The actual problem is not that kids are using group communications technology, it's that the network effect in public interaction has been captured by private companies with a perverse incentive to maximize engagement.
That's just as much of a problem for adults as for teenagers and the solution doesn't look anything like "ban people from using this category of thing" and instead looks something like "require interoperability/federation" so there isn't a central middle man sitting on the chokepoint who makes more money the more time people waste using the service.
Humans survived well before the internet, the telephone, the telegraph, or even international post.
It's also assuming that we're willing to abandon a technological capacity (not having to personally travel to someone's location to communicate with them) that humans have had since before Moses came down from the mountain, which seems like a fairly silly constraint to impose when there are obviously better alternatives available.
IDK where to begin with this, because we clearly do have physical public spaces for interaction, whether free like parks or not free like coffee shops. People also hang out at each others' homes. Moreover, supply of public spaces increases when there's demand, much of which is being soaked up by social media.
You're also acting like we can't meaningfully distinguish between social media and other forms of communication and that we have to be all or nothing about it, which is a bewildering take. Even social media can be meaningfully distinguished in terms of design features. Facebook back when it was posting on friends' walls, no likes, comments, shares, friend/follower counts, or feeds, was fun and mostly harmless. LinkedIn was genuinely useful when the feed was nothing more than professional updates. They've all since morphed into toxic cesspools of social comparison, parasociality, polarization, disinformation, and other problems. Interoperability/federation doesn't solve those problems: most of the interoperable and federated solutions actually perpetuate them, because the problematic design features are part of the spec.
How many public discussions have you participated in at a coffee shop? If you have something to say and you go there and start trying to chat up anyone who walks in the door, what response do you expect from the proprietors?
If you go to a park which is within 10 miles of the median home, how many people do you expect to encounter there at any given time, especially in the heat of summer or cold of winter?
You need indoor spaces that don't have some private commercial operator, like community centers or hackerspaces, but those are the things that get priced out by high real estate costs.
> People also hang out at each others' homes.
You move to a new city and want to meet people. Are you expecting many strangers to invite you into their homes without introduction?
> Moreover, supply of public spaces increases when there's demand, much of which is being soaked up by social media.
Social media costs time. Physical spaces cost even more time (since you need to travel there) and they cost money (to cover the rent). What happens when you then make the rent high?
> Even social media can be meaningfully distinguished in terms of design features.
So is e.g. Usenet social media or not? Does it matter if it provides ordering options other than search by date?
> They've all since morphed into toxic cesspools of social comparison, parasociality, polarization, disinformation, and other problems.
Because those things increase engagement and the central middle man gets paid for increasing engagement.
> Interoperability/federation doesn't solve those problems
It removes the perverse incentive to design things that way.
> most of the interoperable and federated solutions actually perpetuate them, because the problematic design features are part of the spec.
Then why is Neocities or "add a Bluesky comments section to your blog" so much less toxic than Facebook?
The primary thing driving toxicity in certain federated networks is when they get a huge influx of users after some incumbent social network gets into the news over political suppression, because then a mass of the target's partisans try to switch to something else in protest and partisans are toxic so if you get inundated with disproportionately partisan exiles you've got a problem. Which doesn't happen if you federate the whole main network containing the majority of the population including moderates and apolitical subjects rather than disproportionately one side's most excitable militants.