My son deleted Instagram – but why is it so hard for so many teenagers? | Stephanie Merritt

Schools and parents need a greater awareness that our children want to be less dependent on social media and their online life

Last November, after the US presidential election, I stopped using Facebook in a fit of moral high dudgeon over the by now familiar claims that it had spread and profited from inflammatory pro-Trump fake news – a boycott that has clearly hit Mark Zuckerberg where it hurts, because it’s only taken him 11 months to express a vague regret, for which I like to claim some credit. I didn’t expect my resolve to last, so I was surprised to find how quickly I stopped missing all those photos of people’s barbecues.

Related: Growing social media backlash among young people, survey shows

We are perhaps the last generation to have had our brains formed in a world without clicks and likes and memes

Continue reading... October 06, 2017 at 05:27PM