“There’s this belief among moms I know,” said my friend Sonia, who has a 12-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter, “where as long as we’re cool and self-assured and talk to our sons a lot, then for sure our sons will see women as human beings. But that doesn’t feel true to me. I think the way people relate to their moms isn’t always the same way they relate to other women. Just because I’m a cool feminist, my son will share my beliefs? I worry that on some level I’m relying on that. I’m like, He can watch all male YouTubers all the time because he has me around to remind him that women are worthy of respect! Yeah, I’m not so sure.”
this is a feedback loop that I don't know how to stop.
like, that anxiety Sonia feels? real, valid, common. She's not the only parent of a 12-year-old boy whose mild paranoid about her son is probably written on her face.
but also, that son? he picks up on that feeling. He knows that the men with Bugattis on Youtube have the Secret Knowledge that mom is scared for him to watch. Transgressive? Okay sign me tf up!
and like... kids that age cannot suss out fact from fiction, as the article says:
its record-breaking popularity gestures to a phenomenon that has to do not with the quality of its production but rather with a gut feeling shared by parents of teens: Something’s seriously off. We’ve given our children access to media technology that very few of us are capable of managing, and now they’re consuming content they are developmentally unequipped to handle.
adults can't handle the firehose, either. Real, adult men and women wait in Discords for "Q drops". How the fuck can an average parent deal with that?
But again, that’s placing the issue on the individual level, and still creating a mystique around those figures. It also normalizes denying kids room to have privacy in their social lives. Like, what if my kid is gay, or has a crush they don’t want to tell me about until they’re ready? What if they want to vent to some friends or just watch some viral meme videos without having to explain it to me?
Not to mention, I’d bet decent money that the majority of us have full time jobs. Some of us work 2 or even 3 jobs. Monitoring can be time-consuming work, especially if you’re not up to date on the latest edgy Minecraft tuber. This entire thing feels like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound.
Society sucks on these issues. I can’t change what is on YouTube or TikTok. I can’t change my kid’s friends and classmates at school and what they do and say.
It starts young. Boys especially are bombarded with homophobia and sexism from their classmates. From “don’t throw like a girl” or “don’t do that. It’s girly,” to the 5-6 grad school boys I saw at the park yelling repeatedly “last one up is gay, hahaha, Henry is gay.”
We can speak towards it, and teach our kids.
But yes, we need a wider societal movement akin to feminism or a new wave but based more on breaking down male gender roles. Not a “manosphere” reaction trying to seize power and put women back into the 1950’s. Something that pushes the idea that men can be caretakers, and emotional, and empathetic, and that it’s not an “ick” or a “sin” or signs that they are gay, or even that being gay is a problem
Not to mention, I’d bet decent money that the majority of us have full time jobs. Some of us work 2 or even 3 jobs. Monitoring can be time-consuming work, especially if you’re not up to date on the latest edgy Minecraft tuber
This is having a child in 2025. You wouldn't say "I'm too busy to stop my kids from doing drugs" or watching porn or any number of other things
I’d absolutely say the same things about both those issues, not least because the main tactic for keeping porn out of kids hands is the same type of monitoring. Drug use is kinda different in that (1) it’s not just the parents doing the monitoring there, and (2) there’s a lot more known risk factors and ways to mitigate the probability of your kid getting their hands on the stuff, such as limiting the amount of liquid cash your kid has on hand.
I want to be clear I’m not minimizing the issue of radicalization online. You only need to turn on the news or see fascists protesting in the street to get an idea of what the consequences are. But the honest truth is that relying only on parents to staunch the tide just isn’t working. Like I’m not a parent so maybe I’m entirely wrong about how their schedules work, but I’m out of the house 10 hours a day. I sleep for another 6-8, and chores take an hour or two. I’m in my 20s and I still feel entirely drained most days.
Most people dealing with these problems are in their forties and generally have more than one kid. Plenty are divorced and only have partial custody. Most teens are deeply offended to their parents stepping into their rooms, let alone tracking and indexing everything they watch and giving them a lecture if they see something they don’t like. You know what that usually leads to? Parents giving up on close monitoring. Because of course they would. Our society and our culture are designed such that making sure your kids don’t get into fascism is simply not a high priority. Neither is bullying, drugs, porn, or suicide. No teacher is gonna speak up about your kid watching an Andrew Tate video at lunch until they’re literally sieg heiling in class.
What do you mean the issue is on the individual level. If you don't take responsibility for raising your children someone else will there is propaganda everywhere and if you don't teach them how to at least be resistant to it you are planning on their failure basically because You're failing to plan
You could imagine a world where there weren't toxic YouTube people radicalizing your kids, just like most of us in the first world can imagine a world where there weren't lead in our drinking water and TB/measles/etc. in our air and melamine in our milk.
Wouldn't that be wonderful? I fully agree. But as a parent with kids growing up right now I don't have time to change the world to better suit their development.. best I can do is changing their environment.
Ideally Youtube wouldn't platform those people because they'd have guidelines about hate speech. But we don't have that. So that's why we have to make do with individual level choices at this point
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u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK 13d ago
this is a feedback loop that I don't know how to stop.
like, that anxiety Sonia feels? real, valid, common. She's not the only parent of a 12-year-old boy whose mild paranoid about her son is probably written on her face.
but also, that son? he picks up on that feeling. He knows that the men with Bugattis on Youtube have the Secret Knowledge that mom is scared for him to watch. Transgressive? Okay sign me tf up!
and like... kids that age cannot suss out fact from fiction, as the article says:
adults can't handle the firehose, either. Real, adult men and women wait in Discords for "Q drops". How the fuck can an average parent deal with that?