Just pointing out, my point is not that the Gedolim had magical superpowers. But in this case they happened to be correct, regardless of their original reasoning.
Good article, but this disclaimer is disrespectful, decidedly non-Chareidi, and thoroughly unimpressive.
What are you trying to to say? "Raise your children chareidi! Listen to gedoilim! They don't know any better than you or me, but sometimes they happen to be correct!"
Sounds like you're embarrassed to accidentally give the impression that you ever, chas veshalom, waive your own da'as (knowledge and understanding) in favor of a Rav's da'as.
Sounds like kedusha (sexual morality/cleanliness) to you, takes second place to normal mental functioning, to the extent that you're apparently judging the gedoilim for - in your estimation - foreseeing "only" the moral rot, and not the brain rot, that would result from these media.
In reality, the gedoilim do have superior knowledge - "chacham adif m'navi" - and you don't know what the gedoilim did and did not foresee.
In reality, moral rot and brain rot are both huge problems, and the moral rot may be a greater handicap than the brain rot.
Furthermore, brain rot may be the inevitable consequence of the moral rot. I came across a Torah source that strongly implies that moral rot LEADS to brain rot - it said or implied that a child's intelligence has direct correlation to the kedusha of the parents' union. (Maybe this is why Jews are traditionally more intelligent?)
In any case, the moral rot is bad enough. Even if the brain rot did not follow, the moral rot is enough reason to shield our children - and ourselves - from these media.
This post details exactly my criticism (and then some) of the unfortunate consequences of internet usage in a post Covid era.
I’m in a place where I interact frequently with goyim and goyishe kids and frum kids and “modox” kids and everyone, so before anyone says anything, I do know what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t believe the amount of children I’ve seen for whom the only words on their mind were “skibidi” and “toilet”. Even the Jewish but more modern kids were all talking about “gyatts” and other such brainrot all day. For some reason, however, the chevra from the more “yeshivish” crowd, despite them also having internet access, turned out completely normal (in comparison)! Otherwise, most kids the age of that kid in the linked TikTok video that I know are doomed.
None of these kids have probably ever gone on a set of monkey bars. Almost of these kids are really chubby for no reason. Zero meat on their arms. Incapable of speaking about normal things that don’t include either some random swear word or brain rot.
A couple of years ago, I worked at the summer day camp at a martial arts club I’m connected to. Besides trips and games and stuff, we had them do some math and learning to make sure they didn’t completely go off the deep end. So they did the couple math problems and whatever, but when it came to English, the results were dismal. One of these kids, at that time 9 years old, who was talking all day about whatever brain rot was in vogue back then, and could draw you the most exquisite depiction of whatever shin daled was the subject of the aforementioned discussions, couldn’t spell the words “bread” or “home”. A fourth grader who doesn’t know how to spell “bread” but knows all of the skibidi lore there is to know. This is no longer just brain rot; it’s frontotemporal atrophy.
On a more positive note, the learning went sort of normal, despite the audience by this point lacking most/all cognitive ability.
There is simply no question that children raised in a secular environment get exposed to hard-core porn pornography a young ages, in addition to being marinated in cultural garbage via TikTok, YouTube, and all manner of other media. It’s virtually impossible to protect them from it if they go to public school or a secular school, I don’t care how you try to block it.
What the long-term effects of all this are remain to be seen. I think most secular kids get through it, but obviously a high percentage of them end up with severe problems that they might otherwise have avoided.
And I know, for a fact that public schools are a mess. Even in the best of them, kids are selling drugs and gambling in the bathrooms.
And don’t get me started on Snapchat…
The Charedei were right to do what they could to block this technology, and people who mock them for it were fools.
We’ve been running a dangerous experiment on our children for a decade or more.
Well, here’s the thing. We’ll never know because they didn’t try. They didn’t care enough to try. They didn’t give a damn that little children were seeing hard-core pornography. They didn’t give a damn that teenagers were given Snapchat. It’s not that they tried and failed. They simply didn’t try. And I don’t know what sort of unintended consequences could have risen from aggressively prosecuting pornographers who allowed children to get access to pornography.
I’m not prepared to put a number on these things. Put it this way, the number of children who ough to be exposed to hard-core porn is zero. And any percentage of children damaged by that exposure in anyway is too much. Our culture completely failed to protect children in that respect and that’s just one example of the sort of thing Ash is talking about.
Yeah I agree that even 1 kids life ruined is bad. I just think the blame might not be on the culture or community. It may be a low enough number that it’s kind of inevitable.
I hear that take. I’m just skeptical that individual communites could have done enough to prevent the pain. For instance, banning things isn’t often a good solution. The right amount of allowance is probably the best and I think it’s very difficult to figure it out. Hindsight might be 20/20.
But the point is you don’t need hindsight. The chareidi community rightly predicted this. and really anybody could have. I could see right away. It was a problem, but couldn’t do much about it because I live in the general community. I tried to keep certain technologies out of the hands of my son for example, and at every turn both the community, and the technology made it far more difficult than it had to be.
The most basic parent filters didn’t exist, and when they did exist, they were easy to subvert. And even if you kept devices out of your kids hands, if their friends parents were less strict, they found their way into your kids hands, but anybody with open eyes could’ve seen the problems coming in at least some of these areas and in fact, many of the tech Giants would not permit their own children to use the devices they created. This was a massive fail of secular society to do something that anybody could’ve seen was necessary.
Yes, I also mentioned social media. And there is no question that social media is destructive. And again I’m sorry, but I just don’t need to see any research to prove what I see with my own eyes. That having been said there is such research.
Without mentioning any specific research and saying trust me bro, you are just describing two events without any context so we see correlation but not causation.
That's actually only an issue if you're trying to make your argument convincing.
That sounds very smart and intellectual. It’s a nice pose. You know very well that there is research demonstrating damage that pornography and social media can do. And you can find it very quickly if you look for it, but again, I don’t need research to tell me What I see in daily life. And I don’t buy somebody quoting a logical fallacy that they learned in 11th grade as invalidating what we pretty much all know is true.
I have to make time to read it well, but from what I see it concurs with what I've written many times now that Charedi following of their gedolim is NOT because the think they know the Truth better then others but rather. Rather it is the moral values and intuitions of their gedolim and ancestors which they find worthy of trusting and remaining faithful to.
אם לא תדעי לך היפה בנשים צאי לך בעקבי הצאן ורעי את גדיותיך על משכנות הרועים
I left the Chareidi world not to become Modern Orthodox but to build something freer, more expansive, and rooted in trust instead of fear.
Yes, technology can be harmful. I’ve seen what overexposure can do. But I’ve also seen what happens when children are forbidden from using it entirely. In the Chareidi world, I’ve watched too many older teens and young adults, unprepared and uneducated about the internet, misuse it in incredibly destructive ways because they were never given tools, only prohibitions.
My youngest son (of 10) now goes to a school that gives him a fabulous education which is opening his mind to knowledge, creativity, and opportunity. My daughter, who would have been married and pregnant at 18, now creates art for world-renowned institutions.
That’s not chaos. That’s growth. That’s what it looks like when you raise children with guidance and access, not silence and fear.
Sheltering doesn’t make our kids safer. Teaching them, walking beside them, and trusting them does.
I don't know if you read to the end of the article, but I absolutely advocate for teaching kids to use the internet responsibly.
I am not sheltering my kids from the world. I am slowly exposing them and vaccinating them, so they can have a childhood and learn safely. However, that task is far easier in a sheltered community than a community where all your kids friends have smartphones in third grade.
It sounds like you did a great job raising your kid. Unfortunately, as a whole, the Chareidi community is the better bet for Internet safety and childhood in this regard, especially for a parent like me who plans on teaching safety, rules and boundaries as they get exposed on age appropriate terms.
No, I don't. I am referring to how she self-described in the comment in relation to this tech issue. I'm not researching nor passing judgment on her life or determining all her parenting decisions which I don't know.
What terrible things has she supposedly done?
Raising kids not frum doesn't automatically make someone a terrible oarent.
I agree with most of what you're saying here. Although I would caveat that I don't think the issue is as pronounced in Israel, where even non-Haredi kids, as far as I've seen, are less social media/TikTok addicted and brain rotted than their US counterparts.
But still incomparable to the Haredi alternative.
That said, and I guess this depends on the extent to which you disagree with the Haredi system, how do you intend to mitigate some of the issues found there?
Yesterday, I saw a video of numerous Haredi teens (and some adults) violently assaulting other Haredim attempting to enter the IDF recruitment office. The potential for 'brainrot' in the other direction is also there. Although that too might be more relevant to an Israeli context.
Completely agree that this article is only relevant for those raising children outside of Israel; ModOx / Religious Zionist children in Israel are for the most part immune from most of the western ills described and in my experience are as learned and have as good midos, if not better, than their US chareidi counterparts.
I approve of your decision about raising your children (from a non-practicing Jew, if it matters). There is way too much filth and sex, etc. out there. Why would a parent allow their children's brains be destroyed with dreck? They'll have plenty of exposure when they become older (unless they go live in a cave, which has its strong points). I am happy to be beyond child rearing age.
I remember being hosted for Shabbat lunch at a modox rabbi's house in England, and his elementary-school aged child was twiching and kept asking when the shabbat ends so he can watch Mr. Beast videos (ar least he was limited to half a hour on the ipad a day). I'm honestly pretty anti-haredi, mostly because that's how my parents raised me, but I can't say I don't understand you
It doesn’t just affect kids. I am in college and people still scroll and brain rot all the time and say extremely weird gibberish to each other that they know because they watch the same reels. Excellent article and I find it truly saddening what this phenomenon has and will continue to do to our world.
I’m sure there are many good modox communities even when it comes to technology. But this is also one of the major reasons for me to raise my children charedi!
Everything you say about the problems of internet culture is correct.
But your sole focus is on what's best for your children to get the most personal spiritual growth out of life.
What about responsibilities to others? To being able to support their wives and children? To strengthening rather than weakening the economy? To helping Am Yisrael with national defense?
I live in the USA, avoiding pretty much all of these issues in the Chareidi world. We all work here, and most of us support the IDF financially, even as we also support Yeshivos. Had I lived in Israel, I honestly don't know what Id've picked. It's a far starker contrast there - and in Israel the Dati community has a better handle on the Internet.
As far as defending the country, more and more this Gaza war seems like Netanyahu's Vietnam and it's treating the Dati community's life as worthless. Much umbridge should be directed at him.
I think people around my age (mid twenties) in the modox world are much more hostile towards tech usage by kids than those ten years older than us. We know what it did to us lol
I think you are right in highlighting that although rabbinic leadership was right, they have absolutely no idea *why* they were right lol
I don't know why you think it's such a good thing that chareidi kids miss out on this art and culture. This is what Torah u'Mada is all about and is the selling point of Modern Orthodoxy.
Just pointing out, my point is not that the Gedolim had magical superpowers. But in this case they happened to be correct, regardless of their original reasoning.
Good article, but this disclaimer is disrespectful, decidedly non-Chareidi, and thoroughly unimpressive.
What are you trying to to say? "Raise your children chareidi! Listen to gedoilim! They don't know any better than you or me, but sometimes they happen to be correct!"
Sounds like you're embarrassed to accidentally give the impression that you ever, chas veshalom, waive your own da'as (knowledge and understanding) in favor of a Rav's da'as.
Sounds like kedusha (sexual morality/cleanliness) to you, takes second place to normal mental functioning, to the extent that you're apparently judging the gedoilim for - in your estimation - foreseeing "only" the moral rot, and not the brain rot, that would result from these media.
In reality, the gedoilim do have superior knowledge - "chacham adif m'navi" - and you don't know what the gedoilim did and did not foresee.
In reality, moral rot and brain rot are both huge problems, and the moral rot may be a greater handicap than the brain rot.
Furthermore, brain rot may be the inevitable consequence of the moral rot. I came across a Torah source that strongly implies that moral rot LEADS to brain rot - it said or implied that a child's intelligence has direct correlation to the kedusha of the parents' union. (Maybe this is why Jews are traditionally more intelligent?)
In any case, the moral rot is bad enough. Even if the brain rot did not follow, the moral rot is enough reason to shield our children - and ourselves - from these media.
This post details exactly my criticism (and then some) of the unfortunate consequences of internet usage in a post Covid era.
I’m in a place where I interact frequently with goyim and goyishe kids and frum kids and “modox” kids and everyone, so before anyone says anything, I do know what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t believe the amount of children I’ve seen for whom the only words on their mind were “skibidi” and “toilet”. Even the Jewish but more modern kids were all talking about “gyatts” and other such brainrot all day. For some reason, however, the chevra from the more “yeshivish” crowd, despite them also having internet access, turned out completely normal (in comparison)! Otherwise, most kids the age of that kid in the linked TikTok video that I know are doomed.
None of these kids have probably ever gone on a set of monkey bars. Almost of these kids are really chubby for no reason. Zero meat on their arms. Incapable of speaking about normal things that don’t include either some random swear word or brain rot.
A couple of years ago, I worked at the summer day camp at a martial arts club I’m connected to. Besides trips and games and stuff, we had them do some math and learning to make sure they didn’t completely go off the deep end. So they did the couple math problems and whatever, but when it came to English, the results were dismal. One of these kids, at that time 9 years old, who was talking all day about whatever brain rot was in vogue back then, and could draw you the most exquisite depiction of whatever shin daled was the subject of the aforementioned discussions, couldn’t spell the words “bread” or “home”. A fourth grader who doesn’t know how to spell “bread” but knows all of the skibidi lore there is to know. This is no longer just brain rot; it’s frontotemporal atrophy.
On a more positive note, the learning went sort of normal, despite the audience by this point lacking most/all cognitive ability.
It's incredibly widespread - except by the no tik-tok crowd.
The kids look like something from Wall-E.
Idk about you, but some of them look more like the guys on the spaceship than anything…
Thankfully in Israel "gyaat" remains a yemenite family name.
There is simply no question that children raised in a secular environment get exposed to hard-core porn pornography a young ages, in addition to being marinated in cultural garbage via TikTok, YouTube, and all manner of other media. It’s virtually impossible to protect them from it if they go to public school or a secular school, I don’t care how you try to block it.
What the long-term effects of all this are remain to be seen. I think most secular kids get through it, but obviously a high percentage of them end up with severe problems that they might otherwise have avoided.
And I know, for a fact that public schools are a mess. Even in the best of them, kids are selling drugs and gambling in the bathrooms.
And don’t get me started on Snapchat…
The Charedei were right to do what they could to block this technology, and people who mock them for it were fools.
We’ve been running a dangerous experiment on our children for a decade or more.
Well, here’s the thing. We’ll never know because they didn’t try. They didn’t care enough to try. They didn’t give a damn that little children were seeing hard-core pornography. They didn’t give a damn that teenagers were given Snapchat. It’s not that they tried and failed. They simply didn’t try. And I don’t know what sort of unintended consequences could have risen from aggressively prosecuting pornographers who allowed children to get access to pornography.
A good first step would be overturning the 1A rights for lewd material.
I am very skeptical that this is a good idea.
“High” is a relative term, so I’m curious what you think the percentage of these kids who are exposed to hard-core porn have severe problems is?
I’m not prepared to put a number on these things. Put it this way, the number of children who ough to be exposed to hard-core porn is zero. And any percentage of children damaged by that exposure in anyway is too much. Our culture completely failed to protect children in that respect and that’s just one example of the sort of thing Ash is talking about.
Yeah I agree that even 1 kids life ruined is bad. I just think the blame might not be on the culture or community. It may be a low enough number that it’s kind of inevitable.
The culture created the porn and social media and the community permitted and promoted it. It was not inevitable.
I hear that take. I’m just skeptical that individual communites could have done enough to prevent the pain. For instance, banning things isn’t often a good solution. The right amount of allowance is probably the best and I think it’s very difficult to figure it out. Hindsight might be 20/20.
But the point is you don’t need hindsight. The chareidi community rightly predicted this. and really anybody could have. I could see right away. It was a problem, but couldn’t do much about it because I live in the general community. I tried to keep certain technologies out of the hands of my son for example, and at every turn both the community, and the technology made it far more difficult than it had to be.
The most basic parent filters didn’t exist, and when they did exist, they were easy to subvert. And even if you kept devices out of your kids hands, if their friends parents were less strict, they found their way into your kids hands, but anybody with open eyes could’ve seen the problems coming in at least some of these areas and in fact, many of the tech Giants would not permit their own children to use the devices they created. This was a massive fail of secular society to do something that anybody could’ve seen was necessary.
Correlation does not equal causation.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you need research to “prove” hard core porn and social media are destructive to children, I can’t help you.
I believe porn isn't the only cause you mentioned.
Yes, I also mentioned social media. And there is no question that social media is destructive. And again I’m sorry, but I just don’t need to see any research to prove what I see with my own eyes. That having been said there is such research.
Without mentioning any specific research and saying trust me bro, you are just describing two events without any context so we see correlation but not causation.
That's actually only an issue if you're trying to make your argument convincing.
That sounds very smart and intellectual. It’s a nice pose. You know very well that there is research demonstrating damage that pornography and social media can do. And you can find it very quickly if you look for it, but again, I don’t need research to tell me What I see in daily life. And I don’t buy somebody quoting a logical fallacy that they learned in 11th grade as invalidating what we pretty much all know is true.
Wow!
Thanks for finally writing this!
I have to make time to read it well, but from what I see it concurs with what I've written many times now that Charedi following of their gedolim is NOT because the think they know the Truth better then others but rather. Rather it is the moral values and intuitions of their gedolim and ancestors which they find worthy of trusting and remaining faithful to.
אם לא תדעי לך היפה בנשים צאי לך בעקבי הצאן ורעי את גדיותיך על משכנות הרועים
Very well said!
I left the Chareidi world not to become Modern Orthodox but to build something freer, more expansive, and rooted in trust instead of fear.
Yes, technology can be harmful. I’ve seen what overexposure can do. But I’ve also seen what happens when children are forbidden from using it entirely. In the Chareidi world, I’ve watched too many older teens and young adults, unprepared and uneducated about the internet, misuse it in incredibly destructive ways because they were never given tools, only prohibitions.
My youngest son (of 10) now goes to a school that gives him a fabulous education which is opening his mind to knowledge, creativity, and opportunity. My daughter, who would have been married and pregnant at 18, now creates art for world-renowned institutions.
That’s not chaos. That’s growth. That’s what it looks like when you raise children with guidance and access, not silence and fear.
Sheltering doesn’t make our kids safer. Teaching them, walking beside them, and trusting them does.
I don't know if you read to the end of the article, but I absolutely advocate for teaching kids to use the internet responsibly.
I am not sheltering my kids from the world. I am slowly exposing them and vaccinating them, so they can have a childhood and learn safely. However, that task is far easier in a sheltered community than a community where all your kids friends have smartphones in third grade.
It sounds like you did a great job raising your kid. Unfortunately, as a whole, the Chareidi community is the better bet for Internet safety and childhood in this regard, especially for a parent like me who plans on teaching safety, rules and boundaries as they get exposed on age appropriate terms.
'A great job raising her kids'?!?!?!?!?
Do you know who that !@#$ is? Do you know her kids? Do you know what she has done to them?
She is a terrible 'human' and a disgrace to our world.
No, I don't. I am referring to how she self-described in the comment in relation to this tech issue. I'm not researching nor passing judgment on her life or determining all her parenting decisions which I don't know.
What terrible things has she supposedly done?
Raising kids not frum doesn't automatically make someone a terrible oarent.
I agree with most of what you're saying here. Although I would caveat that I don't think the issue is as pronounced in Israel, where even non-Haredi kids, as far as I've seen, are less social media/TikTok addicted and brain rotted than their US counterparts.
But still incomparable to the Haredi alternative.
That said, and I guess this depends on the extent to which you disagree with the Haredi system, how do you intend to mitigate some of the issues found there?
Yesterday, I saw a video of numerous Haredi teens (and some adults) violently assaulting other Haredim attempting to enter the IDF recruitment office. The potential for 'brainrot' in the other direction is also there. Although that too might be more relevant to an Israeli context.
That's Israeli brainrot. I also saw that clip. Is it recent?
Yes, from Monday
Do you have a link to a news site reporting it? I want to post something on it and am having trouble verifying it from a reputable source.
https://x.com/yankihebrew/status/1916929421291773974?t=Jw2OpGFf0ohbfxdxaumTyw&s=19
https://x.com/shilofreid/status/1916745268109730102?t=E3yTKMIs_ZA8gZqrwEQL7w&s=19
Yes looking for a news site
Completely agree that this article is only relevant for those raising children outside of Israel; ModOx / Religious Zionist children in Israel are for the most part immune from most of the western ills described and in my experience are as learned and have as good midos, if not better, than their US chareidi counterparts.
It depends on how much Internet access they have.
Indeed
I disagree; in my experience, the internet access is no less in Israel, yet the ModOx Israelis surf far more responsibly.
I think that many there install filters.
this expresses how i feel precisely.
I approve of your decision about raising your children (from a non-practicing Jew, if it matters). There is way too much filth and sex, etc. out there. Why would a parent allow their children's brains be destroyed with dreck? They'll have plenty of exposure when they become older (unless they go live in a cave, which has its strong points). I am happy to be beyond child rearing age.
I remember being hosted for Shabbat lunch at a modox rabbi's house in England, and his elementary-school aged child was twiching and kept asking when the shabbat ends so he can watch Mr. Beast videos (ar least he was limited to half a hour on the ipad a day). I'm honestly pretty anti-haredi, mostly because that's how my parents raised me, but I can't say I don't understand you
It doesn’t just affect kids. I am in college and people still scroll and brain rot all the time and say extremely weird gibberish to each other that they know because they watch the same reels. Excellent article and I find it truly saddening what this phenomenon has and will continue to do to our world.
מתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה.
I guess there is some hope for you after all, Ash.
Good to hear!
I’m sure there are many good modox communities even when it comes to technology. But this is also one of the major reasons for me to raise my children charedi!
Everything you say about the problems of internet culture is correct.
But your sole focus is on what's best for your children to get the most personal spiritual growth out of life.
What about responsibilities to others? To being able to support their wives and children? To strengthening rather than weakening the economy? To helping Am Yisrael with national defense?
I live in the USA, avoiding pretty much all of these issues in the Chareidi world. We all work here, and most of us support the IDF financially, even as we also support Yeshivos. Had I lived in Israel, I honestly don't know what Id've picked. It's a far starker contrast there - and in Israel the Dati community has a better handle on the Internet.
As far as defending the country, more and more this Gaza war seems like Netanyahu's Vietnam and it's treating the Dati community's life as worthless. Much umbridge should be directed at him.
I think people around my age (mid twenties) in the modox world are much more hostile towards tech usage by kids than those ten years older than us. We know what it did to us lol
I think you are right in highlighting that although rabbinic leadership was right, they have absolutely no idea *why* they were right lol
I don't know why you think it's such a good thing that chareidi kids miss out on this art and culture. This is what Torah u'Mada is all about and is the selling point of Modern Orthodoxy.
This reminds me of a tradition article by Rabbi Yosef Blau from a few years ago.
https://traditiononline.org/modern-orthodox-arguments-against-television/