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Comment by kerrsclyde | Hacker News Reader

As a parent I agree parental reponsiblity is absolute but I haven't seen a workable solution reguarding social media.

I can't realistically monitor what my children are looking 24/7, like I can't listen to every conversation that they have.

I could ban all social media / phones but how is that going to prepare them for life in a world where social media is all encompassing? Plus they likely would be ostracized by their peers.

[I'm talking here about older children, teenagers. We also have a 5 year old and it's pretty easy with him, he doesn't have access to any form of social media.]

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There is no evidence of children being depressed for lack of social media exposure. The opposite is not true.

I'm in your same situation but the previous sentence helps to stand my ground.

> I could ban all social media / phones but how is that going to prepare them for life in a world where social media is all encompassing?

This is not the future that I expect. Rather, in my observation/bubble, "radical privacy advocates" are more and more spreading. So, I would expect that you rather prepare the children for a wrong (and worse) world.

> Plus they likely would be ostracized by their peers.

In my school time, the "nerds" (who were also privacy advocates, keywords: Diffie-Hellman key exchange, RSA, war against cryptography) found friends among each others. So, I wouldn't fear that your child becomes ostracized - it very likely will find (better) friends.

I don't disagree with anything you say but try telling my 16 year old daughter she need to jettison any form of social media and go with the nerd crowd.

> I don't disagree with anything you say but try telling my 16 year old daughter she need to jettison any form of social media and go with the nerd crowd.

There exist quite some other groups of people who reject social media: I just chose the "nerd crowd" example because many HN readers are very familiar with it. For example

- people who are somewhat skeptical about technology

- people who are "anti establishment"/"anti big tech")

- ...

I can easily imagine that if "(mostly) everybody" uses social media, a pubescent girl might easily come to the decision to reject social media completely just to be annoying to other people, and tell them to f... off.

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