>Within young family that has that problem, this is a problem of one person. The rest of them dont even have to be aware.
I don't get what point you are trying to make. Yes, my family has a primary caregiver (like practically every other family). No, it's not me. However, this means I have an exceptionally good understanding of the very issue that is being discussed. I care deeply about the issues that person has as they raise our kids through their youngest ages, and I do whatever I can that is best for all the members of my family.
>Others had one close friends they met with regularly.
Good for them. Where I live, it was illegal to have other people in your houses until mid-2021. Cafes and other hospitality locations were closed for around the same time. My local playground was literally chained shut. Tell me it's fun meeting other families with babies in the winter in an empty field (it's not). Particularly when those other people spend the whole time dancing around you on tip-toes trying to keep the government-mandated 2m separation.
>And most seen socialization as important and moved it online.
There's the catch - I don't regard online-only interacting as "socialising". Most of what makes mere words into the all-encompassing experience known as "socialising" has been removed.
Decided to make this point first: pandemic lockdown was much less lonely situation then being stay at home. The work from home of other partner is already massive change. Moreover, everyone you know is in the same situation, so you have whole world of zoom calls of understanding people. You are all in the same situation, all your pre-existing friends are in exact same situations. It had other issues, sure, but was less lonely.
> I don't get what point you are trying to make. Yes, my family has a primary caregiver (like practically every other family). No, it's not me. However, this means I have an exceptionally good understanding of the very issue that is being discussed. I care deeply about the issues that person has as they raise our kids through their youngest ages, and I do whatever I can that is best for all the members of my family.
Only stay at home person is actually lonely, others are not. No matter how awesome emphatic the other person is, the other person is not that lonely. And in my experience, dont really understands what is like nor consequences of it, despite the best intentions.
Like I said above, being stay at home is way more isolating then pandemic was. That is something easy to understand if you was at home, but people who were not refuse to hear.
> Tell me it's fun meeting other families with babies in the winter in an empty field (it's not).
With babies, we would walk with strollers, we did it every day in winter too. With babies the emptiness of field does not matter much, cause they don't do much anyway and sleep or look. In general, in here, people don't socialize in cafes with kids lockdown or not. It was going outside.
>being stay at home is way more isolating then pandemic was.
I could not disagree more, and my partner would say the same. What was so absolutely terrible about Covid lockdowns was that the few coping mechanisms available to primary caregivers in those early months and years of their childrens' lives (cafe visits with friends, having other people visit, going to the park and talking to others, etc etc) were completely removed. Covid lockdowns were near 100% isolating (and by design).
>The work from home of other partner is already massive change.
And this made it worse again! Not only does one partner have to try to look after young children literally isolated and not allowed to leave the house, but the other is supposed to sit staring at their computer and concentrate on work while ignoring them?
>It was going outside.
I don't know where you are from, but the Covid restrictions here were not only very strict, but people were incredibly compliant. The parks and such were empty! I was surprised. I had many lonely trips to our local playground with my little boy.
>> being stay at home is way more isolating then pandemic was.
> I could not disagree more, and my partner would say the same. What was so absolutely terrible about Covid lockdowns was that the few coping mechanisms available to primary caregivers in those early months and years of their childrens' lives (cafe visits with friends, having other people visit, going to the park and talking to others, etc etc) were completely removed
now imagine you still have all those problems, but without a parner to help you (can't go out to cafe due to having to watch kids, cant talk to nonexistent partner at home, cant invite friends over because youre banned by facebook from your communities, etc.)
This lady got banned from FB in the past few weeks. There's no comparison between "not being able to participate in group chats", and "I am legally unable to leave my house with my small children to meet people".
>youre banned by facebook from your communities
It's also fascinating to hear the words people use when FB has become so deeply ingrained in a culture's social fabric. My "community" does not exist on Facebook.
I think what you're being told is that your personal dismissal of Facebook as useful for isolated caregivers (like such disingenuously reductive language as calling an entire community around, say, cancer, or sobriety, a "group chat") is more reflective of your own personal preferences, rather than any actual evidence being provided to you by the people being affected.
indeed, it's easy to dismiss a use case that you don't personally have, given a sufficient lack of empathy
>It's also fascinating to hear the words people use when FB has become so deeply ingrained in a culture's social fabric.
yep, fascinating and true. we'll have to come up with a good alternative if we want that to change
We are back to literally my first sentence of my first comment on this topic - women (and primary caregivers), are disproportionally affected by the charms of Facebook.
My wife went through a difficult personal journey around the time of the birth of our second child, when she decided to leave all social media. She decided that the benefits of this, which include a mind not addicted to the endless drip of social media, and also giving our kids a chance to live distraction-free, outweighed the disadvantages. Yes, giving up social media when your personal time is already incredibly disjointed and isolated is difficult - Facebook does provide some (at least in my wife's opinion) superficial and temporary benefits there.
>we'll have to come up with a good alternative if we want that to change
What was wrong with what we had before? That is, cohesive, in-person communities. Finding a FOSS alternative to Facebook, etc, as the solution to society's ills is, IMHO, missing the point.
I don't think there's a way for you to make your case without being dismissive of others use cases, like I've pointed out before, and like you're doing now.
For example, your post contains no meaningful suggestions for the person in the article, you just essentially say their use case isn't important and is really just a social media addiction, so I guess they should just get over it?
> What was wrong with what we had before? That is, cohesive, in-person communities.
If you have some suggestions there which would help the person in the article with their use cases, please share. Like, which specific communities exist where they live, for the same purpose, with the same friends, and without a social media presence?
Note that a lot of those in-person communities organize and communicate over social media, so you'll have to exclude those as alternatives.
That's correct, I am dismissing all use cases for Facebook. I too personally believe that the negatives (the constant drip of distraction fragments your time and ruins your attention span, you and all of the social capital you invest in the platforms are tiny cogs in M. Zuckerburg's machine, and it displaces the richer interactions we should experience) outweigh the positives.
The underlying cases are important, in fact very important. It's literally building your social life. But I personally think FB is a horrible tool to use for that.
I'm not saying it's easy. You might not get to meet the same people, or many at all. I think it's very different over in the US, as it seems your community groups are deeply entrenched in FB. But - if we think that's bad, someone has to make a start, by doing things another way.
You can disagree, and do your life as you see fit. And just hope you don't get banned from the platform that you have built your life on, but have absolutely no control over nor ability to plead your case.
Edit: A useful analogy might be - imagine a group who have changed their diet to consist almost entirely of candy samples from grocery shops. The response to those shops no longer giving away free candy should not be "but how will these people continue to get their nutrition from free candy?".
> This is what you wrote: "young families being able to socialise was considered absolutely non-essential, Facebook is as essential as you make it". I am saying that pandemic did not shown any of that.
in other words, they were correcting your incorrect statement about the inessentialness of socializing during the pandemic
I don't get what point you are trying to make. Yes, my family has a primary caregiver (like practically every other family). No, it's not me. However, this means I have an exceptionally good understanding of the very issue that is being discussed. I care deeply about the issues that person has as they raise our kids through their youngest ages, and I do whatever I can that is best for all the members of my family.
>Others had one close friends they met with regularly.
Good for them. Where I live, it was illegal to have other people in your houses until mid-2021. Cafes and other hospitality locations were closed for around the same time. My local playground was literally chained shut. Tell me it's fun meeting other families with babies in the winter in an empty field (it's not). Particularly when those other people spend the whole time dancing around you on tip-toes trying to keep the government-mandated 2m separation.
>And most seen socialization as important and moved it online.
There's the catch - I don't regard online-only interacting as "socialising". Most of what makes mere words into the all-encompassing experience known as "socialising" has been removed.