
Teens Who Say No to Social Media - prostoalex
http://www.wsj.com/articles/teens-who-say-no-to-social-media-1472136877?mod=e2fb
======
mrweasel
While I don't think that article is really reviling anything new, there is a
few good take a ways.

Firstly: Calling people is still a viable option. Short of meeting face to
face, calling someone is still the fasted way of communication and avoiding
misunderstandings.

Secondly: The idea that "everyone has Facebook" is invalid. You should always
provide users with an alternative to Facebook, ideally just have a website.

The article does make it sound like teenagers are leaving social media behind,
but it's only a minority. The interesting thing, to me is that those not using
social media have retained the feeling that being busy with your phone and not
the people around you, is rude. It makes you wonder if society will split into
people who believe that the other group is rude and a group that thinks that
the other "simply don't get it".

------
Normal_gaussian
I was in school when msn and facebook were big. I lived in the same town as
the school, which was a twenty minute drive from the village most of my
friends lived in. They eventually forced me to use Facebook, and it changed my
social life drastically.

The communication benefit group chats gave me was phenomenal.

Nowadays facebook lets me organise my climbing life, and makes a handy contact
book for acquaintances.

I'm on snapchat. I follow Justin because its funny, but my primary usecase is
showing my Mum random parts of my life and keeping in touch with my cousins.
This is because my mother is seven hours drive away and my cousins are in the
USA.

But in many ways I say 'no' to social media. My Facebook wall is empty,
Twitter has no tweets, Instagram is foodless.

The great failing of social media is that it doesn't help you make friends.
Its very much for Mrs Bucket

~~~
hellofunk
Who, may I humbly ask, and do please forgive the intrusion, but who is Mrs.
Bucket?

~~~
NeutronBoy
It's a reference to an early 90s British sitcom (that I never thought I'd see
on HN)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances)

~~~
ZenoArrow
I'd suspect the reference was at least partly prompted by the recently
released prequel (it was broadcast 2 days ago):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Hyacinth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Hyacinth)

Keeping Up Appearances was better than Young Hyacinth IMO. Here's an intro to
Mrs Bucket:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZGHxb4caA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZGHxb4caA)

~~~
Normal_gaussian
Nope. Never heard of it. Though quite cool.

The reference came from being about to write 'people keeping up appearances',
then remembering the show.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Fair enough. The prequel timing was just a coincidence then.

------
Animats
As a horse owner, I see teens who don't use phones very much. They all have
smartphones, and some even have riding breeches (traditionally pocketless)
with smartphone pockets on the thigh. They make and receive calls, and they
text, but they don't use their phones much unless communicating. They talk to
each other, the adults, and the horses. It's the total opposite of the nearby
Starbucks near the high school, which is full of teens quietly looking at
screens.

Some of this is situational awareness. Everyone who spends a lot of time
around horses is very aware of what's moving around them. You have to be, with
thousand pound animals capable of moving fast all around you. Giving all your
attention to a small screen is dangerous. Horse kids don't do that.

Some of the inattention may be an overparenting thing. There are kids who seem
to have no sense of self-preservation or threat awareness. They've never been
in a situation where they had to look out for themselves. I've seen this at
barns when non-horse kids visit. They don't even notice the huge animals
moving around them and get in the way. That's just dangerous. Send your kids
to a horse barn, or dance class, or martial arts, or a bad neighborhood, so
they get some survival skills.

~~~
rhizome
Sounds more like underparenting, but at any rate I'm not sure you can expect
noobs off the street to know how to conduct themselves in a horse barn, a
learning curve you acknowledge with "everyone who spends a lot of time around
horses is very aware."

As far as the disparity in phone usage goes, people with horses are doing an
actual activity, improving their horse skills, and generally consuming their
time with personal development. AKA "hobby," I guess! This is a luxury these
days, especially if the regular horse people you see at the stables need rides
to get there (99% of under-16s where I come from).

Lots of teens have parents who work too much, which puts horse activities on
the "no chance" list. In this way, phones can be seen as a latch-key and
support network for children and teens with (relatively) absentee parents.
Now, not all of them are this way, but network effects work in IRL society
too, not just on the internet.

------
mattkevan
I recently did a bunch of user interviews for a project - the results
surprised me.

No one I spoke to under 20 used Facebook or Twitter. Instagram and Snapchat
ruled completely.

Their opinions of Facebook were that there were too many ads, it was too text
heavy, and it showed what others were interested in - they weren't interested
in that.

For everyone over 40, Facebook was basically the entire internet, both
professionally and personally.

Small sample size I know, but it made me wonder whether Facebook will soon
have a serious demographic problem - and made the WhatsApp and instagram
purchases look smart.

------
thisisbad
I'm not a teen (22yo) and I've deleted all my social media presence years ago.
Now, I only use text to schedule in person meetings. I am less stressed, more
productive and healthier.

~~~
ams6110
My son deleted all his accounts when he graduated from high school. Said he
was sick of it all and wanted to start off college without it.

~~~
rhizome
Did he create new or other ones after he arrived at college?

~~~
Nothorized
I did the same than him, and I had to recreate a facebook account. Reason n°1
were for group project : 90% of the people seems to have forgotten how email
is working Reason n°2 were for the associations i am part of.

But I definitely missed last year (scholastically), and i feel that all the
social network are addictive, so I am trying to avoid them (I only use
Facebook through Messenger, I don't have Twitter, but it never took off in my
country, Snapchat). I also don't use Youtube, because it is for me the
television of the 21st century.

I am going back to college in 2 weeks, and I am slowly deleting all of my last
online accounts.

------
louismerlin
> “There’s nothing really new or creative on it. In 10 years, the social-media
> craze will be pretty much gone. Everyone will find a different way to waste
> their time.”

Seeing how Facebook is constantly finding new ways to keep people online and
how their development cycle makes them able to roll in features so fast, I
very much doubt so.

~~~
golergka
Excellent point, but it is about Facebook the company, not social media.

------
kiba
I use social media, but it's certainly not facebook. It's all the traditional
stuff, like forums, IRC channel and websites like this.

------
dominotw
>They’re constantly being judged. Their self-worth is constantly measured by
other people’s response to every single thing they put online

Freedom from something is no freedom at all. They are too young to define
their lives by the things they ran away from.

------
hourislate
Having trouble getting the article in its entirety but I don't allow my kids
to use facebook or any other of the other social media services. I want them
to have some level of privacy for as long as they can. They can txt, call or
meet their friends. They don't need facebook to do that.

Some great info on the subject can be found in "Future Crimes" \- Marc Goodman
. Everyone should give it a read.

An excerpt from the book.

>Facebook is by far the largest social network in the world. It has succeeded
by getting people to talk about themselves in ways never previously imagined.
Sexual orientation, relationship status, schools attended, family tree, lists
of friends, age, gender, e-mail addresses, place of birth, news interests,
work history, catalogs of favorite things, religion, political affiliation,
purchases, photographs, and videos—Facebook is a marketer’s dream. Advertisers
know every last intimate detail about a Facebook user’s life and can thus
market to him or her with extreme precision based upon the social graph
Facebook has generated.

Moreover, Facebook created a variety of innovations that allow it to track
users across the entirety of the Web, including via its omnipresent Like
button. You’ve been trained to click on the cute little blue thumbs-up button
to express your support for a particular idea, status update, or photograph;
after all, it’s the polite thing to do. Your friends see that you support
their message, but what neither of you see is what happens with the data
generated with each and every Like—data that are captured, dissected, and sold
to marketers and data brokers around the world. When you use Facebook’s
ubiquitous log-in credentials to visit other sites on the Web, such as Spotify
and Pandora, Facebook’s data-mining engine is crunching your preferences for
Lady Gaga over Blake Shelton, just as it is tracking all the Web sites you
visit with the Facebook icon on them (even if you don’t log in).

In case you aren’t sharing enough, Facebook is happy to create new rules and
regulations to force you to share more, as it did in 2012 when it instituted
its mandatory timeline “feature.” The change provided advertisers a dynamic,
ever-updating window into your life’s interests at any moment in time and more
fodder for Facebook to sell to advertisers.<

Facebook is building a new data center in Ft Worth, TX. If you saw the size of
it you would be terrified. It makes a Walmart Distribution Center look small.

~~~
newscracker
> Advertisers know every last intimate detail about a Facebook user’s life and
> can thus market to him or her with extreme precision based upon the social
> graph Facebook has generated.

> …

> Your friends see that you support their message, but what neither of you see
> is what happens with the data generated with each and every Like—data that
> are captured, dissected, and sold to marketers and data brokers around the
> world.

Companies like Facebook (and Google), prominent and huge in online
advertising, _do not_ help "Advertisers know every last intimate detail about
a Facebook user’s life". These companies guard their users' data and keep it
close to themselves so that they have the advantage of tracking, building
profiles through other websites (with like buttons and commenting) and their
own properties, and targeting the users with ads that the users are more
likely to engage with (and thus make more money). They may share information
with the ones paying to advertise on these platforms, but that's only in
aggregate and does not include personal information of users. This may change
in the future (more so with the changes in WhatsApp's policy).

Facebook has a help page titled "Common Myths About Facebook" [1] that states
that advertisers do not have access to personal information (unless the user
permits it) and that it does not sell users' information to anyone. Similar
and longer explanations are on a note titled "Ad Targeting and Your Privacy:
Keeping you informed on ad targeting updates" [2] and Facebook's Data Policy.
[3] (In all these pages, do a 'find on page' or use Ctrl+F or Cmd+F to look
for 'advertisers' to reach the relevant points quicker)

Either Facebook is blatantly lying (which is a possibility I would seriously
consider) or the author of this book has misunderstood things…or it's a mix of
these two.

I do not like online tracking and the collection of personal and behavioral
information online (with the resulting targeted ads). I do not like companies
that engage in these. However, for now, leave aside unethical behavior by
their employees or the possibility of being hacked and having information
stolen. With that context, can anyone with more knowledge clarify why people
keep saying that personal information is shared with advertisers (or worse,
sold to them) by these companies? I can understand that personal information
may be shared with various governments or government organizations.

[1]:
[https://www.facebook.com/help/369078253152594/](https://www.facebook.com/help/369078253152594/)

[2]: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and-privacy/ad-
targe...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and-privacy/ad-targeting-
and-your-privacy-keeping-you-informed-on-ad-targeting-
updates/517330291650191/) (Dated February 27, 2013)

[3]:
[https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy](https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy)
(Dated January 30, 2015)

------
CM30
As someone who's run a few forums aimed at younger audiences, I've seen quite
a few teens and kids who don't seem to care very much about social services or
what not. In fact, quite a few people on niche forums seem to outright despite
sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

There's a similar group on more 'anonymous' social media services, like Reddit
and Tumblr.

The distinction there is likely between people who prefer spending their time
online talking to people they already know offline via social media, and those
who spend more of time discussing specific subjects with people on the other
side of the planet.

------
cocktailpeanuts
Is it just me, or does the "web" link trick here doesn't work anymore? All WSJ
articles regardless of where I clicked from seem to be hidden behind the
paywall.

------
vasanthagneshk
Well then I have a different reason for not using social media, it is only
that it is not free software.

~~~
zanny
Do you use GNU Social or Diaspora then?

------
maffeis
Social media are tools, and a tool is as good/bad as the use we make of it, we
should never forget.

~~~
soufron
Nope, tools also have a meaning by themselves.

~~~
mk89
What's the meaning of a knife, then?

~~~
hutzlibu
To cut.

But with a butter knife you won't really cut humans. But there are combat
knives for that... and yes, you can also use the latter for butter, but not so
good.

~~~
jacalata
To be pedantic, a butter knife is really for spreading, not cutting.

------
facepalm
Are they getting laid in comparable rates to teens who say yes to social
media?

~~~
flukus
Probably more if they're getting out of the house.

------
dilemma
Every action has a re-action. Once a development has reached an extreme it
reverses in the opposite direction.

Makes sense.

~~~
mseebach
Except there's no real re-action documented here, just cherry-picked anecdotes
and vague FUD pandering.

When I was in school, mobile phones were new, and having one and texting (as
opposed to calling a landline) was the constant, relentless (and deeply
worrying, obviously) pursuit of social validation of the time. Today,
apparently, limiting yourself to texting is the pinnacle of measured restraint
and self-control.

This _exact_ paragraph (substitute "text" for "like" and "tweet") could have
been written about texting ca 1999 (and probably about landline telephones in
the 1950s):

 _To these teens who opt out, the relentless pursuit of “likes” looks
exhausting. “I think it takes too much time and kids get too absorbed,” says
Annie Furman, 19, who grew up in the Dallas area and is about to start college
in Iowa. “I’d rather see my friends in person than tweet at them. I don’t want
to spend all my time on my phone. I want to spend it in the real world.”_

------
meira
The one you aren't going see in WSJ: teens who say no to Paywall

~~~
mbreedlove
I'm really starting to think sites with paywalls should be banned from HN.
ATM, this is #11 and I can't read it.

I know you can do that google redirect thing that removes the paywall, but I'm
really not that interested in reading the NYT anyways, even without having to
jump through hoops.

~~~
frou_dh
\-- Annoyed about not being able to read an article.

\-- Have a straightforward way to read the article (that's even automated by
HN's [web] link).

\-- Decide can't be bothered to read the article after all.

\-- Pipe up and moan to everyone in the virtual train carriage about the
article's website.

ASSESSMENT: Waste of attention! Just another mutation of bikeshedding.

~~~
therealidiot
The web link doesn't always do the trick for me. It's a shame Google continues
to index websites that it doesn't work for.

~~~
paulpauper
google should:

de-index pages that have paywalls

apply penalties to pages that have those annoying 'welcome' screens
(forbes.com). The penalty wouln;'t be substantial, but instead would rank the
page lower than similar content that does not have annoying welcome screen.

------
gcr
Does anyone have a link that bypasses the paywall? Even Google doesn't show
the full article.

~~~
gragas
Click on the little "web" link at the top of this page (it's on the same line
that says "96 points by prostoalex"). Then open Google's link to the article
in an incognito window.

That works every time for me.

~~~
gcr
Ah, the trick must be to use an incognito window.

Thanks.

------
mmilano
Why are links to hidden/payed content allowed here?

~~~
prostoalex
Because the criteria for paywalls are publisher-dependent, and can involve
reader's country, IP range, referral source, browser history or some quota of
free articles available per month. Articles from sources with extremely
restrictive paywalls (ft.com, nature.com) just don't get many upvotes, so the
problem is self-correcting.

Alternative solution would be to link to a paywall-free blog post rehashing
the contents of the article that includes a token link to the original
(huffingtonpost.com or businessinsider.com), but HN's policy at this point
expresses strong preference for the original.

------
ourmandave
So all the teens who live in the "No Coverage" areas on a cell carrier's map.

