If you’re anything like my parents, you probably wouldn’t even understand most of the content that floods my social media, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
Here’s a recent example from Instagram: “Do y’all females ever tell ur homegirls ‘Sis chill you letting too many dudes hit?’” Essentially, that means: “Women – do you ever tell your girlfriends that they’re whores and need to stop letting so many guys fuck them?” The reel, posted by a 19-year-old man, appeared on my Instagram feed without me wanting to see it, or ever interacting with any other similar content. The comments that followed were pure misogyny. “Women see body count as a leaderboard and they try to outdo each other,” was one of them. Translation: all women are competitively promiscuous.
Consider the use of the word “female” in these posts. It is not a neutral term here, it is a term of abuse. It’s used by teenage boys to degrade us and equate us to animals. Boys are never described as “males”, but girls are always “females” – the equivalent of sows or calves, creatures that are less than human. We’re also “thots” (whores), “community pussy” and “bops”. “Bop” stands for “been over passed” and is a derogatory term used by boys to refer to a girl they’ve decided has been “passed around” or had too much sex. Sexual equality has ceased to exist online. It’s absolutely fine for boys to have sex, but when girls do, they are called worthless and referred to as objects. “When community pussy tries to insult me, I just want to beat that bitch up.” That’s a message I saw on TikTok.
I’m a 15-year-old schoolgirl and like most teenagers I spend a fair portion of my spare time on social media, often scrolling through short-form videos on apps such as Instagram or TikTok. All of my friends use those apps, and many spend multiple hours a day on them. I actively try to avoid online misogyny, but I am met with it incessantly whenever I open my mainstream social media apps. It only takes a few minutes before there’s subtle or overt misogyny, such as comment sections on a girl’s post filled with remarks about her body, videos made by men or boys captioned with a degrading joke, and even topics such as domestic violence or rape, trivialised and laughed about.
This problem has become so big and deep rooted, that we need multiple approaches over a prolonged period to rectify the exposure and impressions kids (below 16, maybe even 18) are subject to.
First and foremost, education in every layer: Adults, teachers and parents need to not only be aware of what the kids are (potentially) exposed to online, but be educational about how to perceive it. Blocking is not effective enough long-term (check out the failure of COSA).
Secondly, it’s not the government’s responsibility to surveil kids online, it’s primarily the parents’ responsibility! If you as a parent are unaware of your kid being hateful and a bigot online, you’re part of the problem.
Thirdly, if we are to put any responsibility on the government, it is to mandate requirements for adults to become/remain parents. Just like we have a driver’s license to protect the public from accidents impacting innocent lives, we should have something that protects society from having unworthy parents raising assholes and potentially also ruining innocents’ lives (read suicide).
I’m tired of this, sorry for the rant. We need to step up. I’m painfully aware of what this 15 y/o girl has been exposed to, and I know of so much worse things easily available on the clear web, if not on social media.
Be the safety net your kid needs you to be, dear parents…
What world that look like? Are you saying the state should intervene to prevent some people becoming parents? Because that never goes well.
We already have some measurements in place like the CPS. One can also lose the rights of custody after certain convictions. This is all reactive, however, and in many cases CPS comes under fire for “not doing enough”.
This is all speculative on top of my head, and I expect a proper governmental implementation to be much more thought through and extensive than what I write here, but the gist of it I imagine is something like the following:
Before parenthood, one would need to take mandatory courses and a governmental theory test (like the test for driving) in order to be eligible to keep your child when it is born at a hospital. This is not meant to be particularly difficult, but to root out the worst, and to educate a bit through the courses.
All human births are to be registered, and when doing so, one can easily check the parents’ records for things like violent behavior, neglect, conspiracies, etc… This is where I assume most enforcements of this law. (A result of this would be even more children in children’s homes, which is another discussion as a direct result of this. (Which the government also has the power to do something about, like creating subsidiaries for foster parents.))
After the child is born, there should be a wellness checkup at something like the age of 1, 3, 5, 10, and 15, to ensure physical and mental health is good. Both the parents and the child have to answer a questionnaire separately, and if there’s reason for concern, queue CPS.
CPS is also underfunded in several countries already, from what I’ve heard around.
This is an example of where a death should never have been necessary to take action:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=JBRHS5vErpg
Could you refer me to some specific cases? I’m curious to learn. I have a feeling it’s most likely due to improper implementation, being either too narrow or too fast. This is a potentially big societal change, and needs time - years - for a proper adaptation.
Is there a good guide to what social apps actually let parents oversee their kids and how? I have some friends with children reaching the age where they’ll be allowed onto these sites but are still legally children in their country.
I feel like there are incentives for the social sites to be seen as the private and anti-parent ones, rather than grasses/snitches.
There are plenty of apps that both provide restrictions upon the device as well as insight into how the device is used. But ultimately, IMHO, nothing beats open and transparent communication with your kid. Make sure they feel safe with you, and that they can share anything with you and you’d still be on their side. This way, they won’t have any reason to hide things from you, in fear of undesirable consequences. With this, the parent also has to actively engage in these conversations, not expect the kid to bring up everything of possible concern.
There are also parental control built-in with several apps. And on iPhones and Androids there’s already one available where you can do things like limit screen time, prevent app installs, and prevent opening selected apps.
When applying any restriction upon a kid, make sure to talk with them about it so they understand why you are doing what you’re doing. It is not because you think they can’t handle the freedom, but because with the freedom comes a massive responsibility to prevent harm upon both yourself and others. This is often more effective than any tech monitoring and restriction, IMHO.
If you’re asking about how to prevent them from accessing certain sites, there are some options, but they are easily circumventable.
Ultimately though, the internet is an unsafe place, where even places considered safe and mundane can turn out harmful. Open communication is key.
Thanks, but that looks like a long way of saying that you don’t know any socials that allow effective parental oversight. They know and use many of the things you mention, and have a good open communication with their children, as far as I can l tell, but I suspect you never quite know how a child will react if things go bad.
Yeah, there’s no way to be completely sure or safe, for better or worse.
But even if it’s not your own child, it takes a village. So if you are able to, as a safe and healthy individual yourself, you should hang out with the kid and talk about this stuff, and also converse with the parent about the child. I think with all this, there’s not a particularly big need of technological intervention. Although some simple restrictions don’t hurt.
Edit: Actually, I just recalled there being family-friendly DNS! This could be a good and simple measure for adventurous browsing. It doesn’t do anything for the content already on social media however.
This is commonly referred to as Eugenics.