Should social media have warning labels???

Your threads should have warning labels for sure.

Social media should be at least as regulated as cigarettes or alcohol in terms of youth access. Yeah, some will still get it, but hopefully the majority won't.

I know it's a bit of a meme akin to the pearl-clutching grandmas of the 60s and 70s who were convinced rock and roll would turn the youth into Satan worshipers, but this is far more serious. They've cracked into the very essence of what makes young brains tick and are robbing millions and millions of children of their self-worth and normal human socialization.

An overwhelming majority of things you see or read on the internet are at best exaggerations, but more likely just straight up fiction.

Kids don't know this, and when they inevitably compare themselves to others they see online, it royally ****s a lot of them up.

Then there's just the pure vitriol out there. A lot of us were bullied to some extent as children, but it was in-person and typically limited in scope and opportunity. I was bullied for being a giant with an allegedly insufficient level of body hair, but it was maybe 4 kids in total and I only saw them during a few hours of the day. The internet not only expands the window to a 24/7 virtual onslaught, but the anonymous nature of it turns the bullied into bullies toward others. The internet was a mistake.

I held off on getting my kids phones as long as I felt I could. 17 for the boys, and 15 for my daughter. Years later, they're all crushing early adulthood and claim they now see the value in that and will try to carry that strategy forward for their own kids. Hopefully that works out.

I guarantee you most educators wish social media and cell phones didn't exist.

i trust kids to figure out social media FAR MORE than i trust boomers to figure out social media.

i will admit though, the real problem with social media is unrealistic body images that are being fed to young people. but that's also being fed in every form of media now, with every character in TV/Movies needing to be dehydrated in every scene where skin is shown to look vascular and things like that.

Needs regulation and warning labels

social media problem with young people isn't access to third party content actually, it's takes already perserve dynamics of adolescent life to a whole you level. Your "mistakes" (as perceived by your social group) can be proven to anyone forever, you are 24/7 in the game, the gossip game becomes life/death and so on.

Which is why girls suffer from social media access much more than boys in all research on the topic, starting from the increase in suicidal ideation.

Because girls social groups have those dynamics "in real life" more than boys social group, and social media amplifies that.

Cutting access off isn't a solution as a parent though because it means cutting off social life with its consequences.

And a whasapp chat with all the adolescents of the group in is as bad as the cirlce of their instagram accounts.

I dgaf about access to porn, or "misinformation", or with marxist propaganda, or with neonazi propaganda, or climate change propaganda, or maga propaganda and so on being "dangerous" to kids, the earlier they vaccinate against it the better.

But i don't see how to avoid the disastrous damages of the above social dynamic problem for girls especially

As an educator, one with 1 foot out the door for many reasons, I endorse this post.

And I'll add on. Kids don't need smartphones. Specifically, no child should have have unrestricted internet access in their pocket. No good can come from it.

The kids are losing sleep, hooked on their screen time; and they're being exposed to far too many things they just can't understand yet.

The parents need to do better. Good on you for restricting their access. I'm sure they were unhappy with your decision at the time, but they are happy you did that for them now.

Are you against warning labels generally?

This is a problem, but the bigger problems imo are that (i) we are training people to consume information only in very short formats; and (ii) we are training people to believe that being seen and commented on by friends, acquaintances, and strangers is paramount.

Does anyone actually take any warning labels seriously, or are they just there to protect against lawsuits?

The huge death danger signs, i think some people notice them.

shorts are a very bad way to inform i agree, but twitter increased tweet length which counters that trend somewhat.

As for 2), i think no training is needed, that's a very basic biological impulse

The kids are going to figure out what ever it is that is on their feed and recent history demonstrated that.

Unrealistic body images has been around for 75 years and all of that has been exacerbated with social media now that people feel compelled to gain viewers, respect, and attempt to portray the same fake happiness that everyone else is compelled to do - all while playing purposefully addictive games that keeps folks engaged in doing just that.

In 2022, the number of hours people spent on their smartphones increased by 39%.
An average smartphone user unlocks his phone 150 times in one day.
About 66% of smartphone owners have shown signs of addiction to it.
80% of teenagers check their smartphone over 1 time every hour.
About 52% of teens prefer to fiddle on their phones silently than to mingle when they are together with friends.
About 48% of teenagers prefer to spend time with their close friends online than face-to-face.
About 59% of parents fear their children being addicted to their smartphones.
31% of parents say that smartphone screen usage is the number 3 most common thing that causes disagreement between parents and teenagers.
About 46% of parents in the UK feel addicted to their smartphones.
The number of notifications teenagers receive daily is overwhelming for 41%.
About 72% of teenagers have complained that people expect them to respond to the notification as soon as they receive it.
89% of parents think they or caregivers are why their children are addicted to smartphones.
58% of smartphone owners worldwide check their phones every hour.
Smartphone users spend about 3 hours on their phones every day.
Smartphone users in the US touch their phones about 144 times every day.
About 71% of smartphone owners ensure their phones are with them before they sleep.
More than half of the people who own smartphones never switch off their phones.
About 45% of smartphone users have texted at least once while driving.
People check their phones an average of 58 times daily.
Adults in the US check their phones over 96 times every day.

We've entered a new unregulated world that has lead to serious burnout and depression and it's accelerating. But like with all addictions, it's led to denying that a problem exists even when you've got laughable evidence to show that the problem is serious.

I don't know about Italy, but very few teens in the U.S. gaf about X/Twitter.

As for 2), maybe I'm just abnormal. I obviously have some enthusiasm for anonymous debate, but I would get very little psychological satisfaction from having a lot of followers on social media.

Imagine taking a DeLorean from 1985 and seeing that 90% of folks need a phone with them while taking a **** and thinking the future is okay.

i'm not sure which way you are intending for this to mean, but i agree that the kids are figuring out their way passed the mainstream propaganda with increased access to social media if that's what you mean. if not, then LOL i guess.

To be fair, if you tell those same kids that you sat there reading the soap or shampoo bottle while in the shitter in the 80s, they'll think you aren't okay.

Unless you actually just sat there and stared at the shower curtain, in which case you are indeed a weirdo.

Warning labels never stopped me from watching porn on the internet when I was a kid so not sure wtf this nonsense is

That kids are and will be eventually better prepared to handle social media in a vacuum ... id agree. But they are clearly paying a price atm and their challenges are getting worse at the current rate.

Its not clear to me whether or not there is a problem in regards to phone apps and sociial media usage. So, I rarely say anything about this issue. It is certainly true that there is a lot of toxic garbage on the internet.

I recall old people discussjng the absolute evil obsession of their kids in regards to video games and the kid would play a great game for three-four hours a night with his friends and his old yelling parent would sit in front of a tv after work and watch trash tv shows for 5-6 hours a night.

Obviously, social media issues arent the same as that, but I always have a nagging suspicion based on people complaining “ kids are on their phones all the time” buy into a lot of bs themselves and have weird generational conplexes.

That doesnt mean there isnt a problem with social media- the biggest of which is old male attention whores telling everyone how worthless they are and spreading hate. There should be standards. Maybe we shouldnt let small children use social media at all.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend like a lot of parents didn't let the TV raise their kids before smartphones existed, but at least classroom time held a certain level of sanctity.

The loss of sleep is a big point that people overlook, too. When I was a kid, I fell asleep to books. At least until around 1992, when my parents made the mistake of letting me have a computer in my room. This was a constant source of conflict until I moved out in 2000 to go live with a friend for my senior year of high school.

I lead a tech-friendly household and I got my kids computers pretty early on, but always set up in a communal space of the house, and the router was set to kill internet access at 10pm. Bedtime was actually bedtime. If you're not tired yet, go read a book. Smartphones are just too easy to abuse.

That's not the point.

The Sears catalog served the generation before you just fine, but they didn't sit there with their noses buried in it for 10 hours a day at the sacrifice of everything else in life. Phones and social media are doing that to kids today.

Do you have data showing that kids spend more time on tv+ phone today, that they spent on tv 20 years ago?

Because I don't think that's the case. And as bad as you can think phones can be, tv, especially commercial TV loaded with ads, is a lot worse.

A completely passive activity is worse than a partially active one where you have much more control on which content you consume and you move from video content watching (like tv) to music to games to communicating with your friends or with strangers

Parents addicted to SM and phones are the real problem.