mekka okereke :verified:
?Oh we're uploading charts about why teens are unhappy? And saying it's "the phones" or "the apps?"
Well, let me upload my charts!
Showing that:
* Black kids are online *much more* than white kids.
* Black kids have seen *much less* increase in depression since 2011.
??
mekka okereke :verified:
If you ask older conservative adjacent dudes what's making teens depressed, they'll confidently tell you "smartphones and apps!"
But if you ask teens what's making them depressed, they'll tell you "older conservative adjacent dudes."
The racist people that used to target Black teens online, in real life, at school, at the doctor's office...
...have now started targeting white teens, online, in real life, at school, and at the doctor's office.
Like we said they would. ??♂️
mekka okereke :verified:
There's a good chance that she could wind up the target of several different F*x News segments or attacks by sitting politicians.
I count at least 6 issues she could be attacked for, and receive online threats of violence for.
Yeah, that might make her unhappy.
mekka okereke :verified:
Picture a white teenage girl posting the following on Instagram:
"Feeling blessed! I just voted for Katie Porter, because she supports reproductive rights and gun control and anti-racism! I personally don't plan to have kids. I can't afford it! And I care about the environment."
clacke
Alex
> What's new is that the hate has now come for your kids.
That was my take on what you said. Reading that (I'm LGBTQIA+) I immediately think about all the other areas that are invisible boundaries they don't see until all of us flow around them. At risk groups are always the 'canary in the mine' for these types of behaviors and they just never listen.
There is too much personal ownership. They would have to read and understand the blindness, and that hurts. Way easier to just blame the applications.
mekka okereke :verified:
Yes, a Black teen girl posting that same thing to Instagram would receive the same abuse. Worse actually.
But your racist F*x News watching relatives have been dishing this abuse out to Black folk since forever. It's not new to us.
What's new is that the hate has now come for your kids.
mekka okereke :verified:
That's before we even get to the unhappiness from unhealthy comparison to others.
If your solution for increasing her happiness is "Just don't be online!" Then I don't know what to tell you. I can't even argue with that. We're too far apart to even have a meaningful conversation.
Kagan MacTane (he/him)
@mekkaokereke The "online" in this example pretty much means "social media" - aka, "Where people meet to communicate with others". It's like saying, "just don't participate in society!"
Which, to be fair... yeah, actually, participating in this particular society *is* a large part of what's making people unhappy. But it's also not useful or remotely reasonable advice.
"Don't be online" is like telling someone "go be a hermit in the woods", and shouldn't be taken seriously.
Fear and Tooting in Las Vegas
@mekkaokereke It's very much the same thing as "Well, we only started having all these problems with the cops when people started to video them with their cellphones."
Alex
@clacke Oh wow - I had no idea. (I'm painfully American in some areas :blobcatgiggle: )
Yea that makes a lot of sense. We have those same struggles with non-white babies. It's harder to adopt as people want babies that they can pretend erupted from them directly.
I grew up around a few adopted people and I have non-white family members that I grew up with. They experienced a lot of unique discomfort because they were non-white living in white neighborhoods with white family members. In specific they were made to feel like they weren't real members of our family.
One of them has dealt with those issues into their adulthood and in our later adult life.
clacke
Lien Rag
Ever read "Couleur de peau : Miel" ?
Tunguska
If I'm not mistaken, this is an example of what @KimCrayton1 describes as the parasite of white supremacy eating its host.
https://dair-community.social/@KimCrayton1/109914625990857970
Alex Babis :flag_lesbian_new:
@steevmi1 @mekkaokereke "If we stopped testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any"
Woozle Hypertwin
@aebabis @steevmi1 @mekkaokereke
My dad: "I'm so tired of racism. If only people would stop talking about it all the time!"
I think there actually is a belief on the Right (not at all carefully examined, of course, because it would fall apart like a snowflake in a warm hand, as is the case with many of their beliefs) that the only reason racism is an issue is because people keep talking about it.
(Technically I suppose that's true... ?)
clacke
Lien Rag
It's very good, I recommend it.
Alex
@lienrag oh my. This looks very amazing. I've added it to my list.
Woozle Hypertwin
@clacke @steevmi1 @mekkaokereke @aebabis
This is the same logic as "some people get rich -- so clearly anyone can if they just try hard enough!"
The phrase "survivorship bias" comes to mind.
Fear and Tooting in Las Vegas
@clacke @woozle @mekkaokereke @aebabis The American Dream and American Exceptionalism are a hell of a drug. If you have to accept that those aren't true, then what does that say about the story you tell about yourself, where you got where you are by grit and hard work and skill and ability....?
Woozle Hypertwin
@steevmi1 @clacke @mekkaokereke @aebabis
Indeed... When your life is built on a lie, how do you step away from the lie.
Labrador Girl
@mekkaokereke Went to an art show at a high school a few nights ago, and many of the pieces clearly were by young women feeling, IDK, hunted? Three works were explicitly about abortion rights. My favorite was an anime style drawing that showed a strong girl ignoring shadowy ghosts that were all around. I was actually encouraged by their awareness, but the world is depressing and freaking them out!
Fifi Lamoura
@mekkaokereke I'd like to add that teens have a lot to be depressed about in general, do old White men not actually see the world? Climate change and ecological collapse, Covid and overt eugenics (not to mention most teens will have had Covid so there's got to be some long covid in the mix), White supremacist violence, normalized gun violence and school shooters (and adults who prevent teens from being safer), women and queer people being systemically targeted for violence and oppression, are all really depressing to people who aren't White supremacists. Ultimately I wonder more about the people boldly stating that phones are the problem as the world burns around them. Reality IS depressing!
Trisha Lynn 🇵🇭 🇺🇸 🇨🇦
@clacke @mentallyalex @mekkaokereke Oh Dang, I hadn't considered that angle before, the one where the parental concern is mixed in with an acknowledgment that they're not going to do anything to right the wrong over which they are expressing concern. Another thing to add to my list of things to research for my Master's project.
mekka okereke :verified:
Said better:
https://universeodon.com/@DayWalkingRedhead/109960259173905354
mekka okereke :verified:
@ianhecht Yes, I think that's part of it.
I also think that some of the trade-offs of being online are more positive for marginalized communities than for majority communities.
Eg., If you feel like you're the only gay kid in a rural Idaho town, being online can be life saving. Yes, it can also expose you to online bullying. But I would expect the sum "decrease in happiness" of being online for gay kids, to be less than for straight kids. Because humans need community to be happy.
Ian Hecht
@mekkaokereke Do you think Black parents are having better conversations with their kids about handling online targeting because they've been dealing with it longer?
Graham Knapp
@mekkaokereke @chrismak @kagan
360 BC : Plato writes that the ancient king Thamos said books would cause people to "cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks" http://websites.umich.edu/~lsarth/filecabinet/PlatoOnWriting.html
mekka okereke :verified:
Yes, anything can be done too much, or done unsafely. But...
2020: Kids are on their phones too much!
2010: Kids are on the internet too much!
2000: Kids are on their Nintendos too much!
1980: Kids watch TV too much!
1930: Kids listen to the radio too much!
1870: Kids read too much!
https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/806289
https://archive.nytimes.com/op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/when-novels-were-bad-for-you/
ChrisMak
@kagan @mekkaokereke I'm torn on kids (tweens and teens) and screens. On one hand, it appears they spend too much time with screentime, and certain apps may be time sucks when you think they should be interacting with the physical environment. OTOH, due to peer pressure, likely the kid that gets 'othered' and 'outcasted' in the schoolyard is likely the one that doesn't carry a smartphone.
Shannon Kay
@mekkaokereke @chrismak @kagan @dawnfry
This is a favorite quote of mine, which helps remind me not to disparage younger generations. It's from Anne's House of Dreams(1917).
*Mrs. Rachel complains about Eaton's Catalogue*
"Well, they're splendid to amuse children with," said Diana. "Fred and Small Anne look at the pictures by the hour."
"I amused ten children without the aid of Eaton's catalogue," said Mrs. Rachel severely.
clacke
Codex ☯️♈☮
@mekkaokereke
@chrismak @kagan
One of the most frustrating things about our shitty gerontocracy is how much smarter younger people are yet I'm almost 40 and the same stupid old geezers still run everything that did when I was a teen! (And on the computer too much!)
mekka okereke :verified:
Kids today are smarter than we were (if you define smarter as having a broader and deeper working knowledge of math, science, social sciences, humanities, and the world).
For those that doubt it, I present to you one humble anecdote: JFK's Harvard University application essay. And he was accepted! This... wouldn't work today.
http://archives.wbur.org/hubbub/2011/01/13/jfk-harvard-application/
Kagan MacTane (he/him)
@gindi @chrismak @mekkaokereke Shallower than talking on the phone? I doubt it. Okay, you can't get vocal inflection, but you _can_ send memes, GIFs, and all kinds of other things that make the communication channel at least as rich.
I've formed pretty good friendships with people over text-only connections. (Been online since the '90s.) It's about what people are willing to share of themselves, not the medium they connect through.
JulianGindi
@kagan @chrismak @mekkaokereke are kids really forming those same social links online though? It seems like a much shallower version of a human relationship. Am I wrong? I’m no longer in touch with these things….
Kagan MacTane (he/him)
@chrismak @mekkaokereke I hear you on the worry about "but they're spending *so many hours* on social media!" Then I think back to my own high school years, and remember that I'd routinely spend so many hours on the phone (landline) with friends, my ear would routinely be hurting afterward from having the earpiece pressed up against it.
I think "HUGE amounts of time spent building social links" is probably a natural part of teen-hood.
mekka okereke :verified:
@gindi @DayWalkingRedhead @kagan @chrismak
As someone that works at a technology company, please, keep the disdain for technology companies! ??
If by "disdain" you mean a healthy skepticism whenever tech attempts to solve a social problem, and an expectation that tech companies should provide more good in the world, and should spend more time thinking about the ways that their products interact with the health and happiness of all of us, and rejecting the idea that being rich means being smart.
DayWalkingRedhead
@gindi @kagan @chrismak @mekkaokereke Yes, you are wrong. Kids - and adults - form deep relationships with others online. Esp those of us who are marginalized. Social media is the only positive social a lot of folks get, and I can be there for someone on the phone as well as online as well as in person. You get out of it what you put into it, just like anything.
JulianGindi
@DayWalkingRedhead @kagan @chrismak @mekkaokereke thank you for that perspective. It makes a lot of sense. I never thought of it in the same light as gaming as well, since that’s definitely a comparison that I get and I most certainly formed true bonds there. I have a hard time reconciling my disdain of technology companies from the benefit some of their products might provide. Might not be the most productive mindset.
mekka okereke :verified:
For an adult looking at Instagram, it looks like a lot of teen girls posting vanity pictures of themselves to try and get likes from strangers.
But if you look closer, you'll see that a lot of the Instagram interaction was between friends. And a lot of accounts are private, because many kids have a second account that they do their real interacting with.
Those friend group interactions can enable *extremely* vicious bullying, but they can also be very positive.
mekka okereke :verified:
It depends on which kids, and how they're interacting online.
For example, for adults that don't get it, Fortnite seems like a game where the objective is to shoot strangers. But if you look closer, you'll see that Fortnite is a big chat room where friends meet, and the contrived activity that brings them together is the game.
It's similar to an arcade in the '80s. Some kids went to beat the donkey Kong record, but most kids went there to hang out with their friends.
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