fries.

On the other hand, I am 100% with you on not mashing everything up into a single "social media" bucket.

We need to educate our kids to manage these tools and more importantly, themselves with these tools in hand. A blanket restriction/removal won't be very efficient in the end.

You don't have to believe social media creates mental health issues or exacerbates bullying or whatever.

The biggest problem is that it's a massive distraction from learning and also enables cheating, especially now with AI tools.

If you are arguing that phone use inside the classroom is a distraction then we're already on the same page.

If you're arguing for a total ban even outside the classroom, then I need a little more clarity on how it is a distraction. The cheating ship has scaled; even if you ban the outside the classroom, students still have a "home" where they do "homework" that they can apply whatever cheating mechanisms they want.

All indicators are that suicide, depression and other mental illness among teens has been going up directly due to the emergence of social media.

Jonathan Haidt on Huberman Lab said it clearly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csubiPlvFWk

Social Media has a clear detrimental effect on young people.

You are using "Social Media" in the vague and scary sense that I am specifically arguing against here. One reason that I haven't dug deeper into Haidt's work other than listening to him argue for it on podcasts is that he does not appear to address the specific nuance that I'm referring to here.

>Kids watching Tiktok, Reels, Shorts, or whatever, doesn't really bother me at all.

I kind of think of it as eating sugar cereal. Some is fine, but an entire diet of it isn't healthy. Teaching good media habits starts at a young age.

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