There's been a lot of hand-wringing about social media these past few months, since Jonathan Haidt published The Anxious Generation.
-
There's been a lot of hand-wringing about social media these past few months, since Jonathan Haidt published The Anxious Generation. Should we let kids use it?
Someone on a podcast I'm listening to just said, "In 30 years it'll be like cigarettes and people'll wonder why on earth we ever let our children near it."
Yes ... or it might be like the moral panic in the 90s about letting kids listen to hip-hop and rock.
That looks stupid in retrospect now.
-
@[email protected] That's fair, and it'll all be clear in hindsight, but one thing that doesn't quite work in your parallel is that hip-hop and rock artists certainly didn't keep their own kids from listening to their work — hell, they probably encouraged it.
Ask 10 cigarette execs, and you'll likely find that all ten will keep their kids away from cigarettes.
The fact that actual, real, Facebook/Twitter/etc. employees keep their kids away from social media is a pretty alarming signal.
-
@julian That's a fair point.
Tho I do wonder if in fact most social media bosses keep their kids from using it, or if we just hear a lot about the ones that do.
