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Comment by doright | Hacker News Reader

I know someone similar who gave their kid a phone at age 6. 95% of the time I see them they're on TikTok.

Child safety features are not going to solve this problem. All it takes is one parent giving their kid a phone with an adult account and all that progress is undone. I am convinced it is going to take a cultural shift for any positive change to occur - self-policing and, if necessary, social stigma.

This kind of behavior of giving young children phones will have to be outmoded in a generation or two. Until then, there is going to be a lot of growing pains.

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You sound so certain that these other parents are being negligent. Despite the fact that my 9yo doesn't have a phone or tiktok, I'm going to argue the other side's case.

You're right "we don't know what it does to kids brains". But that means we should give parents discretion. Some parents want to run an experiment where they give their kids constant tiktok. Maybe we'll find out in a generation or two that this was bad, good, or a nothingburger.

I'm in my 50s. I have watched sooo many moral panics evaporate to nothing. TV, video games, D&D, heavy metal music, porn, literal satanism, and now everyone's favorite whipping boy, social media.

Let it go. Parent your own child, let other people parent theirs.

You should be able to recognize there are big differences between modern day social media and tv/videogames/dnd. For one you were not watching TV every waking moment of your life including while using a public bathroom. So just imagine that. There are people out there who no longer even think. Every spare second is spent scrolling because it really can be spent like that with the lack of friction that a constantly connected mobile device offers. No, this time it really is different. There was never a time where you would just not think for an entire day, maybe if you were holed up in a crack house or opium den. If you can't see that, wake up, look around and be shocked how more people aren't getting hit by cars or crashing off the road, and somehow can still string together a sentence of coherent thought. Maybe that fades too soon; functional literacy already declines by the year.

I don't know where you live, but I'm pretty much at ground zero for tech and my world doesn't look anything like what you describe.

I do find it annoying when I visit my inlaws, who have a television on every waking hour. But you know what? It's their home and their lives.

"this time it really is different" is what they always say.

I encourage you next time you are in an elevator or using a urinal or waiting to cross the street to look around and see what other people are doing with their spare moment of free thought.

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