Young people don't spend a lot of time on their phones because of tech companies and nefarious algorithms but because they have nowhere else to go, no other way to socialize with their friends outside of school, and nothing else to do because of a lack of third places.

It's actually kind of funny how middle-aged people point the finger at social media and algorithms for all life's problems when they're just as "addicted" as their kids supposedly are.

Your kids are BORED. They're tired of being trapped at home and at school or forced into extracurricular activities like sports that matter more to their parents than them. They're tired of being constantly surveilled. It's not normal for teens, who are supposed to grow into independence. But everywhere they go either throws them out as annoying teenagers on behalf of other middle-age folks or charges money they don't have.

@gwynnion Take it from a young(er than you iirc and probably part of the generation people blame for this) person, I was raised in a cult in a town with a population of less than 2,000 people, I would not be breathing if I didn't have internet access my parents didn't know enough to prevent me from reaching unsupervised.

Every time I see a boomer vilifying social media's impact on teenagers, I think of how many times I talked my peers down from suicide and how often they did the same for me. I think about a world where the only people who didn't aggressively misgender me or deadname me, how often the it was the only place where I didn't get called a slur at least once, was queer people being lit up through a layer of glass on a laptop or phone screen.