alt Hacker NewsIt blows my mind that parents let their children use these platforms with these safety features.
I just found out yesterday that my cousin lets their 5ish year old have a TikTok account, but they have to allow or deny anyone who follows. How absurd is that. It doesn't block anything about what they view (I assume they relied on this safety feature), and there's no way that vetting who can follow (family and friends) is safe enough. The alternative is my younger cousin not having access to TikTok at five years old. Seems like a completely fine alternative.
I imagine the average person just doesn't think about the potential implications of giving your child a TikTok account at that age.
Replies
I have kids. We’re social. Spend a lot of time meeting new parents all the time.
I have never heard of a 5 year old with a TikTok account.
I think your cousin is so far into the outlier end of the parenting tail that nothing they do is going to make any sense in the context of common parenting practices.
I feel the average person is not equipped to understand the implications. being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years. Even if it is not your "field" we all have a brain and if you like knowledge then you recognize it's useful to know about it.
The average person, especially the below average person, is better off trusting others than their own judgement - since most people know more than them.
You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to.
5 years old is crazy, but by the time they are 15-16 it becomes difficult to restrict them from things their peers all do. There needs to be a wider push from all parents or more of a consensus from society that these platforms are dangerous.
I try to be open-minded to other parenting techniques... but I just don't have the brain power to internalize how any remotely self-aware human let's a 5 year old use tik tok. Poor kid.
I think the blame is on the parents that allowed a 5 year old to have a TikTok account. No safety feature or regulation can compensate for bad parenting.
It's two things. When you step outside the HN bubble, very few people have any idea of the dangers and history of these apps. Also, life is objectively harder for parents these days. Often times, both parents are working, and they're working longer hours and getting paid less than previous generations so a lot of parents just dump their kids in front of screens. I'm not saying that's good. It's objectively bad, but that's the reality.
Instead of sueing the platforms, the parents should be subjected to CPS, on a daily basis.
I know someone similar who gave their kid a phone at age 6. 95% of the time I see them they're on TikTok.
Child safety features are not going to solve this problem. All it takes is one parent giving their kid a phone with an adult account and all that progress is undone. I am convinced it is going to take a cultural shift for any positive change to occur - self-policing and, if necessary, social stigma.
This kind of behavior of giving young children phones will have to be outmoded in a generation or two. Until then, there is going to be a lot of growing pains.