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"The First Social-Media Babies Are Growing Up—And They’re Horrified"

Writes Kate Lindsay in The Atlantic:

Today’s teens are similarly wary of oversharing. They joke on TikTok about the terror of their peers finding their parents’ Facebooks. Stephen Balkam, the CEO of the nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute, says that even younger children might experience a “digital coming-of-age” and the discomfort that comes with it. “What we’ve seen is very mature 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds sitting down with their parents, going, ‘Mom, what were you thinking?’” he told me.

This is exactly the kind of scenario I had in mind when our now-almost–11-year-old was just born. It took a tiny bit of convincing, but neither I nor my spouse had posted any baby photos since then; who knows, the lack of dopamine hits may have contributed to neither of us having much of a presence on Facebook or Instagram.

And before I start patting myself on the back, there are of course negative consequences in that old friends and distant family members back in Serbia probably have no idea what any of our children look like, thereby lessening their psycho-social connections, etc. But that is something a visit or two to the old country will, hopefully, heal.

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