>and with the limit on my phone, I would be using it minimally, especially because I use a lot of my phone time daily to listen to music (like 5 [REDACTED], which I am listening to right now) and to text my friends, so I would only use it for 20 or so minutes a day, which is very low.
This is a recipe for frustrating yourself. Social media is very addictive. You're currently unhappy and you're _not_ allowed to use it, imagine how much more unhappy you'll be after having only 20 minutes. You'll only want to use it more and more once you're allowed to use it. You'll be thinking about those 20 minutes and what you'll do all day, you'll get mad when the 20 minutes is up etc.
>Another thing that the article mentioned is that people these days who do not have social media may feel excluded or left out,
That's a much easier problem to treat than social media addiction. The amount of harm you can experience on social media is unbounded, and also not readily anticipated. You don't really know how much it can harm you, and you are asking to allow it to harm you a little bit so that you can then later argue that amount didn't _significantly_ harm you so more access is fine.
>In case you hadn’t already noticed, I don’t really do that. I do find people pretty, but I don’t usually compare myself to them.
Have you considered other people "didn't do that" too, and that social media changed them? What if it changes you too? Do you _want_ to end up like them? "It won't happen to me" is a really common trope when dealing with addictive things.
>Also, studies have shown that when people don’t get to do something as a child/teenager isn’t allowed to do or have something in moderation, they are more likely to do or have it in excess as an adult.
Perhaps, but have you considered that adults shouldn't be using these platforms either? It's not as simple as "when you're old enough, you can now jump off a cliff", maybe... don't jump off the cliff? It's a silly metaphor but still, the default position shouldn't be to use these things.
>I believe that using social media could actually have greater benefits for me, such as being able to record Tiktok dances with my friends, or messaging people on Snapchat.
There's billions of silly dance videos on tik tok, your life isn't any worse for you not making number 9,999,234,255. Snapchat is for old people (zoomer-boomers) now, so you're also not missing much there anyways.
I'm with dad on this one, social media won't make you any happier and it's scientifically proven to make a lot of people less happy over time. If I could go back to a world where social media never happened I would choose that in a heart beat.
>This is a recipe for frustrating yourself. Social media is very addictive. You're currently unhappy and you're _not_ allowed to use it, imagine how much more unhappy you'll be after having only 20 minutes. You'll only want to use it more and more once you're allowed to use it. You'll be thinking about those 20 minutes and what you'll do all day, you'll get mad when the 20 minutes is up etc.
This rings pretty true for me. I grew up in the 90's and my parents heavily policed how much television I was allowed to watch. I was allowed 5 hours of TV a week. I'd borderline obsess over how I was going to spent those 5 hours each week. I would pour over the TV guide plan out exactly what I'd watch. I ended up angry and resenting my parents as a result.
I had a lot of the same complaints, "All my friends at school are going to be discussing what they watched, I'm going to be left out and excluded etc."
At the time a lot of the same arguments being levied against social media today were being made about television, it's addictive, it's bad for children's development etc.
I was the oldest child my parents had some very strict ideas on how they wanted to raise me, by the time my younger siblings were teenagers my parents had more or less given up or relaxed all of the restrictions I had.
We're around the same age and my parents had pretty heavy restrictions on tv and videogames, I also got ticked off at the time, but I was certainly happy for it even by the end of my teen years. I imagine if your goal is to make your kid happy while they're still a kid, there's a good chance you'll screw up your kid. What makes a kid happy half the time is stuff they'll regret in short order. And yeah, more rules went out the window as each of my successive siblings were born, too.
I also seem to remember kids who had NO tv whatsoever (or just PBS, which was arguably worse than nothing), and I don't seem to remember them being too bothered by it. As much as we teased them for not getting the simpsons etc jokes. In fact they seemed to develop, at a much earlier age, some independence from the crowd.
Yeah I have no doubt the way I was raised had an influence on my life as a result of I suppose boredom and the huge amount of free time due to TV restrictions I became heavily invested in electronics and technology, as a 13/14 year old I would buy computer and electronics magazines and read them cover to cover, I'd spend hours pulling apart and reassembling electronics. I would go to swap meets buy old broken second hand computers and upgrade/repair them and then resell them. My room used to be filled with old motherboards, keyboards etc stacked up to near the ceiling. I think it drove my parents nuts I had so much junk parts hoarded all over my room.
I've seen that pattern too. A kid at a birthday party I had had, spent the entire time playing grand theft auto vice city; sleep be damned. He had never watched a violent movie, so the quests were uninteresting. That ~22hr game session was dedicated to roaming free, and what that afforded (simulated violence, prostitution, etc). I didn't see that happen with drugs at least - adderall, xanax, klonopin abound, but the sheltered kids I knew never dove into them the same way.
>Perhaps, but have you considered that adults shouldn't be using these platforms either? It's not as simple as "when you're old enough, you can now jump off a cliff", maybe... don't jump off the cliff? It's a silly metaphor but still, the default position shouldn't be to use these things.
I've noticed in my life when I was a teenager, I had this view of phases of myself. There was my current teenager self and then there was my future adult self. My view was that my adult self would be completely different than my teenaged self. I'd be an "Adult" with a capital A. Nothing can stop me then!
Then I learned that I am still very similar as an adult to my teenaged self. The things my teenage self would get addicted to and obsess over, my adult self also has those qualities.
This is a recipe for frustrating yourself. Social media is very addictive. You're currently unhappy and you're _not_ allowed to use it, imagine how much more unhappy you'll be after having only 20 minutes. You'll only want to use it more and more once you're allowed to use it. You'll be thinking about those 20 minutes and what you'll do all day, you'll get mad when the 20 minutes is up etc.
>Another thing that the article mentioned is that people these days who do not have social media may feel excluded or left out,
That's a much easier problem to treat than social media addiction. The amount of harm you can experience on social media is unbounded, and also not readily anticipated. You don't really know how much it can harm you, and you are asking to allow it to harm you a little bit so that you can then later argue that amount didn't _significantly_ harm you so more access is fine.
>In case you hadn’t already noticed, I don’t really do that. I do find people pretty, but I don’t usually compare myself to them.
Have you considered other people "didn't do that" too, and that social media changed them? What if it changes you too? Do you _want_ to end up like them? "It won't happen to me" is a really common trope when dealing with addictive things.
>Also, studies have shown that when people don’t get to do something as a child/teenager isn’t allowed to do or have something in moderation, they are more likely to do or have it in excess as an adult.
Perhaps, but have you considered that adults shouldn't be using these platforms either? It's not as simple as "when you're old enough, you can now jump off a cliff", maybe... don't jump off the cliff? It's a silly metaphor but still, the default position shouldn't be to use these things.
>I believe that using social media could actually have greater benefits for me, such as being able to record Tiktok dances with my friends, or messaging people on Snapchat.
There's billions of silly dance videos on tik tok, your life isn't any worse for you not making number 9,999,234,255. Snapchat is for old people (zoomer-boomers) now, so you're also not missing much there anyways.
I'm with dad on this one, social media won't make you any happier and it's scientifically proven to make a lot of people less happy over time. If I could go back to a world where social media never happened I would choose that in a heart beat.