Parents told to delete social media apps to prevent kids from seeing Hamas atrocities — Facebook, X, TikTok and other social media services have been filled with graphic imagery::American and Israeli parents say they have received messages from schools, temples, synagogues and peers following the Hamas terror attack urging them to delete social media applications off their kids’ phones.

  • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    The only way to stop kids seeing bad videos on the internet is not let them on the internet.

    • Guy Dudeman@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Israel’s social media propaganda campaign has been super well-funded and is geared to really make people think that Hamas are the only bad guys here.

      Just last night I was watching youtube with my kids and there was a commercial that showed horrible stuff in support of Israel.

    • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      tbf, getting it off the major mainstream platforms would make it less likely for the really young’uns to stumble on it.

    • keefshape@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      There are ways to teach and prevent the atrocities of war, without subjecting someone to those atrocities first or second hand.

      The world needs fewer folks with PTSD, thanks. Not more.

      • KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        This sort of content is also not good for folks with PTSD either. Personally, I have to spend quite a bit of effort avoiding it if I want to continue to consume online content when things flare up in the world.

        • keefshape@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          I agree, and hope my prior post didn’t indicate otherwise.

          I am very much advocating from a point of PTSD understanding, and prevention.

          20 some odd years ago, stupid naive me didn’t turn off one of those post 911 beheading videos. Even just typing that out puts me on the edge still.

          • KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Oh I didn’t mean to insinuate that you didn’t, I was just trying to support what you said with more context too.

            This has been a huge propaganda campaign and it’s disgusting.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This divorces it from context. There is no point showing children context-free images of atrocities except to terrify them. Even within context, it’s really not the best thing to show children under a certain age. My family is Jewish and my father lived through WWII in Britain waiting to be invaded and thrown into a concentration camp, so he made sure I saw Holocaust images when I was pretty young and I can’t look at images of atrocities anymore because they disturb me too much and give me vivid nightmares. I even have trouble with horror movies. I basically avoid them. That’s not how you let a child know what war is or what genocide is.

    • Scubus@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It’d be a damn shame if your kids saw what the world you brought them into is like.

  • Bappity@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    if any kids are still on twitter it’s 100% the parents fault at this point. the place is a shithole

      • BURN@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The internet was a mistake

        It brought a lot of good, but it’s destroyed multiple generations ability to concentrate and interact in good faith. I don’t think we’d necessarily be better off without it, but I think the world might be a better place

        • Balthazar@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          I’d recommend you read up on the multitude of distractions people have had when talking outside.

          During normal conversation people rarely looked eachother in the eyes.

    • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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      Yea. Good luck on that. Just like everything else some parents let kids do it and then the whole peer pressure things happen. Plus how the hell are they going to learn to be responsible when they are old enough unless they have some sort of exposure?

      Abstinence is a novel concept but it is not at all practical. Kids are part of society and will be part of the adults within a decade. I think it’s far better to teach them how to navigate what is going on rather than throwing blinders on them.

    • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I thought parents from my generation would be better equipped to ensure their kids have safe use of technology but somehow they are even more clueless than my parents were. Yet my grandpa has dementia but can use his Linux computer to bet on horse races online. Most people are just not fit for internet exposure or computers and phones in general and will get more fucked up by it and there isn’t any realistic solution.

  • Schwim Dandy@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    I’m not saying this sarcastically but with honest confusion, is the warning from an entity or group that hasn’t spent a lot of time on the internet? I’m not young by any stretch of the imagination and people have had very easy,almost accidental access to horrific imagery and media since the advent of the internet. Fake titled gore on Napster, image boards, etc.

    I will say the quality/detail of the content has gotten disturbingly more clear. That part makes it more disturbing to me. The Ukraine community has a shocking amount of drone video where it’s like a front row seat to the last seconds of someone’s life.

      • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I’d imagine kids are lacking a lot in terms of high quality critical thinking within the majority of educational institutions right now.

        But circumventing their parents and teacher’s technical prowess is one of their strengths. This is a nothingburger. Unless the kid’s parents work in tech and know how to block sites at a router level, they probably have nothing on their kids.

        And even then, heading to a place with public wifi and hanging out with your friends who still do have the apps is still gonna happen.

        As far as censorship, I personally think kids should be exposed to more adult related material while supervised by their loved ones. Not ALL adult related material, but we have to be realistic. The world of tomorrow is likely to be more harsh than it is today, to put it mildly. And the children of today need to be psychologically prepared for that so that they can adapt more readily for the world of tomorrow.

        Again, just my two cents, and while I’ve coached and taught kids in the past, I’m not a parent myself, so take my opinion with a hefty grain of salt.

        • jandar_fett@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I agree. There should probably be a line drawn, but I think it’s important for children of a certain age, that can process it is, get small doses of the real world is actually like and what needless suffering looks like, so they’re prepared for the future and can just have empathy for others in general instead of living inside a bubble.

        • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Lmmfao!

          I can count on one thumb how many kids in my kid’s grade can do shit to bypass parental controls on devices at all.

          That one kid tried, and failed. Also, router level blocking isn’t that hard.

          But, I’m with you on using it as teaching. You wanna have access to Facebook, we sit down and talk about it, learn the good and bad of it, what to watch out for, etc. Because you’re dead right, all it takes is one other kid without restrictions and a device they’re willing to share. It’s much better to teach your kids than just block them from things.

  • LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I haven’t seen a single graphic image of the conflict in at least 4 hours of swiping the past day or two.

    • Land_Strider@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They have to go about this route to reach the kids so kids won’t see stuff, but nevertheless hear about them to have an opinion:

      Israeli Government: ‘Genocidal rage face under the reasonable face mask’ We have a right to defend ourselves by bombing civilians because of x reasons

      U.S. President: Our allies have a right to defend themselves against terrorist attacks

      Mainstream media: Holocaust survivors facing the same horrors at the hands of Palestinian terrorists must take every measure to defend themselves

      Parents watching mainstream media only: Look how these barbarian Arabs without blue eyes and blonde hair are causing never before seen atrocities

      Kids

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      What about footage from every war in the last decade or so?..

      They (those who wrote the article and those making such warnings) are just trying to stay in trend.

    • Wakmrow@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My tiktok feed is incredibly unkind to Israel with the footage of children either dead or weeping at the hospital beds of their parents. That is why this is happening. That is why they shut off the Internet and electricity in Gaza and that is why they want you to shut off your Internet as well. If you see what is happening in Gaza there’s a real possibility that global public opinion turns incredibly hard on the Israeli government.

      I’ve seen about 5 reporters break down crying on tiktok. I watched a doctor treating a patient learn about his children dying in an airstrike. This isn’t even graphic content. It is the raw human emotion and fear. Palestinians are putting out their goodbyes on social media and it’s heartbreaking.

      The Israeli government is a far right fascist government and it knows it can’t survive without Western support. This time it’s already well out what they’re doing. Even their defense of saying they have to fight against Hamas is ringing hollow. You can’t decry the death of Israeli civilians and then the world watches you bomb ambulances on Facebook.

  • Krompus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The messages from schools and Jewish religious institutions underscore the sense of fear that has taken root worldwide after Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel on Saturday, killing hundreds of people. Israel’s counteroffensive has killed hundreds thousands of people in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    American and Israeli parents say they have received messages from schools, temples, synagogues and peers following the Hamas terror attack urging them to delete social media applications off their kids’ phones.

    “It has come to our attention that deeply disturbing videos, including footage of hostages, may be spread across social media in the near future,” a principal at a public school in New York City said in an email this week, quoting from a message she said had been forwarded to her.

    The messages from schools and Jewish religious institutions underscore the sense of fear that has taken root worldwide after Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel on Saturday, killing hundreds of people.

    TikTok, which has community guidelines barring violent content, plans to add another layer of protection to the platform amid the conflict, including additional moderation resources, blocking hashtags that promote violence and proactive fact-checking around misleading narratives, according to a spokesperson for the Chinese-owned service.

    In recent years, leading social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have come under intense scrutiny for hosting video, photo and audio content that might be harmful to teenagers and children, including images related to terrorism, gun violence, suicide and self-harm.

    In response, some platforms have rolled out stricter parental controls, assembled moderation teams and invested in automated systems designed to quickly spot harmful content.


    The original article contains 778 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    lol, Zionist media pretending Israel isn’t currently pushing Palestine into the sea like they always said they would.

    • paintbucketholder@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Wait, I don’t get this argument.

      You’re saying parents are cool with it if their kids see atrocities committed by Israel, but as soon as a Palestinians terrorist group commits atrocities, parents don’t want their kids to see it - implying parents want to protect the reputation of Hamas?

      • dmonzel@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        implying parents want to protect the reputation of Hamas?

        Wow, you totally missed the point. OP is implying parents shouldn’t be ok with Israeli violence, as well as not ok with Palestinian violence.

        Edit: lol at my follow up comments being deleted. To the mod that did so, I’m sorry for pointing out the fact that the person I was replying to is either unable to comprehend basic English, or is trolling.

        Because they were removed, I’ll type up the sanitized version: the parent comment is pointing out the author of the article is singling out Palestinian violence, but is ignoring the violence, the genocide, being carried out by the Israeli government and the IDF.

        • paintbucketholder@lemmy.world
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          OP is implying parents should be ok with Israeli violence, but not ok with Palestinian violence.

          Parents should want their kids to see violence committed by Israel, but they should want their kids to not be able to see violence committed by Palestinians?

          Why?

          Because they were removed, I’ll type up the sanitized version: the parent comment is pointing out the author of the article is singling out Palestinian violence, but is ignoring the violence, the genocide, being carried out by the Israeli government and the IDF.

          You’re still not making sense.

          If this is a pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian propaganda plot, then why should parents want their kids to see the violence, the genocide, that is being carried out by the Israeli government and the IDF, but not the atrocities and the terrorism committed by the Palestinians and by Hamas?

          • dmonzel@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I’m not sure how many times I can say it. The point is the singling out of one, and staying silent about the other. It’s about the hypocrisy. I’m not sure why this is so difficult, friend.

            • paintbucketholder@lemmy.world
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              It’s not that you’re not saying it often enough, it’s that you’re stopping halfway through what’s being proposed here.

              You’re seeing it as a one-sided, negative thing for the Palestinian side that the atrocities of Hamas are being “singled out” - but you’re completely ignoring the fact that they’re being “singled out” in order to be hidden from children.

              This means that children would never learn - at least not on their own, via social media - of these atrocities committed by Hamas. That would appear like a net positive for the Palestinian side.

              You’re getting caught up in the “singling out” part while ignoring the “in order to hide it from children” part.

              • dmonzel@lemm.ee
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                This means that children would never learn - at least not on their own, via social media - of these atrocities committed by Hamas. That would appear like a net positive for the Palestinian side.

                That’s where your confusion is. This isn’t to hide what’s happening to make Hamas look good. This is about removing violent content. What the parent commenter and I are saying is that there’s no mention of the violence the IDF are perpetrating, as if it isn’t happening.

                I’ve now reached a point where I’ve said it as plainly as possible. If you’re still not able to comprehend what’s being said after this, I don’t know what else to tell you.

            • paintbucketholder@lemmy.world
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              That’s an argument, sure.

              It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, at least if presented as an argument criticizing Israel.

              “We want kids to see all the atrocities committed by our side, but none of the atrocities committed by our enemies” would at the very least be an unconventional approach to war time propaganda.

              You know what I’m getting at?

        • L3s@lemmy.worldM
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          Just want to point you to rule 3, that is the reason for removing the other comments.

          Thanks for cleaning it up in your edit.

  • Lysergid@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Oh no kids can get to know how fucked up is this world. Maybe parents should’ve think about it when they were buying smartphone to 5 years olds

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Kids deserved to be punished for what their parents did? Interesting philosophy you have there.

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Imagine having zero sympathy for literal children seeing mangled up corpses because their parents bought them a phone.