I don’t know where I’m about to go with this, but I think it’s gonna be long
This forum is the closest thing to social media that I’ve been on. My parents made it clear when I was younger their opinions on social media, they highly discouraged me being a part of anything like that, however they said if I really wanted to, they wouldn’t stop me. I was free to do what I wanted. I decided I didn’t want to do any social media stuff, it didn’t seem interesting anyways, and along with that, I never got into video games of any sort.
I spent the majority of my time throughout middle school doing stuff outside with my brother and a couple neighbors who were my age. While many of my friends that I knew from school would be on social media and playing video games all day.
My parents gave me a flip phone in middle school since I biked to school and they wanted it for safety. I only got an iPhone 2-3 years ago when I turned 15.
Still, most of my friends spend large amounts of time on social media and stay up late playing video games. They try to get me to join them, I just have no interest. I don’t have a single close friend who doesn’t spend a lot of time on social media. I have to admit, it’s quite different and difficult trying to become friends with new people specifically who have similar interests to me because they just don’t exist nowadays.
Ever since I got my license, it’s made it so much easier for me to go and enjoy doing things by myself. Things that I can do without having to depend on friends to choose to do something active with me rather than sit at home doing nothing. I’ve found many things that I enjoy doing alone and will always try to get friends to join me, but they commonly won’t.
I’ve also realized how recently this whole social media problem has been going on. Of course, it still existed a bit longer ago, but not at this level.
For example, I’ve been rock climbing for 3 years now, and I love it. I can drive to the climbing gym now that Ive had my license, and I probably go 3 times a week for 2 hours each session. I usually end up hanging out with people 5-10 years older than me just because no one my age is there. Same thing with welding. I’ve started a welding class, and I go to the class 3 times a week, plus I usually go in the shop a bit more outside of the class. I hangout with people usually 10 years older than me.
I can seem to connect with people that age much more because they weren’t raised as much during the time when all this social media stuff has taken over kids’ and teenagers’ lives. I’m super thankful that I didn’t fall into that culture, and that I am able to enjoy many things that most people my age don’t. Heck, this forum is an example of that as well.
Obviously bad parenting can have a large affect on how much a kid or teenager might spend on social media, but ultimately, I think most will end up engaging in it anyways, regardless of what the parent wants and it will become that persons decision to stop doing it and realize how pointless and unproductive it is rather than the parents banning it. I’m basically thinking that’s it’s inevitable that a teenager at this day in age will be exposed to social media and it’s up to them to avoid that.
I was right, that was most definitely very long. And mostly pointless, but it kind of gives my experience on it as someone who grew up when social media has become such a huge thing.
