I went to a school with over 1,200 students and still had no friends. Kids can be extremely cruel to their neurodivergent peers. I wasn’t able to learn social skills until university .

Things would have been a lot different if I had access to the internet.

I’m sorry to hear that happened to you.

Unfortunately, the data about mental health outcomes of teens who consume social media is not positive, so I’m not sure things would have been better.

Xanga allowed kids to connect and be social that otherwise weren’t able to in high school. But do we want to raise a society of Xanga kids, or do we want to solve the root problems why they couldn’t be social in the first place?

(Or am I asking the same exact question two different ways, a distinction without a difference?)

> No one need tiktok.

And we should not underestimate teenagers: if they have something better to do than swiping on TikTok, they do it. Parents must help them have better things to do.

But still, if all their friends know and talk about the TikTok trends, they will feel disconnected if they have no clue. That's how I meant that they "need" it. They need to "connect" as in having the same references as their friends.

That’s kind of like telling parents that they should tell their kids to eat their vegetables when sitting next to McDonalds.

Nah, it is more like parents telling their children to eat healthy, while they themself go to McDonalds.

Most parents are addicted to smartphone and don't go with their children outside. I would start the investigation into root causes right there.

So... in the end it's like telling the parents to eat healthy to show their kid that they should also eat healthy...

I didn't expect what I wrote to be that confusing.

Yes, and? Parenting is an active job. It can be done. Take a lesson from Steve Jobs and say "no" a lot.

And Mark Zuckerburg.

> They have more than enough social contacts when they go to school.

If you ever found yourself being the "weird kid" in a small town high school, you might see it different.

I found myself being the "weird kid", and I'm glad I had the Internet in general, but I'm also glad the Internet wasn't yet advanced enough to seem like a complete replacement for in-person socialization. I knew I was missing something by playing Runescape instead of talking to people, knowing that drove me to forge in-person connections when I did have the opportunity, and the fact that I had to actively engage with the Internet instead of passively scroll through it gave me at least some baseline for doing that.

Yes, I generally agree. As a parent of teens I think this as well.

But social media isn't the cause of alienation. It's a symptom.