Some people choose to not allow their children to have ‘smart phones’. This is a viable option, although potentially a difficult one for many guardians to adopt. The peer pressure on young people to have a smart phone and to participate in social media and messaging is intense. There is an undoubted consequence of ‘missing out’ (FOMO) that would be felt by the young person, although I am keen to stress to my own children the JOMO (Joy of missing out). Although this is potentially more than compensated for by improved well-being, the stress and conflict within the family unit could be challenging.

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This is the alternative I will be exploring through the rest of this blog post. It is to use a smart phone that does not facilitate access to the most damaging social media platforms

Feels like they skipped right past the biggest flaw in their idea. Blocking the apps is effectively blocking what a young person’s primary use for that smartphone would be.

You want to hand them a Linux phone, where the only social media platforms they can use are Mastodon or pixelfed? So they can interact with who? The millennials and gen x-ers that are at least 20 years older than them? So they have to tell all their friends that they can’t see the posts they’re sharing on the other platforms?

At that point, just deny them the smartphone.

Because the insidious thing here is this:

Denying your child/teenager access to those apps, in today’s day and age, would shield them from the worst parts of those platforms, but it is effectively causing as much damage as it prevents, because it stops the kid from actually engaging with their peers where those peers are. It becomes a massive impediment to their ability to socialize, and is more likely to get them ostracized from groups. That causes psychological damage over time.

Shitty tech companies understand this, and it’s how they increase their entrenchment.

This is something that should be fought against, but the wrong way to fight that is by making your child an outcast in our digital world.