The next step in China's youth tech lockdown

thechinchinsong · September 22, 2021

20 hours ago, JLO64 said:

I am kinda torn on this. One the one hand, I despise most aspects of social media (why do you think I'm on a forum in 2021) and I genuinely believe that most people would be better off without it (see Facebook's recently leaked internal investigations on the rise of teen and pre-teen suicides and other mental health illnesses linked to their platforms). That being said, I'm also not a fan of my government telling me what I can and can not do. This is pretty similar to China's recent restrictions on online gaming, but the effects of online gaming are nowhere near as bad as what social media can produce (especially among the youth). Honestly, if I had a child I would probably implement similar policies with them (or just no social media), but that would be something I'd apply to my kid and not on hundreds of millions of other children.

I can't agree enough. Although I am hesitant to say that effects of online gaming are as bad as social media can be in China specifically. At least from the CCP's perspective, they can effectively curate what can be seen on social media and so could potentially mitigate some of the side effects of social media in that way, but I feel like online gaming in general in China is a lot bigger of a problem for kids than in the West, but maybe that's just me.

IkeaGnome · September 23, 2021

6 hours ago, SlidewaysZ said:

Umm yeah because subjecting your kids to people online is always more toxic then handing them a phone with pre programmed numbers of their friends in it. Any time you can limit and more easily monitor your kids circle of friends and who they communicate with you help cut down on toxic stuff they can see.

You do have to be careful about that though. I was supposedly completely locked down. I'm just young enough to have grown up just as internet was getting big(28yo). I got into more trouble with in person friends than online. There was a site for PenPals that I signed up for at 12, told the sign up page I was 13. I learned more from people on that site than anywhere else. When I graduated basic training(yes, for anyone that's paid attention to what I've said about my life story, it's complicated with many different things all going on at the same time), I met my friend of almost 5 years. I happened to be in SC and he was from NC. My absolute best friend, I met her on there. We still talk about every 3rd day 8 years later. We have group chats that are still active years after the site going down. I learned more about the world and people from that site and those interactions than I have from any other event in my life. I have a friend that is a reindeer farmer and university professor in Finland. I have a friend that helps design submarines. I have a friend that we are still trying to get out of a bad place and she's finally seeing it. I have friends that have taught me not everyone of different religions are out to get you. I learned how to watch out for red flags from strangers and figure out intents pretty quickly. We chased creepers away from each other, we out creeped creepers too when they needed it.

My parents didn't know about that site until about 7 months ago. No matter how hard you try to monitor, kids will be creative and get around it.

You're better off teaching kids what to look for and how to ask for help than to just tell them no.

JLO64 · September 23, 2021

1 hour ago, IkeaGnome said:

No matter how hard you try to monitor, kids will be creative and get around it.

You're better off teaching kids what to look for and how to ask for help than to just tell them no.

On the one hand I 100% agree that kids will find a way around whatever tech restrictions their parents will place on them (especially when it comes to porn). So as a parent you should let them learn something about online interaction.

1 hour ago, IkeaGnome said:

I learned how to watch out for red flags from strangers and figure out intents pretty quickly. We chased creepers away from each other, we out creeped creepers too when they needed it.

My issue with social media isn't just the "immediate" threats you mention on here like the creepers and stalkers you've come across (Jesus that's scary tho). It's the "long-term" threats to people's mental stability and how it can change how we perceive ourselves and others. Again, we don't know definitively what the effects of growing up with social media are, but all signs point to them being (for the most part) fairly negative.

Fasterthannothing · September 23, 2021

9 hours ago, IkeaGnome said:

You do have to be careful about that though. I was supposedly completely locked down. I'm just young enough to have grown up just as internet was getting big(28yo). I got into more trouble with in person friends than online. There was a site for PenPals that I signed up for at 12, told the sign up page I was 13. I learned more from people on that site than anywhere else. When I graduated basic training(yes, for anyone that's paid attention to what I've said about my life story, it's complicated with many different things all going on at the same time), I met my friend of almost 5 years. I happened to be in SC and he was from NC. My absolute best friend, I met her on there. We still talk about every 3rd day 8 years later. We have group chats that are still active years after the site going down. I learned more about the world and people from that site and those interactions than I have from any other event in my life. I have a friend that is a reindeer farmer and university professor in Finland. I have a friend that helps design submarines. I have a friend that we are still trying to get out of a bad place and she's finally seeing it. I have friends that have taught me not everyone of different religions are out to get you. I learned how to watch out for red flags from strangers and figure out intents pretty quickly. We chased creepers away from each other, we out creeped creepers too when they needed it.

My parents didn't know about that site until about 7 months ago. No matter how hard you try to monitor, kids will be creative and get around it.

You're better off teaching kids what to look for and how to ask for help than to just tell them no.

Yes the internet is always going to have bad areas and people it's the internet. Like you said people have been in chat rooms and stuff since the beginning of the internet. However modern social media seems to be an entirely different set of issues. Kids are having serious mental issues from being on Instagram and Snapchat and such. You can clearly see the difference in people who grew up in the early days of the internet and "social media" in the form of chat rooms and such compared to kids now. Kids now will literally starve themselves to look skinny and there are news stories all the time if kids doing dangerous stunts and getting killed over a viral social media post. The stuff in the early days of the internet would possibly mess you up for a short period of time but like JLO64 said modern social media seems to be having long term effects on people. I guess the best way for me to explain it is avatars were made to give people a online presence and personality and when people logged off the computer a large majority of people disconnected. Now with phones and your online personality being how you present yourself and your life to the internet it seems like it's not allowing people to disconnect anymore and their more worried about what people online think of them than what the people around them in real life do in some cases.