Hacker News Reader

Comment by heythereman | Hacker News Reader

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.)

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com