The kids we have seen mostly don’t engage with social media directly. But the ones who transition from cute 5-6 year olds to problematic 10-12 year olds have a key common factor. Tablets. You see kids as young as 2-3 hiding under a table engaged in some awful kiddie YouTube trash or a game. It ends up being a pacifier that induces anxiety, and I think that effect combined with social media is powerful and difficult for kids to manage.
In terms of targeting, i actually think that things are better today. Through lawsuits and reporting, I learned that my childhood Boy Scout Troop and church was infested with pedophiles. The Boy Scout leader basically roamed the country and landed in NYC where he was eventually arrested for an unrelated rape. Today, there’s extensive background checking everywhere and it’s more difficult for a known offender to be in that position of trust.
Sports and the college recruitment funnel are another thing hurting kids. I had a kid drop out of little league because his soccer academy coach flipped out that he, as a 10 year old, isn’t fully committed to soccer. So he’s playing “elite” soccer, at a cost of almost $4k, because that’s how you make the high school team.
It's really sad to see things like this. Boy Scouts was one of the best parts of my childhood. Both my parents were heavily involved - dad was the Scout Master, mom was the merit badge counselor for backpacking and other woodland activities, my younger sisters came on many of the trips.
It served as a healthy foil to my absolute infatuation with learning about technology.
I would send my kids to Baden-Powell scouting if that was an option.
That's the single biggest problem with scouting - your experience is going to be largely dependent on the adult leadership. You can have dramatically different experiences depending on what pack or troop you're in and leadership changes often make what was a good experience a poor one.
[1]: https://www.adventurescoutsusa.org/#:~:text=Adventure%20Scou....
What's the difference?
For an organization that explicitly advertises itself as a morally driven environment, it's extremely hypocritical for it to have any level of an abuse problem (sexual or otherwise).
That being said, it's been having an identity crisis for years, far longer than the circa-2018/19 attention on getting them to allow women. Obviously, like school, all of the troops are difference and experience their own unique sets of issues.
I was in Boy Scouts from 2004 to 2010, and Cub Scouts before then (1999 to 2004). I suppose I was lucky to start my adventure with a pack and later troop that was located in a liberal and wealthy suburb of Chicago that counted many highly educated people among its population (right down the street from Fermilab).
By 1999, they'd already started allowing women to participate as leaders. My den leader was a woman, many of the instructors were women. Cub Scouts (at least my experience with it) didn't have the same religious aspect that the boy scouts did. Our pack was chartered with a school, in contrast to Boy Scouts which typically charters with a religious organization (church, mosque, synagogue, etc.).
The actual material in the handbook and the overall organization has been ever increasingly non-denominational and non-christian-specific for years. While it wasn't explicitly accepting of atheists or agnostics, most troops don't really care that much about it. Religious service is not a required part of the activities, and by 2010 it'd been watered down to the point that you could barely recognize that you're participating. I was openly agnostic in my troop in Alabama. Moms were also openly encouraged to participate as leaders in the troops I was in. My mom was the backpacking merit badge counselor among other outdoor and survivalist activities.
The whole "exclusion of young women and homosexuals" sentiment can be taken a few ways. Obviously in 2022 it's a lamentable position. It's definitely rooted in the very American religious theme that sex before marriage is bad, therefore anyone who creates a situation where it's possible is also bad. So in order to avoid temptation, you must separate the sexes. Homosexuality turns that on its head because the boys can be attracted to the other boys.
No one had an answer how to resolve concerns, so no one changed anything. When the social progressive movement really got off the ground in the late '10s and was flagrantly demanding sweeping and immediate change to long-standing groups, they were kind of blindsided. Venture crew was a co-ed organization that allowed women to access the Boy Scout high adventure camps, but Girl Scouts was not an equivalent organization to BSA. It has a lot less national direction and troops were very different. Some of my coworkers in California have their daughters in it, and they sound like their having a similar experience to what I had in Boy Scouts. However, when my sisters went in Alabama, they were trying to turn them into proper southern housewives. Hence why they tagged along with my troop as "honorary Boy Scouts".
The appropriation of Native American culture other comments mentioned is also lamentable, at least the part where "white suburban dads jump around in costumes". For the most part it's not too bad, most of the call outs use their culture as an example of one that was more respectful of nature, in contrast with the European colonial worldview the US was largely embraced in their interactions with the Native Americans.
What's also interesting is that many of the kids that do get responsibility are the ones in really crappy situations. That is, responsibility is forced on them because of circumstances. So these kids might do poorly in school, but end up with a better work ethic than rich kids with education. Or they end up dead or in jail. It's all messed up and there are no easy solutions. We all just need to do better.
I mean, it is literally a game, he shouldn't feel the need to "fully commit." That coach just seems like a jerk, to me. Look for a lower-stakes league, maybe? Plus if your kid has put in a couple years on this super intense team, he'd probably be a super-star in a normal one.
Yes! My freshman biology teacher was extradited and imprisoned in Australia for this. [1] The Marianist Church knew and shuffled them to new congregations rather than doing the right thing.
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/catholic-clergyman-bernard-hart...
Social media is such a double-edged sword.
It’s pretty easy to observe - when parents use a Skinner box (ie Youtube) to keep the kids quiet, the kids don’t develop the same social/coping/etc skills.
There’s lots of study on the topic. The decline of toys and play is another related thing.
As always blaming the medium seems a bit short sighted. Who are the people controlling all these apps and social media sites? They're not run by aliens. And who are the parents letting this happen? There seems to be a much larger problem with society as a whole. The problem isn't the tech, it's how we use it. And if kids are developing more and more mental problems, maybe there's something wrong with the adults and how they run the world those kids are born into. "My child's brain is like a sponge", is what I often hear parents say. Feed them toxicity and that's what you get.
If this happened to my kids today it's very likely someone would be charged with a crime (rightfully so).
I have a sadistic stepdaughter who did similar-- on one occasion, I caught her catfishing lesbian girls and publicly accusing them of sexual abuse. From talking to a few of her (now ex-)friends, this was not an isolated incident. Enough of her lies caught up to her that she ended up changing schools, crying victim the whole time.
Kids these days know how to exploit privacy laws, be it HIPAA for their Munchausen-by-internet campaigns or anti-wiretap laws to conceal their targeted cyberbullying.
Evidence obtained from someone else's phone is generally inadmissible, so anybody positioned to discover such activity is going to have trouble reporting it.
