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doleo ,

Not having a job, place to live, or an inhabitable planet in the near future is causing a mental health crisis.

CaptainSpaceman ,

Why are legislators acting like only people under 17 are affected?

PassingThrough ,

Because “protecting the children” is an easier political fight than trying to save adults from their own freedom, and the internet is not as clearly a threat as guns or drugs. And even guns are hard to restrict…

As an adult you have a right to make bad choices, as well as certain constitutional rights, and unless controlling your rights can be readily accepted as required for the public good(like keeping you from driving a 2 ton murder box without training), it will die politically very, very quickly as government overreach.

And even then there are many who think driver’s licenses are a violation of their freedoms. You think we can control their social media/free speech outlets?

PassingThrough ,

TBH I really do think there should be some regulations in place. I grew up on social media and it was bad enough for me that I got away from it…mostly, obviously I’m here…but I look at the next generation afraid for them and their future as I see these platforms define their very reasons to exist today. It’s so much worse today as they were able to get hooked younger and at their most impressionable.

I’m not even sure it can be safely cured at this point without some nuclear option. Kids today don’t know anything else.

I could blame the parents, but most of that generation is almost as addicted many of them don’t see the problem either.

reddig33 ,

Sincere question — What was so bad about it?

PassingThrough ,

I didn’t really have words for it then like I might now with the benefit of hindsight and outside observation…back then I just eventually recognized that it wasn’t making me feel good to participate, more drained and yet I had the need to continue.

Imagine a school social scene. Imagine those youthful desires to express yourself, the need to be recognized as a person and feel seen and maybe even appreciated by those around you. Maybe you decorated your notebooks or locker or dressed “weird” for expression, maybe you tried to enter different cliques and make friends, even shallow false ones for clout. Maybe you suffered under the school bully who always put you down. Maybe you were the bully, looking down on others to elevate yourself.

Now scale that up to what might appear to be the countless billions connected to the web. Now the whole world could be your friend, but also your enemy. You are now a mere speck in a sea of others begging for that same recognition. You post something, and an artificial number goes up to declare your success, but you need it to go higher, reach farther. That same number is also a testament to your failure to matter to literally thousands or millions of people instead of at most a couple hundred you could meet in school and town. You could lose hope, fall into depression that you are worthless, or try ever harder, ever edgier, ever more extreme to try and matter. In addition to your own image, you can also try to put others down, bully them and attempt to decrease their visibility, their reach, so it doesn’t eclipse yours. Just like they’ve been doing to you.

I was too meek to be the bully or the bitch, so my social media experience was trying to go beyond my means and post things that I thought would matter and get seen, while usually being beaten down by those who were not afraid to be assholes about my very existence. And always feeling that I hadn’t reached enough, accomplished enough. That I wasn’t “winning”. Made a whole MySpace page with all the cool widgets just to see a visitor counter(barely) go up. Tried to post my thoughts to a young Facebook and Twitter just to be told I should kill myself, if it reached anyone.

Kids and teens have enough trouble keeping stable in an environment where they have to work with 50-100 people a day at worst…and now they feel the need to catch the eye of millions. The struggle and burden on their mental state scales with it.

And this is before we start a discussion on today’s prevalence of malicious intent, pedophiles and abusers you can’t just walk away from and ignore, if you even recognize the threat. And before we weigh in on the corporations with their own nefarious exploitation of whatever makes more engagement and therefore money.

I’m older now and I can see this all for what it is and navigate around it to meet my needs without falling for it anymore, I don’t care at my age about the likes or upvotes aside from maintaining enough to get into the communities that set a bar to prevent spam. That’s all I need it for, so there’s an achievable goal now instead of an enduring need for ever more that kids have.

NarrativeBear ,

Our parents told us tv would rot our brains growing up, and now we grew up and tell our parents to get off Facebook as it will rot their brains.

PassingThrough ,

Depending on the channel, they weren’t wrong. And ironically, such channels are probably their favorites too.

Do as I say, not as I do and all that.

NarrativeBear ,

Next stop, all news channels!

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