Every Sunday about a dozen high school teenagers without their iPhones gather on a small hill in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, USA. They form a circle and quietly begin to read serious books (Dostoyevsky, Boethius) (paperback or hardback), or draw in sketchbooks, or just sit serenely and listen to the wind.
As the New York Times Reporter Alex Vadukul wrote last month (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html) that these teens are fed up with the addictive Internet gulag run by corporate inmates will. “Social media and phones are not real life,” said Lola Shub, a senior at Essex Street Academy. She expressed the group’s consensus: “When I got my clamshell phone, things changed immediately. I started using my brain. It made me look at myself as a person.”
Before peer group sanctions reach them, I need to have a few of these daily “Self Liberators” on my Ralph Nader Radio Hour. This is a rebellion that needs support and dissemination.
These youngsters may not know how big corporations like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have torn families apart. These corporate predators use iPhones and tablets to isolate millions of children from their parents, communities and nature for 5 to 6 hours a day.
Among the books in their satchels should be the latest by Susan Linn, Who raises the children? Big Tech, Big Business and the lives of children. These young misfits would learn how willful these corporate bosses are at seducing, seducing, then hooking youngsters and sending them to internet prison (en route to Zuckerberg’s insane metaverse). Marketers use peer pressure and cultivate narcissistic behavior. Numerous studies and public hearings have demonstrated the physical, mental, and emotional damage inflicted on children by corporate hucksters’ relentless direct marketing that bypasses parental authority and guidance.
A few other high school students in Manhattan and Brooklyn are joining in this escape from the grip of commercially driven “virtual reality” and connecting to the realities they will face as they grow up.
The teenagers who founded the “Luddite Club” are trying to break free in a world of technology that surrounds them with no ethical or legal framework.
You can gain further self-confidence and knowledge about the controlling processes surrounding you by reading the “Think for yourself” book – You are your own best teacher! (printed only) by Claire Nader. 54 themes will give young readers solid confidence and better performance in the classroom, and the book’s liberation exercises will spark their curiosity, imagination, and intellect.
Curious teens may also want to follow the lawsuits against Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube “which also operate social media products that inflict similar injuries on teens.” Major law firm Beasley Allen in Montgomery, Alabama, “handles lawsuits for teens who have become addicted to social media and have suffered serious mental health outcomes, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, ADD/ADHD, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. “
These attorneys have many experts to assist them in making the connections between these affiliations and the conscious actions of these greedy corporations who know well the consequences of their relentless pursuit of profit. Many of these leaders restrict their own children’s Internet time. You know!
