The kids with phones are alright
heatherburns.tech264 points by JumpCrisscross 6 days ago
264 points by JumpCrisscross 6 days ago
My question to these sorts of articles is, okay so what do we do then?
What do we do when we know that social media it not healthy for kids. Its not good for their attention spans or mental health to a much greater degree than other forms of media.
Nobody is saying kids shouldn't have phones, but they should be able to use them without being engulfed in social media content that has been shown to have a negative impact on them. Whether its algorithmic feeds targeting particular age groups or short form video content that is reducing attention spans and the ability to concentrate.
I have no idea how an adult filming young girls on a train has anything to do with social media bans. The Senior Legal Officer is absolutely entitled to having a phone, but absolutely not to use it however he means. The teenagers are entitled to having a phone, but potentially may have limits to how they can use those devices.
Just because there are adults with full agency that do the wrong thing, doesn't mean we should remove protections on young people. Just because adults with full agency drive recklessly, doesn't mean we should allow 13 year olds the ability to drive.
Social media, as we have it today, is not healthy for anybody. It is bad, truly bad, and the companies responsible know it.
You can't lace beer with crack and sell it. Not to a 12yo, not to a 50yo. Regulate the proverbial crack, then we see if further regulations are required.
Earlier this year (0):
> “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,”
From 9 years ago (1):
> Facebook showed advertisers how it has the capacity to identify when teenagers feel “insecure”, “worthless” and “need a confidence boost”
0 - https://www.biometricupdate.com/202602/meta-plans-launch-of-...
1 - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/01/facebook-...
Thank you, it's been infuriating reading these social media bans for children, as if when kids suddenly turn 16 or 18 or whatever magical nimber the courts come up with, they are suddenly immune to the psychological tricks from multi million dollar companies hiring the best psychologists with no morals money can buy.
Social media needs to be heavily regulated to the point where it's safe for everyone, or banned entirely. I don't understand why there's this belief it should have a right to exist when basically everyone agrees it's a net negative to society.
I would like to recommend a book where the author explains with scientific fundaments why lower age kids are more damaged from social media exposure.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-anxious-generation-how-the-...
I don't think there is that agreement that it is in total a net negative to society.
That said, with bans upcoming or in force in a lot places, what measures should we monitor to see improvements in wellbeing etc. (screen time isn't one there, I'd say)? What do we do if those do not go up noticably?
I agree that the positive effects of Social Media is understated, and probably on purpose.
Social Media allowed ordinary people to challenge on a global scale the oficially-sanctioned narrative. A generation has already grown with full distrust on what they learn from traditional media.
With that picture, addressing the (undeniable) negative effects of Social Media is only the sales pitch for introducing new legislation. The true goal of the legislation however is not to "save the children", but rather to ensure that the next generations will be obedient and meek.
> Social Media allowed ordinary people to challenge on a global scale the oficially-sanctioned narrative.
Hasn't been true for a while. Now it grants people with money and state actors unprecedented control over what ordinary people are allowed to see and mold them to desired narratives.
It is still true. People with money and state actors have always had unprecedented control over what ordinary people are allowed to see... before the internet they were the ones controlling all of the corporate media. You don't think the press was molding people to desired narratives back then?
But it's obvious that social media also still allows grassroots action and organization in ways that simply weren't possible under old media. We need to be careful when talking about regulating or banning social media outright that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - we will be losing freedoms when we lose it and centralizing control of media and communication with governments and corporations (even more so than with the big social media silos now.) And freedoms lost aren't easily gained back.
It still cuts both ways. Almost seemingly the entire internet was talking about the Epstein files non stop for months on end. Pre social media that anti establishment narrative wouldn’t have taken hold to nearly the same degree in my opinion. Unfortunately a lot of the discourse was complete nonsense, and misinformation was rife, but it still put the US government under A LOT of pressure, to the point where the AG was fired.
Then again, as I’m writing this, how much of that was due to manipulation and promotion by adversarial powers… almost nothing is truly organic anymore, or at least you can’t tell if it is, and I suppose that’s what you’re getting at.
> almost nothing is truly organic anymore, or at least you can’t tell if it is, and I suppose that’s what you’re getting at
Yes, but over time, even pre-Internet generations have learned to be skeptical of everything watched or read online. Children growing up in this environment will almost certainly adapt and learn to do the same.
So, at best, laws restricting Social Media are a nanny state overreach, and at worst dystopian Big-Brother-style narrative control.
We have witnessed a similar overreach in the distant past with printing-press regulation laws [1]. But at the time, they power structure was different so they could instate an outright ban without hiding behind "think of the children" or the Red Scare.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166...
Yeah it allowed them to challenge traditional narratives like the earth is not flat and getting the measles vaccine is a good thing.
For starters, what's "social media"? It's kind of a undefinable phrase. Obviously Facebook and Instagram are agreed to be "social media".But is Youtube social media? How about HN? Or any website with a comment section?
Or WhatsApp? Or Matrix? Or SMS? Or the telephone network? Or email? Or Google Docs?
I’d start with “platform on which it’s possible to become an Influencer” and work backwards.
When I had to fill up the ESTA form to enter the US, this is what was in the "social media" drop down list:
- ASKfm
- Flickr
- GitHub
- Google+
- JustPaste.it
- Tumblr
- Vine
- VKontakte (VK)
- YouTube
This is obviously outdated but it can give an idea.
I'd argue that generally speaking, the problematic social media tend to be ad-supported websites that focus on user-generated content.
so Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit are all social-media, because all are ad-supported, and all are focused on user-generated content. HN is focused on user-generated content, but not ad-supported (okay, technically HN is 'advertising for YC', but in practice, the site isn't optimized to get you doom-scrolling so you click on more ads), and a website with a comment section, if it's like a blog or something where the majority of the content is generated by the website owner, isn't focused on user-generated content.
The combination of user-generated content + advertising, however, seems to create websites that will try to get their users addicted to the site, which can harm the lives of their users.
Some nitpicker will probably come with "and what about...??" because we are on HN but I think you basically nailed the definition.
And yes, they are toxic. And yes, just as other toxic products (i.e. cigarettes or alcohol) there should be an ongoing discussion on its regulation for both adults and teenagers. Even if it's not 100% enforceable.
The problem is capitalist companies using heavily gamified psychology to prey on people.
Mastodon doesn't have this problem.
Pixelfed doesn't have this problem.
Lemmy doesn't have this problem.
Peertube doesn't have this problem.
But "social media laws" would hit all of these as well.
They are fundamentally different because they are not centralized and, if they are going to be centralized at some point, they will need to find a revenue stream because giving access for free to the whole world, literally, is technically impossible.
You basically restated that its all about profit, and centralization.
> giving access for free to the whole world, literally, is technically impossible.
Again, this is what Mastodon is doing. This is also how email works.
And its not technically impossible. Its impossible when you have investors who demand 30x growth at all costs.
Its a capitalism issue, with game theory pushing worse and worse solutions to extract smaller percentages of profit.