I have three teenage daughters who are currently not allowed on social media. But I want to give them some ability before they become adults. My eldest gave me a PowerPoint presentation on why she should be allowed on Snapchat, lol.
She made some good points. Her friend group has a group text and she wants to keep up with everyone but doesn’t want to get the ding notifications constantly.
Feels like a good opportunity for a Fediverse platform. Like a closed Mastodon/Pixelfed server and have some parental controls. Any projects out there?
There are more and more kids who aren’t allowed on social media because of its multifarious harms. Don’t forget that 20 years ago, no kids had social media. By all accounts, kids were doing fine back then. Also, OP said that her eldest daughter, at least, has a friend group, so your concern about their social isolation is probably misplaced.
What does the word “social media” even mean?
Because I was definitely on web forums in 2005. I was a preteen back then.
It was only for us nerds.
That is true. I remember around that time wishing the Internet were more popular among the general public and wishing that would turn everyone nerdy. The first part has happened, the second not.
For my part, i don’t consider forums social media. I may be in the minority, but im not as worried about stranger danger or cyber bullying as much as corporate control over content and privacy. i have never used snapchat, but i assume part of their revenue stream involves advertising and selling private data. maybe snapchat is very responsible about these things, but there is no oversight. take facebook, for example: a whistleblower just alleged that facebook targeted teen girls with weight loss and beauty products when it detected that the girls were feeling bad about themselves (say, when they had deleted a bunch of selfies). these exploitative and predatory decisions (to target an individual) are not approved by an ethics board. they are not subject to scrutiny. the only time we become aware of them is when some executive gets laid off and has a sudden crisis of conscience/lucrative book deal. maybe a ban on individualized ads and content feeds for young people would be enough to fix big problems. forums mostly don’t suffer from those problems.
Well, realistically, things have changed. Without social media you get quite left out. Easily forgotten even.
We’ve had discussions about this, with and without our kids. Yeah, they need to be in the loop with their friends, and being in that loop can mean being exposed to some bullshit.
That’s always been the case, though. The additional risk of modern social media, I think, is that it’s always with you. One of the rules we laid down was to plug your phone in outside your room before you go to bed. That was relatively strongly enforced when they were younger, just getting started in that arena. They’re all essentially adults now, so we don’t enforce it anymore, but they sometimes still do it anyway.
It’s important to be connected, and it’s okay to be disconnected when you want to be.
I know adults old enough they didn’t grow up with smartphones who exclude devices from their bedrooms by choice to have a healthier relationship with technology.
(Yeah, yeah, I get it, a bit off-topic)
Sorry, just some small note. Charging to 100% daily significantly shortens the battery lifespan. Staying between 20 - 80% is generally recommended.
But to be honest, if I still had a phone with user replaceable battery I’d just 100% it too. I mean, the battery for my Galaxy Ace is like €6.
Anyway, I’ve got some USB tester from AliExpress that also has a time limit. I can usually nail that near 80%. There’s also some physical Bluetooth charge limiters, though that of course requires their app.
Irrelevant if your phone has built-in charge limiter.
But yeah, anyway, how you did it sounds fine.
Edit: Although theoretically, it probably could be done without an app. Bluetooth can share battery charge info.
There’s a hardware device with a companion app that can do charge limiting for any Android or iOS device if you’re so inclined. I haven’t used it; I use ACCA.
You are right. But if things have changed, they can change again. Many countries are in the process of banning smart phones in schools and are legislating age minimums for social media. In such environments, access to social media becomes much less important. I think a better long-term approach would be to mitigate the risks of social media, and the fediverse is already addressing some of the big problems like corporate control of information and algorithmic curation of content. I like the idea of social media, but i hate the (prevalent) implementation.
It’s pretty clear that OP’s daughter does feel like she’s missing out on things her friends are doing, that’s why she is asking. Social isolation doesn’t have to be total to be damaging to your mental health, especially if you’re an extrovert.
And bringing up “but in my time…” Yeah, no. Not a comparable situation. If everyone is on social media and you’re not, you’re going to be left out of at least some things, there’s just no way around it.
Almost every kid has felt that they were missing out on something because of parental rules at some point. The kids who had no rules were not necessarily the lucky ones, since good parenting always involves setting boundaries. i’m really not making the “in my time” argument because if we fixed the problems with social media i would have no problem letting my kids use something i didn’t have access to. to me it’s about balancing risks: make it safer, then let kids use it! after all, op is opening the door by making this post. she is directly responding to the expressed desire of her kids and trying to find a safe way to let her daughters access the tools they think they need.