alt Hacker NewsI 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.
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I agree with you that nothing has been proven either way. But I would say that, because people hate social media so much, we should perhaps be a little skeptical of claims that it causes harms. It's very easy to believe "X thing I hate" causes harm, even when the evidence is not solid.
> 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.
Doing nothing seems fine!
That seems like a very lame claim, given that Social Media is data in abundance by design, and for at least 2 decades now.
> 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.
Well:
(1) there is no "the general public's gut" -- the general public is millions of separate guts that don't agree with each other;
(2) our political system defines explicit boundaries for the reach of regulatory power, especially where communication, expression, and social interaction are concerned, regardless of anyone's gut feeling on these issues;
(3) science can't be the arbiter here at all, since science only answers "is" questions, but this is an "ought" question; which leads us to
(4) as you alluded to in your final remark, this is a purely cultural issue which families/parents must address according to their own normative values, independently of each other, and there is no legitimate political or legal question here.