Teenagers are so judgy about the color of the text message bubbles they receive, imagine how judgy they would be if one didn't participate at all in some digital platform most of them use.
They all use Discord and/or Snapchat here in Australia.
No one I've every asked about this cares about Android vs iPhone. No one.
No one apart from the Parents uses the built in messaging and SMS.
But then the Parent groups all use Facebook Messenger for most group comms.
The whole green / blue bubble thing is either over played by the Press or purley a US Phenomenon.
But given the marketshare of the iPhone with teenagers in the US, it seems it's possibly less of an issue its made out to be due to the fact that most people have iPhones anyway!
I think you missed the entire point of the comment above. It's not about iOS vs Android but about not being included socially, regardless of the platform. Imagine in your example where one kid in a group didn't use Discord, they'd be effectively cut off.
Again you miss the point entirely. This is not Apple vs Android. This is teenagers not being given a choice whether or not to use social media generally.
The fact is if everyone else uses it, this precludes them from many normal interactions that get replaced by social media. It's a cultural thing as much as it is a personal thing. You will feel excluded if you don't use it, so unless everyone changes, it's hard for you to change. That takes a determination even many adults lack.
The harmful effects of social media are not eliminated by choosing not to participate. They have a cultural impact (both benefit and harm) that expands beyond an individuals choice. We should reconsider how to handle teenagers on social media as a society. Not just tell them to preclude themselves if it's harming them.
It's less about the color and more about the lack of feature parity. If one person joins it can downgrade the experience for everyone. This isn't the teenagers fault, they're just responding to product behavior.
When I was a teenager, I responded to shitty product behavior by switching products. But that was an era where you had a half dozen competing desktop messengers as well as third party client options for most of them. We need to make adversarial interoperability possible again so users are not at the mercy of tech companies and their marketing teams.
