Must've been a while since being a child, huh? I mean, I get where you're coming from, but your ideological stance not gonna help your child at all.

As opposed to the stance (admittedly also ideological, but I agree with this one) that facebook and all its subsidiaries should gtfo children's lives.

We agree that social media should GTFO of children's lives at least! I'm just responding to the parent who said the kid's "friend groups are arranging to meet in the park or whatever via WhatsApp". If they are arranging these things and leaving the kid out, that doesn't sound like very friendly behavior to me.

Back when I was a kid and dinosaurs roamed the earth, we made after-school plans in 4th period math, because we were all in the same class. If my friends suddenly started making plans in a class where they knew I wasn't present, I'd start questioning whether they were really friends.

Do you really not remember being a kid? What your parents allow you to do, have, how they present you all has a very significant influence on how other kids perceive you and whether you will be accepted as a friend.

Being a kid without friends because your parents sucked at teaching you how to integrate into society, is very very hard. And allowing your children to be part of other children's social lives, that matters. Even if that means joining shitty social networks.

Does that situation suck, yes. But don't put this on the kids. Please don't make children suffer because of your views on an idealistic society.

The social norm these days is really different. It's not about your friends suddenly starting a new, exclusive behavior; its about a slow migration of the people in your social world to a tech platform you don't have access to. And kids do get left out because of this--not for nefarious reasons, but because they're just not going to be in the loop for a significant part of the social interactions that are taking place.

Thanks. I suppose maybe I'm just getting elderly and out of touch. Gotta be open to that possibility. I know kids can be cruel but wow. Even if not nefarious, it's callous. In my day you were excluded because you were weird, now it's because you aren't hooked to a particular corporate-mediated communication medium. Sometimes I think we deserve the mild dystopia we have built for ourselves!

This is kind-of a meta comment, but I expect that the platforms would actually benefit from this kind of defeatism in older generations, so I'd encourage you not to concede to it.

Yes, platforms can influence social interaction a lot - but ultimately, regardless of age, we're all still human.

I think most people learn to understand what's fair and unfair in terms of inclusivity, even if it takes longer in some situations. We'll figure out better solutions.

It's almost as if there's a pattern in the way that social networks grow, attract users (perhaps identifying people who are likely to draw other users on-board), and then atrophy after being seen as 'outdated' -- usually around the same time that a new platform happens to be appearing.

I think for a lot of our communications, elements of 4th period math have now moved to a group chat.

"They're probably not his friends." is right. The problem is that being "the weird kid who's strict parents won't let him have a phone" could mean he won't have any real friends. Kids can be harsh, and being different to everyone else doesn't help.

Maybe he'll have friends who'll put the additional effort in to copy him in on email or phone the home land-line. But maybe he won't. Seems a big risk to take.

You're asking a lot of immature, status-obsessed humans to go out of their way to accommodate someone. They might not even be "friends" yet, just social groups that one might like to be a part of. How are you meant to make friends if you can't participate in popular bonding exercises in the first place? WhatsApp groups are social venues in their own right.