alt Hacker NewsIt's been eye-opening to watch people fall for the "social media is hurting the children" scam.
The best and largest observational studies don't show a strong correlation. Studies with an intervention are mixed/the effect isn't large. Extreme and compulsive social media use is bad, but it's almost maybe always a symptom rather than a cause.
I saw the trailer for the new Facebook movie last weekend. It's comical really; first people blamed Facebook for the 2016 election and now for their kids being depressed. It's classic scapegoating.
What makes this worse is the irony: in the name of protecting children, we're going to further reduce their freedom. And if there is single largest cause of children being depressed, I'd bet on "lack of freedom" over "social media use".
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I think you are conflating "the best data we have" with "sufficient data to prove something".
I agree with you that the best data we have is inconclusive. Which doesn't mean social media is totally safe. Also it doesn't mean it's totally dangerous.
It means there just isn't enough data to let science guide the decision. Science is very slow and very expensive.
So since I can't wait another century for their to finally be good science about social media, I have no choice but to go with my gut.
Which means, IMO: (1) regulation should be limited to what the general public's gut on average agrees with, since science won't be the neutral arbiter we want it to be for the foreseeable future. (2) I personally want to severely limit my kids access to social media because my gut says it's addictive and harmful. But I don't expect society as a whole to agree with me on that.
I'm confident kids before Facebook did not somehow have a "lack of freedom". Also screw social media, it's bloat on society.
This is completely different to my experience and my reading of the research. Please link me to any of this research you are talking about.
ODB understood this dynamic years ago - "Wu Tang is for the children"
Would you like to link to these studies?
I know that it's hurting me. Hard to imagine that children are any less affected by it.
That's definitely why they chose to settle.
Anything to shift blame from parents, I guess.
Everyone is just such a 'big tech bad' sheep now. Pitchforks out.
Society is not some science experiment that you can run for 20 years and hit the reset button.
Having seen the increase in suicide rates for girls and young women [1], and having read the arguments for why no other explanation fits that data, I am convinced social media is indeed to blame.
But as someone else put it once regarding global warming, what's the worst case if we reign in social media anyway? That we make the Internet a less addictive place for nothing?
[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/03/suicide-.... Archive version: https://archive.is/wY1OH