You're kid will be very upset when they are slowly excluded from all of their friend groups when noone wants to email or text just one member of the group. Sad reality of it.
Children get upset when they’re not allowed to get a tattoo or eat candy for dinner. Hell, if they’re not getting upset regularly than you’re probably doing something wrong.
Not having any friends is unlikely. But if their friends are connecting and coördinating on their phones, the odd one out will be at a disadvantage. Depending on how close they are, this could be resolved by them finding a workaround as a group. (For example, buying a prepaid smartphone.)
I can say from personal experience, this is absolute not the case. When everyone is using a service you aren't using, you get left out and you're less able to make friends in the first place.
Even if you do manage to make friends, a lot of people won't remember you're the only person they know who isn't able to see the facebook event everyone else is invited to.
I'm very anti-technology for software dev, especially for kids, and pro "who cares, the kid can get over it, they'll be fine" in general, but that's a recipe for going to the wrong place at the wrong time to meet up when your close friends remember to CC you but then others on the thread modify the arrangements and everyone forgets that they have to send you your own, special message to let you know. And having that happen enough times that people get uncomfortable even notifying you in the first place, and annoyed at having to go out of their way to account for your (to them) pointless quirk.
A few years ago an old friend of mine died. This was announced on Facebook. I'm not on Facebook. Nobody told me until a couple months later.
It's a basic fact of life that the more friction there is to doing something, the less that thing will get done. Sure, some people will manage to make it work, but others won't be so lucky.
How do you make "actual" friends if the baseline is to be in the group chat. Good friends start as an acquaintance.
Imagine your kid starts school for the first time and everyone shares their group chat QR code. Your kid can't and now will slowly be left behind as other kids set up plans to go skate, game ,whatever.
And to add further, they don’t know they are being excluded from some more interactive imessage group chats or at the very least talked about or noticed
They rationalize their choices with “I don't want to be around superficial people like that anyway” not realizing just how many people are judging and questioning their decision making process
“oh god someone thats going to talk my ear off about all the control they have over their phone but cant share a photo when signal drops on a hike”
Anyway hope it gets better, it shouldn't be “wealthy Americans use Apple devices and ignore cross platform chat apps” but right now it is. Maybe Apple’s Imessage and Airdrop go cross platform and help fix this culture, instead of relying on Google and a ton of OEMs to improve a UX they dont care about. People don’t want to send unencrypted SMS.
> They rationalize their choices with “I don't want to be around superficial people like that anyway”
This is such a laughably exaggerated view. I would bet less than 1% of Android users choose not to use Apple because of some anti-superiority viewpoint.
haha ehh it is just a notification that the SMS is unencrypted, whereas iMessage is encrypted
the culture itself created the rest of the consternation in favor of Apple. Apple can successfully lean on it being an unencrypted notification than an anti competitive practice. Even two iMessage users can randomly fail back to green bubbles and the SMS network, and it has nothing to do with competitors.
haha! or they'll make it work by not being friends. If a social group is based around playing a specific online game, why would they be friends with your kid if they don't even play?
You can't use a dismissive tone on HN just because someone said something obviously stupid and indicative of poor social understanding. No wonder you got voted into the grey.
If you think what I said was obviously stupid or indicative of poor social understanding, you should respond to me directly and at least explain why you think that.
When I was a kid, friendships were made in person: at school, extra curricular activities, at the park, etc. Maybe I’m so out of touch and kids never actually see each other face to face anymore and live entirely online these days. My friends and I did play games online together, and at school we’d brainstorm games that we could all play together. The point was to do stuff together, so we’re fine ways to make sure we were doing stuff together.
Are you telling me things have changed so much that nobody makes friends in person anymore?
In short: It's good for children to be upset and afraid of new situations. That's how they learn that they can rely on their caregivers, who ideally support them in overcoming those situations.
Children that lack this mechanism (and e.g. are disinterested in new situations, or completely overwhelmed by them to the point where they cannot act at all) potentially lack that skill in adulthood as well.
That does not mean that if your kids are not upset, you are doing something wrong.
That does not mean you have to design those situations regularly. You dont need to upset your kids. It does not mean upset is something that you as parent should always welcome or ignore.
The hubris to think something as controllable as what's served for dinner is in the same realm as shaping your kids' social circles! You'll learn eventually!
Hopefully my kid(s) will be the one to convince their friends to use better communication apps. Perhaps when the kids are younger before they get phones, I can convince their friends' parents to use the better platforms.
Yes. Or Instagram, or any other Facebook-owned property as far as I know, and I do check.
It's also why, last time I heard from a Facebook recruiter, I told him to make sure the next one to cold-call me had their general counsel's contact info handy so I'd know where to have my own attorney send the cease-and-desist. Seems to have had the intended effect, so far at least.
Yeah but who will be more upset later on in life? Their self indulgent peers whose parents allow them to be primed by predatory system are likely to not end up very well. At least not all of them
