It's absolutely insane to me how defensive parents get about this. It's like you asked them to cut off their child's hand or something.
Look, if you don't want to raise kids and be a parent then don't.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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So, I have two small children, and they have access to the internet, and I wrestle with this question a lot. Right now, I believe we're in a Gattaga type moment where parents who hold on to the past are not preparing their children for the future. Like it or not, the future of information transfer is not books, it is Youtube videos. Our children will have to navigate a complex online world with critical thinking skills that will have to distinguish between AI generated videos and reality. The more we handicap this learning process, the worse off they will be. Do they need to be supervised? Yes. Is it dangerous? Yes. But it is the future, and we need to grapple with it, not ignore it.
Teach your kids to read so they don't only have videos.
Not every useful piece of information is animated or verbalized.
Lol imagine thinking the cesspool of YouTube kids is anything but soul cancer
How long would it take for a ten year old to learn about online media literacy?
What about a fourteen year old?
Can either of those children better process unexpectedly seeing something confusing or scary like gore or pornography online?
Can you - personally - teach a kid that has been hooked up to the internet their whole life to set down their devices, sit still, and be patient when they reach their early teenage years?
Most importantly can you get your young kids to 'unsee' bad behavior and/or disturbing images they see online?
I don't know. I haven't been able to teach my mother online media literacy, and she's 65.
As someone who didn't have a smartphone until age 22 I can assure you that whatever advantage is gained in media literacy is far, far outweighed by the damage you are doing to your kids.
Take away the devices. Today. I beg of you, for their sakes.
Lol YouTube of all things isn't going to teach them media literacy.
What exactly do you think that means, anyway?
YouTube is online media?
Oh so like, knowing how to watch popular videos?
Yeah that's not really too important of a skill
What IS important is being able to maintain an online presence that doesn't get one fired. They will also have to be able to tell the difference between truth and fiction in a world where AI can create a photograph of Biden and Putin kissing. Soon we will have convincing video evidence of whatever somewhat types into a prompt. These skills do not come overnight, and the longer they wait, the worse their skills will be.
I'm a Millennial, who didn't have Internet until I was 11 or a smartphone until I was 27. Are you saying I'm somehow being left behind here by not being able to navigate Youtube?!
It's pretentious to think you know what will end up making you obsolete.
That said, yeah, it's probably not YouTube.
I've been left behind in all sorts of ways, but to think that surfing YouTube is a skill that you need to teach your 5 year old...it just sounds like the person writing that probably sets their children in front of YouTube much of the day and is trying to justify their terrible decision-making
Yes
And why are you assuming I don't know how to navigate YouTube? Lmao at thinking you need to expose young children to the YouTube algorithm, otherwise they won't understand it as teenagers or adults.
Anecdotal consensus is that young adults today who were brought up on a smartphone/tablet app-based internet generally struggle with basic computer literacy skills that many of us Millennials and Gen X have taken for granted. What you need to be teaching your children is how to regulate their emotions, how to use basic programs on a PC, and how to sift through mountains of shit to find something useful, not setting them in front of YouTube so they can watch Pinkfong all day. YouTube for young children is literally poison
Yeah, the response usually seems to be to take a step back and make their childhood more like “our own” (whichever prev gen you’re from), as if our childhood was better than theirs. What I feel like we should be doing is paying attention to what they’re getting into and guide them through what they’re seeing. They need to have a healthy mix of socialization and exposure to technology to prep them for the future. Unless we have a huge, society-ending event that strips electricity & tech away from us and plunges us into a new dark age, they’ll need to learn to navigate tech to have any kind of advantage or just keep up with their peers.
Dear lord, read the article for once. There's a mental health epidemic going on among teenagers and an all time high in children's anxiety. It has nothing to do with "have our same childhood" crap.
You lot can't be trusted to actually pay attention to what kids are doing on their phones. And to the comment above yours, this is the first generation raised entirely on phones and they are the worst with technology, they're basically tech illiterate. They can be glued to a device all day but that doesn't mean they know how it works or how to use it effectively.
Honestly the worse offender is social media. Most adults are addicted and mentally distraught by the likes of Facebook, tiktok, Instagram, et al. Now imagine a child who is still in development, with far less cognitive recourses and maturity being exposed to that.
Social media isn't like reading a book, it's like a magazine. It's mainly meant for quick consumption, and rarely teaches anything. Imagine a kid who only read magazines and never books. That's one stunted kid.
That's not what is happening at all. Actual professionals in child development are telling you that you are poisoning your child's brain via executive functioning rot. Kids should learn how to deal with being bored and passive.
Actual professionals in child development said the same thing about comic books too.
No, they didn't. When comic books came into popularity there wasn't many child development professionals. Psychology is a very young science. The ones complaining about comics were conservative pundits and religious demagogues, not professional psychologist with evidence and science backing up their claims. Don't equate both. If you're ignorant of history just shut up and don't make misinformation up for the sake of arguing.
The comic code was mainly based on the Senate testimony of, and book "The Seduction of the Innocent", by Dr. Frederic Werthham, a psychologist.
Dear lord, you bring Wertham into this. The guy who is not taken seriously by any psychologists because he is a raging homophobe? His argument was nothing like this. Please, seriously, learn how to read. His argument was that comics caused juvenile delinquency. He argued that Wonder Woman made girls Lesbians FFS. There's not a single mention of mental health in his book and he didn't have a single shred of evidence. Unlike now when we do have tons of evidence of social media causing teenagers and kids to self-harm and the spike in anxiety and depression. So, NO, it wasn't the same argument.
At the time he was making those claims he was very well respected. It was only around 2012 that his work was discredited.
Moral panic generally doesn't look like moral panic at the time it's happening.
Still, his argument was distinctly different from the one being made today. Again, for the illiterate on the other side. Wertham argued that comic made kids delinquents and homosexuals. Today, we have basis to believe that smartphone addiction and social media use might be making kids more anxious and depressed. Entirely not “the same thing”.
It sure sounds like the same thing except you are just substituting "anxious and depressed" in place of "delinquent and homosexual".
If you can't seem to see the difference, that's a lack of critical thinking on your part. One criminalizes and demeans youth, the other one is concerned about well being and health. I think it is just appropriate that one ended up influencing Congress and courts while the other is largely being ignored and dismissed. I'll let you to sort out which is which. Good bye.
At the time, delinquency and homosexuality were seen as mental disorders, just like anxiety and depression are today. The problem is that you are looking at both events through the lens of today rather than as things were understood at the time each event was happening.