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Fediverse @lemmy.world
Lumberjacked @lemm.ee

Fediverse for teens

I have three teenage daughters who are currently not allowed on social media. But I want to give them some ability before they become adults. My eldest gave me a PowerPoint presentation on why she should be allowed on Snapchat, lol. 

She made some good points. Her friend group has a group text and she wants to keep up with everyone but doesn’t want to get the ding notifications constantly. 

Feels like a good opportunity for a Fediverse platform. Like a closed Mastodon/Pixelfed server and have some parental controls. Any projects out there?

69 comments

  • It's interesting the number of comments about parenting advice as opposed to technology suggestion.

    For some clarifying points: my kids are allowed on some social media, BeReal, Youtube, Pinterest. They log into our accounts for FB Marketplace.

    There is a growing acknowledgement amongst kids that smartphones and social media create mental health issues. All of my kids have asked us to limit their screen time.

    I'm not an overly restrictive parent but I tend to ease my kids into things as opposed to one day it's banned, one day it's permitted. Collectively, parental controls suck on most technology platforms and at the end of the day, the corporate SM is still trying to addict you and turn you into the product.

    I think what my dream is is for a simple set up of a family server with roles. So you can start with just sharing pictures with grandma and grandpa and then expand into sharing more broadly. But starting the online experience outside off of the corporate algorithms.

    • It’s interesting the number of comments about parenting advice as opposed to technology suggestion.

      Was this unexpected? It has been my experience online that people are more likely to tell you what they think you need to hear than what you asked for.

    • Well because your original post was kinda misleading.

      There are multiple things you talk about:

      • "Ding-ding" notifications - well you can adjust notifications, to help with not developing an addiction
      • her group chat - do they want to move their friend group chat to a fedi platform? Or were you just clumsily wording?
      • family fedi server - that is what you are talking about now, and it's a completely different thing. You could set up a closed-registration mastodon or vernissage instance for that, but tbh I wouldnt recommend using any ActivityPub software for the purpose of sharing private photos and messages with your family. Because there is always the danger of that data federating to all kinds of servers..

  • I don't know you, your daughters, or their friends so I can't make specific recommendations. What I can say is that it's really common for teenagers who are sheltered from the dangers of the world to make more and bigger mistakes once they're unsupervised than those who get a gradual introduction.

    The two main dangers of social media for most people are:

    1. Encountering assholes. For girls and women, there's a high probability assholes will try to sexually exploit them. Since there are minimal consequences most of the time for sending "show me your tits", they're going to encounter that behavior eventually, and it may be easier to deal with for the first time when they have parental support.
    2. Algorithmic rabbit holes. These can create the perception that problematic attitudes and behaviors are common and widely accepted when they are not. Having an open dialog with parents about anything from eating laundry detergent to Jordan Peterson can be a strong stabilizing influence.

    I don't think a closed Fediverse server is likely to serve as a first step in a gentle introduction because it has neither danger and presumably no strangers to talk to. The full Fediverse might work better, as it does offer interaction with strangers. Encounters with assholes will be less frequent than on corporate social media, and any rabbit holes will be much more self-directed.

    That said, when one of them is likely within a year or two of leaving home or at least having full control of her digital life, if she wants to use some corporate social media, she's probably better off doing that with some parental supervision and support than jumping in completely unprepared when you're no longer in a position to prevent it.

    Her friend group has a group text and she wants to keep up with everyone but doesn’t want to get the ding notifications constantly.

    This seems like a good opportunity to learn how the notification settings on her phone work.

  • I'm not a parent (and I'm glad I don't have to think about this problem myself). However, I've worked at a company that specialised in filtering internet services with many parents using it to protect their kids. I've also talked to plenty of people whose parents used to deny them whatever app the kids were on at the time. I can tell you that many kids will install apps and create accounts eventually, whether you permit them or not. I've seen the ingenious workarounds kids will come up with (using the browser app built into Windows Help to get around parental controls, combining web proxies and VPNs into an unholy homebrew Tor, or just using a burner phone outside the house), and while I appreciate the hacker culture that can develop around hiding apps from your parents, I don't think it'll be good for the relationship between you and your kids if you're too strict about this stuff.

    Snapchat is popular because other kids are on there. It's mostly a stupid looking chat app. Every other chat app out there has cloned its most important features. Your kids won't be missing out on anything on there, except for the network of friends and social activities that are there. That means you won't find a Fediverse app like that, because most teenagers aren't on the Fediverse. The other kids aren't going to replace Snapchat with an app just to chat with your kids, especially not if it sends a copy of their conversations to their parents. Best case scenario, they install the app and share most of the stuff your kids are missing out on on the special server you set up so your kids don't miss too much.

    As for the point your daughter made, notifications can be silenced. If your kids are worried about phone addiction or getting interrupted by notifications, help them with whatever digital wellness tools their devices come with. Every major OS, desktop and mobile, now comes with tools to limit notifications during focus time, bed time, and the ability to silence notifications for certain chats or events. I find it hard to believe that Snapchat would solve that problem and feel like it's more likely she's using an unrelated valid concern to help her case for your permission to use Snapchat.

    I don't know how old your daughters are and what guidance they need, but if they're creating PowerPoints to get their desires across (bravo), I think they'd be better served with guidance than with alternatives. Instead of rejecting them, consider permitting apps like Snapchat under certain conditions (time limits, no publicly posting pictures, no strangers, etc.). It's probably also best to make the rules are clear and consistent (which means not taking away Snapchat time as punishment for arbitrary things), because that kind of stuff can cause trust issues that will still have them go behind your back. For this to work, they need to trust that you will honour the "deal". I'm not saying you should let 12 year olds go ham on social media, but letting 16 year olds on Snapchat an hour a day isn't going to kill them.

    The biggest risk with these things is that kids will find a way to install these apps without you noticing, something bad happens (their online friend turns out to be a grown man, a classmate starts sending weird messages), and they're afraid of talking to you about it because they might get in trouble for having a banned app on their phone.

  • matrix synapse good learning expierance on how the internet works and is more closed then snapchat so less risks

  • How old are they?

    The minimum age for Snapchat is 13. The direct mesaaging part of it allows for fun and harmless messages between friends. I think allowing her to use it if she's 13+ is reasonable.

    What you could do is to ask her not to allow friend requests or messages from anyone who are not her friends, not to use the AI assistant (which can't be disabled), and to not use it to consume content from influencers (which is in a separate tab to the right). You cannot really police this, but it's not the end of the world if she sees the feed of some dumb influencer. Maybe while she's home you can show interest and use it together with her.

    Position data must of course also be disabled. Snapchat is a bit creepy.

    The fediverse is always (somewhat) public, making it not inherently child friendly. Getting together with other parents to set up a Pixelfed instance to use in the friend group rather than to have them use Instagram is a cool idea, and allows parents to be admins and decide who can federate without taking control of the accounts of the kids. It might be a nice way for them to learn that whatever they do online is run by some person whom they decide to trust. And it could keep them off Instagram a little longer.

    I don't really know the first thing about parenting though, just my thoughts. It's a tricky question.

69 comments