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ConnorHassonSecondEssay 4 - 23 Jan 2025 - Main.ConnorHasson
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| | | Social Media | |
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< | Children have a whole host of issues nowadays that previously either latent or not lying dormant at all. A lot of them are said by a whole host of research to stem from social media and children’s unfettered access to the internet at the tips of their fingertips. The Case for Banning Children from Social Media. The New Yorker, 4 Apr. 2023. It is not hard to imagine how social media and a host of sites can impair or alter development in children, and although I grew up right on the cusp of this and can’t say for certain since I did not experience it firsthand. I do believe a lot of what ails young people today relates to social media and perennially being online. There are many great studies out there that say similar things, and I agree with them. However, on the subject of other freedoms, I am of the camp that children are not our little minions to do what they are told and for us to have complete control over them. Going that direction could in fact be equally as harmful as an unrestricted internet at their beck and call. I understand the argument for access to a search engine that allows basic information searching, but powerful social media algorithms and pornographic materials I believe are harmful to adolescents. | >
> | Children have a whole host of issues nowadays that previously either latent or not lying dormant at all. A lot of them are said by a whole host of research to stem from social media and children’s unfettered access to the internet at the tips of their fingertips. The Case for Banning Children from Social Media. The New Yorker, 4 Apr. 2023. It is not hard to imagine how social media and a host of sites can impair or alter development in children, and although I grew up right on the cusp of this and can’t say for certain since I did not experience it firsthand. I do believe a lot of what ails young people today relates to social media and perennially being online. There are many great studies out there that say similar things, and I agree with them. But the internet is not a malevolent force, but one that is misused, and there are noble undertakings and learnings that children can undertake online. But cellphones and dumbed down apps are a large part of what young people spend their time doing online, and bans on social media or in school might be helpful to future generations' development.
However, on the subject of other freedoms, I am of the camp that children are not our little minions to do what they are told and for us to have complete control over them. Going that direction could in fact be equally as harmful as an unrestricted internet at their beck and call. I understand the argument for access to a search engine that allows basic information searching, or learning programming or other subjects, but powerful social media algorithms and pornographic materials I believe are harmful to adolescents, and are too much freedom. | | | | | | That is why I am interested to see how the ban on social media in Australia turns out. The mechanisms are fuzzy as to how it will actually operate, with a trial this year of different methods to halt the use of social media by those under the age of sixteen. The onus of noncompliance being on the tech companies, not citizens, Australia will halt minors logging into social media pages and tech companies will face a fine for noncompliance. Australia Passes Social Media Ban for Children under 16. Reuters, 28 Nov. 2024. In the end, however, I believe it will be almost impossible to limit a regular child’s internet access if the parents simply don’t see it as an issue. New pseudo social media sites will crop up, or children will simply lie about their age. However, if parents are helicopter parents in the sense that they restrict the internet, but not helicopter parents in the sense that they allow their children autonomy in the real world, that balance is the one I believe is optimal for a child’s upbringing. | |
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I think the category "social media" could use a little critical attention. Someone editing Wikipedia pages or using git to help develop a free software project, or contributing to bird counts or other citizen naturalism, like a preteen writing a letter to the editor of the local paper "back in the day" is doing something rather different than scrolling Instagram or commenting on TikTok. So perhaps it would be useful to perform some analysis rather than writing about some blunderbuss statute on the other side of the world, or even in Florida, preferring to take the sort of critical look you started out from without immediately descending into the usual law school thumbs-up or -down mode.
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |
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