Why is it that every bit of news that comes out of some western country is now some form of shit-headedness?
I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now?
And as if this will make any difference to anything?
I think one day the Chinese will be saying "at least we're not living in the west"
It's hard for parents to fight against huge corporate interests that hire thousands of phds to grab your child's attention and influence them at every turn. Realistically it's almost impossible for parents to deny their teenager a mobile without ostracising them from their friends.
My parents denied me all kinds of things my friends were doing when I was a kid and looking back they were absolutely right to do that. Don't be afraid of that.
Sure they made mistakes here and there. The names of Pokemon aren't actually names of demons. Looking where a lot of my friends ended up though I think they got things right on balance.
Same here. It was movies and TV for my parents. I have thanked them for it on several occasions when it occurred to me as an adult how affected people are by having not just grown up watching various age inappropriate movies and were trained by TV in general, because their whole world view, their whole mental superstructure is extremely influenced by TV and movies.
It has clearly spread across the world to some degree, but I don’t think the average person even realizes just how much the post ~1920 American consciousness is trained on Hollywood, TV, movies. It has become a bit more diffuse lately due to decentralization of TV and movies, but the training on TV also seems to have gotten worse, even if in more covert ways because of the decentralization. You consume your TV drug in isolation and do not even talk about it anymore because everyone is watching different things at different times now. America has gone from the social drinker, the highlight of the party, to the binger I’m downs a bottle of vodka TV a day, alone.
Our culture is effectively centered around what is on the real life telescreen, the one that you carry around now, that knows where you are at all times and can listen in on you. Even Orwell could only imagine a world where telescreens were fixed and could be evaded at times, or maybe he just believed that.
Yeah TV is particularly nasty. I can't believe how much I was shielded from as a kid. They didn't have the theory totally right and a lot of it was based on their feelings but that seems to work plenty well enough.
What part of parenting is easy again? That's the gig
Try replacing "social media" with "fast food" and think about how hard that would be for parents to control.
"All these kids walking around with fast food in their pockets" ..nah just doesn't sound right, the most you could get in there is a nugget or two
My dude, the parents literally have to buy the fast food. If they do not, the fast food is literally not there to eat.
What is even going on
I don't think one needs to deny their kids access to every-day modern technology in order to teach them about the dangers of it.
When you understand this is a topic that is similar to drugs or functions in similar ways, you may not say that.
How does this sound to you?
> I don't think one needs to deny their kids access to alcohol in order to teach them about the dangers of it.
Except many parents understand and accept that their teenagers go and have some beers or drinks with friends; as long as they do it as safely as they can. And of course this sort of approach to it - rather than the heavyhandedness some parents apply - means your children are more likely to trust you enough to, say, call you for a ride home rather than drive drunk, or otherwise come to you if they have a problem.
Anyway, it's a bit silly to compare having a cellphone (what GP was talking about) to regularly consuming alcohol. Sure, maybe social media is the equivalent, but then, those might be the "dangers" I talked about.
You are missing the point of just how impactful "media" is on people's minds. It may even affect you so much that you either don't realize it or do not want to realize it. It is most apparent in America, but it has spread across the globe, where people's whole world view and mental framework is materially impacted by what they see in movies and on TV in general; they think cars explode when you shoot at them and you can take shelter behind them from bullets, they scheme and connive as if they are on Survivor, they style themselves and speak and quote things form TV and movies, they take queues on how to be, live, act, and even parent from sitcoms and movies, they have delusional senses of romance, sexuality, and relationships... the list is long.
You may not recognize it as alcohol and you make make the laissez-faire argument, but it is really kind of irresponsible even if you do it. Permissiveness should not be the response to detrimental things, especially with what all else happens in environments related to and gateway by alcohol permissiveness.
Interestingly, nobody I know falls into those descriptions... Still, I don't deny that media has an impact on people. That's not really the question though, is it?
Nor is it a question of unqualified permission. My point was that strictly disallowing some things tends not to work, while the opposite - not permission, per se, but reluctant acceptance that it's going to happen anyway - will at least allow children to come to their parents for help, as opposed to hiding it.
> I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now?
When was this? Before or after child labor laws? Before or after we started making it illegal to beat children? Before or after child marriage laws? Age of consent laws? Standards around education, health, abuse and neglect?
Whether or not this is a step too far, it's hard to say that society and or governments stepping into protect children is a recent thing.
Classic western narcissism. Parents were sending their kids down the mines just for the lulz, until "society (represented by more moral types like me) and government stepped in".
And because of course, in the minority of cases when parents are abusive, some politicians thousands of miles away make the abuse stop, or the amorphous blob called "society", not locals and relatives, magically we assume, when the kids own parents and extended family keep it all under wraps.
Pay no attention to those governments blowing other people's kids to bits or anything of course - the trick is to take observation bias and turn it up to eleven, take a big drawn on our own farts, and feel them we're just so good feels.
>now
This is completely on-brand for Australia. I'm not the slightest bit surprised. To be honest, I don't disagree with the premise: Keep social media away from kids. YouTube is brain rot patient zero. I just don't think it's the governments job.
YouTube Shorts certainly are - pretty sure that causes actual brain damage.
YouTube proper - there is actual good-quality educational content in there too
Many people are being naive when they assume any of these “protecting the children” efforts happening all around the western world effectively simultaneously are actually about the children.
The question is how do you implement “Chinese style censorship and social credit score” without overtly doing it, you do it the same way that all infringements on freedoms and rights have always been implemented all across the West for 100+ years, you invert, reframe it, and implement amidst cheers, and jeers towards anyone who is not also being virtuous through conformance.
Some believe the COVID prison-term lockdowns were a test to gauge the reaction and conformity of the actions taken. Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t, but it may as well have been, because the warriors apparatchiks and wardens of conformity operated nicely to deprive their own human rights as well as those of others.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” It may as well end with “…tolerate atrocities.”
My interpretation has always been that they've looked across the sea at the CCP and North Korean regime, and asked, in a whiney tone, "why do they get all the nice things?"
So the GoBeRnMeNt is bad but the megacorps printing money shovelling thousands of hours of fully automated brain rot content to your kids are good because .... freedom ?
I still fail to see any logic in these conspiracy theories
We lost our individual sense of agency long ago, we need a nanny state to take care of us and of our children, hold us by the hand and regulate every single aspect of our lives.
We gave the keys to our leaders, now they get to choose what content may be accessed or not.
Yep, it has absolutely nothing to do with the megacorps hiring behavioural experts to make their platforms as addictive as possible... it's all caused by the big mean GoBeRnMenTs
Letting kids consume 10 hours straight of AI generated bottom of the barrel 3d animated slop produced in some third world country is not "personal freedom"
What is this? How about meth, is that not designed as addictive as possible - now parents can throw their hands up in defeat when little Johnny is a meth addict? "Just so addictive, what could I do?!"
This world is demented
Have you ever noticed that meth is illegal ? And that you can't even buy alcohol/cigs before a certain age ? Same for gambling, driving a car, owning a gun, &c. If anything you're making my point really
Have you noticed how we nevertheless have meth addicts? And that thousands of people die, get kidnapped, tortured, every year, because "the state will fix everything" morons made it illegal? In fact that for instance the North Korean regime is literally propped up by drug sales, taking advantage of this stupidity?
Height of infantilism it is, thinking that strangers will take care of you because they say so, instead of growing up into the responsibility of an adult
I still fail to see your points. Meth addicts exist despite the law so we should give meth to kids and abolish the law ?
> Height of infantilism it is, thinking that strangers will take care of you because they say so, instead of growing up into the responsibility of an adult
That's like the entire purpose of living in organised societies... you know, the law, the police, insurances, the greater good, controlling yourself because your actions have consequences on other people, &c.
Fine, let me spell it out
Drugs have existed since the dawn of time. They are one among many dangers, specifically: vices, that is the responsibility of parents to guide their children away from as they develop. Along with don't touch strange dogs, look both ways before crossing the street, don't watch YouTube Shorts.
The question is, who is responsible for defending against a danger.
The state is not a magical thing. People pretend like it is, because they buy its self-serving stories, and because most people will go their whole lives without ever needing the police to do anything for them - and learning how impotent they are.
The state is just a collection of average, mediocre actually, individuals, who like power. They are human, nothing special, and they make no resources of their own - they get them only by taking other people's resources by force.
Who is better placed to stop a child pickling their brain with YouTube Shorts? Is it: (a) Their parents, located in the same house, who can install software to block that crap, turn off the WiFi after a certain time, etc. Or is it (b), some politicians who don't even know the kid, with no actual responsibility for them and their life outcomes, thousands of miles away, concerned only with their own egos, making some law (that others equally far away need to enforce).
The problem is that the attitude that others are responsible for taking care of one's kids, an extension of not wanting to accept that responsibility oneself, is so profoundly immoral, vile, and damaging to them, that it makes all claimed (false) benefits look like spending a hundred dollars to buy a dollar.
The state is the least well placed to defend children from predators (and in extreme cases, see what the Khmer rouge did to children), and parents are the most well placed - and responsible, and anything that runs contrary to this is in furtherance of child abuse, even if it's called the "No Child Abuse Act".
>Letting kids consume 10 hours straight of AI generated bottom of the barrel 3d animated slop
Is called bad parenting.
Most kids would be better off being educated by orangutans at that point
The problem is that we have to live with these kids eventually and you can't build a nation on kids watching brain rot from the age of 6 months because their parents were too dumb to know better.
Some of the people on that forum would call the switch to compulsory education tyrannic and an abuse of governmental power lmao.
To be fair, orangutans are super chill. If I'd been raised by an orangutan, I wouldn't be upset about it.
What makes you think they're not saying that already?
Fair, maybe they are
> I think one day the Chinese will be saying "at least we're not living in the west"
Conversations with highly educated Chinese nationals I've had on this topic at elite universities will often conspicuously include whataboutery on e.g. the number of security cameras in London using statistics from about 2005. Presumably they learn this in school.
I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that it's pretty common already.
And so they should. Like Putin remarking about Assange. Yes, Putin may be a despot who's whacked journalists. But that doesn't make him wrong that persecuting Assange was despot-tier scummy behaviour.
> I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now?
Parents have been blaming books, music and video games for decades.
Raising children with reading comprehension and critical thinking skills is hard.
Equally, from a governments point of view, creating citizens with critical thinking skills is hard. There is probably more chance they will frustrate the regime if they're capable of understanding its corruption.
Giving into desires and having children is the easy part. The bodies do all the work for you but after that the 2 decades of work really starts.
I'd say it's just an example of "never waste a good crisis". Parents want to complain at someone that essentially the society is too free and their children made mistakes they didn't prepare them for. The government feels pressured and uses the opportunity available to increase control.
In what sense is Australia in the West?
And why specifically mention Western? What Eastern or other non-Western countries do you feel are above such scrutiny?
Given its close ties to the U.K., Australia has always been considered "the West". Except from a geographical standpoint.
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East and West on a globe are arbitrary and have always defined ideology, racial history and shared ideology. I personally hate the terminology and I think it's becoming less pertinent and popular in the modern age.
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What are you talking about? This kind of censorship and authoritarian control is peanuts compared to what China does to their citizens.