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Are You In Favor Of Not Allowing Social Media For Young People? (1 Viewer)

Would you be in favor of not allowing people under 16 years of age to access social media sites?

  • Absolutely in favor of not allowing people under 16 to access social media

    Votes: 39 36.1%
  • In favor of not allowing people under 16 to access social media

    Votes: 17 15.7%
  • Slightly in favor of not allowing people under 16 to access social media

    Votes: 14 13.0%
  • On the fence

    Votes: 9 8.3%
  • Slightly opposed to not allowing people under 16 to access social media

    Votes: 10 9.3%
  • Opposed to not allowing people under 16 to access social media

    Votes: 9 8.3%
  • Absolutely opposed to not allowing people under 16 to access social media

    Votes: 10 9.3%

  • Total voters
    108

Joe Bryant

Guide
Staff member
Would you be in favor of not allowing people under 16 to access social media sites like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc?

Thought this was super interesting. https://open.spotify.com/episode/43MU5Mlb0UPSQ3zMQXEZEx?si=a664347c3e4a4f07

One of the things the author is proposing is not allowing people under 16 to access social media. He thinks the effects are so damaging for young people that there should be an age requirement. There currently is a flimsy requirement now of 13 years but it's not observed. He's suggesting a real limit like gambling sites have.

Here's the description for the podcast:

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been explaining the human condition to us better than anyone else. He first did it with his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, which explored why people were so passionately divided over politics and religion, and argued that people are fundamentally religiously inclined creatures. Then, he did it again with The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, which laid out why kids today—especially on college campuses—have become so intolerant of opinions that conflict with their own.

Now, he’s done it once more with his new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. This time, Haidt explains what so many parents have been confused by for the last decade: Why are kids today more anxious than ever, more depressed than ever, more risk-averse than ever, lonelier than ever, and less social than ever?

It’s pretty simple, Haidt argues: We changed childhood.

The mass migration of childhood, Haidt says, from the real world to the virtual world has completely changed what it means to be a kid. By replacing free and independent play and quality time with friends with the isolation of screens and phones, we instigated what he calls the “Great Rewiring of Childhood.” What resulted, he argues, is a childhood that is “more sedentary, solitary, virtual, and incompatible with healthy human development.”

Today, Haidt explains how this massive change happened, its detrimental effects on kids, and what actions we can take—both in our own lives and legislatively—in order to reverse course and free the anxious generation.
 
Last edited:
NYTimes Gift article:

Coddling Plus Devices? Unequivocal Disaster for Our Kids.​

In “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt says we’re failing children — and takes a firm stand against tech.


Imagine that your 10-year-old daughter gets chosen to join the first human settlement on Mars. She’s ready to blast off but needs your permission.

You learn that the billionaire architect of the mission hasn’t considered the risks posed by the red planet’s toxic environment, including kids developing “deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes and brains.”

Would you let her go?

It’s with this “Black Mirror”-esque morality play that Jonathan Haidt sets the tone for everything that follows in his erudite, engaging, combative, crusading new book, “The Anxious Generation.” Mars is a stand-in for the noxious world of social media. If we’d say no to that perilous planet, we should of course say no to this other alien universe.

Instead, we hem and haw about the risks, failing to keep our kids safely grounded in nondigital reality. The result can no longer be ignored: deformities of the brain and heart — anxiety, depression, suicidality — plaguing our youth.

Haidt, a social psychologist, is a man on a mission to correct this collective failure. His first step is to convince us that youth are experiencing a “tidal wave” of suffering. In a single chapter and with a dozen carefully curated graphs, he depicts increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens.

The timing of this is key because it coincides with the rise of what he terms phone-based childhood. From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, smartphones, bristling with social media apps and fueled by high-speed internet, became ubiquitous. Their siren call, addictive by design and perpetually distracting, quickly spirited kids to worlds beyond our control.

It wasn’t phones alone. A second phenomenon coincided with the rise of the machines: the decline of play-based childhood. This change started in the 1980s, with kidnapping fears and stranger danger driving parents toward fear-based overparenting. This decimated children’s unsupervised, self-directed playtime and restricted their freedom of movement.

With parents and children alike stuck in “Defend mode,” kids were in turn blocked from discovery mode, where they face challenges, take risks and explore — the building blocks of anti-fragility, or the ability to grow stronger through adversity. Compared to a generation ago, our children are spending more time on their phones and less on, well, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. While fewer hospital visits and teen pregnancies are obvious wins, less risk-taking overall could stunt independence.


That’s why parents, he argues, should become more like gardeners (to use Alison Gopnik’s formulation) who cultivate conditions for children to independently grow and flourish, and less like carpenters, who work obsessively to control, design and shape their offspring. We’ve overprotected our kids in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual one, leaving them too much to their own devices, literally and figuratively.

It’s this one-two punch of smartphones plus overprotective parenting, Haidt posits, that led to the great rewiring of childhood and the associated harms driving mental illness: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. He has a lot to say about each of these.

Here is where his ideas and interpretation of research become contentious. Few would disagree that unhealthy use of social media contributes to psychological problems, or that parenting plays a role. But mental illness is complex: a multidetermined synergy between risk and resilience. Clinical scientists don’t look for magic-bullet explanations. They seek to understand how, for whom and in what contexts psychological problems and resilience emerge.

Haidt does recognize that nuance complicates the issue. Online — but not in the book — he and colleagues report that adolescent girls from “wealthy, individualistic and secular nations” who are “less tightly bound into strong communities” are accounting for much of the crisis. So perhaps smartphones alone haven’t destroyed an entire generation. And maybe context matters. But this rarely comes through in the book.

The final sections offer advice for reducing harmful, predatory aspects of technology and helping parents, educators and communities become more gardener and less carpenter. Some tips will be familiar (ban phones from school; give kids more independence). Other advice might give readers pause (no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16). Yet, taken together, it’s a reasonable list.

Still, Haidt is a digital absolutist, skeptical that healthy relationships between youth and social media are possible. On this point, he even rebuffs the U.S. Surgeon General’s more measured position. We’re better off banning phones in schools altogether, he asserts. Because, as he quotes a middle school principal, schools without phone bans are like a “zombie apocalypse” with “all these kids in the hallways not talking to each other.”

Whether or not you agree with the zombie apocalypse diagnosis, it’s worth considering the failure of prior absolutist stances. Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No drug campaign? A public health case study in what not to do. During the AIDS crisis, fear mongering and abstinence demands didn’t prevent unsafe sex. Remember the pandemic? Telling Americans to wear masks at all times undermined public health officials’ ability to convince them to wear masks when it really mattered.

Digital absolutism also risks blinding us to other causes — and solutions. In 1960s Britain, annual suicide rates plummeted. Many believed the drop was due to improved antidepressant medications or life just getting better. They weren’t looking in the right place. The phaseout of coal-based gas for household stoves blocked the most common method of suicide: gas poisoning. Means restriction, because it gives the despairing one less opportunity for self-harm, has since become a key strategy for suicide prevention.

“I’ve been struggling to figure out,” Haidt writes, “what is happening to us? How is technology changing us?” His answer: “The phone-based life produces spiritual degradation, not just in adolescents, but in all of us.” In other words: Choose human purity and sanctity over the repugnant forces of technology. This dialectic is compelling, but the moral matrix of the problem — and the scientific foundations — are more complex.

Yes, digital absolutism might convince policymakers to change laws and increase regulation. It might be a wake-up call for some parents. But it also might backfire, plunging us into defense mode and blocking our path of discovery toward healthy and empowered digital citizenship.

 
100% in favor of limiting social media for children. There's no question the effects of it are damaging.

We didn't allow our son to get a phone until he was a freshman in HS. We are doing the same thing with our girls, one of which is in 5th grade now.

The problem with that? She's already been the ONLY one without a phone for at least a couple years. It's frustrating because we are somehow the extreme outliers. It also means these girls are primarily communicating with each other outside of school in a way she can't. I hate that for her, but we still feel it's better than the alternative. Especially when we hear of issues/situations that inevitably come up with kids and their phone use.
 
NYTimes Gift article:

Coddling Plus Devices? Unequivocal Disaster for Our Kids.​

In “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt says we’re failing children — and takes a firm stand against tech.


Imagine that your 10-year-old daughter gets chosen to join the first human settlement on Mars. She’s ready to blast off but needs your permission.

You learn that the billionaire architect of the mission hasn’t considered the risks posed by the red planet’s toxic environment, including kids developing “deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes and brains.”

Would you let her go?

It’s with this “Black Mirror”-esque morality play that Jonathan Haidt sets the tone for everything that follows in his erudite, engaging, combative, crusading new book, “The Anxious Generation.” Mars is a stand-in for the noxious world of social media. If we’d say no to that perilous planet, we should of course say no to this other alien universe.

Instead, we hem and haw about the risks, failing to keep our kids safely grounded in nondigital reality. The result can no longer be ignored: deformities of the brain and heart — anxiety, depression, suicidality — plaguing our youth.

Haidt, a social psychologist, is a man on a mission to correct this collective failure. His first step is to convince us that youth are experiencing a “tidal wave” of suffering. In a single chapter and with a dozen carefully curated graphs, he depicts increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens.

The timing of this is key because it coincides with the rise of what he terms phone-based childhood. From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, smartphones, bristling with social media apps and fueled by high-speed internet, became ubiquitous. Their siren call, addictive by design and perpetually distracting, quickly spirited kids to worlds beyond our control.

It wasn’t phones alone. A second phenomenon coincided with the rise of the machines: the decline of play-based childhood. This change started in the 1980s, with kidnapping fears and stranger danger driving parents toward fear-based overparenting. This decimated children’s unsupervised, self-directed playtime and restricted their freedom of movement.

With parents and children alike stuck in “Defend mode,” kids were in turn blocked from discovery mode, where they face challenges, take risks and explore — the building blocks of anti-fragility, or the ability to grow stronger through adversity. Compared to a generation ago, our children are spending more time on their phones and less on, well, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. While fewer hospital visits and teen pregnancies are obvious wins, less risk-taking overall could stunt independence.


That’s why parents, he argues, should become more like gardeners (to use Alison Gopnik’s formulation) who cultivate conditions for children to independently grow and flourish, and less like carpenters, who work obsessively to control, design and shape their offspring. We’ve overprotected our kids in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual one, leaving them too much to their own devices, literally and figuratively.

It’s this one-two punch of smartphones plus overprotective parenting, Haidt posits, that led to the great rewiring of childhood and the associated harms driving mental illness: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. He has a lot to say about each of these.

Here is where his ideas and interpretation of research become contentious. Few would disagree that unhealthy use of social media contributes to psychological problems, or that parenting plays a role. But mental illness is complex: a multidetermined synergy between risk and resilience. Clinical scientists don’t look for magic-bullet explanations. They seek to understand how, for whom and in what contexts psychological problems and resilience emerge.

Haidt does recognize that nuance complicates the issue. Online — but not in the book — he and colleagues report that adolescent girls from “wealthy, individualistic and secular nations” who are “less tightly bound into strong communities” are accounting for much of the crisis. So perhaps smartphones alone haven’t destroyed an entire generation. And maybe context matters. But this rarely comes through in the book.

The final sections offer advice for reducing harmful, predatory aspects of technology and helping parents, educators and communities become more gardener and less carpenter. Some tips will be familiar (ban phones from school; give kids more independence). Other advice might give readers pause (no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16). Yet, taken together, it’s a reasonable list.

Still, Haidt is a digital absolutist, skeptical that healthy relationships between youth and social media are possible. On this point, he even rebuffs the U.S. Surgeon General’s more measured position. We’re better off banning phones in schools altogether, he asserts. Because, as he quotes a middle school principal, schools without phone bans are like a “zombie apocalypse” with “all these kids in the hallways not talking to each other.”

Whether or not you agree with the zombie apocalypse diagnosis, it’s worth considering the failure of prior absolutist stances. Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No drug campaign? A public health case study in what not to do. During the AIDS crisis, fear mongering and abstinence demands didn’t prevent unsafe sex. Remember the pandemic? Telling Americans to wear masks at all times undermined public health officials’ ability to convince them to wear masks when it really mattered.

Digital absolutism also risks blinding us to other causes — and solutions. In 1960s Britain, annual suicide rates plummeted. Many believed the drop was due to improved antidepressant medications or life just getting better. They weren’t looking in the right place. The phaseout of coal-based gas for household stoves blocked the most common method of suicide: gas poisoning. Means restriction, because it gives the despairing one less opportunity for self-harm, has since become a key strategy for suicide prevention.

“I’ve been struggling to figure out,” Haidt writes, “what is happening to us? How is technology changing us?” His answer: “The phone-based life produces spiritual degradation, not just in adolescents, but in all of us.” In other words: Choose human purity and sanctity over the repugnant forces of technology. This dialectic is compelling, but the moral matrix of the problem — and the scientific foundations — are more complex.

Yes, digital absolutism might convince policymakers to change laws and increase regulation. It might be a wake-up call for some parents. But it also might backfire, plunging us into defense mode and blocking our path of discovery toward healthy and empowered digital citizenship.

Just curious if you have kids under 16. Sort of a weird post if you dont
 
100% in favor of limiting social media for children. There's no question the effects of it are damaging.

We didn't allow our son to get a phone until he was a freshman in HS. We are doing the same thing with our girls, one of which is in 5th grade now.

The problem with that? She's already been the ONLY one without a phone for at least a couple years. It's frustrating because we are somehow the extreme outliers. It also means these girls are primarily communicating with each other outside of school in a way she can't. I hate that for her, but we still feel it's better than the alternative. Especially when we hear of issues/situations that inevitably come up with kids and their phone use.

You'll appreciate the podcast. He talks a lot about that "the only one without" thing.

He said something I thought was interesting, "Collective problems require collective action".

Meaning, nobody wants to be the one without. But if everyone got together collectively, they could solve it by all being without. Granted, this isn't easy.

But I've seen this happen with high school kids at summer camp. The first day without their phone is super tough for some. Then they realize the other people there also dont have phones and they can connect that way.

It's a fascinating dynamic.
 
NYTimes Gift article:

Coddling Plus Devices? Unequivocal Disaster for Our Kids.​

In “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt says we’re failing children — and takes a firm stand against tech.


Imagine that your 10-year-old daughter gets chosen to join the first human settlement on Mars. She’s ready to blast off but needs your permission.

You learn that the billionaire architect of the mission hasn’t considered the risks posed by the red planet’s toxic environment, including kids developing “deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes and brains.”

Would you let her go?

It’s with this “Black Mirror”-esque morality play that Jonathan Haidt sets the tone for everything that follows in his erudite, engaging, combative, crusading new book, “The Anxious Generation.” Mars is a stand-in for the noxious world of social media. If we’d say no to that perilous planet, we should of course say no to this other alien universe.

Instead, we hem and haw about the risks, failing to keep our kids safely grounded in nondigital reality. The result can no longer be ignored: deformities of the brain and heart — anxiety, depression, suicidality — plaguing our youth.

Haidt, a social psychologist, is a man on a mission to correct this collective failure. His first step is to convince us that youth are experiencing a “tidal wave” of suffering. In a single chapter and with a dozen carefully curated graphs, he depicts increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens.

The timing of this is key because it coincides with the rise of what he terms phone-based childhood. From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, smartphones, bristling with social media apps and fueled by high-speed internet, became ubiquitous. Their siren call, addictive by design and perpetually distracting, quickly spirited kids to worlds beyond our control.

It wasn’t phones alone. A second phenomenon coincided with the rise of the machines: the decline of play-based childhood. This change started in the 1980s, with kidnapping fears and stranger danger driving parents toward fear-based overparenting. This decimated children’s unsupervised, self-directed playtime and restricted their freedom of movement.

With parents and children alike stuck in “Defend mode,” kids were in turn blocked from discovery mode, where they face challenges, take risks and explore — the building blocks of anti-fragility, or the ability to grow stronger through adversity. Compared to a generation ago, our children are spending more time on their phones and less on, well, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. While fewer hospital visits and teen pregnancies are obvious wins, less risk-taking overall could stunt independence.


That’s why parents, he argues, should become more like gardeners (to use Alison Gopnik’s formulation) who cultivate conditions for children to independently grow and flourish, and less like carpenters, who work obsessively to control, design and shape their offspring. We’ve overprotected our kids in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual one, leaving them too much to their own devices, literally and figuratively.

It’s this one-two punch of smartphones plus overprotective parenting, Haidt posits, that led to the great rewiring of childhood and the associated harms driving mental illness: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. He has a lot to say about each of these.

Here is where his ideas and interpretation of research become contentious. Few would disagree that unhealthy use of social media contributes to psychological problems, or that parenting plays a role. But mental illness is complex: a multidetermined synergy between risk and resilience. Clinical scientists don’t look for magic-bullet explanations. They seek to understand how, for whom and in what contexts psychological problems and resilience emerge.

Haidt does recognize that nuance complicates the issue. Online — but not in the book — he and colleagues report that adolescent girls from “wealthy, individualistic and secular nations” who are “less tightly bound into strong communities” are accounting for much of the crisis. So perhaps smartphones alone haven’t destroyed an entire generation. And maybe context matters. But this rarely comes through in the book.

The final sections offer advice for reducing harmful, predatory aspects of technology and helping parents, educators and communities become more gardener and less carpenter. Some tips will be familiar (ban phones from school; give kids more independence). Other advice might give readers pause (no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16). Yet, taken together, it’s a reasonable list.

Still, Haidt is a digital absolutist, skeptical that healthy relationships between youth and social media are possible. On this point, he even rebuffs the U.S. Surgeon General’s more measured position. We’re better off banning phones in schools altogether, he asserts. Because, as he quotes a middle school principal, schools without phone bans are like a “zombie apocalypse” with “all these kids in the hallways not talking to each other.”

Whether or not you agree with the zombie apocalypse diagnosis, it’s worth considering the failure of prior absolutist stances. Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No drug campaign? A public health case study in what not to do. During the AIDS crisis, fear mongering and abstinence demands didn’t prevent unsafe sex. Remember the pandemic? Telling Americans to wear masks at all times undermined public health officials’ ability to convince them to wear masks when it really mattered.

Digital absolutism also risks blinding us to other causes — and solutions. In 1960s Britain, annual suicide rates plummeted. Many believed the drop was due to improved antidepressant medications or life just getting better. They weren’t looking in the right place. The phaseout of coal-based gas for household stoves blocked the most common method of suicide: gas poisoning. Means restriction, because it gives the despairing one less opportunity for self-harm, has since become a key strategy for suicide prevention.

“I’ve been struggling to figure out,” Haidt writes, “what is happening to us? How is technology changing us?” His answer: “The phone-based life produces spiritual degradation, not just in adolescents, but in all of us.” In other words: Choose human purity and sanctity over the repugnant forces of technology. This dialectic is compelling, but the moral matrix of the problem — and the scientific foundations — are more complex.

Yes, digital absolutism might convince policymakers to change laws and increase regulation. It might be a wake-up call for some parents. But it also might backfire, plunging us into defense mode and blocking our path of discovery toward healthy and empowered digital citizenship.

Just curious if you have kids under 16. Sort of a weird post if you dont

Weird? In what way?
 
It's none of my business how other people raise their kids and I don't want others telling me how to raise mine.
When it comes to things we KNOW are harmful, I disagree.

That's why children can't get p0rn, smoke, drink alcohol, get tattoos, drive, etc even if parents want to raise their children that way.

We are finding out how harmful the digital world and in particular social media is for developing children.
 
NYTimes Gift article:

Coddling Plus Devices? Unequivocal Disaster for Our Kids.​

In “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt says we’re failing children — and takes a firm stand against tech.


Imagine that your 10-year-old daughter gets chosen to join the first human settlement on Mars. She’s ready to blast off but needs your permission.

You learn that the billionaire architect of the mission hasn’t considered the risks posed by the red planet’s toxic environment, including kids developing “deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes and brains.”

Would you let her go?

It’s with this “Black Mirror”-esque morality play that Jonathan Haidt sets the tone for everything that follows in his erudite, engaging, combative, crusading new book, “The Anxious Generation.” Mars is a stand-in for the noxious world of social media. If we’d say no to that perilous planet, we should of course say no to this other alien universe.

Instead, we hem and haw about the risks, failing to keep our kids safely grounded in nondigital reality. The result can no longer be ignored: deformities of the brain and heart — anxiety, depression, suicidality — plaguing our youth.

Haidt, a social psychologist, is a man on a mission to correct this collective failure. His first step is to convince us that youth are experiencing a “tidal wave” of suffering. In a single chapter and with a dozen carefully curated graphs, he depicts increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens.

The timing of this is key because it coincides with the rise of what he terms phone-based childhood. From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, smartphones, bristling with social media apps and fueled by high-speed internet, became ubiquitous. Their siren call, addictive by design and perpetually distracting, quickly spirited kids to worlds beyond our control.

It wasn’t phones alone. A second phenomenon coincided with the rise of the machines: the decline of play-based childhood. This change started in the 1980s, with kidnapping fears and stranger danger driving parents toward fear-based overparenting. This decimated children’s unsupervised, self-directed playtime and restricted their freedom of movement.

With parents and children alike stuck in “Defend mode,” kids were in turn blocked from discovery mode, where they face challenges, take risks and explore — the building blocks of anti-fragility, or the ability to grow stronger through adversity. Compared to a generation ago, our children are spending more time on their phones and less on, well, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. While fewer hospital visits and teen pregnancies are obvious wins, less risk-taking overall could stunt independence.


That’s why parents, he argues, should become more like gardeners (to use Alison Gopnik’s formulation) who cultivate conditions for children to independently grow and flourish, and less like carpenters, who work obsessively to control, design and shape their offspring. We’ve overprotected our kids in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual one, leaving them too much to their own devices, literally and figuratively.

It’s this one-two punch of smartphones plus overprotective parenting, Haidt posits, that led to the great rewiring of childhood and the associated harms driving mental illness: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. He has a lot to say about each of these.

Here is where his ideas and interpretation of research become contentious. Few would disagree that unhealthy use of social media contributes to psychological problems, or that parenting plays a role. But mental illness is complex: a multidetermined synergy between risk and resilience. Clinical scientists don’t look for magic-bullet explanations. They seek to understand how, for whom and in what contexts psychological problems and resilience emerge.

Haidt does recognize that nuance complicates the issue. Online — but not in the book — he and colleagues report that adolescent girls from “wealthy, individualistic and secular nations” who are “less tightly bound into strong communities” are accounting for much of the crisis. So perhaps smartphones alone haven’t destroyed an entire generation. And maybe context matters. But this rarely comes through in the book.

The final sections offer advice for reducing harmful, predatory aspects of technology and helping parents, educators and communities become more gardener and less carpenter. Some tips will be familiar (ban phones from school; give kids more independence). Other advice might give readers pause (no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16). Yet, taken together, it’s a reasonable list.

Still, Haidt is a digital absolutist, skeptical that healthy relationships between youth and social media are possible. On this point, he even rebuffs the U.S. Surgeon General’s more measured position. We’re better off banning phones in schools altogether, he asserts. Because, as he quotes a middle school principal, schools without phone bans are like a “zombie apocalypse” with “all these kids in the hallways not talking to each other.”

Whether or not you agree with the zombie apocalypse diagnosis, it’s worth considering the failure of prior absolutist stances. Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No drug campaign? A public health case study in what not to do. During the AIDS crisis, fear mongering and abstinence demands didn’t prevent unsafe sex. Remember the pandemic? Telling Americans to wear masks at all times undermined public health officials’ ability to convince them to wear masks when it really mattered.

Digital absolutism also risks blinding us to other causes — and solutions. In 1960s Britain, annual suicide rates plummeted. Many believed the drop was due to improved antidepressant medications or life just getting better. They weren’t looking in the right place. The phaseout of coal-based gas for household stoves blocked the most common method of suicide: gas poisoning. Means restriction, because it gives the despairing one less opportunity for self-harm, has since become a key strategy for suicide prevention.

“I’ve been struggling to figure out,” Haidt writes, “what is happening to us? How is technology changing us?” His answer: “The phone-based life produces spiritual degradation, not just in adolescents, but in all of us.” In other words: Choose human purity and sanctity over the repugnant forces of technology. This dialectic is compelling, but the moral matrix of the problem — and the scientific foundations — are more complex.

Yes, digital absolutism might convince policymakers to change laws and increase regulation. It might be a wake-up call for some parents. But it also might backfire, plunging us into defense mode and blocking our path of discovery toward healthy and empowered digital citizenship.

Just curious if you have kids under 16. Sort of a weird post if you dont

Weird? In what way?
I'm guessing you don't have kids around 16.. I could be wrong I guess
 
16 is too old. I'd change the cutoff to 13.
Be a parent. Watch your children's screen time. Watch for behavioral changes. But, let them live their lives. A 16 year old is damn near an adult.
Yeah, I think high school is an appropriate age (13-14). But if 16 was the only option, I wouldn't argue it.
 
Not a parent, but yeah....I think there needs to be some major limitations (agree that 16 is probably a little too old to set the limit, but still something needs to happen)

I also have different concerns about different types of social media. I think the social pressure and self worth issues that come from bad interactions (or unrealistic expectations) on something like facebook or instagram are certainly harmful. But IMO, Tik Tok and similar short-form video aps are a whole different animal. I think the people that run Tik Tok are playing a very dangerous long-game with the intent of harming America (by making our youth a bunch of brainless idiots with the attention span of a gnat) ....but that's partially a political discussion.
 
It's none of my business how other people raise their kids and I don't want others telling me how to raise mine.
When it comes to things we KNOW are harmful, I disagree.

That's why children can't get p0rn, smoke, drink alcohol, get tattoos, drive, etc even if parents want to raise their children that way.

We are finding out how harmful the digital world and in particular social media is for developing children.
pRon has never been restricted, do you think because they put the nudie mags behind a black tint divider in Barnes and Noble that kids can't grab it and look at it?

Once again smoke, drink alcohol, get tattoos, drive, etc all of these are legal on a person's private property and while I don't condone that way of living it was some what normal in northern michigan.
 
Unless my reading comprehension sucks (entirely possible these days), your poll choices don't have any room for the "limiting" part of your title.

I'm in favor of limiting it for young people (I don't know what the correct age would be - or if there is one).

And, given the performance of the PSF here, I'm also in favor of limiting it for adults.
 
I'm assuming when you say "limiting" that you actually mean "limiting via government law" as opposed to "parental limiting".

For me, the devil is really in the details. How will the law define social media? How will the law be enforced? How will the limits be imposed in the first place? Some will say I'm quibbling about details, but I see this as a really close call to begin with and all of those things have the potential to significantly swing the cost/benefit calculation of the equation.
 
It's none of my business how other people raise their kids and I don't want others telling me how to raise mine.
When it comes to things we KNOW are harmful, I disagree.

That's why children can't get p0rn, smoke, drink alcohol, get tattoos, drive, etc even if parents want to raise their children that way.

We are finding out how harmful the digital world and in particular social media is for developing children.
pRon has never been restricted, do you think because they put the nudie mags behind a black tint divider in Barnes and Noble that kids can't grab it and look at it?

Once again smoke, drink alcohol, get tattoos, drive, etc all of these are legal on a person's private property and while I don't condone that way of living it was some what normal in northern michigan.
The intent is to restrict access to those things. You can't stop everyone from doing things and there are always ways around but that doesn't mean you don't set limits and boundaries for the common good as a society.

When we see overwhelming harm as a result of social media (and we do), both to self and to others, then at some point it becomes incumbent to set those limitations.
 
NYTimes Gift article:

Coddling Plus Devices? Unequivocal Disaster for Our Kids.​

In “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt says we’re failing children — and takes a firm stand against tech.


Imagine that your 10-year-old daughter gets chosen to join the first human settlement on Mars. She’s ready to blast off but needs your permission.

You learn that the billionaire architect of the mission hasn’t considered the risks posed by the red planet’s toxic environment, including kids developing “deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes and brains.”

Would you let her go?

It’s with this “Black Mirror”-esque morality play that Jonathan Haidt sets the tone for everything that follows in his erudite, engaging, combative, crusading new book, “The Anxious Generation.” Mars is a stand-in for the noxious world of social media. If we’d say no to that perilous planet, we should of course say no to this other alien universe.

Instead, we hem and haw about the risks, failing to keep our kids safely grounded in nondigital reality. The result can no longer be ignored: deformities of the brain and heart — anxiety, depression, suicidality — plaguing our youth.

Haidt, a social psychologist, is a man on a mission to correct this collective failure. His first step is to convince us that youth are experiencing a “tidal wave” of suffering. In a single chapter and with a dozen carefully curated graphs, he depicts increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens.

The timing of this is key because it coincides with the rise of what he terms phone-based childhood. From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, smartphones, bristling with social media apps and fueled by high-speed internet, became ubiquitous. Their siren call, addictive by design and perpetually distracting, quickly spirited kids to worlds beyond our control.

It wasn’t phones alone. A second phenomenon coincided with the rise of the machines: the decline of play-based childhood. This change started in the 1980s, with kidnapping fears and stranger danger driving parents toward fear-based overparenting. This decimated children’s unsupervised, self-directed playtime and restricted their freedom of movement.

With parents and children alike stuck in “Defend mode,” kids were in turn blocked from discovery mode, where they face challenges, take risks and explore — the building blocks of anti-fragility, or the ability to grow stronger through adversity. Compared to a generation ago, our children are spending more time on their phones and less on, well, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. While fewer hospital visits and teen pregnancies are obvious wins, less risk-taking overall could stunt independence.


That’s why parents, he argues, should become more like gardeners (to use Alison Gopnik’s formulation) who cultivate conditions for children to independently grow and flourish, and less like carpenters, who work obsessively to control, design and shape their offspring. We’ve overprotected our kids in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual one, leaving them too much to their own devices, literally and figuratively.

It’s this one-two punch of smartphones plus overprotective parenting, Haidt posits, that led to the great rewiring of childhood and the associated harms driving mental illness: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. He has a lot to say about each of these.

Here is where his ideas and interpretation of research become contentious. Few would disagree that unhealthy use of social media contributes to psychological problems, or that parenting plays a role. But mental illness is complex: a multidetermined synergy between risk and resilience. Clinical scientists don’t look for magic-bullet explanations. They seek to understand how, for whom and in what contexts psychological problems and resilience emerge.

Haidt does recognize that nuance complicates the issue. Online — but not in the book — he and colleagues report that adolescent girls from “wealthy, individualistic and secular nations” who are “less tightly bound into strong communities” are accounting for much of the crisis. So perhaps smartphones alone haven’t destroyed an entire generation. And maybe context matters. But this rarely comes through in the book.

The final sections offer advice for reducing harmful, predatory aspects of technology and helping parents, educators and communities become more gardener and less carpenter. Some tips will be familiar (ban phones from school; give kids more independence). Other advice might give readers pause (no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16). Yet, taken together, it’s a reasonable list.

Still, Haidt is a digital absolutist, skeptical that healthy relationships between youth and social media are possible. On this point, he even rebuffs the U.S. Surgeon General’s more measured position. We’re better off banning phones in schools altogether, he asserts. Because, as he quotes a middle school principal, schools without phone bans are like a “zombie apocalypse” with “all these kids in the hallways not talking to each other.”

Whether or not you agree with the zombie apocalypse diagnosis, it’s worth considering the failure of prior absolutist stances. Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No drug campaign? A public health case study in what not to do. During the AIDS crisis, fear mongering and abstinence demands didn’t prevent unsafe sex. Remember the pandemic? Telling Americans to wear masks at all times undermined public health officials’ ability to convince them to wear masks when it really mattered.

Digital absolutism also risks blinding us to other causes — and solutions. In 1960s Britain, annual suicide rates plummeted. Many believed the drop was due to improved antidepressant medications or life just getting better. They weren’t looking in the right place. The phaseout of coal-based gas for household stoves blocked the most common method of suicide: gas poisoning. Means restriction, because it gives the despairing one less opportunity for self-harm, has since become a key strategy for suicide prevention.

“I’ve been struggling to figure out,” Haidt writes, “what is happening to us? How is technology changing us?” His answer: “The phone-based life produces spiritual degradation, not just in adolescents, but in all of us.” In other words: Choose human purity and sanctity over the repugnant forces of technology. This dialectic is compelling, but the moral matrix of the problem — and the scientific foundations — are more complex.

Yes, digital absolutism might convince policymakers to change laws and increase regulation. It might be a wake-up call for some parents. But it also might backfire, plunging us into defense mode and blocking our path of discovery toward healthy and empowered digital citizenship.

Just curious if you have kids under 16. Sort of a weird post if you dont

Weird? In what way?
I'm guessing you don't have kids around 16.. I could be wrong I guess

What's "weird" if I don't?
 
NYTimes Gift article:

Coddling Plus Devices? Unequivocal Disaster for Our Kids.​

In “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt says we’re failing children — and takes a firm stand against tech.


Imagine that your 10-year-old daughter gets chosen to join the first human settlement on Mars. She’s ready to blast off but needs your permission.

You learn that the billionaire architect of the mission hasn’t considered the risks posed by the red planet’s toxic environment, including kids developing “deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes and brains.”

Would you let her go?

It’s with this “Black Mirror”-esque morality play that Jonathan Haidt sets the tone for everything that follows in his erudite, engaging, combative, crusading new book, “The Anxious Generation.” Mars is a stand-in for the noxious world of social media. If we’d say no to that perilous planet, we should of course say no to this other alien universe.

Instead, we hem and haw about the risks, failing to keep our kids safely grounded in nondigital reality. The result can no longer be ignored: deformities of the brain and heart — anxiety, depression, suicidality — plaguing our youth.

Haidt, a social psychologist, is a man on a mission to correct this collective failure. His first step is to convince us that youth are experiencing a “tidal wave” of suffering. In a single chapter and with a dozen carefully curated graphs, he depicts increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens.

The timing of this is key because it coincides with the rise of what he terms phone-based childhood. From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, smartphones, bristling with social media apps and fueled by high-speed internet, became ubiquitous. Their siren call, addictive by design and perpetually distracting, quickly spirited kids to worlds beyond our control.

It wasn’t phones alone. A second phenomenon coincided with the rise of the machines: the decline of play-based childhood. This change started in the 1980s, with kidnapping fears and stranger danger driving parents toward fear-based overparenting. This decimated children’s unsupervised, self-directed playtime and restricted their freedom of movement.

With parents and children alike stuck in “Defend mode,” kids were in turn blocked from discovery mode, where they face challenges, take risks and explore — the building blocks of anti-fragility, or the ability to grow stronger through adversity. Compared to a generation ago, our children are spending more time on their phones and less on, well, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. While fewer hospital visits and teen pregnancies are obvious wins, less risk-taking overall could stunt independence.


That’s why parents, he argues, should become more like gardeners (to use Alison Gopnik’s formulation) who cultivate conditions for children to independently grow and flourish, and less like carpenters, who work obsessively to control, design and shape their offspring. We’ve overprotected our kids in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual one, leaving them too much to their own devices, literally and figuratively.

It’s this one-two punch of smartphones plus overprotective parenting, Haidt posits, that led to the great rewiring of childhood and the associated harms driving mental illness: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. He has a lot to say about each of these.

Here is where his ideas and interpretation of research become contentious. Few would disagree that unhealthy use of social media contributes to psychological problems, or that parenting plays a role. But mental illness is complex: a multidetermined synergy between risk and resilience. Clinical scientists don’t look for magic-bullet explanations. They seek to understand how, for whom and in what contexts psychological problems and resilience emerge.

Haidt does recognize that nuance complicates the issue. Online — but not in the book — he and colleagues report that adolescent girls from “wealthy, individualistic and secular nations” who are “less tightly bound into strong communities” are accounting for much of the crisis. So perhaps smartphones alone haven’t destroyed an entire generation. And maybe context matters. But this rarely comes through in the book.

The final sections offer advice for reducing harmful, predatory aspects of technology and helping parents, educators and communities become more gardener and less carpenter. Some tips will be familiar (ban phones from school; give kids more independence). Other advice might give readers pause (no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16). Yet, taken together, it’s a reasonable list.

Still, Haidt is a digital absolutist, skeptical that healthy relationships between youth and social media are possible. On this point, he even rebuffs the U.S. Surgeon General’s more measured position. We’re better off banning phones in schools altogether, he asserts. Because, as he quotes a middle school principal, schools without phone bans are like a “zombie apocalypse” with “all these kids in the hallways not talking to each other.”

Whether or not you agree with the zombie apocalypse diagnosis, it’s worth considering the failure of prior absolutist stances. Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No drug campaign? A public health case study in what not to do. During the AIDS crisis, fear mongering and abstinence demands didn’t prevent unsafe sex. Remember the pandemic? Telling Americans to wear masks at all times undermined public health officials’ ability to convince them to wear masks when it really mattered.

Digital absolutism also risks blinding us to other causes — and solutions. In 1960s Britain, annual suicide rates plummeted. Many believed the drop was due to improved antidepressant medications or life just getting better. They weren’t looking in the right place. The phaseout of coal-based gas for household stoves blocked the most common method of suicide: gas poisoning. Means restriction, because it gives the despairing one less opportunity for self-harm, has since become a key strategy for suicide prevention.

“I’ve been struggling to figure out,” Haidt writes, “what is happening to us? How is technology changing us?” His answer: “The phone-based life produces spiritual degradation, not just in adolescents, but in all of us.” In other words: Choose human purity and sanctity over the repugnant forces of technology. This dialectic is compelling, but the moral matrix of the problem — and the scientific foundations — are more complex.

Yes, digital absolutism might convince policymakers to change laws and increase regulation. It might be a wake-up call for some parents. But it also might backfire, plunging us into defense mode and blocking our path of discovery toward healthy and empowered digital citizenship.

Just curious if you have kids under 16. Sort of a weird post if you dont

Weird? In what way?
I'm guessing you don't have kids around 16.. I could be wrong I guess
Very odd take there.
 
Unless my reading comprehension sucks (entirely possible these days), your poll choices don't have any room for the "limiting" part of your title.

I'm in favor of limiting it for young people (I don't know what the correct age would be - or if there is one).

And, given the performance of the PSF here, I'm also in favor of limiting it for adults.

No worries. Tweaked the title to line up with the body of the post and the question.
 
I'm assuming when you say "limiting" that you actually mean "limiting via government law" as opposed to "parental limiting".

For me, the devil is really in the details. How will the law define social media? How will the law be enforced? How will the limits be imposed in the first place? Some will say I'm quibbling about details, but I see this as a really close call to begin with and all of those things have the potential to significantly swing the cost/benefit calculation of the equation.

Yes. Limiting by law in the same way gambling websites limit underage people.
 
More on the "Collective problems require collective action" thought.

On the podcast, the author talked about a parent that relayed this.

The parent asked her daughter if she thought it would be a good idea if she were not allowed to access social media.

The daughter's reply was telling. "Would my friends also not be allowed to have it?"

Mom said "yes".

Daughter than said yes, she'd prefer no social media if it applied to everyone.
 
I’m in favor of it. I’m not sure it’s possible without some sort of North Korean mandates/rules on the internet. That train has left the station. A long time ago.

For context, my daughter is 17. She was the last person in her friend group to get a phone. The last to get the social media apps. We made the decisions to allow them/get her a phone because she was an outcast without them. She was out of the loop and unable to communicate with her friends. This is not good for a 13-14 year old girl. I heavily monitored her phone usage for the first few years and we constantly had conversations about the dangers online. Covid was another factor. The lack of in person socializing drove the need for virtual socializing for all of us.

I think 14 is a more reasonable age but like in the other thread, how do we enforce it? Government restrictions aren’t the answer IMHO.
 
Trust but verify.

I monitor my 13 yo 7th grade daughter's online activity with great success. My wife and I can insert ourselves when we see something going a bit sideways. Granted, she's a sponge, willing to hear us out and integrate our input into her behavior.

Thankfully my 11 yo 5th grade son does not care. Fortnite is the issue there and unfortunately I'm an enabler cause I like playing with him.
 
I'm assuming when you say "limiting" that you actually mean "limiting via government law" as opposed to "parental limiting".

For me, the devil is really in the details. How will the law define social media? How will the law be enforced? How will the limits be imposed in the first place? Some will say I'm quibbling about details, but I see this as a really close call to begin with and all of those things have the potential to significantly swing the cost/benefit calculation of the equation.

Yes. Limiting by law in the same way gambling websites limit underage people.
by law, i could be in favor of, say 10, 11, 12.

13 and over= parents' discretion
 
I’m in favor of it. I’m not sure it’s possible without some sort of North Korean mandates/rules on the internet. That train has left the station. A long time ago.

For context, my daughter is 17. She was the last person in her friend group to get a phone. The last to get the social media apps. We made the decisions to allow them/get her a phone because she was an outcast without them. She was out of the loop and unable to communicate with her friends. This is not good for a 13-14 year old girl. I heavily monitored her phone usage for the first few years and we constantly had conversations about the dangers online. Covid was another factor. The lack of in person socializing drove the need for virtual socializing for all of us.

I think 14 is a more reasonable age but like in the other thread, how do we enforce it? Government restrictions aren’t the answer IMHO.
I'm 51, pretty much the same age of most around here. When I was in middle school, I was on the phone with my buddies to arrange pick-up football and basketball games, trips to the mall or the high school football game, or just to mess around. I was also on the phone with girls, talking about who knows what, sometimes an hour at a time. I learned a lot about communication and relationships then.

We don't have a landline so how are our kids going to talk to arrange social gatherings or just shoot the ****? I don't want to broker that stuff and I don't want my kids using my phone, and I want her to have those conversations with friends: what's the homework, who has a crush on who, are you going to the game tomorrow? So we got my daughter a phone at 13, and she's doing what I did 40 years ago, but on Facetime. It's important, but needs to be monitored.
 
I'll try to find some of the article with historical correlation to youth suicide, depression etc....but buy by now I think most know about this.
Yeah I don’t have the answers but we need to do something because we have created a very unhealthy world to raise children in.
 
Is a chat forum social media?

I would say yes. And that will be a challenge.

But like with all of it, not being able to fix 100% doesn't mean we can't try and fix what we can.
Some people would make the case that chat forums and places like reddit or Discord aren't true social media. So this is where I think those "studies" might be skewed a little bit. Forums can be a good place for community and personal growth. Sure there will be some negative stuff, bullying and inappropriate content, but then a restriction is also advocating taking away a lifeline for some kids.

Its easy to focus on the bad, but there is a lot of good on the internet for teenagers. I'm firmly "on the fence" with this.

ETA: You run a more wholesome website than most of the internet. Would you support a law regulating who could use this site? Would you change things if there was an age cutoff?
 
100% in favor of limiting social media for children. There's no question the effects of it are damaging.

We didn't allow our son to get a phone until he was a freshman in HS. We are doing the same thing with our girls, one of which is in 5th grade now.

The problem with that? She's already been the ONLY one without a phone for at least a couple years. It's frustrating because we are somehow the extreme outliers. It also means these girls are primarily communicating with each other outside of school in a way she can't. I hate that for her, but we still feel it's better than the alternative. Especially when we hear of issues/situations that inevitably come up with kids and their phone use.
My daughter was one of the later ones but it was probably 7th grade when she was going to be taking the bus and coming home by herself. But she did have a tablet at home with no social media. So what we did is there's an app. You can create a phone number that allowed her to least text some kids here and there so that was a good alternative
 
100% in favor of limiting social media for children. There's no question the effects of it are damaging.

We didn't allow our son to get a phone until he was a freshman in HS. We are doing the same thing with our girls, one of which is in 5th grade now.

The problem with that? She's already been the ONLY one without a phone for at least a couple years. It's frustrating because we are somehow the extreme outliers. It also means these girls are primarily communicating with each other outside of school in a way she can't. I hate that for her, but we still feel it's better than the alternative. Especially when we hear of issues/situations that inevitably come up with kids and their phone use.
I voted absolutely against kids under 16 having access to social media, hypocritically because we allowed both our daughters access before then. One handled it very well, her younger sister (by 5 years) had some very troubling experiences because of it. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have given either phones until 16 or older.

Gian makes the point though, it HAS to be a collective approach or it simply won't work. Even when we took the youngest's phone, a friend gave her a burner and we caught her using that. The addiction was/is real and terrible.

I encourage anyone with children to listen to this podcast.
 
Yeah I think texting and FaceTiming friends is cool. I would want my kids doing that. It’s the communicating in an open network where they might be talking with strangers I don’t like. There’s absolutely adults and older teens on Snapchat that just go around adding kids and trying to develop relationships.
 
Interesting topic/discussion because you have the parental side vs the government side.

My first thought was no I am not for restricting it and that parents need to actually parent. But as I think about it, We as parents have a wide variety of views on certain things based on how and when we grew up. I'm GenX, grew up without cell phones, social media, seat belts laws, didn't have to wear a bike helmet and played outside until the lights came on. My world view is different than others. I understand bullying (ours was in person) and how it's evolved in the digital age. We talk to our 14 year old daughter about it. We have access to her phone and work to teach her the good and bad of social media. But not everyone does for a variety of reasons, good and bad. And as I think further, we have allowed the government to set laws and restrict certain things based on age as well as under the idea of "protecting ourselves from ourselves". With the lack of similar views across the parental range, is social media something that needs to fall under the government's oversight?

Food for thought for sure. I still lean no, but am open to more discussion.
(And I am not sure any of that made sense but its where my mind went)
 
Yeah I think texting and FaceTiming friends is cool. I would want my kids doing that. It’s the communicating in an open network where they might be talking with strangers I don’t like. There’s absolutely adults and older teens on Snapchat that just go around adding kids and trying to develop relationships.
there are two sides to the issue:

1) Limiting the access for predators (we all understand the problems here)

2) Limiting the access for cyber bullying (most parents do not understand the mental side of this)

The second is a far bigger problem in our society, leading to significant depression and some times suicide, specifically for teen girls.
 
Interesting topic/discussion because you have the parental side vs the government side.

My first thought was no I am not for restricting it and that parents need to actually parent. But as I think about it, We as parents have a wide variety of views on certain things based on how and when we grew up. I'm GenX, grew up without cell phones, social media, seat belts laws, didn't have to wear a bike helmet and played outside until the lights came on. My world view is different than others. I understand bullying (ours was in person) and how it's evolved in the digital age. We talk to our 14 year old daughter about it. We have access to her phone and work to teach her the good and bad of social media. But not everyone does for a variety of reasons, good and bad. And as I think further, we have allowed the government to set laws and restrict certain things based on age as well as under the idea of "protecting ourselves from ourselves". With the lack of similar views across the parental range, is social media something that needs to fall under the government's oversight?

Food for thought for sure. I still lean no, but am open to more discussion.
(And I am not sure any of that made sense but its where my mind went)
I'd be in favor of the government assigning an agency to study the situation and provide hard facts. A lot of the concern seems subjective. Even if we can point to kids today being unhappier or less adjusted to society is that all social media's fault? I think a strong case can be made that it is social media's fault, but I'd like to look at it from all angles before regulations occur.
 
I know a lot of people blame the internet, social media, and phones for the loss of what we would probably refer to as unstructured play time, or in more common parlance, the fondness many of us have for the days when we took off on our bikes with friends and came home when it was dark. However, data shows pretty clearly that unstructured play time has been in a fairly steady decline since the '80s. Internet and social media are partly to blame, but we can also blame increasing focus on organized sports (travel teams, private coaching/lessons, year-round practices, etc.), the media sensationalizing a few child disappearances in the 80s, and other factors.
 
I know a lot of people blame the internet, social media, and phones for the loss of what we would probably refer to as unstructured play time, or in more common parlance, the fondness many of us have for the days when we took off on our bikes with friends and came home when it was dark. However, data shows pretty clearly that unstructured play time has been in a fairly steady decline since the '80s. Internet and social media are partly to blame, but we can also blame increasing focus on organized sports (travel teams, private coaching/lessons, year-round practices, etc.), the media sensationalizing a few child disappearances in the 80s, and other factors.
I grew up in the 80's and we spent as much time outside as possible. The biggest changes I remember seeing during that time that brought us under a roof were:
1. cable tv
2. video games

Keep in mind I grew up in a small OH farming town of about 5,000 with one stop light. The first computer I saw was my senior year in college in 1989 and it required a stack of cards. My first job I got issued a Compaq Lunchbox computer with the bright orange screen that cooked my eyes. My frame of reference for all of this is light years different than what my kids and kids of today have/are going through.
 
I’m completely opposed. This should fall on parents. When the government starts deciding what we as citizens can and cannot access, we will have much bigger problems. First it’s social media for kids. Then it’s porn for kids. Then it’s porn for adults. Then it’s whatever the far right (or far left) deem inappropriate.

How is this enforced? So this would mean everyone would have to show proof of age in order to access social media? Including adults? What happens when “they” decide to raise the age to 21? What happens when “they” decide social media is just too harmful to society and decide to make it all illegal?

I hate this.
 
ETA: You run a more wholesome website than most of the internet. Would you support a law regulating who could use this site? Would you change things if there was an age cutoff?

That's a good question. Like anything, it would be weighing out the good against the bad.

In this case, I'd be ok with a law that didn't allow under 16 year olds on the forum.
 
I’m completely opposed. This should fall on parents. When the government starts deciding what we as citizens can and cannot access, we will have much bigger problems. First it’s social media for kids. Then it’s porn for kids. Then it’s porn for adults. Then it’s whatever the far right (or far left) deem inappropriate.

How is this enforced? So this would mean everyone would have to show proof of age in order to access social media? Including adults? What happens when “they” decide to raise the age to 21? What happens when “they” decide social media is just too harmful to society and decide to make it all illegal?

I hate this.

Thanks. Are you ok with the government deciding other things?

Like the Legal age to buy alcohol? Or the Legal age to buy cigarettes?
 
More on the "Collective problems require collective action" thought.

On the podcast, the author talked about a parent that relayed this.

The parent asked her daughter if she thought it would be a good idea if she were not allowed to access social media.

The daughter's reply was telling. "Would my friends also not be allowed to have it?"

Mom said "yes".

Daughter than said yes, she'd prefer no social media if it applied to everyone.
What do you think is telling about this?
 
I’m completely opposed. This should fall on parents. When the government starts deciding what we as citizens can and cannot access, we will have much bigger problems. First it’s social media for kids. Then it’s porn for kids. Then it’s porn for adults. Then it’s whatever the far right (or far left) deem inappropriate.

How is this enforced? So this would mean everyone would have to show proof of age in order to access social media? Including adults? What happens when “they” decide to raise the age to 21? What happens when “they” decide social media is just too harmful to society and decide to make it all illegal?

I hate this.

Thanks. Are you ok with the government deciding other things?

Like the Legal age to buy alcohol? Or the Legal age to buy cigarettes?
Yes. I’m fine with that.

First, those are things done outside the home where parents may not be present.
Second, those are proven, physically harmful substances.
Third, none of those have the affect of infringing on citizens’ access to information and data.
 
I’m completely opposed. This should fall on parents. When the government starts deciding what we as citizens can and cannot access, we will have much bigger problems. First it’s social media for kids. Then it’s porn for kids. Then it’s porn for adults. Then it’s whatever the far right (or far left) deem inappropriate.

How is this enforced? So this would mean everyone would have to show proof of age in order to access social media? Including adults? What happens when “they” decide to raise the age to 21? What happens when “they” decide social media is just too harmful to society and decide to make it all illegal?

I hate this.

Thanks. Are you ok with the government deciding other things?

Like the Legal age to buy alcohol? Or the Legal age to buy cigarettes?
Yes. I’m fine with that.

First, those are things done outside the home where parents may not be present.
Second, those are proven, physically harmful substances.
Third, none of those have the affect of infringing on citizens’ access to information and data.
What about gambling (online)? What about p0rn?

And, to your last point, I would argue limiting social media is not limiting "access to information and data". Online access != social media.
 
100% in favor of limiting social media for children. There's no question the effects of it are damaging.

We didn't allow our son to get a phone until he was a freshman in HS. We are doing the same thing with our girls, one of which is in 5th grade now.

The problem with that? She's already been the ONLY one without a phone for at least a couple years. It's frustrating because we are somehow the extreme outliers. It also means these girls are primarily communicating with each other outside of school in a way she can't. I hate that for her, but we still feel it's better than the alternative. Especially when we hear of issues/situations that inevitably come up with kids and their phone use.

The tipping point for us was when our daughter got involved in club sports at 11 and was essentially an outcast with no connection to her teammates. We got her a phone at 12, in 7th grade. Also by far the last one in her class to have a phone. She has an instagram account because it’s essentially required for her club volleyball team.
 

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