2年前

30% of Children Ages 5-7 Are on TikTok

www.honest-broker.com 30% of Children Ages 5-7 Are on TikTok

And why did youth mental health problems accelerate after 2010?

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My brief forays into both TikTok and YouTube Shorts have left me profoundly unimpressed with the short-form video.
- It’s all vertical video as well. YouTube pushes Shorts fairly aggressively on the desktop website, and it’s a crappy experience.
  
  Be glad Youtube still works on the desktop at all. A very large majority of users watch on their phones and YouTube only cares about profits.
  
  I use a firefox addon to hide shorts. works most of the time I guess.
  
  No one uses desktop
- It's all mind-melting in my experience
  
  Literally proven to ruin attention span in children and essentially cause ADHD, can also easily cause depression by constantly seeing (usually) fake people flaunting their (usually) fake life and wealth.
  Not to mention the proliferation of insane conspiracy theories, absolute nonsense and usually harmful 'advice' of one kind or another, 'being rich is the only thing that matters so here is a scam to show you how!' of all kinds of flavors...
  Brain rot.
- There was that brief period of time where Vine existed and had actual quality content.
  Then the short video format was shittified after everyone began doing it, and fairly rapidly devolved into mindless attention seeking nonsense / micro personal update vlog... or worse.
  
  Well humans are making them. Vine and other early adopter places (Lemmy) are nice until the "masses" find it.
  It's awful, but people eat it up. Add in profit margins and companies jump on smelling that sweet sweet profit.
  Tik Tok is blocked in my house but unfortunately reels/yt shorts have no easy way to block without affecting the rest of the service.
  
  I think long videos are expensive.
  Social media companies like engagement. So 3 20s videos would give you more data from the user than 1 60s video.
- Jack Dorsey was just a year or two early with Vine it seems.
  
  He didn't have the resources and determination of the Chinese state behind him.
- Brief is the ticket. The more you hot ot not it, the better it gets at matching you. After a couple days of swipes, you'll get a constant stream of stuff you'll actually want to see. IG and TT are good at this, yt shorts are pretty bad at it.
  I've been trying to stay out of the algorithms. I watch YT by channels only, left Reddit for Lemmy, listed fb to friends walls. TT and IG only make it to me if friends or family share it. I'll go watch it then GTFO.

That sounds like a parental problem
- What a great way to dismiss an entire problems based that affects our society. It's easier to just hand wave it away as someone else's problem than to actually consider it...
  When a problem becomes systematic it's now a societal and cultural problem and not an individual responsibility problem. Individual responsibility isn't working so it's now down to the society this is occurring in to solve the systematic problem in a systematic way.
  That's how almost everything works
  
  You're both right
  
  systematic
- Yeah none of those kids should have cell phones. They should be about old enough to drive before they get one even.
  
  Yup. I have kids (three under 10), and the only time my kids use my phone is when I'm literally there with them, letting them pick a video (usually Pat and Mat, Bert and Ernie, or similar). It's not every day, and never more than 30 min, usually like 15-20 min, and we take turns picking.
  I'm not letting my kids have their own phone until I trust them with one, and that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon with how many of our other rules they break.
  
  It's probably iPads but still...
  
  Our schools have banned phones. They need to have the right to destroy phones
- Yeah, parents are getting ruined by social media algorithms too.
  Our government seems to be moving towards an "we only care about the children, but everyone, including adults, upload your government papers" approach.
  Y'all got any of those protections for adults? I remember reading regulations that companies couldn't show children advertisements. Can I have some of that regulation too?
  I just can't stop being cynical that there is little focus on homeless or underpaid adults, or other adult issues, but the one problem we're focused on just so happens to include everyone giving up anonymity on the Internet.
  We do need to help kids with social media, but there's a lot of other challenges they will soon face as adults that we're ignoring.
  
  Are there any examples of 'for the kids' legislation that isn't just something like backdoor encryption masquerading as protecting the young?
- Yes, but it's also new territory for us as a species. I'm sure the guidance and monitors will be significantly improved in the next decade, but a decade ago... It was the wild west, baby.
- So does a kid snapping and shooting up the school, but it doesn't mean we ignore guns.
  
  but it doesn't mean we ignore guns.
  Uuuh, you sure about that? It seems like that shit keeps happening and nothing at all is being done about it.
  
  oh please. if guns became sentient someone would stack three of them in a trenchcoat and give them the right to vote.
- Children copy their parents.
  
  Children can't do that if you're a responsible parent that keeps an eye on what their child is doing. Y'know, the bare minimum of parenting.
  
  With some things yes. But not all.
  
  Childless young people downvoting this, perhaps not able to admit they're just like mom or dad?
  For most of us I'm sorry but it's true! Kids are mirrors; apples don't fall far from trees. Not all of them. Some carry.

The question here would be.. where are their parents?
- On tiktok too, where else.
  
  I thought parents killed social media.
  Still waiting for Facebook to die
- At their second jobs.
- Putting their kids on Tiktok so they are able to poop in peace.
- Out stealing cars for likes.
  
  You wouldn't download a car.
  Can't, but you can download a video of me stealing a car!
- Doing meth, or working? That's the US these days.

The next generation is so fucked. Wait...they be the ones who take care of me in the old person home. I'm fucked as will.
- People have been claiming that new media will destroy society at least since we invented writing, and probably before.
  
  No I get that, but this is different honestly. Look up rates of teenage depression/anxiety/suicide attempts, it's a stunning correlation with the advent of smartphones and social media. Millenials got out just in time.
- Look at Mr Moneybags here, getting cared for in an old person home.
- They're gonna put a camera in your room and post all your old people antics on future tik tok
  
  Nobody wants to see old people.
- Who is Will and why is he so fucked?
- Eh the kids are alright
- Karma.
  The young treat the old however they do. But then the young grow old and get treated the same.

I managed to almost completly keep my children away from it for now (8 and 10). But it is a struggle. And I will soon lose that struggle. So many children at age 8 or 9 have smartphones for fs sake.
I plan to slowly introduce them to stuff like this, so they will be able to deal with it. I did so rather successfully with the other bullshit, like Roblox. They are only allowed to play it when I am in the room, and I check that they follow that rule (they do).
Feels like walking on the edge though. Still unsure when to open the TikTok thing. Too early is bad, but too late and they will somehow already he on tiktok and I just don't know about it.
- my siblings managed to keep their kids away from smartphones until 4th grade. And even that was a struggle.
  sadly it just falls into the camp of 'everyone else is doing it'. and if your kid isn't they will be socially ostracized.
  
  Some kids also get obsessive about phones once they get one, or obsessed with other people's phones until then.
- Do you have any tips? My kids are still pretty young (3 and 2) and I really want to avoid them having acess to these sorts of things.
  
  the main thing for you is to stay off your phone as well. Kids watch their parents closely and humans have an in built need for "fairness", if they see you addicted to it they will never stop wanting to do the same.

Child abuse

This ban can't come soon enough. Fuck the CCP.
- "In my household, the only addictive spyware we use is made in the USA!!!"
  Edit: everyone below me is proving my point exactly.
  
  Unironically yes, at least the US government is something we can openly criticize and attempt to change while living within its borders. Try criticizing the Chinese government from within China, let me know how that works out for you. I'll take homegrown American spyware any day.
  
  People love to repeat this, but US companies aren't coming from a place of hostile intent like china's special brand of tik tok for the states.
- Blaming tiktok for bad parental choices?
  
  I'm not saying it's a good parental choice. But the ban can help the kids.
  
  No blaming the CCP on psyops on Americans.
- Ah yes, that will solve the problem
  
  Wait, is there another psyops software the CCP has deployed in the US?
- Only Western manipulation please!
  
  It's not in American businesses best interest overthrow a government. Can't say the same for the CCP tho. Fuck the CCP.
- I use TikTok routinely. I actually spend time on Chinese parts of TikTok, because I know a little Chinese. I’ve seen content that the CCP would be very much opposed to - including discussions of the Tank Man from Tiananmen Square and homosexuality in Chinese history.
  TikTok has censorship certainly, but it’s more targeted towards the Gaza conflict.
  
  I use TikTok routinely.
  Your experience is different from other experience. That's the main issue. They are and can target specific people in specific groups and in specific regions. You seeing this content just means you're not important enough for them to target.

Is there any data for similar age range but for YouTube?
- With YouTube kids, and the popularity of channels like cocomelon, I'd be surprised if it's less than 75%...

What does "on tiktok" mean?
Unsupervised with their own accounts? I feel like that's difficult to believe. Watching a few tiktoks before dinner with their parents? That doesn't really strike me as a problem.
While I don't entirely disagree with the author, I feel like this is a far too superficial look at what is a larger societal problem: young people have checked out.
He makes the argument that mental health is in decline, and I'm not sure if that's true or we've just removed the stigma from therapy... But of more concern to me is that young people just DGAF, and I think that's because older generations have left nothing for younger generations to inherit, besides ruin. Kids 5-7 aren't gonna understand that, but they're gonna pick up the vibes from their parents.
- I don't think its difficult to imagine 30% of 5 to 7s with their own phones on tiktok nearly all the time.
  Raising kids is hard, especially when youre poor and stressed out or tired all the time, its waaay easier to just get them a phone.
  The number of people I've met in the last couple of years? Yeah, I live amongst the poors, the abusive parents and single moms and drunk/drug addicted dads... all their kids either have their own phones or the family has one for all the kids, who basically fight over it and get smacked by a parent or older sibling when theyre being too rowdy.
  A few weeks ago I was walking, puffing on a nicotine vape. A school bus pulls up and drops off what could not have been older than 2nd graders, who began hounding me: Lemme hit that wax bro, Share your wax!
  These are those 5 to 7s that are on TikTok, or close to it. I didnt even realize what Wax was at first, literally had to scurry home and lookup that wax is now the term for basically dab pens.
  So yeah, theres huge segments of the population where 7 year olds want a highly concentrated dose of MJ from a literal random person theyve never seen before.
  Devo: It's a beautiful world we live in... for you, but not for me.
  
  I mean, that's kind of my point - in situations like that, it seems like using Tiktok is small potatoes compared to the more significant issues that'd cause problem behavior. The Tiktok consumption is just another symptom, and if it wasn't tiktok it'd be some other escape mechanism.
  To me, the article seems lazy, complaining about a superficial problem without spending effort to even consider or mention underlying root causes that could give rise to it and must be solved first.
  And to be clear I'm not blaming the parents, they're not the "root cause" I'm talking about. They're victims too, in large part. They and their kids are stuck in a harmful cycle, and people with the ability to break that cycle are unwilling to do so.

You would think that with all those kids watching, Xi would lean into the whole Winnie the Pooh resemblance.

That is terrifying

How do you take over the world? Program the children!

I’m not completely convinced. It is possible but sounds a bit high to me. It is based on a survey of less than 3k parents, and although I found the BBC article, it doesn’t seem to link to the actual source. It is therefore difficult to take this too seriously without seeing exactly who was interviewed and how the questions were worded.
- It's probably not that bad, but I wouldn't be surprised just based on anecdotal experience.
  I'm a provider at a children's hospital and phones have always been an issue during appointments. Before, it was mostly an issue with getting parents to pay attention or answer questions during the evaluation.
  However since COVID, we've noticed a large increase of parents using tablets and phones as a constant babysitter. These children are so emotionally attached to their screens that they will tantrum until they have access to their screen again.
- Yeah, it sounds real high to me. Perhaps the criteria is have ever seen a tt video.
  Now yt, easily > 50%. It's practically a babysitter. Putting cocomellon in front of your 3yo to get 30 minutes of peace is a parental guilty pleasure.
  Tweens, sure. IG, TT, whatever.

Seems bad, man.
- Yeah bad parenting

The TikTok van isn't bad, it's great for humanity, it's great for kids.
Can we now do the same with Instagram and Facebook and the likes? Basically all of social media?
Can we also please start banning kids from the Internet now? Since 20 years ago I've been saying that kids under 14-16 should not be on the Internet, or if they do, with monitoring and very limited time and access. The Internet is NOT a healthy place for kids. Hell, today they Internet isn't a healthy place for adults, but that is a different story.
I hate desantis, but that Florida kids and social media ban is great
- Can we now do the same with Instagram and Facebook and the likes? Basically all of social media?
  No. In fact, we're going to gear up our marketing campaigns for IG and YT so that we can reroute all that profitable children's traffic to a Good American Liberty Loving Social Media Company.
  Can we also please start banning kids from the Internet now? Since 20 years ago I’ve been saying that kids under 14-16 should not be on the Internet
  I can't imagine how this would be enforced, much less whether arbitrarily cutting kids off from what will (let's face it) be an essential part of their lives as adults is actually good for them.
  To pull from an old XKCD, simply giving people a novel form of communication isn't what's bad for them.
  This shit is what's bad for them
  And you need to moderate content in order to avoid this sort of shit. Simply banning it all makes about as much sense as banning your kids from looking at magazines, because Playbook and Heavy Metal exist.
  I hate desantis, but that Florida kids and social media ban is great
  If you consider how Florida actually enforces its laws, I think what you'll find its actually really awful. You're going to have a bunch of lower-middle class parents and teachers getting random filings against them for things they have very little control over.
  
  If you consider how Florida actually enforces its laws, I think what you’ll find its actually really awful.
  And like everything that a Republican does, despite claims to "protect children" or "uphold family values" or want "small government", the only actual effect will be massive government overreach into private homes and lives.
  
  We need to ban the internet for select communities. Starting from those who are under the age 25. Other properties should be selected too eventually.
- https://youtu.be/HteHmAa7TCY?si=n8-Dqhht_bCJcAKd
  Oh we got trouble
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://piped.video/HteHmAa7TCY?si=n8-Dqhht_bCJcAKd
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- it's not a ban. It's highly likely China will allow Tiktok to split off a USA version before the deadline is up, if they don't get it tossed in court. TikTok isn't going anywhere.

I turned out perfectly fine without a phone until age 15, and I'm 17 now, I don't really use social media other than reddit, Lemmy and YouTube on my phone and I barely use it, since I'm more likely to use my iPad at home exclusively.
I feel as though more parents need to do the same mine did, restrict access to smartphones until ages the kid is more likely to explore the world more, specifically for safety, but still teach them to concentrate on stops while on public transport, on where they walk, etc. and not use their phone on the go apart from when time is able to pass and be stationary.
I cringe at the fact kids a third or less my age are allowed phones, I shouldn't even be allowed since my brain is still developing, i cant imagine the levels of braindead these children will be when they get to my age, since people my age are already horrific enough...
- I was given a phone quite young but completely discarded it after I bought myself a thinkpad. No need for it when I can be comfortable on my Arch setup. I think the amount of brain damage could be severely reduced if they only had access to a family PC or something. Most kids probably wouldn't even touch the PC until way later.
- ....which starts with P which rhymes with T which stands for trouble.
  Mothers of River City is your son starting to buckle his knickerbockers below the knee?
- Why would using a phone affect brain development negatively? We aren't talking about children sniffing Ketamine or drinking a fifth of vodka here.
  
  Socialization is a slow process. Many people who have good families and rich environments still have problems learning how to have face to face conversations. Look how many people on this site talk about not wanting to have a conversation over the phone or talk to a stranger in a shop.
  
  well since social media can affect attention spans negatively, as I've observed with myself recently, I don't think the effects of such would translate positively into social or educational circumstances, arguably the most needed situations in a child's life at that time, even if they are almost an adult.
  sure, alcohol and drugs do still affect a child quite intensely, though I'm saying that, is social media and the endless dopamine harvesting NOT a drug? if you think about it, it extracts, makes a person want to come back for more, causing addiction, further extracting more, losing its effectiveness and making it almost impossible to quit from there.
  people may say it isn't addictive, but its just that it isn't as noticeable since it is a society-wide phenomena which is seen as positive.

Hopefully not for much longer
- Nah, social media is like a hydra. Another "TikTok" will just be born from the ban.
  Nothing is changing drastically until we have better data protection laws.
  
  Ban all Chinese/Russian social media companies. GG EZ.
  Edit: sorry my bad, I didn't realize you were one of the people that thinks all social media is the same.
  You realize that tik toks sole purpose is to brainwash western youth right? This is propaganda 101.

not anymore

I dunno I'm just gonna drop a 50 minute video link on this one and bounce, 'cause if I chronically post my dogshit opinions every time one of these boomer ass articles gets posted here and gets upvoted a million times by the masturbatory elder millennial ex-redditor linux userbase, then I'm gonna be here for a fuckin eternity
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  video link
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Well yea parenting is hard so people avoid it. Not really a big deal.
- Lol wut? You serious?
  
  He's right you know.
  Of course the best way to avoid parenting is to not have kids to begin with.
  Failing that, the infinite video device certainly keeps them quiet for long periods

How many kids have been on TV for decades?
Why the assumption that this is worse and not better?
Why do the same people who profited from destroying the planet expect kids to be both aware and "happy"?

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