brandon

Look, maybe it’s true that parents should be doing a better job here. The thing is, that’s an individual solution. This is a systemic problem. How kids (and adults) interact socially and consume media is fundamentally changed over the last thirty years and we’re going to have to find ways to adapt to that as a society.

Yeah, in any particular individual case you can probably come up with a list of things the parent could have done differently. The reality is that this is a problem for tens (hundreds?) of millions of parents.

You can hand wave away any problem that affects children with “parents should do a better job”. It didn’t work for obesity, it didn’t work for child traffic deaths, it didn’t work for fentanyl overdoses, it didn’t work for school shootings, it didn’t work for measles, and it’s not going to work for this either.

I’m just going to copy/paste what I wrote in a previous comment in a similar thread:

Everybody is so quick to blame the parents in these situations. Maybe there is some truth to that, but people also need to reckon with the fact that kids (and adults) are being constantly inundated by Skinner box apps, and “platforms” full of engagement bait designed to be as addictive and attractive as possible. All run by corporations with functionally no regard for the safety of their users.

Yeah, sure, if you’re giving advice to an individual parent, they should probably be keeping a closer eye on what their kids are doing.

But there are systemic problems here that can’t be fixed with individual action. By laying the blame solely at the feet of the parents here, you are in effect putting individual parents up against dozens of huge corporations, each with armies of expert advertisers, designers, and psychologists working to build these products. It’s hardly a fair fight.

You can walk into any Walmart in America and buy a cheap smartphone for $30.

This approach is even less effective than “just don’t give them drugs”.

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