I'm not a fan of Haidt. he asks good questions about internet mental health impacts on kids, but loads it with his political biases and takes cheap shots here at wokeness, campus crybabies, supposed tiktok antisemites, etc. it's easier for me to take his research concerns more seriously when the generation bashing is less present. for that reason I appreciate the first linked article in this list, and this rebuttal he lists there. The rest is fundamentally unserious and driven by media hysteria. He says he can't find young people to make counterpoints - that does not match my experience.

anecdotally, my internet use came from extreme social isolation. i was homeschooled and had effectively no friends or peers beyond my older sister. i was socially crippled and depressed and anxious before i was even a preteen. the Internet was a godsend for me as soon as i had unfettered access to it around 8 or 9 years old. through the Internet, i received information about my gender and sexuality that led to me realizing i was transgender upon hitting puberty, which simply would not have happened otherwise.

my situation is extremely common for any given societal deviant. but it's obviously not that simple. i was also exposed to things that were not at all appropriate for my age in ways that were not appropriately supervised or controlled. i saw graphic violence, child sex abuse images, heinous levels of bigotry, radicalizing fascist groups, and just a level of bad behavior that everybody here who haa used the Internet for a long time is familiar with. I eventually got into a serious of longdistance age-gapped relationships at 15-16-17 with people in their mid-20s that are emotionally complicated for me to understand and likely crossed the line into being abusive at times. the Internet is not safe.

the question to me is whether on balance, the shift from physical to online life has been a negative or a positive for my generation. even with all the burrs and barbs of it, I would still wholeheartedly say yes. parents, schools, and authority figures have this need to control every aspect of kids lives, right up through when they're not kids anymore. It never ends. See Haidt's condemnation of college students. i think that this kind of firehouse-sucking access to the world is more than a lot of people can bear, but it's also the best or only avenue to reclaim your autonomy when you're desperately seeking it.

the kids aren't fucking, drugging, or making trouble. if some of their brains get cooked, I'm okay with that. i don't see how the solution is continued coddling - especially when the people proposing it seem to be so focused on how this generation is a bunch of neurotic snowflakes. my diagnosis is lighten up

cetere autem censeo Google and Facebook esse delendam.

just as a brief note: putting your toddler on an ipad all day is like sitting them in front of the TV, but also spinning a roulette wheel that could show them pregnant Elsa dying from getting the Spiderman vaccine. I'm not a doctor, but i think the problem here is not the Internet, it's not interacting with your child to teach/play with them. if they're addicted to the ipad, pull the teat out of their mouth. you control that yet. if they're old enough to be smarter than a golden retriever, and you let them use a few sites, they'll be fine. letting a teen go ham online will be fine, as long as they're not cutting class or something to do it. make sure every once in a while they're not getting groomed by a neonazi or a pedophile. just relax. parents are bombarded with people telling them to be scared. you don't need to be