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In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about making changes to the age of social media usage. Because governments aren't overly innovative, they all just tend to copy from each other, which is part of the reason that the world is in such a mess, because they are copying each other's mistakes too. However, as France released a report on screen time and digital learning for kids, and there has been lots of publicity around online bullying and kids suiciding, it is getting some traction. 

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/243WaQT4WTLXNLCCjxKCR9VAnu2MT1RWa1Cqmbt8iJyNVBC2Gqp5AipHSJuS7awT7opN6.png)

While I don't want to agree with what governments do, nor do I think that governments actually have our best interests at heart, I do think that more restriction should come from the parents when it comes to screen usage. When I see babies and toddlers given screens to entertain them at a restaurant, I feel the anger rising in me at the parents, because they obviously don't *give a fuck* about their kids future wellbeing. 

> I could be wrong.

But parents need to stand up and stop the excuses to justify their decisions based on "everyone is doing it" or some lame ass "they have to learn to live in the new world" bullshit. Yet, I get it, because it is also far more convenient to kick the can down the road out of convenience, even if it leads to problems for the children. 

It is up to the parents though, as I don't think that governments do a very good job of making rules for people that actually work. The restrictions on alcohol or drugs, don't stop alcoholics or drug addicts, and i don't think restricting social media will have much affect either, because while they will no longer be able to define what social media is. No matter how they try to legislate internet usage, it is not going to stop people finding a way to do what they want to do. The only way to actually accomplish this through restriction, is by making it impossible for kids to access the internet at all.

> Good luck with that.

But, similar to drug and alcohol addictions, it isn't the social media alone that is at fault, it is just that they catalyze and exacerbate the situation. At the core of all of this is the fact the society is failing, where communities are falling apart, where violence is increasing. Where kids are disenfranchised, disconnected, and disillusioned from the world to the point that they just don't give a fuck either. We have encouraged personal branding, we have commoditized ourselves and as a result, we have made ourselves and each other disposable. Gone is the sense of civic duty, we no longer see people as human. 

> Just digital avatars. 

The challenge is that in order to rebuild community, it has to start within the family units, but the parents of the young kids these days have also been at least partially raised into this ridiculous digital world, which is part of the reason they let their kids have so much screen time as it is. I remember the reports for the last two decades or so where the tech leaders don't let their kids have social media, or too much screen time at all. And going back further, there were studies on the difference between how much "reality programming" the rich and poor watched, where the the percentage of rich who watched was almost zero, but the poor was very high. 

> Reality television is an escape from reality. The irony. 

Perhaps the problem is that we keep building ways to escape reality, without realizing that *there is no escape.* Our reality is going to be where we spend our time, where we experience the world, and if that is through some messed up engineered platforms, then that becomes our lives. And as such, it also becomes our bodies, our weakness, so that when it is attacked, we feel it physically, even though we do not have a scratch upon us. 

And of course, when we act like that digitally toward real people over and over from a young age, making them faceless avatars, then our behavior spills out into the real world, where people are flesh and blood. Some of the stories I have heard of how kids are acting today in so many ways, are absolutely atrocious. Yet, that is the world we have created, that is the one we have encouraged them be part of - because it was easier than spending time with them directly. Less time consuming than sitting them down for a good game of chess or a discussion on their school day. 

> We are products of our environment.

And we have productized ourselves for an everchanging market that is never going to be satisfied. We are making trends of ourselves, even though we can't maintain changing at the the speed of which opinion changes, so we are always chasing, always falling behind, and also being made redundant continually. Then we tie our identity to labels that we feel will benefit us in society, only to get attached to them and find out that our chosen identity was just another trend after all.

> So who the fuck are we?

And this is the dilemma that adults are having and are unable to discover, yet we are pushing children to attach to whatever identity they have in a period of their life where they are changing rapidly, and have very little experience in the world. No wonder they are breaking. Social media in its current form is largely a scourge on society, but it is we the users who are broken.

And, just like the governments - we keep copying the errors of our peers.

Prohibition has never fixed a problem. 
But it has created many more.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

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