What you’re describing doesn’t sound like parenting to me, it’s giving in to peer pressure. From kids. And you’re supposed to be an adult who already knows what’s right and wrong. If your kid’s peers all gain a liking for drugs or gambling or some other vice and they bully your child for not partaking, are you going to tell your child to participate? No, what you should do is show them the right way and to what’s good for them in the long term, even if it’s difficult for them to see it now because of their youth.

I have been bullied by losers the whole school time, because of something as simple as my name and being smarter. I managed to develop a strong resistance to certain things and learned to go my own way, questioning the mainstream, including dealing with network effect and peer pressure to do things I do not want to participate in. For children in primary school it can be terrible.

However, I can easily imagine, what can happen, if a parent does not support their child as much as my parents did support me. I think except for exceptionally strong independent children, there needs to be a balance in children's lives. If almost everyone in their social circles is basically telling them, that they suck, because they are out of the loop, then it needs parents to support them and make them feel that they do not suck.

Parent, after an age, has very small influence in what kids do. Kids will be spending most of their time with peers, not with you.

Anyway, to respond to your points:

> What you’re describing doesn’t sound like parenting to me, it’s giving in to peer pressure.

What I'm describing is knowing how society works and planning around it. It doesn't mean that I would give unrestricted access to social medias, it also doesn't mean that I would not be there to guide my child about how to use them, what the dangers are etc...

I'm saying that straight up abstinence is not a good idea and doesn't work if your child lives in a society that doesn't abstain. There are also perverse effects whereby preventing your child from completely accessing social medias, you end up with a child who just hides it from you.

> If your kid’s peers all gain a liking for drugs or gambling or some other vice and they bully your child for not partaking, are you going to tell your child to participate?

I'd probably consider switching my child to a different school.

fwiw fighting is the only thing that mitigated bullying for me too

I was about to say teach your child self-defense and how to fight, and the last sentence of that same paragraph just proved my point.

Look, as a parent, your goal should not be to teach your child how to avoid bullying. That's not within your control, nor your child, and in the real world, even once your child is grown up, there's always some moron out there in the world who's going to bully you or want to beat you up, sometimes for no reason, sometimes for not being like them. That's not an excuse to teach your child to be like other children just for the sake of conformity because that is the wrong thing to teach. You teach them how to fight back when people beat them up for being the way that they are. None of your other points matter against that.

The thing too is that I'm also not convinced abstinence on something that's part of society and that your kid will have when they grow up is that useful anyway. Social media is unfortunately needed to function in society so learning to use it reasonably (and not in an addictive manner) has value too.

That said, yes I absolutely will teach my son to fight back, violence in some circumstances is a useful tool to have.

No, wrong again. It’s not necessary to function and there already are secure messaging apps through which kids and adults can communicate. You don’t have to have a Facebook page. You don’t need an IG profile of portraits where you pose like a model. You don’t need to make funny Tiktok videos.

This entire issue is being murkied by adults who are projecting their deep-seated bullying issues as value judgments on how to raise children when evidently they haven’t sorted themselves out and they are already having kids.

Are you a parent yourself? Just wondering.

It's at the heart of socialization itself, which is an important part of growing up healthy.

The analogies with drugs and gambling are also misplaced, because these things are illegal and/or generally frowned upon by parents, the legal system, and society as a whole. In other words, the exact opposite of what's happening here.

And, those things are illegal/ frowned-upon for reasons you respect enough to use them as examples. That should actually help you see the point?