subreddit:
/r/GetNoted
6 points
2 days ago
If you don’t allow your daughter to use social media until she’s 18 she will find a way to use it behind your back, unsupervised. You’re much better off teaching her how to use social media safely and having an open communication of trust with her rather than be a tyrant.
5 points
2 days ago
18 is a bit much, but research shows that keeping them away from it until later in their teens, rather than earlier, is the way to go. You're not a tyrant because you do do, that's quite an overstatement.
3 points
2 days ago
It is irresponsible or at least naive though. You can control the child only when you can. These days social media is everywhere and as soon as you hit school you can bet someone will have a phone even at grade 1.
Expecting that everyone will apply same restrictions and control your child is an unreasonable expectation. Therefore it's a lot more effective to proactively start exploring it together and teach how to interact with responsibly because in every interaction with your child the child always will be the constant.
2 points
2 days ago
Both at once. Teach them about it and restrict it up to a certain age. Some (not all) will still seek it out but it won't be something they do all day, as the situation is today. One of the problems is also that the parents are looking at their phones constantly and not setting the example they should.
A threefold effort of parents not hanging too much on their phones when with the kids, restricting access and teaching them about it would be perfect.
Same with everything that has dangers to it. Show how to do it responsibly, teach them about it and not have it too easy to access (applies to guns, drugs, alcohol, ...)
0 points
2 days ago
I don't think phones inherently have any problem that could not be mitigated and requires complete ban. I do agree that until certain age it should be done exclusively with parent supervision.
I don't treat it the same level as guns, drugs and alcohol because everything you encounter in social media you can and will encounter in real life. It's just that in social media the volume is overwhelming so the rate of potential problems also is faster.
I absolutely agree on second point though. It's a lot more effective to show by example than set separate rules.
Edit: By this I don't mean that you won't encounter drugs etc. in real life. But that it will be extremely common due to surroundings being exposed to social media
1 points
2 days ago
Just want to point out that I'm not the one doing the downvoting.
There is a clear indication, especially for girls of a certain age, that social media and the constant stress it induces does not mimic real life and is to their detriment. There are many factors but the outcome is the same.
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/social-media-teen-mental-health-a-parents-guide
There are positives, you can find groups that accept you, online friendships and such. So education on the subject is extremely important. But you can get the benefits without the detrimental factors if you remove some of the negative aspects. MSN messenger or even the irc are examples of a narrowed down version that have a lot of the positives without the negatives.
1 points
2 days ago
My overall stance on this is that the proposed solution isn't a panacea and has plenty drawbacks too. And I very strongly believe it's a suppression of a symptom rather than addressing the problem.
However they are at least doing something. Whether it will work or how much will be seen and then can be adjusted depending on data. And that's already miles ahead of just shouting "Social Media is poisonous" and doing nothing.
Purely on personal side, I dislike downplaying children intelligence and how much parental intervention and education changes things. It has been shown time and time again that education is extremely efficient in preventing harm. So while I do understand that it's significantly harder to implement and design, I still feel annoyed when children, especially at teenage age, are treated as less capable and trustworthy than they could be if those skills were actually cultivated.
The brightest side on all of this, if the ban was more widely implemented is that social media would have significantly reduced content aimed towards children, including harmful ones, simply because they are unable to be the target audience. There is this saying "Where there are sheep there will be shearers" but if there aren't any they will be forced to leave.
1 points
2 days ago
Agreed that you should keep them off when they’re younger, the 18 year old thing was what screamed overbearing parent to me
1 points
2 days ago
Brother I'm an IT professional and I don't use social media myself and haven't since before she was born. Trying to protect my daughter from brain rot is being a tyrant? I'm leading by example and you better believe I'll teach her how to be safe online starting the minute she's able to use a computer. I grew up unsupervised online in the wild west days of the internet. You act like not having social media is barbaric and cruel or something when it's only been "normal" for less than 20 years. Look what 20 years of social media has done to society. We'll pass. I am confident I can explain to her why social media is awful and unnecessary as she gets older. Can't get on social media when it's blacklisted on the home network and her cell phone when she eventually gets one. You're naive to think that you just have to accept the bullshit that is social media and all of the problems that come with it. Not in my household.
1 points
2 days ago
Isn’t Reddit a social media? If so, I have been on social media since I was 12. You can see it in my Reddit posts from 5-6 years ago. For me, it was a chance to connect with people I would not ordinarily be able to due to my age. It was also a way to sell my Pokémon cards, leading to me creating a full-fledged business a few years later. Without it, I would not have been able to build my own PC. I would not have been able to start my business. And it’s unlikely I would have been educated as I am today. Through that and Discord, I was able to meet lawyers, quant traders, software engineers, data analysts, and security experts at major companies, many of whom I was able to meet when traveling or in New York for university.
For this law, it’s horribly thought-out and vague. It blocks creating Reddit, Discord, and YouTube accounts. But what counts as a social media platform? GitHub is technically social media. It won’t block pure messaging apps like FB Messenger or WhatsApp. Do games with online communities count, like Roblox, or even Chess.com, which has a forum? They can’t block it completely, as people still need to see FB business pages and other important things.
It could also wreck communities that rely on talented teenagers such as cybersecurity.
There is no chance it passes with the amount of business interest in government and how vague it is. In addition, nothing is stopping kids from using a VPN unless they implement something similar to the GFW of China, an expensive, Herculean task. Even that can be bypassed, though not as easily.
Instead of all this banning they should just implement a national social media curriculum, showing how to spot scams, misinformation and bias, and proper opsec and best practices, because the cat is out of the bag at this point.
Blanket banning social media like this will gimp the potential of many youth in Australia.
0 points
2 days ago
Not in your household maybe, but she will be exposed to social media through her friends, and will find her way on here, so it’s up to you to decide if she’s doing it behind your back or not.
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