I wish 2 girls one cup wasn't invented but all these years later I'm fine and a hard working citizen. In my day it was finding someone throwing out a pile of Playboys and creating a fort in the woods to store them. Technology isnt the problem - human nature is the problem.
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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That's a bit like, "guns don't kill people." Human nature is the problem, but certain technology makes it so much worse.
Damn those parents who hate bicycles.
Im cool with everything but the cancer that is social media. Social media makes kids angry, mean, creates drama in friend groups and reinforces delusional ideas that your parents are "abusing" you.
Funny how you can make a lot of good points, but suddenly twisting the exposure of narcissistic and abusive parents into some kind of farce.
Go off.
Some parents are abusive and deserve what's coming to them, but pre-teens don't really understand or know what abuse really is and what it takes for the state or government to get involved.
An example is a parent yelling at her daughter. Taking her phone and forcing her to have no outside contact with her friends for say the weekend.
Now, that kid will call that child abuse. Tell all her friends that she is getting abused. Post about it when she gets her phone back, etc. Convince her friends to build up courage to call child services or seek out adults that appeal to those vulnerabilities. Those adults turn those into something else and exploit them sexually or in some other twisted means.
I've seen this with one of my own kids' friends. I've worked in the state child care system and have seen abuse with the unfortunate outcomes.
Real abuse should be exposed, but kids can twist punishments into abuse, and social media can reinforce this. Not improving the relationship, but driving it apart. That's what I was trying to convey.
The same thing was said around corporal punishment in the past. We have learned that there are more effective, less damaging methods of teaching than yelling, and isolation. I have two kids, I have used physical force when they were too young to understand words (smack on the bottom while in diapers etc). I have raised my voice, I have grounded them from electronics etc. I am doing the best I can with the information I have at my disposal. When they ask questions, they get answers.
At any time I know my children could report me or my spouse to government agents, who would come investigate, review and if I was in the wrong, I would be corrected. But if I was not in the wrong, life would continue. The stigma that comes along with it? Thats the cost of having children really.
If the pre-teens you are dealing with dont understand what abuse is, that sounds like an opportunity for education, not justification.
Bicycles?? Almost 1 in 10 wish bicycles had never been invented for their kids?!
Thats the bigger headline for me
I have no idea how a few of those are possible. Newspapers? Radio? Bikes?
It's hard to guess. I suppose there are a sizeable number of drivers that really hate cyclists. Maybe some people hate newspapers/radio because they hate all media?
Those three things together read for me a parent that wants to control their child. Newspapers and radio bring information and ideas that the parent didn't introduce. Bicycles bring transportation and exposure to more of your city, which introduces ideas the parents don't control.
10% is within the normal bounds of βassholes who reliably pick the worst answers on a surveyβ. I would not think too hard about it.
Ah, the lizardman constant
Fatal bicycle accidents, I assume. The one tripping me up is radio. Of all things
Could be weirdos who thought bicycles give their kids too much freedom. When they were first popularized that was a complaint especially of parochial village elders. They helped young people experience the world and leave the village. Particularly young women.
Radio killed the bicycle star
That devil music, rock and roll
"I wish agriculture had never been invented"
"I wish baryonic matter would never have coalesced from primordial soup"
This survey sponsored by the unicycle gang.
Has to be parents that are overprotective and feel like parental failures if their kid gets a scraped knee.
10% of the respondents live in Houston, probably
Made me wonder if these are serious bike accidents
Probably the same parents that donβt force their kids to wear helmets. Dorks donβt get brain damage.
βMature online contentβ
Bwahahahahahahah you fucking prudes have to be kidding. You know full well every one of these parents watches porn while clutching their pearls about every kid topic.
Same people pushing to invade peoples privacy for the sake of the children. π€¦ββοΈ
I don't have a problem with porn, and I wouldn't erase it from existence if I could.
But as a parent, I do have concerns that porn creates unrealistic and unhealthy expectations when it comes to relationships. Children don't have the context or experience to fully understand what they are seeing. And it's so much more complicated than Playboy and Skinamax that we had when I was growing up. As adults, when we watch porn, we self-filter for the things we enjoy and activities we like to see, so it's easy to ignore how much weird and shocking shit its just a click away. Modern porn also hyper-fixates on very specific trends that drive engagement. It's part of the algorithm now, and if you want your kids to have healthy relationships, you need to keep their internet access locked down tight.
So I can understand why it was number 1 on the list. I would put guns as a more significant and dangerous risk for kids, but there are some gun enthusiasts who want their kids to learn gun safety and think that's enough.
I put more blame on parents that are not teaching their children proper internet hygiene or themselves are not learning how to properly moderate their own internet usage.
Maybe learn to install ad blockers and donβt use toxic social media platforms that run off fake engagement and algorithmic slop to push ads.
But what about the corporate fomo???! Who gives a shit. Itβs your responsibility to learn how technology works and to make the right decisions about educating your child on internet safety and sexual education in general.
Anyone letting their kids onto instagram, TikTok or facebook without any kind of moderation is digging their own hole.
I've gotten into this a few times with Americans and the common theme is refusing to take responsibility for their kids tech illiteracy and social media influenced right wing swing. The Millennial legacy.
Itβs always βWonβt somebody else think of the children? Not me! Iβm too busy to raise my own kids.β
Pervert here, Iβve watched all the weird and shocking shit just for kicks. Nothing really that bad. Although the frequency of incest stuff is worrying. I can understand your stepsister. But who is fantasising about banging their mom or daughter. Iβve had unfiltered access to the web since I was 12 or so, although porn then loaded very slowly. Relationships have been fine.
People like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate are a thousand times more damaging to prospects of a healthy relationship.
I completely agree on that last point, but they're yet another reason to filter youth access to the internet and social media.
And yes, you can watch porn and have healthy relationships. I should have been more clear. It's not that porn will create unhealthy attitudes and expectations. It can create unhealthy attitudes and expectations. This effect can also be mitigated if you model healthy relationships and talk to your kids about sex, but that's something people often struggle with.
The scariest thing is that bicycles are on the list, but capitalism is not.
Some of those responses had to be people joking. Bicycles?
I really like how there are a bunch of social media things in the upper answers, but seeing Facebook has a smaller percentage than "social media" sounds like mental gymnastics to justify its usage.
Absolutely, they should have grouped all online social media together. It is strange that they separated mobile phones and smartphones, but I can see the distinction. Communication vs distraction really.
I really want to know how much guns are actually affecting these kids, with differentiation against media fear mongering of guns. I know even asking the question that way makes my point obvious but it's something that DEEPLY interests me and always has
A majority of U.S. teens fear a shooting could happen at their school
That's going toward exactly my point, though. The fear of guns is doing WAY more than the guns are
Doubt most kids think about guns at all. I asked mine, 10 and 12, and they shoulder-shrugged me.
Are you American?
50 years ago:
"Silent Generation parents wish the telephone and television had never been invented"
It will be nice when we finally stop blaming this newer technology for the problems caused by our society.
I would argue the two aren't equivalent as you imply. Social media has been designed to be as addicting as possible for a profit motive. Companies hire people who specialize in psychology, just to figure out how to take advantage of our brains, especially the underdeveloped brains of children, to get as many eyes looking at it for as long as possible.
Is the top answer so grossly puritanical they couldn't even say porn or does that mean something else?
I'm guessing it would also include horror films.
Billionaires. The answer is billionaires.
So basically technology and alcohol...
Most of these things can be consolidated into a single surveillance state category.
Americans are so stupid.