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Childhood disrupted: is the internet damaging young people’s development?
(yorkshirebylines.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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More importantly I grew up without the internet, and no real parenting, and ended up with lifelong major depression. And I manage suicidality on a daily basis.
We blame social media the way we blamed video games, and CCCGs the way we blamed violent movies and Gangsta Rap the way we blamed Rock-＆-Roll and Dungeons ＆ Dragons. What we're not willing to look at is how we force both parents to work, so they aren't around to parent and when they are they're too exhausted from working.
In fact, no-one is okay. We have intergenerational mental illness and our healthcare grossly underserves mental health interests, which figures into why our suicide rates are creeping higher every year while Japan's (where suicide is more culturally accepted) is lowering. It figures into why the Christian nationalist movement and transnational white power movement are lousy with new members.
It doesn't help much that the old myth of upward mobility has been thoroughly debunked, that we're anticipating a global population correction in the next century and our leaders are all inheritance aristocrats who act childishly on the House and Senate floor (or in Parliament). The society that demands we do better and give 100% can't help but do everything half-assed.
So no, we can disregard this given we can't be bothered to give our kids school lunches or even a daily wellness check-in.
Look, there's a lot to be critical of about parenting and the demands of current day society, but when I was a kid, being bullied 24/7 even while away from the bullies, having algorithms target my particular individual insecurities and being covertly groomed by strangers even while being actively supervised by responsible adults were not possibilities. It's not just a moral panic to blame social media, it actually created more risks for children than anything else on that list, and this is one responsible parents actually would be doing good by keeping their kids away from it.
Responsible parents
And I submit we don't allow such things, at least not often, not without above-average household income.
In the meantime, it took into the 1990s before we realized it is not enough just to let parents do their thing. Family dysfunction, child abuse, child sexual abuse ran rampant not just within homes, but in schools and churches. The Satanic panic was part of our recognition that these are things that actually happen.
So, I submit that the first step is not to block kids from the internet (at which point you have to decide when you're going to decide when they should be allowed to make mistakes about dangerous things, knowing they're going to get into trouble and cause harm) but to provide for a society in which parents can be enabled to parent. Because they are not, and haven't been before I was born.
Besides which, when a kid is stuck in a dangerous home, the internet is one of the resources they can go to in order to get informed about the danger they are in, and maybe how to escape it. Of course, SESTA/FOSTA killed some of those information sources, and KOSA is going to kill even more of them, since it's not about hiding porn from kids but LGBT+ information, even when it's educational.
I can agree. I don't think most regulation purported to be protecting children actually does anything to help, or that they are drafted in good faith at all. There's fearmongering and overreach involved, and LGBTQ+ people, as well as sex workers, take the brunt of the impact most of the time. But these new risks are there.
Even if parents were enabled to parent more, and a lot needs to change to get there, there still would be a need to educate about these new risks and aid them to protect their kids. The average parent is not nearly aware enough of what they ought to be watching out for, or how to handle it.
And as hesitant as I am about how it would be implemented, there must be some reasonable degree which we should expect online platforms to take measures too. We can demand brick and mortar businesses to take measures for child safety, why would it be impossible online? Though unfortunately the politicians we have are not nearly internet savvy and measured enough to formulate these reasonable standards...