Why do you say that? I'm part of one of the earlier cohorts (I assume) to go through high school on Facebook, and absolutely a huge part of my social life was on Facebook. I organized our senior ditch day on Facebook. My awkward first attempts at flirting were on Facebook.
I'm not saying it's a good or healthy space for teens to socialize, but I do contend it's an important one.
Maybe so, but my claim is that social media is an important part of our social landscape, one that you can't simply deprive a kid of without consequence, not that Facebook is this or is that.
You can absolutely function perfectly fine without social media as a kid or adult.
Hypothesis/opinion: a large portion of the world has no access to the internet or social media and those people are doing better in terms of mental health than those with access.
Also there's a significant amount of kids without access (because their parents don't let them) even in the Western world and they seem to be doing fine (if not better) as well.
It's not that you need to log on to an app to function, it's that to function socially, you need to be in contact with the people in your community. In a community with limited Internet access, of course that happens in person. But that isn't really comparable to not being on the internet in a community that generally is.
I'm sure plenty of teens would do fine without social media, some would probably prefer it because some people prefer limited social contact, but we can't make a blanket statement that we can yank kids offline and it'll all be fine.
The criticism I'm hearing in this thread seems to be, "parents are doing something uncomplicatedly irresponsible, it's obvious kids should be off social media," but frankly the analysis I'm seeing behind that is pretty thin (I'm gathering this is more a gut feeling for people than a reasoned position? Which is valid and all, it just doesn't make for good discussion since it can't be transmitted to or evaluated by another person), and this is a complex issue without such simple solutions.
You don’t need these apps to do what you are asserting though. I am probably a part of the same cohort as you in terms of when social media arrived on the scene. I used Facebook to socialize, but ultimately my meaningful socialization came through in-person contact and was primarily organized through phone calls and texting. Facebook was kind of a sideshow. Later the same was true of Instagram. I eventually got rid of my social media accounts and my social life was unchanged, because almost none of the socialization that goes on in these sites is substantive in any way.
Cool, but since we've had different experiences, can we not both acknowledge our experience might not be representative and that we shouldn't be making proscriptions for how other people raise their children?
Facebook of your youth is a social network. TikTok is also a social network.
Maybe try launching TikTok for once and let me know whether you’d want to grow up like that.
I can't imagine unironically saying fam or poggers either, but I don't need to, that slang isn't for me. So I don't really see the point.
Help me understand the difference between this conversation and the general phenomenon of looking at what the kids are doing and finding it weird and scary. Because everything I did as a teen was supposed to destroy my generation, too.
I'm not saying it's a good or healthy space for teens to socialize, but I do contend it's an important one.