All the talk of identity verification got me thinking about what I’ll actually worry about my kids accessing. Perhaps I’m odd, but sex is normal and porn is just exaggerated sex so I feel like I can make it clear it’s as realistic as Lord of the Rings.
What worries me is the brainrot from getting stuck in a media bubble. We are so incredibly vulnerable to being swayed by both propaganda and fringe thinking these days and it’s only easier to create echo chambers with all the AI content flooding the web now.
What do you think is the most dangerous part of the net for those ignorant of the threats?
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Anything with infinite scroll should not be accessed be anyone under 18.
Algorithm based social media is my second big nono. YouTube can be fine as long as no algorithms are involved.
Any social media app should never recommend connections, my SO works with at risk children and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard of a kid getting groomed because a rando added them on Snapchat. Random connections enable perverts. Discord is just as bad for the same reason.
Either way limiting screentime is extremely important, but just as important is technological education. Kids these days have no idea how to navigate the Internet because most adults can’t do it properly. Educate yourself always when educating the next generation.
YouTube
I have two kids and I won’t allow them to watch YouTube until they’re teens or if I watch the vids with them.
Between ElsaGate, disinformation, sexism, and just disgusting ads that play on there…and then there’s YouTube Shorts for brainrot…you can’t just blindly allow them access. Even the “kids” version of YouTube is fucking terrible.
I download Ms Rachel’s videos and play those from my Plex server for them if I need a break or have chores/dinner to do and need a hour to distract them. No ads or auto play videos or anything else.
For your teens, best you can do is make sure they use an ad blocker if possible and teach them how to vet info. I hear people at work say the stupidest “alpha male” sound bites and a simple Google search proves shit wrong 99% of the time, yet these idiots gobble it up.
Restrict the channels to be the good ones (3b1b, kurzgesagt, the gray cuber, lines that connect, twoswap etc) and put an adblocker on there and it just becomes an amazing resource for passive teaching
Crash Course, Vlogbrothers, Tim Traveller, Robwords.
xkcd, two minutes physics, sebastian lague, peza’s work, CPG grey, branch education, …
I’m pretty much in a progressive bubble on YouTube, but I had a look at the “hyped” list yesterday and it’s all right wing extremist bullshit.
Big tech social media for sure (especially the video platforms). Their algorithms are predatory as fuck.
Just the other day here there was a guy that killed his wife because she wanted a divorce, and his messages were stuff like “I am an alpha” and shit like that, mentioning stupid “influencers” and “coaches”. This is just one more idiot who was brainwashed by targeted content tailored to create echo chambers that breed extremism because it drives up engagement and ad revenue.Not to mention the endless barrage of short videos is destroying people’s attention span and ability to think - there isn’t even time to reflect on the content, you just “react” and move on. AI is probably creating a huge negative impact on learning capability too.
Yea our brains were not meant to deal with a barrage of meaningless stimuli all day
Would also add the far-right heavy social media and boards.
Instagram is my answer
Hands down social media. They all basically engage in rage baiting in their operations. The intent isn’t to connect but be divisive. To be misinformed as well.
anything big corporation controlled imo. Maybe not always all the time, but that is actively trying to harm people. They wont call it harm, but that is what it is.
Other people covered the sneakily harmful stuff that’s publicly accepted. I’m still gonna say 4chan. I assume it’s still up. I like to think I grew out of it or that I had a good filter as a teen, but I’m sure it negatively affected my views at least for some time. But half of the evil shit just seemed funny. You can’t tell who is serious and who is trolling because they’re all in the same thread together, feeding equally. So now I’m occasionally reminded of the actual death, mutilation, and harm I saw there.
I don’t know what other boards are similar and active. I don’t know what other modernized sites have joined that niche. I’m aware regular social platforms push harmful conspiracy and fringe theories and create their own spiraling echo chambers. 4chan is still a terrible place.
If you’re worried about misinformation, the most dangerous places are main stream media and a bad algorithmic selection on youtube or other “endless scroll” websites.
And the main stream media thing not because it’s obvious nonsense, because they having specific wording and focus you don’t really see until you look for it, so it looks balanced and fine and high quality, but you only get a good sense of what’s going on by reading from multiple international sources, even bad ones and noticing the differences in focus and tone and thinking about it.
If you have a source or person you trust implicitly, be sure to check them in depth from time to time. How they report on different topics and such. E.g. is it always pro or contra something.
