Asociality is not the same thing as social harmony. It's not better for children if their shithead peers are replaced with smartphones.

The unfortunate truth is that cliquey behavior and bullying are some of things that children have to be exposed to - you won't come out of school as a fully-capable human being unless you've spent the last several years being exposed to a ton of different adult emotions.

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HeinzStuckeIt 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That high school is necessarily a place of cliquey behavior and bullying, and that kids may even benefit from it, is not a universal thing. In some countries, viewers of imported American TV shows are baffled by that depiction of high school, because in their high schools there aren’t such hard knocks.

	▲	tuckerman 10 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I agree with you, American schools seem particularly bad at breeding these sorts of unhealthy dynamics, and we shouldn't accept it as normal. But even in a better environment, unstructured social interaction with peers still seems like a useful part of growing up/socialization and shouldn't be replaced with kids sucked into their phones.
	▲	LtWorf 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think USA does everything later than in other countries. So I think by the time I got to high school we were too mature for the kind of bullying you see in USA films, but that did happen earlier.

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squigz 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It might be better if those shithead peers are replaced with supportive peers who happen to be elsewhere in the world.

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SR2Z 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I've had plenty of friends I've only known through the internet and a chat room. It's not the same as being in-person - I don't see a way to reliably turn out healthy adults unless kids talk to each other.

	▲	7 hours ago \| parent [-]
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