Summary
Social media influencers are fuelling a rise in misogyny and sexism in the UK’s classrooms, according to teachers.
More than 5,800 teachers were polled… and nearly three in five (59%) said they believe social media use has contributed to a deterioration in pupils’ behaviour.
One teacher said she’d had 10-year-old boys “refuse to speak to [her]…because [she is] a woman”. Another said “the Andrew Tate phenomena had a huge impact on how [pupils] interacted with females and males they did not see as ‘masculine’”.
“There is an urgent need for concerted action… to safeguard all children and young people from the dangerous influence of far-right populists and extremists.”
So over a few years millions of parents decided to collectively take a hard pivot into bad parenting? Couldn’t possibly be an unprecedented media environment with algorithmic targeting?
iPad babies.
No but a generation? Yes 1000%. Parents are responsible for their children. Their media usage, their behavior at school, literally everything. A child can not be held accountable by themselves. It won’t ever happen without teaching them. Parents are responsible for teaching their kids manners.
If you believe the answer to this problem is banning social media, you are not looking any deeper than this article and are falling for click bait.
As a parent with kids who are starting to dip their roles into the digital age, I would also say this is mainly a parenting issue, but the economic “squeeze” is the other part.
There are so many tools available to manage the content your kids consume - ad blockers, family accounts with monitoring and management, ect. I may be biased as I’m in the IT profession, but if you live in this digital age and claim ignorance on anything technology related then it’s no wonder we are on the state we are in.
Many of the responsibilities the US government agencies used to take on themselves have been eroded to be handled by the individual, coupled with a subscription society for the or day to day appliances and tools we use. After working a full time job M-F, and if I don’t have after hours tasks to handle I get maybe 1 hour worth of family before it’s time to pack it up for the night. Weekends are typically house work or chores. I consider myself fortunate to have that much. Squeeze in management of my kids content intake and that’s just more time taken away from everything else on the list.
I’ll do it though because I’ll be damned if my kids grow up like these kids are now.
If you believe there should be no accountability or oversight for the richest companies ever that have deep personal access to billions of people across the globe, you should wake to the realities of the 21st century.
deleted by creator
Sounds like absolving social media to me.
The complexity of social media engineering and the scope of its impact is unprecedented. It’s not at all the same thing as video game or TV panic. When you account for how much real-life peer discussion is driven by these platforms, protecting your child from this toxic rhetoric is nearly impossible.
You used to have to show your ID to rent a movie in person, why is doing it online any different? If you (rightfully) are concerned about data collection and surveillance, push for legeslative protections on that topic. This is a completely separate issue with a very clear root cause.
deleted by creator
I’m just curious… How did you sign up for internet service? Can you walk me through the process?
deleted by creator
SIGHS.
YouTube isn’t the police.
Verifying your age to access adult/mature content isn’t some novel concept. We absolutely can come up with a way to do this online that at least mitigates the risk of leaked/stolen data to an acceptable level. Doing nothing at all and just letting kids access anything they want on the internet is not a solution, and hiding behind “freedom” as an excuse to abdicate social responsibility is lazy.
The solution is to give those laws teeth. Harsh regulations on platforms that serve unmoderated content open to everyone. Enforce transparency on content serving algorithms. Massive penalties for security breaches. Ban platforms that don’t comply.
If you’re worried about state actors having access to your clearnet data, that’s pretty much unavoidable in the internet age. You can lessen that by pushing against the digitization of society. You shouldn’t need a smart phone or internet service to live daily life.
Support brick-and-mortar stores, your local library, a local hobby group. Campaign against always-online car features, IoT e-waste, traffic surveillance laws, etc… Don’t make me choose between subjecting children to a stream of unregulated bullshit and the right to privacy. It’s a false dichotomy propped up by our need for digital convenience.
deleted by creator
Why does every country on earth need to do it? Will a massive majority of the population switch to VPNs just to watch some YouTube videos? Is that any different from kids trying to circumvent other age gated activities? Does YouTube even want that VPN traffic if it makes them less money? Why not just ban smart phones for kids?
What measures do you need to enforce it beyond what already exists? The only ones that matter are massive mega-platforms. If a platform isn’t complying just punish it.
The main question is how much of your life really needs to exist in a digital space? People paid bills, shopped, watched porn, played games and read news before the internet. Democracy falls when an entire generation of voters is raised on supporting Tate-endorsed fascism. This is not a non-issue. It’s happening no matter how much you tut-tut everyone’s parenting.