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Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

My kid is 7. He has a Linux desktop he can use whenever he wants with no internet access from his user account. My wife and I abandoned all social media and we’ll probably get him a dumb phone when the time comes.

I’ve heard the stuff some of his friends with more internet permissive parents parrot from YouTube and stuff and honestly it’s frightening.

As for the good stuff that’s actually out there, I download for consumption offline.

As someone who grew up in the 90s and learned touch type playing StarCraft online, the internet is not for kids.

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> My wife and I abandoned all social media

...I'm sorry, I have to point out, you're posting this on what is basically a social media site.

It's not an advanced algorithmic feed designed with the sole intent to consume as much of you attention as possible...

I wouldn't classify Hacker News as 'social media' per se.

Hacker News does not have the feed-driven approach of other social media that is designed to generate addiction/engagement amongst users; we just like to talk about fun stuff. Hacker News is more of an old-school forum, where we talk about topics, rather than being a true 'social media' experience where you can talk about anything/yourself as a topic.

Moreover, the average baseline of discussions here is much higher and more intellectually-driven than discussions on X, IG, FB, and so on. That makes it keenly distinct from other social media designed for more base discussions.

That's a property of some kinds of social media. Not a definition or negation of.

The most amusing thing is that discussions on reddit, tumblr, x, etc include the very same kind of denials that gp comment is eliciting regarding those sites being social media.

Social media includes content sharing, discussions, and echo chambers, all of which are present here in abundance. Certain content gets promoted over others, and each site assumes see itself above others.

What originally set social media apart from forums was that you interact with people you sorta know. Social media apps later drifted to something else, but they still aren't forums. HN is a forum.

A definition of “social media” that includes HN has been stretched to the point of uselessness. We would have to invent a new term to refer to the things we actually mean by “social media”. Better to just not do that so we can keep having a useful term.

Alright, let's use an actual definition: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/social_media says,

> (uncountable) Applications or websites allowing users to share content and communicate with one another via the Internet.

and HN:

[x] is a website

[x] allowing users to share content

[x] allowing users communicate

[x] via the internet

Perhaps you should invent a new term for whatever you're talking about? Depending on what you want, I might suggest "algorithmic feeds" (actually that appears to be an extant term, but it might be what you want), or "multimedia social media" (to exclude pure-text sites like this).

The Wikipedia definition isn't complete, otherwise Wikipedia itself is social media too. Basically nobody outside of HN would consider HN social media if they saw it.

> The Wikipedia definition isn't complete, otherwise Wikipedia itself is social media too.

Actually, that's a decent point; it should probably add something about being primarily focused on the user interactions. That is, Wikipedia isn't social media, but I'd hesitate to say that the talk pages aren't.

> Basically nobody outside of HN would consider HN social media if they saw it.

And on that point we definitely disagree, though I suppose I could ask around. What do you think makes it not?

Social media was originally all about connecting with people you know in real life. Nowadays some of them are about followers you don't always know, but one way or another you're repeatedly interacting with a select pool of people based on who they are.

Forums have been around longer than the WWW and are more about interacting with topics than with particular members. Some let you follow or PM someone, but that's not the primary function, and HN doesn't even have that. Some social sites have expanded to cover forum-like roles too, like Facebook (Pages).

But most people won't think that far. They'll see HN and say nah, this isn't social media.

Anecdata, but I have heard people in my life refer to Hacker News as "social media", which is why I brought this up in the first place.

No “social graph” whatsoever. Instantly disqualifying. News-aggregator-with-comments isn’t social media.

Yeah this is a good succinct way to put it.

Ok fine, I’ll have to be more specific I guess:

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and the like (I don’t know of there’s something else new). The algorithmic crap where you’ll find AI generated videos of a fake Elon Musk taking to visit sense website or wherever the outrage du jour happens.

If you do that, your kid won't fit in and will be a social outcast

But at least they’ll be functional with a potentially positive trajectory vs their peers.

Humans especially children need to be part of healthy social groups.

Being excluded is not setting them up on a positive trajectory.

Social skills are probably the most important and valuable skills to success in life

Social media and staring at a screen destroy social skills. I know, I lived through 2 years of COVID.

You may think this now but maybe wait until your kid is in middle or high school.

Adolescent life is coordinated online now, and you will literally be handicapping your kid if you take a hard line.

His 7 year old friends are not coordinating things online. I know this because we are doing so with their parents.

That doesn't contradict what the parent said. "Adolescent life is coordinated online now" -- your 7-year-old is not an adolescent.

If my kid has my social skills it's guaranteed - with or without social media.

Are there studies of the long term consequences to children resulting from not giving them a smartphone or access to popular social media?

So either your kid gets infected by other kids, or it becomes a social outcast. Seems both are equality bad, I would even lean towards saying social outcast is less worse than being infected.

Believe it or not, there’s a lot between those two extremes.

Also I never said I’ll never let him use the internet, but it’s not for 7 year olds.

Sorry I was just being sarcastic, my point was exactly that it's not that black and white ;)

Thank you for the parenting advice, anonymous stranger.

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