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Memo To Parents and Society: Teen Social Media "Addiction" Is Your Fault
FuzzNugget writes "Wired presents this damning perspective on so-called social media addiction: 'If kids can't socialize, who should parents blame? Simple: They should blame themselves. This is the argument advanced in It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, by Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd. Boyd ... has spent a decade interviewing hundreds of teens about their online lives. What she has found, over and over, is that teenagers would love to socialize face-to-face with their friends. But adult society won't let them. "Teens aren't addicted to social media. They're addicted to each other," Boyd says. "They're not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they've moved it online." It's true. As a teenager in the early '80s I could roam pretty widely with my friends, as long as we were back by dark. Over the next three decades, the media began delivering a metronomic diet of horrifying but rare child-abduction stories, and parents shortened the leash on their kids. Politicians warned of incipient waves of youth wilding and superpredators (neither of which emerged). Municipalities crafted anti-loitering laws and curfews to keep young people from congregating alone. New neighborhoods had fewer public spaces. Crime rates plummeted, but moral panic soared. Meanwhile, increased competition to get into college meant well-off parents began heavily scheduling their kids' after-school lives.'"
...to raise a child poorly.
If something like Facebook is available to teens, they will use it. And they do.
What is with this "blaming" nonsense? What is all this talk about public spaces - where? Are we supposed to accept that the lack of facilities for youths exists throughout the Facebook-using world, or is Danah Boyd unable to think outside of her own local area?
As Pop Psychology clearly tells us, nothing is ever the fault of the person who did it. It is always the parents fault, or societies fault, or their upbringing, or the people they hung out with.
Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go rob a bank. You should be ashamed of yourselves for driving me to this. I hope you all rot in jail.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I've pushed and encouraged my son, now 19, to get out and socialize. I've encouraged him to go hang out with friends and to invite friends over. I've encouraged him to have and to attend parties, join groups, travel... I've provided a relatively fancy/sporty car and more than enough money to do almost whatever he likes.
Instead he plays League of Legends and DOTA2 for 18-20 hours per day. He'd rather be kicked in the head than leave you computer and go outside or socialize...
Well maybe it's my son that's got a problem. I do see lots of teens out in public. But, all of those teens, ALL OF THEM, have their heads buried in their smartphones. They go out of their way to NOT interact, let alone socialize, with anyone.
I think this "researcher" is full of shit. I think that we are still to blame for providing an easy and pervasive technological environment that allows them to bury their heads in their comfortable world of cyberspace and "social media", never having to come up for air. It's addictive as shit and they are all addicted to it. But, they're not at all interested in socializing IRL.
therein lies the problem.
Here is what I see vis a vis the new constant communication paradigm. I see a lack of discipline. I see kids at school who need in constant communication with their parents. I see adults at work who need in constants communication with their lovers, thier spouse their kids, and whoever else will make them feel valuable as a person.
This is a great change from the 80's when I talked to my parents maybe in the morning, definitely checked in by phone after school, than saw them whenever we both were home. I talked to my friends at school, where we made plans for whatever nefarious activities we might want. When I started college and later working, I certainly did not spend the whole day texting everyone. Honestly, at college I was normally around the people I wanted to be around, and a work I already generally knew what I needed to know for after work. I did not have to spend the day, as one ex-coworker of mine spend the day texting to try to come up with some activity for the evening.
What I see here is pretty typical teenage logic, which is developmental appropriate, but hardly a major finding. If the lawgivers do not let me do what I want, I will find some way to circumvent it, and if it is bad it is their fault for making the law. In this case, i can't go wherever and whenever I want, so I will instead play with social media, and if it causes problems it is not my fault.
Seriously though setting limits and fighting such logic is an important part of child rearing. There was a case in West Virginia where this girl was murdered by her two best friends, which was possible because she was allowed to sneak our of the house. There are cases of other children killing themselves over bullying because they cannot put down their phones and so are constantly receiving bullying texts. There is also cases where kids are getting really messed up sleep wise because they cannot put down their phones.
There is really nothing special about this, and there is really nothing new. We always need to learn to live with technology, and parents need to help children learn to live with it. In some ways this is like TV where a new generation of parents really did not know how to balance the TV with the development of the child. It is certainly not the parents fault that it was a better choice to have a kid come home and watch tv instead of running unsupervised outside.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
So what about the situation where the parent is addicted to social media but the child is not? This isn't a rhetorical question.
I dunno, I think the idea that parents being over-protective driving children online is one of those things that's easy to prove anecdotally, because there are so many overprotective parents to choose from, and as a substantial number of children could be said to be addicted to social media, there would be a significantly large intersect between the two groups. But I wonder if there's really any meaning there.
I think it is true that society (not just parents) has made it more of a challenge for children to interact with each other. Geeze, the grade school playground is looking more and more like something out of A Wrinkle in Time. (...Camazotz... ...Read a book!...) I think a case could be made that there are a number of factors involved, including the observation that if it's news, it's rare by definition even if it's not, for profit reasons, presented as such, and this has given the vast unwashed public, who as a group has a less-than-college-level understanding of statistics, some wrong ideas. (Incidents of people being hit by falling pianos up 100%! Panic!)
I continue to believe that this tendency, if it exists, merely gives my daughter much shorter lines to stand in as she journeys through life, as more and more of her competition is staring at a screen when they should be doing something important. So I don't worry about it overmuch.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Crime among teens didn't change relative to society as a whole, as far as the stats I found in a quick glance. What changed was the *perception* of crime.
Learn to love Alaska
There are many of us of a certain age (50ish) who remember during summer vacations being told not to be at home until after dark. Seriously.
This one has everything -- video monitoring the streets too. (Contrary to vendor claims, the video hasn't prevented crime.) This sounds like one of those 1950s movies where, the next thing you know, the teenagers will be playing rock and roll and dancing. Don't worry, they don't do this to white kids.
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20131115/crown-heights/police-want-cut-wi-fi-at-crown-heights-mcdonalds-prevent-crime
Police Want to Cut Wi-Fi at Crown Heights McDonald's to Prevent Crime
By Sonja Sharp on November 15, 2013 8:38am
DNAinfo
CROWN HEIGHTS — Phone thefts and teen brawls have gotten so bad at a Crown Heights McDonald's that police asked the management to turn off the Wi-Fi as a way of scattering the after-school crowds, DNAinfo New York has learned.
“We asked them to kill the Wi-Fi there from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. so it doesn’t become a hangout," Capt. Eddie Lott, commanding officer of the 77th Precinct, said of the McDonald's at Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway. "That McDonald's is a big hangout for young people."
Lott said he had reached an agreement with the managers of the McDonald's to cut the Wi-Fi in the afternoons, but it was still going strong this week — and McDonald's corporate office said the company had not agreed to anything yet.
"As good corporate citizens, we are working with the police to ensure the safety of our customers," the company said in a statement, adding that that McDonald's has hired additional security.
"The police have presented many solutions, one of which includes turning off the Wi-Fi."
The 77th Precinct has seen a 19 percent jump in robberies so far this year compared to the previous year, coupled with a 10 percent increase in felony assaults, NYPD statistics show. Grand larcenies, which police said include many phone thefts, have spiked by nearly 30 percent.
The precinct did not release separate crime statistics for Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway.
While the intersection is far from the only problem spot in the neighborhood, police in both the 77th and the 71st precincts have repeatedly called it one of the most troubling. Earlier this fall, Lott put an NYPD SkyWatch tower at the intersection, videotaping 360 degrees 24 hours a day as both a deterrent and a way of catching suspects after crimes occur.
"That’s why we have the SkyWatch there — we want to prevent those things from happening," Lott told residents in September when asked about the large group fights that routinely break out on the corner, particularly on Fridays.
"Hopefully we can abate that and it won’t become the problem that it was the end of last school year."
Teens, too, say the fights and thefts there have become routine.
"It's very violent — people get chased, jumped, beat up," said Melissa, 16, a student at nearby Clara Barton High School.
"It'll be three girls, five boys, and then their friends jump in. A lot of people get their phones stolen here. People from other schools, if they see someone with a phone, they'll take it."
But while it may curb crime, regular customers like Devonte, 16, said they would be unhappy about losing wireless access in the McDonald's.
"The library's closed a lot, so I can't go there," Devonte said. "The Wi-Fi brings me here mostly.... It'd be kind of upsetting if they turned it off."
FamousandRich
a month ago
Why don't the geniuses at NYPD just put a pair of cops on post at the location or is that just too easy for these idiots to figure out?
The media distortion described is absolutely true. In the 24 hour cable news cycle, every kidnapping, abuse, or (dare I say) mass shooting is plastered across multiple networks for a couple days. People get the gut feeling that frequency of occurrence is high, because our brains are wired to treat news as local. If a cave man saw someone killed, he actually saw it. We are really bad at making the distinction that back in 1800 there were about a billion people, and now there are about 6x that, and back in 1800 if something didn't happen in your particular town you were unlikely to hear about it. So if in 1800 there was one kidnapping and teen murder every 20 years in your small town, it means today in a country of 300M you are going to be having them nearly constantly.
OBTW, this is the same logic that produces kooky behavior to protect from mass killings. Yea, mass shootings are real, but the odds of your kid getting involved in one are about the same as winning the lottery, being eaten by a shark or hit by lightning. Not high enough to really worry about or change school policy, but we do anyway "just in case". The odds are way higher that your kid will get hit by a car or come down with cancer.
"But for the sake of argument, let’s agree that we have a crisis."
Hysterical!
. . .to admit to lousy parenting and invest personal time in the children.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I work around plenty of teens and young adults who persistently access social media, simply because it is more interesting to them than the world around them.
These teens are by no means locked out of the real world by over zealous parents. These teens are active in their schools and in many cases their community.
While I can't speak for teens as a general population, the ones that I am exposed to are "addicted" to social media for reasons other than just their parents. (Parents may have some responsibility for not setting guidelines on social media use, but it isn't because they locked their kids away.)
. . .is to self-empower, while assuaging guilt.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Find someone to blame, then make sure they get *all* the blame.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
My parents should not be blamed because everyone else is a sociopathic nutcase.
Here's how I view socializing:
I've had enough years "socializing", developing Stockholm Syndrome (with being forced to attend school and told the diploma was doing me a favor), and dealing with Random crazies. My basic social needs are handled with my computer, and a software compiler.
You'd think this article was posted just so I could share this link...
http://www.theonion.com/video/braindead-teen-only-capable-of-rolling-eyes-and-te,27225/
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Teens aren't addicted to social media. They're addicted to each other," Boyd says. "They're not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they've moved it online."
What a load of horse shit. Has this woman got eyes?
Of course teens are allowed to hang out. I live in a medium sized town and Main Street is full of teenagers wondering about in groups... and playing with their smart phones at the same time. They play with them in the cinema too (fuckers), instead of watching the movie (which they went to with their friends). They play with them when they're out on dates. I see this in my town and I see it elsewhere too.
No, the problem is social media. It's vacuous and addictive. My girlfriend wastes hours and hours on it; procrastinating when she should be getting on with finishing her thesis. She claims she needs social media to communicate with the her friends who are abroad. Now that's a valid use of social media, but does she really need to spend 3 hours a day on it?
soylentnews.org
I'm talking about socializing with others of your own species. ... They can't express or articulate an idea LOL cuz it's like IDK w/e. They are emotionally maladjusted or, at a minimum, they lack the ability to read emotion or empathize with others
Like, that's like, grody to the max! Like, gag me with a spoon! Why if the youth of today could only sound like the youth of my day, that would be the bees knees!
Sulking, angry teenagers, who's say to their parents only "just leave me alone!" - surely this is the first generation to encounter such wild, uncultured youth, whatever shall we do? (Complaints about "the youth of today are just not the men their fathers were" have been recorded for at least 2500 years, and likely from every society to leave written records.)
Here's a hint: you can socialize with others while still not being able to smell them. Socializing is about communication. Whatever the medium, whatever the dialect, if people are communicating then people are socializing. And teenagers are going to act like teenagers, regardless.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So, basically the report says that over-restrictive parents are to blame for social media addiction? Don't think so. I've travelled quite a bit, the biggest complaint I've heard in the past decades is that parents were less involved in their kids lives than they were before WWII. Rebelling youth has been a chronic theme in Hollywood movies for the past 40 years. My favorite line in True Lies is when Tom Arnold explains that today's kids' parents are Axle Rose and Madonna and that parents can't compete with that kind of exposure. Social media is addictive because it's designed to be alluring and parents buy smartphones for their kids (pretty sure the kids aren't coming up with the coin themselves). Not sure how this report was researched.
Congregating Alone? How's that done?
While I don't disagree that things have changed since I was a kid, let's not ignore what social media is: a non-stop popularity contest. Who has the most "friends", who says the most outrageous things, who shows most skin.
Everyone wants to be the most popular. When I was growing up, the popularity contest was limited to hanging out after school, going out, parties. With social media it's constant. Kids nowadays can contest for popularity every waking moment of their day. If the internet and smart phones existed in our days, it would've been the same stupidity.
Also, it's not just kids. My mother in law is just as bad, maybe worse. Same with all the moms at my kids' schools. So let's not throw only the kids under the bus.
This leads to not just issues relating to another individual, but also to far greater things when you consider that they people might one day be enacting laws based on their personal experience, or lack there of.
You's seen how laws are working out now right? It's not like it could get much worse. At least these people will be familiar with the subject matter.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
First of all, as a formerly "awkward teen" and presently mostly well adjusted adult (what geek on here can claim otherwise?) I can say that socializing isn't as natural for some as it is for others. So a potential contributing factor is likely attributable to the epidemic proportions in the rate of ASD. (Among children now worse than 1:30!) If you want to point to social disorders, there's an obvious problem that doesn't require technology as a scapegoat.
Next, there's the "everyone's doing it and if you don't let your children participate, you are HARMING their social interaction, not helping it" problem. That's right. I just said that if parents didn't allow their children to text and facebook, they would become awkward among their participatory peers. So while there are clear signs of dependency and even addiction, it is also the new media by which kids interact. And we can say the same thing for smoking cigarettes and marijuana as well. Social and peer factors are huge in teenage years. If parents taught their children to love and respect them, then their input and advice would be valued. So yes, there is a factor of parental blame to be spread around... but you might have to trace that back one or two more generations back before you find the source.
And if you want to place blame on technology, let's talk to the people who CREATE and MARKET the technology. They are aiming these markets directly at children. It's just as outrageous as cigarette companies marketing their product to children isn't it? Eventually, it was curtailed. Then again, Disney markets sex to kids and no one has managed to say much or stop them. Perhaps it's just not as obvious. But the fact remains, for the areas we're talking about, it's pretty clear and obvious the means and methods involved are specifically marketed to the demographic under discussion. Aren't they to blame for exploiting this market of children?
I'm not defending parents who buy their preteens frikken expensive phones and ipads and the like. I personally feel like it's outrageous. I didn't do it and I'm not going to do it. But I'm not going to tell parents they shouldn't do that as I'm sure there are things they could assert I'm doing wrong in their view as well. (I'm also pretty sure they wouldn't listen to the likes of me anyway.) So not going ot cast stones. I will, instead, try to lead by example as much as possible,
So I guess part of the topic is the question of whether parents today are raising their kids wrong. I have to say, "unquestionably." But this problem started when most of us were kids and slightly before then. Anyone recall referring to the TV as "the babysitter"? Anyone who recalls hearing this probably knows exactly what I'm driving at. But the problem is increased exponentially as those children are now parents and if they didn't grow up with good parents, then how on earth are they expected to know how to raise children?! Am I wrong in observing that we have a generation of immature parents (not 'young' parents, but childish parents) trying to raise children without a clue as to how to do it?
We have 2-3 generations of consumerist, debt-financing people acting like zombies all over the US and we're only NOW talking about what's wrong with kids? And we have the audacity to blame parents who were mostly raised by deficient parents? I say mostly, because a small handful of us actually did have some level of parenting and grandparenting in our lives and managed to absorb their wisdom and all that. And I did say grandparenting. What do we do with grandparents these days? Put'm in a home right? Not in my family. But what do I know -- I'm an outlier. None of my grandparents ever spent a day in a retirement home or community or any such facility. My mother, for example, acquired some land and set up two homes on it where one was inhabited by my grandmother. Imagine that? How could that have happened?
Here's a clue-stick for anyone here who doesn't understand how it REALLY works.
"In the dirt? Ew."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The streets used to be common areas where young and old people met, spoke out, argued, or just passed one another saying "good morning".
Now they're dominated by cars.
There are fewer places to hang out. Record stores and video rental stores are gone. Indoor malls are on the way out. Fast food places discourage hanging out. Starbucks are popular places to hang out, but just can't handle many people. Few nightclubs allow teens. Where to go?
I'm in Silicon Valley, and I get to see a few views of this. Downtown Redwood City (a mostly lower middle class town), sort of by accident, ended up being a teen hangout zone. Years of attempts to "revitalize downtown" actually worked. A 20-screen theater, a lot of cheap restaurants (pizza, yogurt, burgers, etc.) and a refurbished live theater, often used by cover bands, finally brought people downtown. There's also a big plaza in front of the former courthouse, where free movies or bands are shown on warm nights. It took years to get going, there were empty storefronts for years, and it seemed to be a boondoggle project, but now it's happening. But it was never intended to enrich the lives of teenagers. It was intended to enrich retailers and property owners.
There's another side to this. Being a teenager in a high-achieving area like Silicon Valley means being run ragged with school, homework, and semi-mandatory activities needed to build up the resume to get into a good college. As a horse owner, I see a lot of kids like that, and many are just overworked. I once asked a group of girls at the Stanford barn who were discussing grades what they considered an acceptable GPA. One answered, in a bleak voice, "4.5." These are kids who will be considered a failure if they don't get into a school at the Stanford/Harvard/Yale level. Those kids are on a treadmill from their first day of preschool.
As an amusing note, one thing horse kids have going for them is good situational awareness. They're used to being aware of what's going on around them, because that's required on or around horses. (Riding in a busy ring with different people and horses doing different things without getting in each others way is a basic skill.) They all have smartphones, but aren't glued to them.
As long as we're clear that your right to deliberately poison the acoustic spectrum ends at your property-line
The range on these is about 120 feet, or 140 feet without the baffle, so In a large free standing store with a parking lot or a private mall, it would not be difficult to keep the audible range within the property boundaries. As for the notice, I doubt that it would a problem. Notices are generally required only when the area is under surveillance and video or audio are being recorded and even then not all places require that.
Virtually all problems with children are the parent's fault and no one else. Parents just can't except it and blame everyone else.
Another speculative piece packed with journalistic fiber to help me process and evacuate the content.
THis is not about addiction. No one has physical withdrawl symptoms. Any mental ones are part of a CHOICE.
This is all about CHOICES.
What happens when you are separated from connectivity? You decide to respond with anxious emotions.
What do you mean you didnt decide? Do you have puppet strings? Someone decide for you to feel like that? Does someone else control your brain or do you?
YOU DECIDED!
There are plenty of more appropriate reactions to choose and a plethora of unlikely reactions, all of which you get to pick!
You could shrug your shoulders and pick up a book, choosing indifference. You could choose anger and go run some blubber off or hit a speed bag for a while.
You could meditate, cook, masturbate, bicycle, sleep, yard work,build something and choose to be happy instead.
This article is a dodgy filler for a sinking publicatioin that fewer people care about every day. Just filler, nothing to see here, just move along...
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Buy Lego Technics and Mindstorms, allow your kid to take apart old electronic devices when he or she is older. Learn it welding so that when your kid grows older he or she can put bigger things together. By the time your kid is that old, 3D printers will affordable. Let's make things (better).
Which means that it involves more than just one set of parents and their children, it involves the social sphere of many parents and many children.
If my child doesn't learn to eat well or brush their teeth, really, it's all about me as a parent because there's no other dynamic there.
But with social components, it involves what other kids are doing, too, and while you can set limits on your own kids it influences their interactions with other kids and what the other kids are doing influences your kids in ways outside of your control.
You may demand strict controls on social media, but if the majority of other kids have less strict limits, your kids may reap whatever benefits come from that but they may be outweighed by the negatives of being outsiders or less engaged the same way the other kids are.
The idea that parents have just failed is kind of ludicrous. Most parents I know struggle with technology access in all forms, it's not like they ignore it or don't try to do things they think will be positive. And it's not like our experience as children or our parents' experience is specifically informative -- social media didn't exist at all, and technology didn't have that wide of a reach (through high school I was one of the few kids that even had a computer).
http://www.theonion.com/video/braindead-teen-only-capable-of-rolling-eyes-and-te,27225/
As you get comfortable being an adult, inevitably all change makes the world seem like it is ending. But it keeps marching on.
Facebook ruined the world, and so did video games, and fast food, and television, and rock and roll, and radio, and comic books, and dime-store novels, and cars, and bicycles, and Vaudeville, and Shakespeare, and classical Roman convenience foods like bread and soup, and probably every other invention adopted by the young or profane.
And now for something completely different.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
...has spent a decade interviewing hundreds of teens about their online lives.
So, most of your research is completely worthless now. Well done.
Perhaps next you can give us a research paper about Myspace.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
You are the one paying the ISP bill.
You are the one paying the pricey smartphone bill.
He is 19.He is an adult. Cancel that crap and see if he thinks his addiction is worth getting a job and paying for it himself. If nothing else the job will get him out of cyber space and in to the real world.
I have to return some videotapes...
It distracts from the very real issues.
People have become more insular because of the tech that was supposed to make interaction easier.
Check out what goes on with teens, check out sites like chatroulette for instance. I'd argue that today's teens and twenty-somethings are more socially retarded than ever. And addicted to the high that relative anonymity and the dis-inhibition they experience on-line.
Not to mention games where you go around shooting hookers in strip clubs. I mean, come on. There isn't going to be a consequence to all this ? Really ?
Blaming parents is easy. Admitting that society has a long ways to go to catch up to tech, and making an honest effort to identify how and why is some work. And we all have a great deal of work to do. Kids shouldn't be as insulated from the real world and human interaction as they are now. It's not healthy for them or for society as a whole. And replacing real world interaction with something that is arguably psychotic like social networking is just crazy. And profitable. Let's put some of the blame where it belongs.
Corporations are people that don't give a fuck about your kids mental health or social development.
She didn't have the last names of many of the friends I had met outside of school and only had the first names noted in her book, so I doubt the phone book was used.