Comment by iterationx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iterationx | Hacker News Reader

There was an interesting article recently about teens and social networking, and insight of the article was that teens want to socialize IRL, but there is nowhere for them to go without parental supervision.

I would argue that this approximately true for adults, American cities don't have pedestrian-only town squares, the public transit is abysmal (because long ago they ripped out all the streetcars, which led to the destruction of many social places, like Excelsior Amusement Park and Wonderland Amusement Park),

[warning anecdotal evidence]

The few dynamic social spaces I've known have been

Paved (Hidden Beach),

Pushed out due to rent increases (Loring Bar, Little Nikkis Cafe, CyberX),

Turned into a Bank of America (Filter in Wicker Park),

Out of business due to the smoking ban (The tobacco shop next to Filter in Wicker Park)

Purposefully destroyed by fake art to prevent gatherings (That little area next to the Subway on State Street in Madison, WI (where I used to play hackeysack))

Not to mention that we destroyed all the beer gardens during WW2 (this really happened), because that was too German, you can't drink a bottle of wine in a park like the French do, because I guess the drunks would abuse it, and the parks we do have generally don't also have any commercial activity whatsoever, not even a little kiosk where you can buy a coffee.

That's not even considering the destruction of ethnic neighborhoods by intersecting them with freeways (the old Catholic neighborhood [that no longer exists] that used to surround the Basilica in Minneapolis)

You know we're doing something wrong with urban design (which I argue is directly related to loneliness), when you see statues of children playing and not actual children playing.

Further reading/viewing:

James Howard Kunstler: The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs

James Howard Kunstler: Geography of Nowhere

The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing

Streets for People: A Primer for Americans

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community

I would expand your hypothesis: the goal of business is to take away all of our abilities to take care of ourselves--whether it's socialization, food, shelter, or anything else--so that they can sell those things back to us.

Our culture, increasingly dictated by commercial interests, is taking this strategy to the extreme. The result is a world which appears humane to the wealthy.

the goal of business

The goal of some businesses, yes. Not all. And even the ones that do have this as a goal only succeed to the degree that we, as customers, let them.

I was speaking informally. To be more specific, I'm talking about the goal of Capital.

(Capital being not a person or an organization, but a different species in the world that is outside of our control. The emergent effects of the existence of capital. Which itself is the result of widespread enforcement of property laws.)

The goal of large organizations - the government is in on this racket too, indeed is the master of it.

Could you link the article?

I spent most of my youth "ruled" under extremely restrictive parents in a suburb that offered nowhere to go without a car, that my parents would never let me use. I was very lonely as a kid and even after I got to college, it took me a while to develop the social skills I needed to make myself happy. I ended up developing a strong hatred for the suburbs in my youth and have embraced the urban city. Wherever I end up living when I have kids, I'll never subject them to the loneliness that I grew up with. I want my kids to be able to have peers as a refuge away from me as a parent.

(Using a throwaway for anonymity.)

Don’t Blame Social Media if Your Teen Is Unsocial. It’s Your Fault

If kids can’t socialize, who should parents blame? Simple: They should blame themselves. This is the argument advanced in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, by Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd. Boyd—full disclosure, a friend of mine—has spent a decade interviewing hundreds of teens about their online lives.

What she has found, over and over, is that teenagers would love to socialize face-to-face with their friends. But adult society won’t let them. “Teens aren’t addicted to social media. They’re addicted to each other,” Boyd says. “They’re not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they’ve moved it online.”

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/12/ap_thompson-2/

It's a relevant point she brings forth - albeit a false one. Microsoft just as Google is much too biased in this debate and so is Danah Boyd. It is not just the parents fault, the upbringing and social life of a child is composed of many factors. It is not unreasonable to assume that most regular children at the age of ten are in possession of a smartphone and have working parents. At least half of the kids' days will be spent outside of parental jurisdiction and under the influence of other players. These players are - from most real to most virtual: Geolocation, Government, School, Teacher, Classmates/Clique, [...], Mobile device, Software company (Google, Microsoft et al). It is not just a mistake to blame parents, it is the deliberate attempt to throw off any kind of debate that needs to be had about the responsibility of tech companies. If kids learn that likes matter, they will behave accordingly.

I haven't read the book yet, but based on my knowledge of what boyd has said over the past decade, I'd hazard a guess that she actually means that parents should stop trying to defend their kids from nebulous external threats and recognize that their own behavior is a significant part of the issue.

Last I checked, Google wasn't a daycare service. I'm not really sure why you're trying to insist that it is.

ObNitPick: Her name is 'danah boyd'. All lowercase. As her friend, Clive Thompson shouldn't have allowed that mistake to remain uncorrected.

My suburb used to have an arcade/bowling alley, but my parents didn't want me to go there (I did anyway), but then even that closed down. I guess I was one of the lucky ones.

Consider the following, most parents are driving their children to sports, therefore the children are not playing in the neighborhood, therefore if you are a child and not in sports there is no one to socialize with since all your peers are "at hockey" or whatever.

Do activities like "at hockey" consume the majority of American kids, or just a few rich kids?

Its possible that more of them are playing video games than at team sports, but in any rate they are not roaming around the neighborhood.

I fondly remember organizing football, basketball and baseball games with kids from the neighborhood as a child. I'd get 2-4 people together at a time and we'd have a blast! Small, suburban, rural neighborhood.

well I think you missed out on playing video games together with friends in any of their available houses? playing multiplayer halo and just hanging around were some liberating times away from home growing up for me.

I would also argue that the spread and popularity of "social" networking, and the cliquey nature of American undergraduates (which is the stage in their late teens) also heavily contributes to this.

Over-supervision by parents leads to college students around in a coffee shop working, hooked to their iDevices, staring into their Macbooks while they "like" the last 20 items their "friends" posted on Facebook. They go to the supermarket for most of their needs, but are almost surprised if anyone actually talks to them. They don't get to interact with basically anyone outside of their tiny little group of (real) friends [although they have tons of Facebook ones that provide limited mental satisfaction], and thus are often awkward and lonely when they move away for work.

The only solution I can see for this is for parents to

a) let their children be outside, unsupervised for longer periods of time, and

b) to intensely monitor their online activities at a younger age, and not give them access to smartphones.

This will act as a forcing function for simple social skills, like talking to a stranger without going goggle-eyed.

Also worth a read is 'A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction' if you're interested in an architectural look at how humans might live together better.

Thanks for the link, I will probably read it. Are you familiar with Bjarke Ingels over at BIG, I thought his TED was super interesting, http://www.ted.com/talks/bjarke_ingels_3_warp_speed_architec...

Thanks, that was great! I've only very recently started exploring urban design - I spend my days building software. I have this vague notion that living in a city could be nicer, so I'm trying to familiarize myself with what the people who know what they're doing say about it. I'll look further into Ingels and BIG. Are there any other starting points you'd suggest?

I thought this book was interesting, ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking

I enjoyed this blog post, "Car Kill Cities" about parking lots in Atlanta, http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/cars-kill...

I've heard good things about "The High Cost of Free Parking" but I haven't read it.

I lived in Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany for a year, and when I got back everything seemed wrong.

I think the number 1 thing that the US is missing is a pedestrian only square, with cafes and restaurants lining the perimeter. The children can run around the square, while the adults socialize.

Something like these photos: http://www.carfree.com/cft/i056.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Piazza_Navona_Rome.jpg

Happy City is one of the better "published in the last year" books on the topic:

http://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design...

Thanks, I'm looking forward to reading it! I'm only just getting my feet wet with urban design, so I appreciate the link.

I love that book. Just browsing through it brings relief to the soul. Imagine if all buildings were alive like that!

Alexander's critique of modern architecture is devastating, but his later, hugely more ambitious work is somehow less compelling. Perhaps I should give it another chance.

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