Kids, Social Media…who’s at fault?

Brother, I've been sitting in a lot of waiting rooms getting my neck chopped on, my cataracts zapped, and grandbabies being hatched.  I can tell you truthfully...it ain't just kids with their faces stuck to a screen.  Virtually EVERYONE is hypnotized.  I reckon it may have a different effect depending on the user's age but it's all rot.

As far as your question about who or why it happened...you already know the answer.  It's always the same answer.  A shit ton of money is being made.

My son is 9 ,doesnt own a phone yet ,he wont have one for along time. He does get screen time ,sometimes a phone ,pc or PS5 . He definitely has some anxiety issues . My wife is very smart when it comes to dealing with that stuff. She's really good at noticing behavior that may trigger it or add to it. He watches those trick shot videos and stuff similar to that on YouTube, he beats himself up if makes mistakes . We're trying to get him to understand all the failed attempts it took to get it right one time. He's getting really into baseball and holds himself to an almost unrealistic level of play during games. Again we stress to him when he watches the professionals play he seeing the end result of a ton of practice and hard work. I guess that was a pretty long way to say that kids these days have lost a ton of life experience to prepare them for situations that trigger anxiety .

Tried to DM you Manny. Straya. 

I believe that the problem snuk up on everyone before anyone had realized the extent of it. Since the inception of social media, and with most social interaction now being internet based. Society as a whole has become painfully superficial. Anyone can start an account, and put up the front that they're as cool, successful, or as high status as they want. Most kids born 2000 and later, have been inundated with it since their earliest years. That being so, they feel as though if they're not the best, brightest, coolest, hottest, wealthiest, or don't have the best of everything, that somehow they're lacking. They've spent their whole lives comparing themselves to narcissistic, and mostly fake, internet influencers, and it's really fucking up their mental state.

I'd put this on degradation of the nuclear family and parents unwillingness to choose what is right over what is easy.

We no longer live in proximity to previous generations of family, and now lack the support that system brought.  
Work all day - pick kids up - plug them in front of a screen for de facto parenting. It's the easy button.  
Kids require hyper vigilance and hyper vigilance requires parental mental focus, attention, and  bandwidth.  That's hard.

We purposely removed the 2 TV's from our home.  We don't plug our son in front of a TV so we get a break.  I purposely hold myself accountable and do not scroll my phone in front of him. It's not easy but I know it is right for him.  It forces me to get creative and intentional - to find new experiences and activities to do together.  It has also formed an incredible bond between us.

We do intentional screen time - We'll watch moto together, some other racing, and good quality movies with characters that I'd want him to embody as a grown man.  None of the woke Disney bullshit.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the parents choosing what they feel is best for their children.  If it's screen time and scrolling, just know there will come a time when those kids will have to face the real world.  The real world will kick your ass if you're not prepared.

Everyone is doing the head down walk……everyone

How did we get here. ……Look in the mirror and ask how YOU got to this stage.

How did we allow this to happen……..I’ve seen parents at ferry terminals, on ferries ,airports or planes just giving a phone or electronic device to keep the kid quiet
Who’s at fault……peer pressure of kids being forced onto parents.and parents giving in

How many families have you seen out for dinner,waiting in a line for something. Now how many of those same were actually talking to one another??

When your kids ,spouse, you sit for dinner are phones etc allowed ?

Do any of you still gather everyone at the end of the day for a sit down dinner anymore ?

People just want to be connected to everyone and everything.

Before my employer put satellite internet on-board the tug I work on we would be 5 days or so without wifi.due to how far offshore we would be towing.it was a crewing issue for some on-board.
My wife and I are 7 years free of a cell phone for domestic use.we actually have a house phone only.

We have a iPhone 7 that has SIM cards for the countries we travel to.

Yes we have wifi obviously. We do live in a major city and not out in some forest.

Try leaving your house w/out the cell phone.society has created a life that allows/requires you to have a phone.

Apple Pay,your new car can start with a app,

Parents!

But…our society has been devaluing, and making deliberate attempts to ruin, the family unit for decades…and this is only one of rhe consequences of that.

Strong families > strong neighborhoods > strong cities > strong states > strong country

The family is the most basic and fundamental unit in our society…virtually all problems can be traced back to that…but everyone loves to point fingers at the president of United States…

“No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” J.E. McCulloch

Parents can shoulder some responsibility. So can the companies making these apps.

Kids themselves are born into it and seemingly have grown aware of the downside. They’ll figure it out but will need assistance getting off of it as any habit is hard to kick.

Easy to say go outside but it’s better to go outside with them. My kids don’t give a shit what I say but they most certainly do pay attention to what I do. With that in mind it’s very important to walk the walk.

It's intoxicating draw to the vital website that they just can't stop. Gotta be on there 24/7

Some good point made so far. My son's last game was beginning of June, they got smoked in the play offs ,he asked me to stop at the ball field and practice on the ride home. We've been practicing baseball no less then 6 times a week since that last game for an hour to 2 hours every evening . Never once has he asked me to use my phone . As soon as we walk in the house from baseball practice he asks to use his tablet . The answer is always no that late at night but he tries anyway. If given free reign he would absolutely be on it .

Wait a minute, Vital MX is a social media site and some of you post in non moto all day and you are now wondering whos fault that kids are on social media also.

Oh boy I've got a lot to say on this one....

Several good books out over the past few years on this topic. The Anxious Generation probably the best place to start. I also like 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You 

Technology progressed so fast that it had consumed us before anyone was able to put any thought or research into whether it is good for us or how it should be used. Unfortunately this and covid has done serious damage to a generation of kids and we're just starting to pick up the pieces. 

My kids don't have tablets, social media, kids messenger, any of that crap.... and they won't until they're mid teens at least. we have a family computer they do school work on and we watch TV in the living room like a family occasionally, but not all that often. My kids don't even bother asking for their own devices anymore. We've watched them lose friends over the years when the friend gets the iPhone and just becomes consumed by it. 

All of it is designed to make you an addict. Kids brains are just not ready to handle any of it. If you've never seen The Social Dilemma on Netflix, give it a watch. They interview a lot of people in the tech world about all of this. The part of the movie that got me was right at the end, maybe even during the credits, they have a montage asking all these experts how they handle tech with their own kids. Nearly all of them say their own kids aren't allowed to use it, they buy them books, etc. They know what they're doing and they know it's bad but they're making too much money to stop. The mutual funds in your 401k depend on it as well. 

It's not just technology that is to blame though. The obsession with mental health has made things much worse. It's all backfired. Talking about suicide constantly leads to more suicide, etc, not less. Validating every negative emotion as a potential sign of a disorder with a diagnostic code and a drug and therapy to go with it instead of telling the kid to suck it up sometimes has not worked. Same thing is true with military vets. We basically discharge people from the military and tell them yeah you'll probably have PTSD and if you do it might wreck your life but hey you can get a little more disability and there might be meds that can help. Other countries do not do that. Want to guess which countries have worse mental health outcomes for their vets? 

With teens and vets, it's too much coddling and not enough coping. Culture rewards being a victim so why learn to be resilient? Social media just amplifies this mentality. The pendulum is starting to swing back on a lot of this but I really feel for the 20 somethings out there who took the brunt of all of this. 

X10000000 to this!  Nailed it!  Holy Smokes!

“The obsession with mental health has made things much worse. It's all backfired. Talking about suicide constantly leads to more suicide, etc, not less. Validating every negative emotion as a potential sign of a disorder with a diagnostic code and a drug and therapy to go with it instead of telling the kid to suck it up sometimes has not worked.“

My kids didn’t get phones until 14 years old…and we let them have instagram their senior year of high school, and only so we can teach them, limit them, and help them navigate social media before they move out and we lose all control over what they do…we have no video games in the house, at all…kids don’t have TV’s in their rooms…no phones at dinner, ever…we try and keep technology out of our kids lives as long as possible…

Growing up where I did, (strathmore dr. in santee California) it was easy to jump on our dirt bikes, or dune buggy, run down to the end of the street, hit the dirt and be gone until sunset.

It's been talked about before, here and other internet forums, that the majority of kids these days don't have that outlet.

Due to restricted land access. 

(We didn't have to load up and go somewhere and pay to ride some crowded moto facility)

Due to the insane costs of dirt bikes, mt bikes, etc...

And parents who aren't as engaged with their kids the way they were back when we were growing up.

Hell, when we weren't out riding, we were in the garage of one of our running buddies messing around,  and almost always with someone's dad out there right in the middle of it.

These days, the school bus drops kids off at each one's doorstep,  they go inside, and you can hear a pin drop in the neighborhoods.

And you never saw the traffic backups around every school zone, with minivans picking up their kids.

We walked, and rode our bikes. 

We weren't hovered over by mommies. 

We were half feral.

We had a wicked, two story tree fort.

Surrounded by a barricade of tumbleweeds. 

Had a cousin in Ventura. 

He had a taco44 miniibike.

I got in trouble for showing him how to remove the governor. 

Teamgreen, you have to watch this video. It’s good regarding this topic. We’ve taught our society to value careers and self happiness over families.

The video is amazing, and sad, I hope we get our values back in order as a society very soon.

 

Lots of Shit going on these days. The kids that do want to go outside are loners because everyone else is inside. The kids that do go outside get the cops called on them for riding bikes or play riding in the only fun areas to ride...jumping curbs, wheelieing, whatever. Kids riding bikes in the street is dangerous now. People on their phones, driving, speeding through neighborhoods etc. Hell, the bus driver in our last neighborhood was the most dangerous driver I've ever seen, and was an asshole to anyone who questioned her driving.

The social media part - SUCKS! Everything on there is some trick that no one can do, or some chick that is unreal (literally), or some car build that you will never be able to do on your own. It's all the best of the best, and if you can't live up to that, then why try, right? It makes you feel hopeless because you can't do the same.

Add a 1:32 Autism rate, and you've bogged down kids/parents even more, where we're exhausted trying to figure all of this out.

My son is still confused about the part where being grounded meant you couldn't leave the house.

😆 Yeah I guess that's not the deterrent it used to be is it ?  If our kids really fucked up we used two different approaches. The girl got anything electronic taken away, at that time playstation and music, and if she really tested us we'd take her bedroom door off. Our son it was wheels, anything with wheels goes. Bike Skateboard, scooter, toys with wheels, he'd get so bummed. If he wanted to push it and see how far we'd go then it was in the room with nothing to entertain himself but books. It worked for us.  I can see wanting your kids to have a phone nowadays just to know where they are. No internet though, calls, texting, and find my phone. And you'd better respond promptly.  

 We went to a Teppan restaurant on vacation, total waste of money. My wife and I were the only ones not buried in their phones. 7 people at the table, a couple that looked completely burnt out or were fighting, either way they were zero fun. And a Mom with two daughters. They were all buried in their phones until the chef started cooking, then they filmed him like they were making a documentary.  We've been on hikes where there's awesome scenery, waterfalls, wildlife, all kinds of bitchin shit to look at, and have to move out of some kids way who's walking along staring into their phone. I don't know who else you can blame besides the parents, the kids aren't buying $900' cell phones and paying $100' a month. I don't what the fix is, but I agree it's a big problem. 

 Sorry for the long post, this weekend our daughter was at a party at the in-laws, there was a new "Friend of that family" that has just moved into the area. A single Mom with a 10 ? year old son. He was getting all the younger single digit aged kids to go back to the granny flat. Our son in law followed them and asked what they were doing. The new kid said "I'm making a movie about a kid that gets bullied and then comes back 20 years later and murders them. Our son in law (who we love) said "THE FUCK YOU ARE" "All you kids get back to the party with everyone else, no ones making any movies"  So our daughter said she went and told the Mom about it and her reply was "Oh these kids and their you tube" and blew it off.  So now I guess we're going to see if this lady and her son are going to be regulars at family events now. Daughter unit said if they're there she's not going, which is going to be weird at some point. Now we're contemplating how to handle it when we are eventually at an event with them. Part of me wants to help the kid, but what am I gonna do ? fix his issues with a couple conversations ? Yeah we all know that's not gonna work, I'm just some old fucker he doesn't know, part of me wants to threaten the kid, part of me wants to avoid the kid altogether, and all of me doesn't want my grand daughters anywhere around this kid. And he's only ten now... The plot thickens as we get older eh ?  I don't know what the fix for these kids is but it's certainly a problem, and I have no idea what to do about it.       

IMO, the system itself is mostly to blame. Parents themselves run a close second. It’s  nothing more than a pacifier for kids older than a toddler who’s parents are too wrapped up in their own lives to take time out to spend meaningful time with their kids. It starts by giving them their phone to shut them up, then it progresses into getting them their own phone , then a pad. By the time these kids are 10  years old , games and social media become their whole lives. Then those same parents are the same ones that bitch about little darling living at home at 35 with no life skills eating a box and a half of Lucky Charms a day.