I dont really understand this. Does tiktok have a group call feature now? Or are they equating short form videos of strangers to "hanging out"?
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Yeah I would consider Discord as more of a space people can "hang out" in.
I use discord but I didn't realize how much others used it till I got new roommates. They basically have it perpetually open on the side, a perpetual portal to their friend network
It's one of the easiest ways of calling and texting friends without exposing your phone number.
I rarely open discord on my PC, but I have it as an app on my phone which is always connected.
Yeah I was on board until the tik tok part
I wonder how much of the internet outrage about the bill is just astroturfing by tiktok.
It's less about hanging out and more about occupying the time I guess. Teens hang out in a third space being social because it burns free time and releases dopamine. When you can achieve that by sitting in your room, getting dopamine by watching tiktok and sending them to your friends wordlessly, the need for the third space drops
I kind of get what the Twitter post was trying to get at its just written poorly. Anything that's not them participating in the economy is considered bad.
The death of the third place predates tiktok.
Are kids disallowed from hanging out in parks, school clubs, or others’ homes now? What’s changed?
Nothing, it's a ridiculous argument as a rationalization for arguing against the tiktok ban. I've seen a number of posts today trying to paint it as some attach on democracy or youth culture. The fact is that tiktok captures a giant amount of data and is directly accessible by a hostile foreign government. The ban makes sense.
Parks are miserable, school clubs are worse, and it seemed like when I was a kid everyone was too embarrassed to have someone at their house.
Because tiktok is the only social platform that exists. Because libraries don't exist. Because teens never go to the movie theater like their parents did.
My sibling in Christ you posted this on a social platform used by minors that is not under threat by the government
Some people just want to be angry.
Because teens never go to the movie theater like their parents did.
From OP:
if they're spending money
What if I told you that having absolutely no community third spaces is a result of car dependency?
Ever heard people complain that it's impossible to just meet new people in real life because everyone everywhere is busy? It's because we don't have third spaces anymore, and one really big reason for that is car dependency. People really don't like to drive, for the most part, and they're generally not going to go drive to hang out somewhere; it becomes both dangerous and a special pain in the ass if alcohol enters the equation, as it does for many (but not all) third spaces. In short, if people go to a third space, it's usually going to be one inside their own hyper local community or they won't bother. These are all generalities, of course; miss me with anecdotal exceptions. Well, we keep our cities badly zoned and low density so that you don't really have hyper local third spaces, you just get weird, semi-local, sanitized big box "third spaces" (massive sarcasm quotes) like Chili's or Starbucks that don't actually fill that role. They just want you to spend money and get out, there's no actual tie to the community.
Having an outdoors that's so utterly lifeless and hostile to anything that's not a car that kids "hang out" on social media is neither normal nor desirable, unless you're a tech exec, I guess.
What if I told you that having absolutely no community third spaces is a result of car dependency?
Then I'd suggest that if your only tool is a hammer, then every problem is going to look like a nail.
Like, I get it, fuck cars, but North American culture has been car dependant while having history of having the some of the highest third space membership, even in my own lifetime. While I accept it as a factor of the erosion, it's unlikely to even be the primary factor.
What a fucking braindead take.
This is fucking braindamaged, 3rd spaces are dying because of social media not some conspiracy to destroy them in order to make kids work.
Jesus christ, you really can tell when someone just hasn't suffered enough in their lifetime.
In the town where I grew up, there was a tiny park downtown where all the weird kids hung out. It was a funky little park which had a lot of character. Then they renovated it and I never see anyone there anymore when I go back.
Of course, they took out all the benches and they took out the trees and walls that gave a modicum of privacy.
There were always paranoid kids who thought the cops were watching the park from other buildings such as one of the bars across the street (college town) but getting rid of everything that made the park theirs and taking way any feeling of privacy killed it.
My daughter is 13 now. We're in another town. There is so little for kids to do. She spends most of the time talking to her friends on Discord.
Boomers:
Kids don't do anything anymore. They just sit on their phones inside all day.
Also boomers:
Hello, police? Yes, there is a group of teens at the park. I think they have drugs or sex stuff.
Does no one remember what being a kid was like? Most people, especially teens, don't care enough about you to be plotting against you. Let people live their lives.
I forgot to say that the cops raided the park one day. The whole town was outraged, but it definitely didn't help matters.
I don't think that's what a meme is.
As much as I don't like TikTok, I don't like the idea of the government censoring arbitrary apps under vague notions of "national security".
It would be one thing if they were passing legislation about surveillance in apps, but it's clearly not about that or 99% of American apps would be under the chopping block (they're selling data to arbitrary buyers, so the data can be obtained by "foreign adversaries" anyway). Instead, they're just handing the executive power to strongarm any app into American control, or lose the huge American market.
I feel like proponents of this are getting too distracted by their hatred of TikTok, and this nonsense about third spaces isn't helping. TikTok is just the beginning, and a convenient one because it's such a hot topic right now.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/congress-should-give-unconstitutional-tiktok-bans
It's because it actually is a security risk with the Chinese government having the ability to do who knows what with a frightening amount of data. There is also the option of selling the company to one that isn't related to the Communist Party government, but no one seems to be talking about that option.
The only slippery slope is more apps owned by a foreign government that is not exactly our friend.
If the app was owned by North Korea, would you be cool with it too?They aren't banning Instagram and Facebook.
Capitalist society is socially isolating by design. To take back our autonomy we have to collectively organize in our local communities
Everything out there for teens to do costs money... except the public library, which often has teen services.
Yet another reason to support your local public library.
It's not like Tik Tok is doing things out of the kindness of their hearts, kids. They're making money off of you. I bet if there was a meatspace location that tracked all your conversations and pushed ads to you they'd let you hang out there for free, too.
I grew up in a time where you couldn't loiter, I had no money to spend, and social media didn't exist. I still managed to have a lot of fun. Why are people acting like TikTok is some kind of life necessity that they'll die without?
And I'm certain that if TikTok is banned, an American-based competitor will pop right up.
Why are people acting like TikTok is some kind of life necessity that they’ll die without?
Some of them are paid to act that way, the others are just following the trend. It's how marketing works now, especially if you have zero ethics.
One of the things the USA desperately needs is benches.
We eliminated all our benches in an attempt to get homeless people to disappear, but lo an behold they still exist.
It’s time to bring back public benches.
Nothing about this is true what the heck? Kids aren't just banned from ever being anywhere, my friends and I hung out in parks and at restaurants and at eachothers' houses all the time. And anyone who's been on social media and thinks it's an appropriate place for kids is very sus or naive. Even the most squeaky clean of sites are cesspools of bullying and grooming and right wing propaganda, and any use beyond looking at memes and catching up with irl friends should be supervised to some extent.
This post acts like we live in a dystopia where kids aren't aren't allowed to do anything and need social media to have any friends, which is only the case in really shitty circumstances where a kid is super lonely irl or somehow lives somewhere with no park or library or other good hangout spots. The banning of one specific app (which you can just get around with a vpn) isn't going to disenfranchise all zoomers overnight, it'll be a minor inconvenience people get over when they get a vpn or go to a different site. I just wish the people pushing to ban tik tok would apply the same pressure to American companies also pushing propaganda and doing shady stuff with your data
Tbc I understand the sentiment here, but it's not a very well thought out take. Plenty of advertising revenue is being generated by teens' presence on tiktok. They are being exploited monetarily by an extremely hostile and repressive foreign power.
I get that there are nuances to this but it's not "oh look the teens' one free place to just be is being taken away!" It's not free in any way.
Like yeah, we should be building community infrastructure to allow for teens and humans in general to have meaningful engagement with each other. In no way is any social media platform a solution for that deficit and it's dumb to pretend it is.
IMO it's pretty sad for anyone to think that using a social media app is equivalent to hanging out with friends. You're filtering your entire reality through a corporate controlled micro-computer basically.
It's also a myth that teens don't have anywhere to hang out. They could just go out and do it if they wanted to, people most likely won't give a fuck if they see some kids hanging around somewhere. There are parks, libraries, malls, streets, alleys, underpasses, etc. (Adjusts the onion on my belt) .... Back in my day we just went out and walked or biked or skated somewhere and did random bullshit wherever.
Hehe, there's someone fearing about losing their dopamine source. Typical addict behavior.