There’s a drinking and smoking age because the government thinks that businesses should not have the freedom to profit from exposing kids to alcohol and smoking before they are 21, why shouldn’t the same be true for preventing social media companies from profiting from exposing kids to porn, bullying, illegal drug pushers, etc.
I am surprised that I still have all my fingers. As a kid I packed cutoff match heads into used CO2 cylinders to make improvised rockets that sometimes exploded when set off. I like to tell my grandkids about how as ten year olds with paper routes my friends and I once rode our bikes to a nearby small airport. We gave a pilot we didn’t know a couple of bucks for gas and he flew us over our homes in a Piper Cub. When I got home and told my mom her response was “that’s nice, get ready for dinner” and that was it. We lived in a Chicago suburb and would ride the train to the Loop and wander through the big department stores and once ended up on State street south of Van Buren outside a burlesque show hoping to get a peek inside. A friendly doorman waved us in for a free show. That we never mentioned to our folks. I fear for the current coddled generation.
Thank you for this. I agree that the book is well researched and powerful. I also agree that we need to be careful when enacting government policies... they will always have trickle over. (Why does everyone forget this when they want to apply govt' to their cause?) Parents most definitely should know their children best - it's called attunement and it's a very important part of parenthood. However, our instincts have been highjacked by screens, lack of authentic community, and being away from nature for too long. There are many ways of knowing including embodied ways of knowing, and sadly, we are a disconnected society, even though we are more connected than ever before. I find myself longing for more people to see this as the biggest hurdle and come together to tap into our true selves, rather than placating ourselves with our screens and the knowing that comes with a Google search, all while ignoring our children with an iPhone in our hands. This is really well written and researched and fans my longing for more authenticity and a deeper, more spiritual conversation about being more fully human.
If we trusted parents to make decisions for their children we wouldn't need truancy laws, supervision of home schooling, child protection services, etc etc etc. Parents give in to their children because of peer pressure. If no one in their peer group had access to social media, problem solved.
Greg:"Parents know their kids better than anyone."
"Feeling Great" by Dr Burns
page238
"I did a study at a community mental health clinic in New York to evaluate the accuracy of therapists’ and caregivers’ evaluations who brought children in for treatment. I asked the children, their therapists, and their mothers to rate how they thought the children were feeling.
When I analyzed the data, I was amazed to discover that the therapists’ accuracy was about zero. And the mothers didn’t do any much better! There was pretty much no correlation between how the children felt and how their therapists (or mothers) thought they felt.
The errors were not trivial. For example, the mother of one little boy rated his depression and suicidal urges at zero. She was convinced that her son did not feel depressed, and the therapist agreed with this assessment.
How did the boy actually feel?
His depression and suicidal scores were at the top of the scale! In the margin of the assessment test, he wrote that he had borrowed a gun from a friend and had plans to kill himself on Friday. In this case, mind reading* almost resulted in the death of a little boy, but the assessment test alerted the mother and therapist to what was really going on and likely saved his life."
In a court of law, citing the US Supreme Court may carry the day. But elsewhere the Supreme's assertions may have probative value, but they're not dispositive. The Court can be wrong, as its reversals attest from time to time.
When I was a child in a saner era (the 1950's) the public square was constructed to be safe for children to wander about untended. Cocktail lounges were behind opaque doors. Pornography was behind the counter, tended by an adult. Movies were made according to the Hayes code, whereby gangsters called each other "dirty rat" and other tame epithets. By pitching the adult content over the childrens' heads, they nevertheless managed to address important social issues. I remember "Town Without Pity": Kirk Douglas played an Army officer sent to defend soldiers who'd raped a young woman in occupied Germany.
That better world is gone forever but in modern times I have to think that there is a way to provide certified adults with internet access to adult materials so that, for all practical purposes, it is invisible to children absent the actions of irresponsible adults. At the very least, shouldn't we be *trying* to do something along this line?
Bad Catitude on substack has a. essay on "In praise of Lawn Darts" that Explores much the same concept of allowong children to grow in a world with some risks...good read.
I recall a thing called a "snow day" (ages before remote education). Snow days took place when so much snow fell in a limited period of time that the roads and sidewalks remained largely impassable by the start of the school day. Hence, no school that day. But it wasn't just the cancelation of school that made snow days so enticing. I would look outside and see an adventure waiting to happen, and without a second thought I would throw on some winter clothes and race outside. I must have quickly informed a parent or brother that I was heading out, but I honestly don't remember; and, anyway, they all probably understood where I was going. And then I would just spend hours roaming the transformed landscape of a snow-covered world. I took that kind of childhood freedom entirely for granted. It simply seemed like the natural order of things. And the idea that modern kids are now restrained from such independent activity and are instead encouraged to stay inside with electronic devices fills me with unspeakable sadness. How is that not considered a form of child abuse? I don't have kids. If I ever do have some, however, I will dare anyone to arrest me for setting them free.
“Parents know what’s best for their children”? Unless of course you live in some states that allow school councilors to keep secrets from parents when they are playing gender games with your child’s mind.
Ultimately, parents need to PARENT. Parents have lost our confidence that what we deem to be right, is ultimately good for our kids. That’s why we defer to just about everyone else. The culture, the government, the school, social media parenting experts, toy companies, therapists, our peers, our children’s peers, our children, etc. even if that child is just turning 2. We don’t ever want to be accused of being bad parents or authoritarians, or earn our children’s anger. And that’s why it’s so hard to put down our foot and say, no, you’re not going to have a smartphone or access to social media until you turn X age, simple as that. And enforce consequences for any attempts to flout this rule.
Kids will take responsibility when forced to do so. the child isn't the problem it is the parents. We have a multitude of problems that have been created by government with their attempts to "help". government and their "experts" using the science of mental health, a science that changes daily because it is proven wrong. yet government uses the findings of studies that are flawed to pass rules and regulations that harm our children and often inhibit parental rights and responsibilities. Often stepping in and accusing parents of abuse because a child learns to use the system against a parent. I had a teacher interfere with my grandson by telling him he could file abuse charges because his mother took the belt to him. well it caused all sorts of problems and cost thousands of dollars. I knew the principle of the school so I asked to address the class. I had my grandson present to tell them what happened after he filed the complaint. he told them he was taken away from his parents. he now shared a bedroom with three other boys who took his clothes and shoes. he no longer had his computer or books or his backpack to carry his books for school because the other boys stole them. He didn't get to go places with the family because the court took him away. then I told the class about the thousands of dollars in lawyer fees and court costs. When I was done I had all of them crying. then I explained it all happened because the teacher told him he could complain to the authorities about how his parents abused him. she never asked if he deserved the punishment or even asked what it was. I told them that teachers are not counselors. she caused a lot of problems because she advised a child without knowing what the problems were. She tried to argue but my grandson stopped her cold. he asked if she was going to fix the problem she caused with bad advice? The one thing you dont want is social services in your life. They cause more problems than they solve. are they necessary? yes because many kids dont have people to turn to. before you ask make sure you have used all your choices before you make this one.---------- I, Grampa
Regarding your opening segment, could it be that we're missing a big part of the bigger picture? I see powerful people like Donald Trump (e.g., recently publicly threatening to retaliate against donors who support Nikki Haley) and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (who, by the way, I'm pretty sure took a course in constitutional law at Harvard Law School) flagrantly abusing every governmental power he can muster to attack businesses and institutions that express support for ideas that DeSantis, personally, opposes. I doubt they're doing what they're doing because of anxiety. They're acting on what they perceive to be the power they already have to attack, as well as the power they can gain by attacking, others they think are weaker and disfavored by those who support Trump or DeSantis.
It seems to me that a new-found sense of power, far more than anxiety, is driving the illiberalism of our younger people. It seems to me that too many people who have learned the power of social media, etc., suffer from the same sense of entitlement to abuse the power of their speech as Trump and DeSantis. They are (merely) following in the footsteps and mindsets of many groups that suddenly found themselves with more power than they were prepared to handle responsibly.
I'm a big supporter of the freedom of speech, so I've read much of Jacob Mchangama's very insightful book "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" and, to this day, I continue to re-listen to his outstanding podcast "Clear and Present Danger" for its great insights. One common theme throughout all that history is that people with power abuse it to oppress others, including by repressing speech. Often anxiety played an important role, but power always played a bigger role.
Without then making spyware quite viable, how would parents enact these controls? We have strict-by-the-standards-of-of-peers rules about the phone but the schools do not seem to have any restrictions, the platforms certainly don't offer tools to parents to manage their access, there's increasingly toxic content specific to young people, and unless you install special spying software, Apple doesn't provide parent controls to parents who don't also have iPhones, and doesn't permit multiple parents to have controls. Furthermore, while social media offers benefits, there is zero reason why these benefits wouldn't migrate to less toxic platforms should the current ones become more responsible for their harms. It's totally possible to create less toxic alternatives, and to not make excuses for why our kids or any of us should be subject to endless advertising, misinformation, and harmful content. As long as we take it for a given that only access to these imperialist platforms offers the benefits of connection and discovery, the more we're giving them license to keep perpetuating their surveillance and disregard for humanity.
Please mention the 230 gag law that prohibits users suing Zuck
Please mention corporate brainwashing documented in the movie HOT COFFEE... 7 years of data (plummeting law suits in 58 California counties ) upon request.....aka plummeting free speech measured by the number of suits filed
There’s a drinking and smoking age because the government thinks that businesses should not have the freedom to profit from exposing kids to alcohol and smoking before they are 21, why shouldn’t the same be true for preventing social media companies from profiting from exposing kids to porn, bullying, illegal drug pushers, etc.
I am surprised that I still have all my fingers. As a kid I packed cutoff match heads into used CO2 cylinders to make improvised rockets that sometimes exploded when set off. I like to tell my grandkids about how as ten year olds with paper routes my friends and I once rode our bikes to a nearby small airport. We gave a pilot we didn’t know a couple of bucks for gas and he flew us over our homes in a Piper Cub. When I got home and told my mom her response was “that’s nice, get ready for dinner” and that was it. We lived in a Chicago suburb and would ride the train to the Loop and wander through the big department stores and once ended up on State street south of Van Buren outside a burlesque show hoping to get a peek inside. A friendly doorman waved us in for a free show. That we never mentioned to our folks. I fear for the current coddled generation.
Thank you for this. I agree that the book is well researched and powerful. I also agree that we need to be careful when enacting government policies... they will always have trickle over. (Why does everyone forget this when they want to apply govt' to their cause?) Parents most definitely should know their children best - it's called attunement and it's a very important part of parenthood. However, our instincts have been highjacked by screens, lack of authentic community, and being away from nature for too long. There are many ways of knowing including embodied ways of knowing, and sadly, we are a disconnected society, even though we are more connected than ever before. I find myself longing for more people to see this as the biggest hurdle and come together to tap into our true selves, rather than placating ourselves with our screens and the knowing that comes with a Google search, all while ignoring our children with an iPhone in our hands. This is really well written and researched and fans my longing for more authenticity and a deeper, more spiritual conversation about being more fully human.
If we trusted parents to make decisions for their children we wouldn't need truancy laws, supervision of home schooling, child protection services, etc etc etc. Parents give in to their children because of peer pressure. If no one in their peer group had access to social media, problem solved.
Greg:"Parents know their kids better than anyone."
"Feeling Great" by Dr Burns
page238
"I did a study at a community mental health clinic in New York to evaluate the accuracy of therapists’ and caregivers’ evaluations who brought children in for treatment. I asked the children, their therapists, and their mothers to rate how they thought the children were feeling.
When I analyzed the data, I was amazed to discover that the therapists’ accuracy was about zero. And the mothers didn’t do any much better! There was pretty much no correlation between how the children felt and how their therapists (or mothers) thought they felt.
The errors were not trivial. For example, the mother of one little boy rated his depression and suicidal urges at zero. She was convinced that her son did not feel depressed, and the therapist agreed with this assessment.
How did the boy actually feel?
His depression and suicidal scores were at the top of the scale! In the margin of the assessment test, he wrote that he had borrowed a gun from a friend and had plans to kill himself on Friday. In this case, mind reading* almost resulted in the death of a little boy, but the assessment test alerted the mother and therapist to what was really going on and likely saved his life."
*
https://www.google.com/search?q=cbt+%22mind+reading%22
Note: the law requires testing:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=WIC§ionNum=5150
"At a minimum, assessment... shall be conducted and provided on an ongoing basis."
...but a Congressional Study found...
Congressman Kennedy:
https://www.patrickjkennedy.net/agenda#Quality
"...only about 18 percent of psychiatrists and 11 percent of psychologists in the U.S. routinely administer symptom rating scales..."
...the difference between the assessments required by law and the lack of routinely administered symptom rating scales may explain:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-therapy/200901/seven-questions-david-d-burns
"...one of the most common causes of suicide-the therapist..."
"Parents" — yu fonny!
In a court of law, citing the US Supreme Court may carry the day. But elsewhere the Supreme's assertions may have probative value, but they're not dispositive. The Court can be wrong, as its reversals attest from time to time.
When I was a child in a saner era (the 1950's) the public square was constructed to be safe for children to wander about untended. Cocktail lounges were behind opaque doors. Pornography was behind the counter, tended by an adult. Movies were made according to the Hayes code, whereby gangsters called each other "dirty rat" and other tame epithets. By pitching the adult content over the childrens' heads, they nevertheless managed to address important social issues. I remember "Town Without Pity": Kirk Douglas played an Army officer sent to defend soldiers who'd raped a young woman in occupied Germany.
That better world is gone forever but in modern times I have to think that there is a way to provide certified adults with internet access to adult materials so that, for all practical purposes, it is invisible to children absent the actions of irresponsible adults. At the very least, shouldn't we be *trying* to do something along this line?
Ken
Bad Catitude on substack has a. essay on "In praise of Lawn Darts" that Explores much the same concept of allowong children to grow in a world with some risks...good read.
I recall a thing called a "snow day" (ages before remote education). Snow days took place when so much snow fell in a limited period of time that the roads and sidewalks remained largely impassable by the start of the school day. Hence, no school that day. But it wasn't just the cancelation of school that made snow days so enticing. I would look outside and see an adventure waiting to happen, and without a second thought I would throw on some winter clothes and race outside. I must have quickly informed a parent or brother that I was heading out, but I honestly don't remember; and, anyway, they all probably understood where I was going. And then I would just spend hours roaming the transformed landscape of a snow-covered world. I took that kind of childhood freedom entirely for granted. It simply seemed like the natural order of things. And the idea that modern kids are now restrained from such independent activity and are instead encouraged to stay inside with electronic devices fills me with unspeakable sadness. How is that not considered a form of child abuse? I don't have kids. If I ever do have some, however, I will dare anyone to arrest me for setting them free.
“Parents know what’s best for their children”? Unless of course you live in some states that allow school councilors to keep secrets from parents when they are playing gender games with your child’s mind.
Ultimately, parents need to PARENT. Parents have lost our confidence that what we deem to be right, is ultimately good for our kids. That’s why we defer to just about everyone else. The culture, the government, the school, social media parenting experts, toy companies, therapists, our peers, our children’s peers, our children, etc. even if that child is just turning 2. We don’t ever want to be accused of being bad parents or authoritarians, or earn our children’s anger. And that’s why it’s so hard to put down our foot and say, no, you’re not going to have a smartphone or access to social media until you turn X age, simple as that. And enforce consequences for any attempts to flout this rule.
Kids will take responsibility when forced to do so. the child isn't the problem it is the parents. We have a multitude of problems that have been created by government with their attempts to "help". government and their "experts" using the science of mental health, a science that changes daily because it is proven wrong. yet government uses the findings of studies that are flawed to pass rules and regulations that harm our children and often inhibit parental rights and responsibilities. Often stepping in and accusing parents of abuse because a child learns to use the system against a parent. I had a teacher interfere with my grandson by telling him he could file abuse charges because his mother took the belt to him. well it caused all sorts of problems and cost thousands of dollars. I knew the principle of the school so I asked to address the class. I had my grandson present to tell them what happened after he filed the complaint. he told them he was taken away from his parents. he now shared a bedroom with three other boys who took his clothes and shoes. he no longer had his computer or books or his backpack to carry his books for school because the other boys stole them. He didn't get to go places with the family because the court took him away. then I told the class about the thousands of dollars in lawyer fees and court costs. When I was done I had all of them crying. then I explained it all happened because the teacher told him he could complain to the authorities about how his parents abused him. she never asked if he deserved the punishment or even asked what it was. I told them that teachers are not counselors. she caused a lot of problems because she advised a child without knowing what the problems were. She tried to argue but my grandson stopped her cold. he asked if she was going to fix the problem she caused with bad advice? The one thing you dont want is social services in your life. They cause more problems than they solve. are they necessary? yes because many kids dont have people to turn to. before you ask make sure you have used all your choices before you make this one.---------- I, Grampa
Regarding your opening segment, could it be that we're missing a big part of the bigger picture? I see powerful people like Donald Trump (e.g., recently publicly threatening to retaliate against donors who support Nikki Haley) and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (who, by the way, I'm pretty sure took a course in constitutional law at Harvard Law School) flagrantly abusing every governmental power he can muster to attack businesses and institutions that express support for ideas that DeSantis, personally, opposes. I doubt they're doing what they're doing because of anxiety. They're acting on what they perceive to be the power they already have to attack, as well as the power they can gain by attacking, others they think are weaker and disfavored by those who support Trump or DeSantis.
It seems to me that a new-found sense of power, far more than anxiety, is driving the illiberalism of our younger people. It seems to me that too many people who have learned the power of social media, etc., suffer from the same sense of entitlement to abuse the power of their speech as Trump and DeSantis. They are (merely) following in the footsteps and mindsets of many groups that suddenly found themselves with more power than they were prepared to handle responsibly.
I'm a big supporter of the freedom of speech, so I've read much of Jacob Mchangama's very insightful book "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" and, to this day, I continue to re-listen to his outstanding podcast "Clear and Present Danger" for its great insights. One common theme throughout all that history is that people with power abuse it to oppress others, including by repressing speech. Often anxiety played an important role, but power always played a bigger role.
Without then making spyware quite viable, how would parents enact these controls? We have strict-by-the-standards-of-of-peers rules about the phone but the schools do not seem to have any restrictions, the platforms certainly don't offer tools to parents to manage their access, there's increasingly toxic content specific to young people, and unless you install special spying software, Apple doesn't provide parent controls to parents who don't also have iPhones, and doesn't permit multiple parents to have controls. Furthermore, while social media offers benefits, there is zero reason why these benefits wouldn't migrate to less toxic platforms should the current ones become more responsible for their harms. It's totally possible to create less toxic alternatives, and to not make excuses for why our kids or any of us should be subject to endless advertising, misinformation, and harmful content. As long as we take it for a given that only access to these imperialist platforms offers the benefits of connection and discovery, the more we're giving them license to keep perpetuating their surveillance and disregard for humanity.
Please mention the 230 gag law that prohibits users suing Zuck
Please mention corporate brainwashing documented in the movie HOT COFFEE... 7 years of data (plummeting law suits in 58 California counties ) upon request.....aka plummeting free speech measured by the number of suits filed
I'm curious if anyone at FIRE considers speech restrictions predicated on "mental health" to be constitutional. If so, why?
https://substack.com/@martinworld/note/c-54670161?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=cl97f