The U.S. surgeon general has called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms similar to those now mandatory on cigarette boxes. pic.twitter.com/UZLEmkAbtV
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 17, 2024
Heard this story on the radio, then saw it on social media where people addicted to social media insist that no, social media is not, nay *cannot* be a problem.
— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs.bsky.social) Jun 17, 2024 at 8:33 PM
The guy behind the ‘Fig Economy’ label has, IIRC, five (pre-teen) kids. I’m aware that forbidding any form of pop-cult to children is a fool’s game (my mother had a blanket ban on comic books, 60 years ago, which didn’t keep me from becoming a teenage comix geek)… but I think the analogy with warning labels on cigarette packs is apt. Yes, we gave you an IPad to watch Bluey, kid, but TikTok and SnapChat are *not* without risks!
Per the Washington Post, “What research actually says about social media and kids’ health” [gift link]:
… [“>E]xperts — from leading psychologists to free speech advocates — have repeatedly called into question the idea that time on social media like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat leads directly to poor mental health. The debate is nuanced, they say, and it’s too early to make sweeping statements about kids and social media.
Here’s what we do know about children and teens, social media apps and mental health.
Why it’s hard to get a straight answer
There is evidence that adverse mental health symptoms among kids and teens have risen sharply, beginning during the global financial crisis in 2007 and skyrocketing at the beginning of the pandemic. But research into social media’s role has produced conflicting takeaways…Vulnerable kids are more likely to struggle
Sometimes, social media appears to boost anxiety and depression. Other times, it appears to boost well-being and connectedness, according to a 2022 analysis of 226 studies.So when we ask whether social media is a community hub for LGBTQ+ youths or a rabbit hole of warped information, the answer can be “both.” Bigger factors may be a teen’s existing vulnerabilities and what they’re actually doing on social media apps, American Psychological Association Chief Science Officer Mitchell Prinstein has said…
It’s not clear why social media might affect mental health
Social media leaves some people feeling bad, some studies suggest, but scientists still don’t understand why…
Social media companies design products to keep us scrolling…
In their own words: What young people wish they’d known about social media https://t.co/SI8Rd2Mqoh
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 17, 2024
… Kids constantly hear about the downsides of social media from the adults in their lives, often in the form of dire warnings and commands. But these adults did not grow up with social media themselves.
They didn’t get a phone handed to them as toddlers, just to keep them quiet in a restaurant. They didn’t join TikTok’s predecessor Musica.ly and do silly dances before they even learned to read. They didn’t have their schools shut down in a global pandemic, their connections to friends and peers relegated to phone and computer screens.
Kids coming of age with social media are forging ahead in a whole new world. And now that they are getting older, they have some advice for their younger peers.
You don’t have to share everything
“It’s so easy to look at your friends’ stories and feel this feeling of FOMO, of missing out and comparing yourself, like: ‘Oh, my friend just got a new car.’ It’s like this overwhelming sense of comparison. But the things that people post on social media, it’s just the highlight reel, like the 1% of their life that they want to showcase to other people.”
– BAO LE, 18, a freshman at Vanderbilt University
Don’t take it too seriously
“My main point of advice would be not to take it too seriously. Be yourself. I feel like what I was exposed to as a 12-year-old was much more limited than what is accessible to 12–year-olds nowadays. Younger kids want to be who they idolize. And when the TikTok stars or the social media stars are 20, 18, 16, they’re going to want to be like them. You’re getting younger kids that are now obsessing over products and brands, and it’s just getting really hard to be young. And it shouldn’t be really hard to be young. You should be enjoying childhood. And we shouldn’t be rushing to grow up. It’s OK to be 12. It’s OK to be young. It’s OK to enjoy childhood.”
– DOREEN MALATA, 22, a senior at the University of Maryland…A lot of it is not real
“A lot of people make their life artificial so that they’re perceived in a certain way. And I think going into social media, I wish I knew it is a tool to learn from. There’s so much information, and you’re able to learn so much about different things. … I wish people had that outlook rather than the whole idea of other people viewing you and having to be seen a certain way.”
– NOUR MAHMOUD, 21, a junior at Virginia Commonwealth University…
Since the pandemic, teenagers are using social media more than ever – with the risk of mental health problems rising with their time online.
Many parents are trying to raise their children with restrictions or blanket bans. https://t.co/a1klSqTF00
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 17, 2024
War for Ukraine Day 848: The Butcher’s Bill from Last Night’s/This Morning’s Russian Attack
Tony G
I am so glad that the first “smart phones” did not become available until my sons were 17 and 19 years old. (Of course, since we’re cheap, they didn’t actually get one until a couple of years later.). I’m not sure what I would do with young kids now. Probably something like this: “I assume that the kids will be mature enough to handle this when they are fourteen years old. Before that, no “smart phone”. If they don’t like it, too goddamn bad. As my father used to tell me: you can always just dig ditches for a living!”. I would also tell them what I told my real kids when they were about twelve years old: “Don’t give a damn about what other people think! Just do what’s right!”. Maybe that approach would work! It actually worked well with my real kids in the pre-smartphone era.
Urza
“risk of mental health problems rising with their time online”
This is not because of being online, its people who are more isolated tend to spend more time online, and being isolated tends to lead to the problems. Granted its harder now to form real world attachments than it was pre-internet.
CaseyL
I think the dangers of social media on minds not yet trained for critical thinking is a real problem – but it’s one factor amid all the rest of the sheer mountains of shit young people are faced with.
One of those things is the atomization of society, where finding an in-person community is so difficult I’m amazed anyone manages it. Can’t talk to parents, because no kid does. Can’t talk to teachers, because they may be required by law to tell the principal, the police, or your parents the things you confide in them. Can’t talk to community leaders, because they either don’t exist or aren’t available.
The grown ups have pretty much given up creating a safe place for kids. School shooters? Can’t do anything about that. Crumbling, understaffed schools? Can’t do anything about that. Predators everywhere, including on the social media? Can’t do anything about that.
I do agree social media is a problem – but IMO it’s a problem precisely because the grownups have abdicated all responsibility for the society the kids are living in. If other stuff was working, kids wouldn’t be so dependent on social media. If other stuff was working, kids wouldn’t be so easily misled by social media. IF other stuff was working, kids would have other things to do besides social media.
/rant
SpaceUnit
I don’t need a warning label. Other than posting now and then on BJ I pretty much avoid social media like the plague.
Is BJ social media?
Suzanne
@CaseyL:
Yes this.
One of the most frustrating aspects of modern parenting is the schlepping. There’s a lot of it. Kids, in many places, can’t walk to school, can’t go out with their friends without a parent to supervise, can’t get to activities without being driven. So it leads to…. being stuck at home, probably indoors, lonely. Of course social media is there. They’re fucken bored.
Ken
Agreed, but why the focus on young people? Plenty of older people aren’t good at critical thinking. If anything, they’re more likely to substitute pat answers from whatever ideology they’ve adopted.
Ken
Can’t be, no ads.
Noskilz
I don’t think the measures proposed are bad things – they’re just telling social media sites they aren’t allowed to target kids in certain ways.
Whether they will make a huge difference or not, I cannot say, but I definitely prefer that the companies are being targeted by the regulations rather than the kids.
I have a feeling the kids are gonna do what the kids are gonna do, but I am curious to see the experiment play out.
frosty
@SpaceUnit: Yes, B-J is social media. We interact with, and feel like friends with people we’ve never met. We share information about ourselves – like our ages in John’s post about looking back in time.
I spend more time with you jackals than any other group these days.
HumboldtBlue
There was no social media (one could say the Green Book was an early form of social media) during Reggie Jackson’s playing days, but the Klan was active.
Reggie describes playing in Birmingham as a black player.
UncleEbeneezer
The way that social media allows such easy bullying, pile-ons, bigotry, not to mention very phony communities I struggle to imagine it not having major negatives for mental health, especially for kids. All of the shittiest aspects of being young (insecurity, body images, peer pressure, obsessing over something someone said etc.) are all exponentially worse on social media. Hell, I’d argue that social media shows us just how many adults are still basically childhood bullies.
UncleEbeneezer
@HumboldtBlue: I can think of several professional athletes (Naomi Osaka being the first that comes to mind) who have talked about social media playing a large role in their mental health struggles. The sheer volume of racist shit that athletes now have to have foisted upon them is horrific to even imagine. Not saying it’s worse than what Reggie and other OG’s had to navigate but just different. And athletes sort of have to have a social media presence for branding/marketing purposes.
Poe Larity
So I’ll need to check the cookie popup, the gdpr popup, and now the social media warning popup.
Since we can’t demonetize these kinder platforms, couldn’t we tax them better?
Tony G
@Suzanne: Absolutely. There are many places — probably the majority of places at this point — in the U.S. where it is effectively impossible to get anywhere without driving or being driven there. That isolates everyone — but it especially isolates kids who must rely on a parent to drive them anywhere. An awful, cruel geography that hurts everyone. And goddamn NIMBY zoning exacerbates this. If someone wanted to put a coffee shop or ice cream shop in a residential area, the NIMBY’s would freak out.
SpaceUnit
@frosty:
This sort of blog just feels a bit more casual in ways and yet far more intimate in others. It’s not a crazy zoo. I like coming here even if I get into the occasional argument.
The thought of being on Facebook or Instagram or TickTock just wears me out
Eta: Also, the fact that there’s no competition for status or money (via likes or advertising) tends to keep things low key. Nobody is getting rich or famous on this blog, but it keeps things a bit more rational.
Tony G
@Tony G: … and that’s how I got that “Father of the Year” award, ten years in a row!
cain
@UncleEbeneezer: sounds like you are describing high school. :-)
strange visitor (from another planet)
sooo wait. there was a giant terrorist attack that pancaked the tallest buildings in america, then a two decade, lie-driven, failed war-on-terror, the environment is collapsing, the seas and fascism are rising, home ownership is increasingly out of reach, there was a fucking PANDEMIC that killed gramma and the nice aunt, everywhere you look, just about everyone is full of shit, every “disruptor” thinks they’ve re-invented the fucking wheel, and the last president was a raping, fake, orange, hate-driven, bloviating, bullying con-artist who attempted a coup (and he might actually win again bc his cronies bent the judiciary enough that he might skate on his many, many crimes)….
but it’s SOCIAL MEDIA that’s warping people’s mental health and making them depressed?!?
ayfkm? is this like where joe lieberman blamed video games for gun violence?
maybe people are depressed and mental illnesses are surfacing bc times are shitty?!
this entire century has gotten progressively worse year by year.
Poe Larity
Also, too, when we have the next artists in our midst can we commission an updated Balloon Man logo in 4K? A bit ratty for a top 10,000 blog to have a 240p logo.
cain
@Tony G: growing up in Indiana we just rode our bikes everywhere. Yes parents are probably more strict on going out than us GenZs but didn’t that start with boomers ?
I don’t know.. i think the problem with social media is algorithms that always end up feeding you right wing toxic stuff.
Tony G
@CaseyL: “Can’t talk to community leaders, because they either don’t exist or aren’t available.” Yup. I would argue that, at least in suburban towns, communities themselves don’t really exist. You MIGHT get a quick glance at your neighbors entering or exiting their cars, and you MIGHT give them a quick wave of the hand. That is the extent of “community” in most suburban towns. A culture of deep isolation and loneliness. If you’re lucky enough to have a functional nuclear family — then pressure is put on that family because it is so isolated.
different-church-lady
Sheeeeet, I was calling Facebook “cigarettes for the mind” at least ten years ago, and here we are.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne: Holy god, when I was a kid you just went down to the closest street corner and got bullied until the school bus showed up.
It wasn’t better then, but I’m still astonished at the 180.
cain
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Well said.
different-church-lady
@CaseyL: Well, the first problem is getting the adults to recognize that social media is a problem for people of any age.
Jay
@Tony G:
What happened?
Did you keep breaking the Trophy Mug, year after year, or do you have 10 stacked up in the cupboard?
different-church-lady
@strange visitor (from another planet): Uhhhh… Trump became president because of social media.
cain
@different-church-lady:
I disagree. Everyone thought he was some amazing businessman because of ‘The Apprentice’
SpaceUnit
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Social media can spread disinformation at light speed.
So yeah, it’s a big part of the problem.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@different-church-lady: dingus con became president because the gop (and the media) had spent twenty some-odd years stalking the clintons and making hillary out to be ilsa, she-wolf of the ss.
then comey’s letter happened ten days before the election.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@SpaceUnit: ok, great. never mind the disinformation. what do you do when the actual, underlying facts suck ass?
eta- mental illnesses breach from the depths in times of stress. trust me, i know.
SpaceUnit
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Facts don’t suck ass.
That’s actually something the MAGA crowd believes.
HumboldtBlue
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Sing along with Harry Kalas.
scav
Social media may be a firehose, but you can’t make the horse drink from it. And the MAGA crowd practically mainline the flowing shit. Tough chicken or egg call here.
Will be interesting to watch the shit ripples resulting from TIFG wanting to hand out green cards with diplomas (“But Keep The Student Debt!”). Especially as it seems to have been floated by Hillary at some point.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@SpaceUnit: no. they do. they really, really do.
some indicators are positive, fine.
however you can’t ignore the rising tide of right wing autocrats that thrive off of the network out of moscow.
you can’t ignore that the environment is never getting better. we missed that moment, the tipping point is tipped. this is gonna be the coolest summer you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
barring some sort of thames-type barriers or really innovative ideas like damming the east river and jamaica bay, a BIG chunk of nyc is gonna be underwater in 50-75 years.
our country is full of ill-informed morons who are being bombarded by right-wing propaganda CONSTANTLY from every direction. the right wing has MANY dedicated mainstream media outlets, the left has NONE.
with concurrent procurement, our MIC can’t manage to make a ship that works right for the job it’s designed to do (hi, LCS program!!) nor can it re-tool to make simple things like 155mm shells on an industrial scale for the hot war in europe which adam KEEPS telling us is WWIII…
but things are groovy? i mean, i could go on. yah. some things have gotten better.
for the most part, we’ve been on a SERIOUSLY downward spiral since 2000, when the brooks brothers riot stopped the counting and we ended up with bush the lesser as POTUS with the non-precedent decision.
but yeah. let’s blame social media for society atomizing, depression and MI. remind me again how we woulda known about george floyd, how BLM woulda happened, sans social media?!
@HumboldtBlue: heh. nice.
Mike in NC
Glad I’m an old man and never had to contend with our modern social media, which is often a sewer of disinformation.
strange visitor (from another planet)
“there is no such thing as society.”
margaret thatcher, 1987.
but definitely, no. myspace is responsible, facebook is responsible for the atomization of society, not conservative policies, right
people’s depression and the increase of mental illness has nothing to do with the actual really-real world, it’s all about internet, on-line interactions?!?!
yeah, no. that’s absurd. the internet may EXACERBATE the underlying issues, but the underlying issues are there, barely hidden just beneath the surface.
SpaceUnit
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Feel like we’re talking past one another.
Yes, we’re living in a shitstorm. Social media isn’t entirely evil, but a good deal of it seems dedicated toward promoting ignorance and hate (see Elon, Musk). Also see about a few hundred other RWNJ sites that spread nothing but the worst sort of stupidity (such as all the disinformation during the Covid pandemic, vaccine lies, anti-maskers, etc.)
I’ll sing the praises of social media when it ushers in a more civil and better informed era. But I ain’t holding my breath just yet.
ron
Social media has melted adult’s brains. Just look at Elon Musk and Trump. But so has hate radio, hate podcasts, and hate TV. Where are the warning labels for them?
“Fox “News” has done to our parents what they thought video games and heavy metal would do to us.” as the popular phrase goes.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@SpaceUnit: i just kinda figure that the people who run the internet companies are just as bad as the people who run the not-internet companies. is musk worse than murdoch?
i get very frustrated with human usage of the internet. the collected knowledge of humanity there for the asking…. but most people don’t fucking ASK!!
…or they ask the wrong question. on the wrong website. and are sent down the rabbit hole.
the thing is, that shit existed before the internet. for example, the birchers thrived on those rabbit holes.
admittedly, the field of rabbit holes is considerably larger now…
but i don’t think the really dire straits we find ourselves in can be divorced from explosion of depression and mental illness.
you know how the story goes, “we’re all just one bad day” away from losing our shit?
that bad day doesn’t require the internet to be bad.
again, trust me, i know how it works.
eta- serious question: what do you see as the dividing line between “social media” and “the internet”?
Jay
@strange visitor (from another planet):
I define social media as internet spaces where I interact with people, so BJ and texts with friends are my social media.
The “Internet” is where I go to learn stuff, read stuff from two hands and one foot carefully curated sites.
scav
See also Yellow Journalism. Like sex, we didn’t invent it. We are probably doing it faster and at scale.
different-church-lady
Omnibus comment: the big evil is not online spaces in and of themselves (although they can have their problems).
The big evil is huge social media platforms for profit doing things to deliberately addict people into spending huge amounts of time ‘engaging’ with something that sucks all the oxygen out of a well-balanced life.
And one of the things they do is nurture conflict, because conflict drives engagement.
They’re deliberately corroding the social fabric because it makes money.
luc
I do blame social media for an, in my eyes, unbelievably uncritical consumeristic attitude of our teenage kid and seemingly all his peers.
Their life revolves around online shopping. Each week there is a NEED to participate in a lottery for the right to purchase the latest limited edition sneakers. They beg to be manipulated. It makes me sick.
OTOH, I did not grow up in the US myself. I am sure social media makes all this worse.
SpaceUnit
@strange visitor (from another planet):
I don’t know. It’s a good question. I suppose I see the internet in general as a kind of public space. You’ve got good-faith interaction, culture, well-meaning social activism, a shit load of good commerce, conveniences such as paying one’s bills and banking online. But it’s fraught with bad actors, including scammers, fascists and Russian propagandists.
As a people we just haven’t figured out how to properly regulate it. It’s sort of like when the automobile came along and we had to figure out traffic laws. We’re lagging way behind. Advantage: Bad Actors.
ETA: I didn’t fully answer your question. I suppose I see social media as the most unregulated, unprincipled, financially motivated and most corruptible sites on the web. They are the most socially-irresponsible sites. And they seem strangely addictive to a lot of people. They’ll promote any sort of garbage if it earns them a dime. January 6th was made possible by social media.
SectionH
Based on my granddaughter, not remotely worried about kids and social media. She turned 13 day before yesterday. Kids here are so clued. And I think it propagates, at least among clever kids. I’ll take cynical assessment for a start, but yeah.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Jay: i mean, i learn a great deal from the other jackals on BJ as well as the front-page articles
@SpaceUnit: re: bad actors- 100% agree.
different-church-lady
@luc: If you had grown up in the U.S., you’d know social media merely the most modern and advanced tool in the drive to manipulate children into becoming relentless consumers.
It’s been like this a long time, but they’re getting a hell of a lot better at it with every passing day.
Matt McIrvin
Why is the focus on kids? I worry the most about what it does to middle-aged people in positions of power, and to retirees.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Matt McIrvin: i figure far more middle-aged people fell for it and sent money to the nigerian prince, rather than the yoots.
scav
@different-church-lady: Yeah, I mean beanie babies were sorta pre-social, but cabbage patch were definitely so. And the beanies didn’t just involve kids, that was manic collectors too. And it was adults with those beer releases maybe a decade ago? So again, complicated.
Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
The focus is on kids, to break the cycle, the same reason they can’t buy dope, smokes or alcohol legally. Here, there is a trend of “kids”, young teens and young adults ditching smartphones.
Also, because a lot of the “social media” companies have focused major efforts on “targeting” kids and getting them addicted. Also, because their BS detectors are not as well honed or even formed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBfi8OEz0rA
SectionH
Happy Solstice anyway.
HumboldtBlue
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Someone say Dire Straits?
strange visitor (from another planet)
@HumboldtBlue: nice.
i love that tune. woulda gone with the proto-mainframe-entertainment video, money for nothing, mostly because i have a DEEP love for ReBoot and i think that’s knopfler’s best video, but goddamn are the dire straits a good band.
ColoradoGuy
The part that deserves the most attention are the secret, proprietary algorithms these monopoly providers use to maximize addictive potential. They spend billions devising and continuing to modify these algorithms. Look at your favorite YouTube channels … the creators are maddened by the ever-shifting algorithm, and the opaque reasons why some content is de-monetized and others are “anything goes … this week”.
The secrecy of these algorithms provides room for all kinds of mischief. The content providers pretend to be neutral, and claim common-carrier legal status, but they’re not. They are de facto monopolies that are using hidden psychological techniques to shape their audiences, and are barely regulated at all. And it’s not a secret. Former employees tell story after story of techniques similar to tobacco companies addicting teen-agers. The algorithms are NOT benign, or neutral.
Full disclosure would require the site to disclose that they use mind-control techniques that are a corporate secret, and current law does not offer the user any protection from the psychological impact of these techniques. The personal information they collect will be resold to anonymous third parties. Use with caution, and pay attention to your mood when using these sites. If you start to feel negative about yourself, step away.
cain
@ColoradoGuy: 💯 correct
Gloria DryGarden
@SectionH: happy solstice. Yes.
Gloria DryGarden
@different-church-lady: I read that the folks who work at and design Facebook won’t let their kids on it, bcs they know it’s designed to be addictive. They were involved in making it addictive.
when you look for a reward, and only get it intermittently, that’s the strongest hook.
I’ve been on Facebook a lot. And read some of the pitfalls. Addictive, cultivating a shorter attention span , interfering w good focus. I would say I’m an addict. I learned later that the articles I would get before the election in 2016, Hillary c v orange rapist con, were micro targeted to me, based on my data (yikes!) and were coming often from Russian bots and servers paid to send out misinformation.
I had to learn to go to media bias fact check page and see how far from center and how factual or not a source was. I learned to skip the articles that told me just what I wanted to hear, once I saw they were pretty far left of center. It took a while to notice the way subjective points of view developed. I noticed that Oan, and news max were way low on the truth/ fact scale, and I’d never even heard of them, until my chiropractor kept telling me odd ideas from the news and I asked what source he listened to.
while I do get into too long scrolling, and lose time, it’s partly because there’s a video stream and short reels, and it auto plays, and is full of interesting bits.
there are several ways I use Facebook that I find useful and uplifting. I get news and uplifting teachings from a few teachers I’ve studied with. I hear bits of personal news from 2nd and third circle acquaintances, and enjoy the comment exchanges. It’s good to keep up w old friends in small ways, too. When people are in a tough situation, they’ll post asking for prayers, or specific help. We exchange garden advice, free plants, questions, ideas. I find out when someone has died, my friends father for example, or a guy in my community. There’s a whole glory of art, music and figure skating I can access, view, and repost, and that seems to be fun and uplifting. And recipes to share, discussing how to adjust them.
sometimes I’ll go to someone’s page and see their recent posts, since the stupid algorithm doesn’t show things in a timely fashion.
i get announcements of group camping, public rituals, drum circles, memorials, festivals, poetry writing gatherings, a party, a garden tour.
oh, and I see pix of my great nieces. Invaluable
it’s still not real life. It doesn’t really fill my need to have real time conversations and contact. Sometimes it leads to it, though. But so many flicks of connection from people I know. Oh, and we tell jokes, pass on community news. So it’s not all bad. During Covid, I went on and said I really needed to be reaching out by phone to talk to people, and rekindled a few friendships. Several people wrote back that I could call them.
I keep my settings on only friends, and usually stay off public posting site, though I’ve made a comment here or there and seen the kind of bullying, and framing, and narrow minded mean comments some people make.
HumboldtBlue
@Gloria DryGarden:
Ain’t nobody reading all that. Keep the settings on kittens and Krugman.
You’ll be cute, and informed.
NotMax
Have always opined that social media is neither.
Jay
@HumboldtBlue:
I read it all, understand it all.
Kid’s won’t.
You forgot to use the snark tags in your “comment”,
This ain’t XShitter or Reddit,…… we have rules,…….//
Martin
I don’t think exposure to social media is excessively harmful. At the local level it can make traditional problems with bullying worse, but it can also provide important outlets for kids that don’t feel they fit in the local culture.
I think the bigger issue is that it takes the problems that adults create and try to hide from kids and either makes it impossible to hide from kids, or more likely, makes their parents and other authorities look like even bigger liars than they would otherwise have believed. It’s not that social media delivers a constant stream of depressing shit, it’s that we create a constant stream of depressing shit that social media does a decent job of documenting.
Jeffg166
It’s never changed. Kinds in the 50s were being corrupted by TV and rock and roll. Today it’s social media. Stupid kids turn into stupid adults.
People I know are annoyed with me for not have a cell phone so they can text me. Email is too much trouble for them as is picking up the phone and calling.
WereBear
As a small business owner, I have to be on it. End of story. I manage it with budget iPhone level tech because I don’t “work” from it that often. I have a laptop for that :)
I’ve made friends around the world I wouldn’t have otherwise. Business contacts and writer connections and I have to maintain a site and promote it. It ALL costs money, of course. But this is uniquely new to human history, that so many have the means AND the distribution.
But of course, I came to it with adult experience and assessment. The thing to do with kids is keep an open door policy and talk to them about our own experience with bullying and predation, post and pre-Internet.
Stranger danger goes virtual. And my child training in advertising started as soon as we watched TV together. They complained, but they learned :)
WereBear
Also, want to thank everyone on the recent Supreme Court thread who helped me with my dilemma about writing about the Pandemic… without writing about the Pandemic.
In discussion with Mr WereBear, he spotted me ONE mention. I already have dated headers for sections of the book. I might see him and raise him and NOT mention it!
It’s the brain trust here I treasure. You are my focus groups…
Baud
I can quit Balloon Juice anytime I want.
Jay
@Baud:
No, you can’t.
You might as just well put on pants.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Ironically, I think Elmo cured me of any addiction I may have had to Twitter, by pay-walling or otherwise destroying the tools I used to make Twitter work for me as a communications tool. Facebook has degraded similarly over the course of the last six or seven years, to the point where I check my feed and it’s eighty percent mis-aimed advertising, ten percent irrelevant click-bait crap, and on a good day, ten percent updates from friends. I think it’s been something like two years since I made a substantial post to either.
Rachel Bakes
Late to the game. Have an 18 year old daughter who is a geek and self-proclaimed nerd. Turned 14 6 weeks into shut down. At 14 she posted to Arxhive of our Own and lurked on tumblr. At 16 she joined there and had found her people. She screams at the misinformation but questions everything and seeks data to back everything up. I don’t remember pushing that she has to be 16 before joining tumblr but she took whatever we said seriously. Just recently joined instagram as part of college prep and to catch up with people but literally does not care about the influencers.
Is this from watching her parents engage with FB to keep up with people and let the rest gloss over; dad’s vague following of twitter when it was decent; her own ocd and obsessive rule following? A well-honed BS meter? Not sure but I’m comfortable with her.
prostratedragon
Everything is eberything:
“A graphic designer friend once put it in very useful terms: you can think of cuffs like the serif on a font. A serif can make typography look more traditional, while a sans-serif looks more modern. So traditional tailoring? Cuff. More modern look? Plain hem.” — Derek Guy
“If different fonts were outfits” — Wisdom Kaye (Video)
WereBear
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Facebook is their core system, which no longer recognizes me.
My authorizations still work, and the admin of our Way of Cats page is there, but he has the conversations, or refers me to them. And I can do that from the page.
But he weren’t administration, we would be in a pickle. My attempts to fix it lead to me to a big loop of nothingness. They say they send the things to my email or my phone. But they never arrive.
And that’s it. I’m never getting it fixed in this race-to-the-bottom world. You know, the very rich know all about global warming. That’s how the new Yacht Races were about how many they had, no?
WereBear
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Since Facebook is messed up, so is Instagram and Threads.
I can post on Threads, but I don’t want to pay for it in my scheduler.
Every con artist, everywhere, is dancing around the law until the hammer comes down. May it come down soon from a judge who is not in the cult.
satby
Fascinating discussion about social media by people who say they mostly don’t use social media.
lowtechcyclist
Good morning, y’all! I don’t have much to say about social media. Stay cool this weekend!
SFAW
Probably a dead thread, but:
I just skimmed an article which made my blood run cold. Apparently, the so-called “Hawaiian” pizza was invented in Ontario, Canada.
Now, in general I like Canada — except for the idea that a team from BC calls itself the “Canucks” * — but I am now wondering whether I have been misguided. It also raises the question: which is the worse/worst “gift” that Canada has given the US: Ted Cruz or the “Hawaiian” pizza? Frankly, I’m not sure.
[Incoming!]
* As the proud scion of real Canucks — mother’s side is/was French-Canadian (from Quebec, of course) — I fart in the general direction of those BC pretenders.
mrmoshpotato
@SFAW: Oh, Shithead Ted is definitely worse.
eversor
It’s not entirely social media. It’s the damn iPhone. These devices themselves are designed to be addictive and take over your life. They are also sold that way. Which is why there is an entire cult around having an iPhone, having AirPods, and having an Apple Watch. This is all designed to be a locked ecosystem that takes over your entire life and you do everything in your life view iDevice. It’s a lifestyle and a class and cultural statement. A huge portion of “influencers” started off with young people showing off their iPhones (always the top model) and their AirPods. These things are part of your personal brand. Taking apart facebook or regulating them into the ground won’t do squat unless you also do it to Apple.
There’s also the issue that these devices consume tons of rare earth minerals mined by child labor and are made but just above slave labor in work camps. And are marketed to make you get a new one each year. Or in cases like the AirPods (which are utterly crap for audio quality and the iPhone is a shit audio player to start with) made non upgradable so you have to throw them out and buy new ones. It’s profit from strip mining the earth through child and slave labor and getting people hooked on it as part of their own personal peacocking.
If we are serious about fixing what’s going on than sure we need to go after facebook and it’s ilk. But we also need to go after Apple and it’s ecosystem. We also need to go after the AT&Ts. I just mentioned the worst offenders here of course there are more.
We aren’t going to do that. People would riot, the stock market would crash, and whatever party did it would be wiped out for generations.
WereBear
@eversor: On the other hand, my experience with Apple is that “everything works” while that is so emphatically not the way with PC, because it’s open architecture.
It is hard to do art on a PC. Which is my Mr WayofCats, a retired graphic artist, sticks with Macs.
I used to have an Amiga. Now there was an operating system! First one to multi-task, for instance. First PC to do video. I was part of it’s history.
Just saying such comparisons are apples and oranges ones. As a business owner and IT pro, I’ve seen a LOT of OSses and I have professional opinions :)
gvg
@cain: These days it’s electric “scooters” which to me look like skateboards that have a steering handle sticking up to arm level. The battery must be amazingly small. Anyway, there are other rechargeable electrical personal mobility devices appearing also and the kids (and adults) seem to be trying them all. Bikes are still around, but in Florida in the summer, going very far can seem not fun, and in larger town things are spread out. The scooters are foldable and can be carried on a bus. All public school kid IDs are bus passes here I think. Potentially they could go some places, like a park, a pool or the library.
eversor
@WereBear:
I have friends who are professional graphic designers and video editors and they all moved off Macs completely. They won’t touch them now that Adobe upped it’s game on Windows. That’s true in the professional sphere as well where Mac is fading fast with creatives.