I teach fifth grade at an upscale private school. None of the children in my homeroom have cell phones; one has an apple watch.
I think more parents are becoming aware of the problem, which in turn makes social pressure less of an issue.
No social media or smart phones until 16 y/o.
Also making sure kids have friends in their community is a plus. Involve them in school programs, help guide them as they find their interest.
For love of god, don’t give your kid an unlocked iPad with YT/TT/FB/Twitch/kick.
Social media does some harm. Being socially excluded does far _more_ harm. Which starts to happen in middle school.
So as a parent, you have three choices:
1. Deal with the emotional consequences of your kid being systematically excluded and having few/no friends.
2. Construct an alternative school/community with like-minded parents and kids.
3. Just give them the damn device, with screen time restrictions and the understanding that you'll be monitoring their activity. Follow through and be involved in their social life, with open and honest conversations about what happens online.
It turns out most good parents these days opt for #3.
We don't allow our kids to use social media. Some of their friends do, and some of them do not.
Doesn't seem to be a problem in any way.
Outside the classroom there are still plenty of in-person activities from informal gatherings, to sports teams, to clubs and civic events, and in those situations, the few people who are sitting on their phones are the ones more separated from the rest.
I think a lot of us who were early involved in building some of the web that led beyond Web 2.0 into algorithmically-driven media consumption see the massive dangers, and have probably sometimes even overreacted in terms of kids' access to it, but it's certainly better than the alternative.
Phones ARE banned from school and the kids DO socialize in person there.
But then they all get home and stay in touch. Some have phones, some have tablets, some just their school-issued laptops. But they're constantly talking, 1:1, in various overlapping group chats. They organize getting together in the neighborhood or meeting up elsewhere over the weekend. It's where a lot of the drama happens (which isn't great.)
If you prevent your kid from accessing this communication layer, it will 100% affect their social life.
Some degree of device pragmatism is inevitable of course. But I don't think my kids will need a smartwatch until high school, or a phone till very late HS. In other words, I think there is a balance of these options possible.
Jonathan Haidt gives a lot of hope here, as depressing as "Anxious Generation" usually is.
A lot of them coordinate hangouts via social media, unfortunately. It’s a tough balance.
We actually have banned social media until 16, but fortunately iMessage was the defacto coordination and we accepted that.
No TikTok until adults, for a host of reasons.
I’ve heard the stuff some of his friends with more internet permissive parents parrot from YouTube and stuff and honestly it’s frightening.
As for the good stuff that’s actually out there, I download for consumption offline.
As someone who grew up in the 90s and learned touch type playing StarCraft online, the internet is not for kids.
...I'm sorry, I have to point out, you're posting this on what is basically a social media site.
Hacker News does not have the feed-driven approach of other social media that is designed to generate addiction/engagement amongst users; we just like to talk about fun stuff. Hacker News is more of an old-school forum, where we talk about topics, rather than being a true 'social media' experience where you can talk about anything/yourself as a topic.
Moreover, the average baseline of discussions here is much higher and more intellectually-driven than discussions on X, IG, FB, and so on. That makes it keenly distinct from other social media designed for more base discussions.
The most amusing thing is that discussions on reddit, tumblr, x, etc include the very same kind of denials that gp comment is eliciting regarding those sites being social media.
Social media includes content sharing, discussions, and echo chambers, all of which are present here in abundance. Certain content gets promoted over others, and each site assumes see itself above others.
> (uncountable) Applications or websites allowing users to share content and communicate with one another via the Internet.
and HN:
[x] is a website
[x] allowing users to share content
[x] allowing users communicate
[x] via the internet
Perhaps you should invent a new term for whatever you're talking about? Depending on what you want, I might suggest "algorithmic feeds" (actually that appears to be an extant term, but it might be what you want), or "multimedia social media" (to exclude pure-text sites like this).
Actually, that's a decent point; it should probably add something about being primarily focused on the user interactions. That is, Wikipedia isn't social media, but I'd hesitate to say that the talk pages aren't.
> Basically nobody outside of HN would consider HN social media if they saw it.
And on that point we definitely disagree, though I suppose I could ask around. What do you think makes it not?
Forums have been around longer than the WWW and are more about interacting with topics than with particular members. Some let you follow or PM someone, but that's not the primary function, and HN doesn't even have that. Some social sites have expanded to cover forum-like roles too, like Facebook (Pages).
But most people won't think that far. They'll see HN and say nah, this isn't social media.
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and the like (I don’t know of there’s something else new). The algorithmic crap where you’ll find AI generated videos of a fake Elon Musk taking to visit sense website or wherever the outrage du jour happens.
Adolescent life is coordinated online now, and you will literally be handicapping your kid if you take a hard line.
Being excluded is not setting them up on a positive trajectory.
Also I never said I’ll never let him use the internet, but it’s not for 7 year olds.
She is an avid reader, and reads for hours a day, re-reads the same books, and on YouTube she mostly consumes recipes, book reviews and book related content (like fanfic) so by most standards she's pretty good.
That being said, once she has a phone, she will not be allowed to use it in the house at all.
Our youngest has fewer issues with impulse control, and uses her iPad for things like Duolingo, Toca Life and Finch the self-care pet and messaging friends on iMessage or Facebook Messenger kids. She doesn't have access to YouTube, but does have YT kids. She likes the tiny cakes channel and regularly brings me the videos because I find them very enjoyable also.
They're both very heavily supervised and when they demonstrate there are problems, we take away their devices.
My eldest has had an apple watch SE since year 7 and we use that for communicating, and she can get in touch with friends that way. I also bought a 4g nokia with has the SIM for the same number in it (I had to use my backup iPhone to set up her watch) and if she is going somewhere further or longer than a school day she takes that for safety reasons.
My youngest will follow the same trajectory, we talk about the risks with them often, and they aren't allowed phones at school (by the school) and have had regular online safety sessions provided by the school.
Australia is also seriously considering legislation to criminalise allowing children under 16 from having any social media accounts.
Note that we only got them iPads in 2020 because of home schooling, prior to that we had given them iPhone 5s each to listen to podcasts and music. We always used screentime controls, and had them set up with family sharing and their own iCloud accounts, they have never (even as children) been allowed to use either mine or my wife's phones, we never let them watch or listen to anything during dinner or on car rides under 2 hours (a rule that still stands).
She is NOT going to be touching social media or similar until at LEAST high school.
Says you. Said me (several times). I failed. Got circumvented by three teenagers blessed with the same inquisitiveness that got me into tech.
Case in point, the massive failure of D.A.R.E. drug abuse prevention programs for children and teenagers in the US. Yay propaganda.
Turns out that even when the advice itself is decent, you can easily sabotage it all in the long term by using those types of propaganda methods. All just for a short-term “win”.
Curious why parents don't limit their kids screen time.
Not 'fitting in' is not an excuse.
This is a parent problem, not a TiktTok problem.
They are fine, do well in school, and are about to be venturing out of our house with much optimism.
I understand every child is unique. But you should understand your children's weaknesses and strengths, and build restrictions around that.