Good on these parents for trying to raise their kids off social media. I can say with confidence social media only hurt me in middle and high school, and I wish my parents had had stronger opinions on me using it
Lemmy is the only social media I use. I intend for my kids to not touch any of it.
I am so thankful that I got out of school before social media blew up. We had Myspace, and Facebook opened up to everyone I think my junior year of HS, but smartphones didn’t become a thing until my senior year, and they weren’t that prevalent either.
Same! I didn’t even have a computer till the year I graduated high school because they cost too much then. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people had them. We were the odd family in the neighborhood. Not that anyone cared. Once I got one, the only social media type stuff that I remember using was AIM, Photobucket, and shudder LiveJournal. I couldn’t imagine navigating the internet today where everyone has figured out exactly how to exploit you for everything without you even knowing because you are too young to understand still.
I grew up with access to social media. I got an Android 4.1 tablet when I was 8. Actually, I wish my parents had less strong opinions on it.
That’s because they went the other way around.
My dad wanted me to have a Facebook account, which I created, and then was upset at me when I deleted it when I was 12 because of the dumb hateful “jokes” floating around there.
Then later he again urged me to at least use Messenger, as if he didn’t have a plan with unlimited SMS and phone calls…
I am an adult now, but not much has changed. It only went from Facebook to TikTok.
I quit all non anonymous social media a while back and it’s lonely as fuck. If I wasn’t a low level autist with a small very online friend group I’d miss out on a lot. When people make plans for parties, get togethers, anything like that, they do it on social media and if I dont somehow hear about it and ask, I don’t get an invite. This works for me as many of those people and parties are things that I don’t wanna do, but if I had a kid in school I could not imagine the massive social gap it would create for them to not have social media.
For kids it really seems like a pick your poison situation, social media and all that comes eith it, or being left out of a lot of social activities at the most social time of your life.
