When did we abandon personal responsibility?
California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
41–50 of 225 posts
Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
or just close the tab
Tell that to young children who’s brains are still developing and who don’t understand the consequences. Not every child can have a parent to teach them the rights and wrongs of the world. Sometimes policy enforcement helps situations like this. It keeps large corporations from taking advantage of our society.
Treat kids like they're irresponsible and they'll never become responsible. Adulting takes practice. You have to let them fuck up and do unhealthy things if they are to learn not to do those things. Delaying it until the stakes are high is counterproductive.
I'm not saying let your kid shoot up heroin but I'd much rather deal with social media usage problems in a 14yo than a 17yo
Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
#43What I've come to realize in recent years is there are an awful lot of people who have children who don't want to be parents. It's like they don't even like children but it seems like they're running down a Life checklist of things you should do. Or maybe they like the idea of having adult children? I really don't know. But I know so many people who don't actually like spending time with their children. I get some pe…
> It does seem easy to scapegoat companies for these issues though
When the addictive factor is deliberately manufactured into a product (AKA engagement), the company absolutely bears some (IMO, a large amount of) responsibility.
Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
#44If only there was a way parents could exert some sort of influence or authority over these children to prevent what they believe is harmful. We could call it “parenting”.
Couldn't the same argument be used for cigarettes? "We shouldn't regulate tobacco companies influence on kids because it's a parent's responsibility to prevent that sort of harmful thing"?
I agree that this bill is silly, but "parents are responsible for preventing all harm to children" doesn't seem like a universally applicable argument.
Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
#45If only there was a way parents could exert some sort of influence or authority over these children to prevent what they believe is harmful. We could call it “parenting”.
A controversial take. We should consider individuals aren't able to parent their kids effectively. Would you rather trust two exhausted individuals or a huge army of trained professionals at payroll by government to parent the kids? There is very less transfer of knowledge and the worldview of individual parents is often limited. If there is an organization parenting thousands of kids, they can run A/B tests, see res…
This is the most dystopian thing I've ever read.
But probably the best way to defeat the existential threat of gray goo.
Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only parents could exert some sort of influence or authority over others harming their children. We could call it "sueing".
Why just limit it social media? Why not also include video games, streaming services, movies, etc.?
Why not give people both the freedom and personal responsibility instead of making assigning parental duties to the government like China has recently?
Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
#47If only there was a way parents could exert some sort of influence or authority over these children to prevent what they believe is harmful. We could call it “parenting”.
Would you say the same thing if someone was standing outside an elementary school peddling drugs and cigarettes? Or creepy dudes who offer to buy alcohol for minors to get in their pants? The world is a big place and it's impossible for parents to be everywhere they need to be for their kids all the time. It's only gotten unfathomably bigger since the advent of the web and the explosion of social media.
It's interesting when people advocate both "free range children" and "helicopter parenting" at the same time.
Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only parents could exert some sort of influence or authority over others harming their children. We could call it "sueing".
> others harming their children I'd suggest they did harm to their own children when they allowed a smartphone and social media at an early age.
> early age
Given that the human brain is still forming into your 20's, the harm can happen at any age. And given how much social media pressures impact teenagers, it doesn't even require that early of an age.
Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why just limit it social media? Why not also include video games, streaming services, movies, etc.?
Agreed. It should be applied to all services which are optimized for addiction. Social media is just the worst of the bunch due to its built in peer pressure.
My favorite is gacha games of any flavor. Please keep that crap out of the hands of children.
Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction
#50I hope this might push towards more regulation in social media. There needs to be a way to turn on a chronological feed, hide likes/retweets/scores/comments, and hide all content made by people I don’t follow. Doesn’t have to be default, but should be configurable. It’s harder and harder to participate in society without major social media tools so don’t just tell me to stop using these platforms.
or just close the tab
Yeah, except that kids are communicating with each other through those mechanisms, and increasingly seem to be required to for schoolwork.
So you have the companies providing the communication mechanisms intentionally manipulating the communication to encourage specific behaviour.
A very simple “you cannot reorder or promote content for people less than X” rule would do a lot to reduce the problem for kids. Once you’re an adult you can be just as free to get addicted to Facebook as you are beer.
Before then Social media companies should be subject to similar rules that we have for alcohol. SM at least have the advantage that they can just completely remove the intentionally addictive reordering algorithms, whereas alcohol companies can’t make a meaningfully similar simulacrum when then extract the alcohol.