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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?
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.
Well, since its mostly talking about teenagers, which the parents usually don't allow to fully make their own choices, especially if it may reduce their safety, then yes, in this case I think we can blame the parenting.
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
Are you rational? If you are, why would you rationally make a poor decision? The short answer (for the most common case) is that someone else pushed a belief upon you that modified your parameters to irrational ones. That's child abuse
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!
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.)
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.
We are all the product of our environment.
No, no, no! Remember the scene the "Life of Brian" where he tells the crowd "you are all individuals", and they respond in unison "we are all individuals!"
That's child abuse.
'
I've heard of strong reactions against social media, but I didn't think it went that far.
Are you rational? If you are, why would you rationally make a poor decision? The short answer (for the most common case) is that someone else pushed a belief upon you that modified your parameters to irrational ones. That's child abuse
Even rational people can make some judgement errors and technical mistakes, or give into temptation and rationally take a course that isn't optimal in the long term.
It's called "life".
You're extrapolating the principle to an extreme and incomparable context.
Let me lay it out for you:
1) Helicopter parents become extremely restrictive and surveillant of their childrens' activities because of irrational fears provoked and perpetuated by a shock-based, fear-is-gold media and equally fear-mongering politicians.
2) People, especially children and teens, need socialization to function properly in society. That much we know. And they want it. And they will find it any way they can.
3) With no other options, they turn to social media and spend time there that they would otherwise spend mostly on actual socialization (which involves face-to-face interactions with tone, inflection, body language and all that important stuff that social media lacks or can only convey in a very rudimentary manner)
So, ask yourself again... who bears the majority of the blame here?
The first question is, do you think emotional abuse is a bad thing? So many loonitarians here claim that feelings aren't real, so hurting them shouldn't be restricted. If that's your basis, then there's no common ground for discussion.
If you aren't that radical, then what do you call systemic lies to manipulate behavior? Should that be encouraged, or is it a bad thing? If it's a bad thing, then what do we call it when a parent does it to their child?
Learn to love Alaska
A rational person wouldn't make a mistake if they have all the information, unless they aren't being rational at the moment of the decision. So, if they are not rational, then that invalidates my requirement. If they are rational, but have insufficient information for the correct decision to be reached, then what's the problem if some group is deliberately holding back information? If it's the parents deliberately harming the child by restricting information that would enable rational choices, then that's Child Abuse. A parent deliberately causing harm is abuse.
Learn to love Alaska
. . .is to self-empower, while assuaging guilt.
Exactly. And if you want numerous examples, all you need do is get married.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Huh? Talk about a knee jerk response. "Investing" too much time (i.e. being overprotective) is exactly what's being blamed here. I don't think social media is a major social problem, but I do think parents are overly protective. What we need is a little more neglect, like I enjoyed.
"invest personal time in the children" != "being overprotective"
"being overprotective" == "being overprotective"
I'm very pro 'independence", allowing my children to have freedom and the responsibility to make good decisions, often by allowing them to make (and learn from) bad decisions. But there is nothing wrong with 'spending time with my children' to guide them, teach them and encourage them to be independent and do things on their own without requiring supervision (I hate that word 'supervision'). But it's equally important to do things together, learn to work and socialise together - that includes allowing my children to socialise with us adults, be part of our conversations and have their say and be listened to.
I had a lot of freedom as a child, I got up to all sorts of (mostly harmless) things - these helped shape me, provided me with the ability to make sensible decisions and a whole load of independence. But my parents still spent a lot of time with me - they're not mutually exclusive things. They used their time with me to equip me to be independent, social, thoughtful, etc. They became a sounding board to whom I could go to with any questions/problems with out the fear of being embarrassed/chastised/other poor response. They always had the time for me and for that I'm grateful - but I certainly was not 'over protected'.
Never happened. True story.
You're right, social media are addictive. So it's time to log out of Slashdot and get back to spending time with your family and friends during the current Christmas-to-New-Year holiday season.
And, yes, I'll do the same. Honest, I will. I can stop any time. Really, I can.
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.
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.
We are all the product of our environment.
No, no, no! Remember the scene the "Life of Brian" where he tells the crowd "you are all individuals", and they respond in unison "we are all individuals!"
Oh, but you missed the best part. After everyone shouts "we are all individuals", a lone meek voice says "I'm not!".
I live in a big metro area (Memphis, TN) and it doesn't seem to work that way here anymore, the author of TFA could be living in my neighborhood. The only time I ever see kids or teens outdoors is if the school bus has just dropped them off, and more often than not, there's a big line of cars waiting at the bus stop so that Precious Snowflake doesn't have to walk more than a block until their parents can usher them back home.
Here too (LI) they drop off the kids with the bus that has the stupid flappy stop sign. But in the evenings it's common to see teens on Main St or at the mall. None of the fun stuff you mention happens here either, but it's not the case that teens don't socialise with each other. Of course they do.
The "precious snowflake" syndrome is real but I think we need to consider why it's happening, rather than just call parents over-protective and consider that the explanation. Personally, I think this over-protectiveness is a mix of various factors; you can't explain it with one thing. In no particular order:
- People are generally having fewer kids and having them later in life. It might seem crass to say it, but that makes a child more valuable nowadays. The extreme of this is in China where, although parents tend to be younger, they're mostly only allowed one kid. Plus, it HAS to be a boy or everyone is very upset. So you get a lot of very pampered, very spoilt, and very useless little boys in China. There are also a lot of girls that given away. My partner's Chinese, so I'm not pulling this out of my ass. We know people like this.
- It's more common for both parents to have to work to make ends meet, since children are now more expensive due to higher costs for healthcare and education. So having a child is something most people have plan carefully. The flipside of that is that one parent may have to sacrifice a career to raise the kid. Again, making the child a bigger investment.
- The media have a love of scare stories, particularly kiddie fiddlers. Although it's always been like this, it's probably worse now. Especially in the US, TV news has become reality TV (preferably with shock value) and so they ham up the "human stories" over the boring political ones. The atypical stories stand out and make people think it's more dangerous out there than it really is. People forget that most cases of child abuse are perpetrated by family members or close friends, not by strangers.
- Kids themselves are more sedentary and go out less. TV, internet, video games, too much shool work, etc. Parents don't need to "stop" kids running wild: they stop themselves.
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