Tweens and social media

These points are about ... your comment?

1. Social media was not designed for children.
A tween's underdeveloped frontal cortex can’t manage the distraction nor the temptations that come with social media use.

2. You can not teach the maturity that social media requires.
I hear parents say that they want to teach their child to use social media appropriately, but their midbrains are not developed yet. Like trying to make clothes fit that are way too big, children will use social media inappropriately until they are older and it fits them better.

3. Social media is an entertainment technology.
It does not make your child smarter or more prepared for real life or a future job.

4. It is not necessary for healthy social development.
It is entertainment attached to a marketing platform extracting personal information and preferences from your child, not to mention hours of their time and attention.

5. A tween's “more is better” mentality is a dangerous match for social media.
Social media encourages them to overdo their friend connections like they tend to overdo other things in their lives. Does anyone have thousands of friends?

6. Social media is an addictive form of screen entertainment.
Like video game addiction, early use can set up future addiction patterns and habits.

7. Social media replaces face-to-face learning social skills necessary for success.

8. Social media can cause teens to lose connection with family.
They view “friends” (the social media image the other people present) as their foundation and since the brain is still being formed, they need healthy family attachment more than with their peers. It is just as important now as when they were preschoolers.

9. Social media use represents lost potential for teens.
The teen’s brain development is operating at peak performance for learning new things. Studies show that it is nearly impossible for them to balance it all and teens waste too much time and too much of their brain in a digital world.

10. Do any of us wish we had started earlier?

I guess there’s no escaping it anymore. Kids now days are brought up with iPads and apple watches and all this crazy advanced technology (makes me and my GameCube look pathetic :’)) that there’s just no avoiding it. I started using Instagram when I was about 13 and I ended up in a very toxic community that pretty much promoted eating disorders.
I was able to realise that it was toxic but younger girls and even girls of the same age or older might not be so sharp with it, which is a real danger

OP raises valid points but no doubt the majority of those the OP is aimed at accuse the writer of being old sour grapes and starting another intergenerational conflict. After all, the previous generation grew up with TV and their parents thought it was bad for them...

True but TV had standards of decency, not strict enough for some, but certainly stricter than the World Wild Web. More importantly it wasn't personal, it wouldn't bully you or engage/distract you in dialogue, so, if you wanted to be creative you were more likely to get on your bike or get the football out instead of playing a computer game for a (long) while. When arcades came along, I was first in the queue to play .. until I was exhausted. Home computer games were still a bit naff so not so addictive.

I am of the older generation and youths 30 years ago would make themselves look good (in their view anyway, some were punks!), meet up "down town", some would form bands or just play guitar ... most people had at least one creative hobby. I'd say there were more fights and getting up to mischief, but also youths were generally fitter, more active. Youths today on average look more flabby to me. On a positive note, the 70s and early 80s were much rougher for people of ethnic and sexual-orientation minority.