Maybe I'm just too old school, but I was raised with "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me". Not, of course, that I don't want to help someone who's bullied by everyone at school, because being a social outcast with no friends is miserable, but you don't have to use Twitter, or associate your personal account with your professional work.
20 years ago, when you finished your school day, week, or semester, you could go home, on vacation, etc., and not have any contact with your schoolmates unless you wanted to. Nowadays, you see them and they can interact with you or talk about you 24/7 on social networks. There's no escaping your bully by hiding at home anymore, as you can be publicly bullied on social platforms all the time. This is likely a terrible experience for many young people. Additionally, the constant feeling of inadequacy due to having fewer likes, comments, or friends on your profile compared to the popular kids can be quite disheartening.
I don't have an account for any of these, and I don't want one. I have, let's see, HN, GitHub, and Stack Exchange. Those accounts are my online identity, which I make sure is separate from my real identity. If you want to contact me, you can email me, or if you know me in real life, you can text me. I don't feel smug about not having those accounts, but I'm not embarrassed either. Maybe it's just because I don't socialize with the "normal" people my age, or something else, but more people than you might expect understand when I say I don't have an account. I don't want them because they would be more of a time suck than the Internet already is, and no one really has trouble finding me.
Having a teenager, I've seen the bullying and caustic behavior without social media. One classic example is for a group of friends to be on a iMessage thread together, and suddenly nobody posts to it anymore because they've created another thread and left you off.
Our 13-year-old doesn't have IG/FB/Twitter and he is fine, and even proud about it. He does have Minecraft, Discord, and other video games (and some access to YouTube at his other house, but he doesn't have an account). There are of course problems with every platform, but we have watched a bunch of the social media documentaries and talked about it, and he's aware that what he is "missing out on" is primarily the kind of interaction that won't leave him feeling good. Being off "social media" doesn't mean being without communication with other kinds online.
Your “outcast” assertion is unsupported by facts. It turns out that not everything happens on social media. Within a group of friends even a single person who isn’t on Twitter/Snapchat/TikTok/etc tends to pull the entire group’s narrative away from those platforms and into the domain of a more private tool, such as iMessage or WhatsApp. Within the Gen Z cohort the understanding is crystallizing that social media is toxic, addictive, and leads to nothing but bleak and depressing thoughts. This commonly understood truth enables people like my kid to act as an anchor that keeps numerous others on solid ground and away from the jaws of “big social tech”.
And thank you for the “serial killer” comment: I’ll take it as a compliment.
> Mr. Haidt has addressed classes of seventh- and eighth-graders on the perils of social media. “I ask them, ‘Would you get off it on your own?’ Many are afraid to do that. But when I ask, ‘What if nobody could be on? Would that be better?’ they mostly say yes.”
I hope to help my kids find friend groups that aren't super online. If there were family meetup groups to facilitate this, I would join in an instant. Even if they had some school friends who were super online and some other friends who weren't, they'd be better off since they'd be able to see the different ways of interacting.
It's a valid point and I have found value in looking up past friends on facebook.
I'm not sure a teenager has the same value. Anyone under 18 shouldn't have real identifying names them.
When facebook came out you had people isolated into networks of schools. Those structures provided better protections and freedom. The transition to fully public with forced real names made facebook into something not for kids but great for older folks.
I see where your cousin is coming from by thinking that if she isn't on Facebook, she's ostracized, however people tell me the same thing when trying to get me to sign up.
Thankfully, since I never actively used any social networks as a kid, they never became a crutch for me, and any time there's a party worth going to, I'll know about it either through text, a call, or (what most kids seem to avoid these days) face to face social interactions with my friends.
The other night at dinner my eleven year old daughter asked me "What's instagam?" and then proceeded to ask if she could have an account because all her friends were on it. I told her no because I don't like the idea of her on a social network yet (and it's probably against their TOS anyway).
Truthfully, I don't know why there isn't a K-12 social network that has schools and teachers, and kids were grouped by class, and teachers could moderate all posts and (have the option to) see all messages (with a notice to the parties that it had been looked at). That would alleviate any concerns I had about inappropriate content, and online bullying (there's a record, kids would be accountable for what was said), and provide immediate benefit to students and parents (who could maybe have accounts that were read-only for public discussions and their own children's correspondence).
Edit: As numerous replies have pointed out, there apparently is one, edmodo.com. I guess it's just not used around (or at least not in my district).
> And you can't not have any online presence at all as a teenager, it's part of life now.
Not all teenagers feel like this. My fourteen-year-old's "online presence" mostly consists of using google docs to write stories with her friends. I know, it's anecdotal at best, but at least in my house the kids don't feel a need to be on social media.
I'm completely with you on the social platforms. I think school provides a certain set of situations where social networks become very important to groups and personal growth. I remember being active in IRC, forums, all manner of instant messaging and chat platforms even MUDs. Now I'm so far removed, and so far from a group think of peers, that those social networks just don't feel relevant.
On text, your absolutely right, text used to be the way to get a hold of the younger crowd, but now I have 9 active chat clients installed, everyone wants to use their own network where there friends or business is. I installed SnapChat, Secret, a few others, poked around, deleted them.
My sibling comment here is being downvoted for saying he needs closer friends. Maybe that's blunt, but if he is unable to maintain friendships without FB, then something is going on there that shouldn't just be accepted as normal.
And, if what you're saying is universally true for kids, or even nearly so, then I'd say that we (collectively, as adults) have failed them in strolling hand-in-hand with them into a world wherein personal relationships are not viable without a profiteering third-party intermediary.
It depends really whether you as a kid can have a social life at all without being on social media. If your school is one of those no-digital-devices places where tech workers send their kids to, then you'll manage. But most schools aren't like that. Instead, there, children heavily rely on online services to communicate. I'm a late millenial, so I didn't have 100% the same experience as a kid growing up now has, but even for me, I felt it on my own skin. A lot of social interaction was inaccessible to me due to me not being on Facebook by choice. When some event was planned, I didn't immediately know about it.
Also there is the practicality point. In the old days, kids could reach each other from their own volition, back when kids walking on the sidewalk alone wasn't a reason to call CPS. Back when said side walks existed in the first place.
they are going to be very inadapted when they end up in college or later. this is also restricting them from career opportunities, e.g. community & socials management etc. I know people who flat-out say that they wouldn't trust someone with no social media presence.
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