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Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

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Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#541

Post by whats_a_quasar »

hedora wrote: post #536
whats_a_quasar wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about not having a theistic culture? How about not stigmatizing kids who don't fit into the blonde white monoculture that Utah pushes everywhere? The teen mental health crisis is happening everywhere in the US, and in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It started about the same time everywhere. Utah's particular culture doesn't have anything to do with it. They're just the state that has reacted first…

There’s no evidence regulation would help, and strong evidence the form of regulation being proposed will make things worse, which the article outlines. Things that could work, that are not known to be harmful: - Parental education campaigns. - Elimination of tracking and other privacy invading technologies for all age groups, not just children. The latter eliminates the need for age blocks, and matches consumer pref…

> Strong evidence the form of regulation being proposed will make things worse, which the article outlines.

The only evidence in the article that the law will be harmful is a quote from a free speech lawyer, which doesn't cite any research. If there is strong evidence that the law will be harmful it hasn't been presented yet.

These laws certainly might be harmful! But I think it's much more likely they will have no effect or a positive effect. But we don't know, because restrictions like this haven't been attempted before.

Regardless, it's the state legislature's job to protect public health. I think there's assumed ill intent because it's Utah, but I think the evidence is stronger that this measure will stop so many kids dying by suicide.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#542

Post by api »

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #518

I think that people aren't giving enough credence to the reason Utah gives for the restrictions: The teen mental health crisis. Social media has radically changed the social lives of adolescents, and as a result anxiety, depression, self harm, and suicide have all skyrocketed. The data on this is not ambiguous [1]. And there's now a lot of evidence that social media and smartphones are the cause of the crisis: they s…

I’ve been calling social media companies “the tobacco companies of the mind” for years.

Modern social media like Instagram and TikTok are not even social. They are just skinner boxes that crowdsource and amplify addictive content to keep people staring and scrolling. Social media started to stop being social when algorithmic timelines, weighting of content for engagement, and monetization were introduced.

The next major innovation in the field will be pure AI generation of the feed. No more human sources at all, just endless amounts of mindless addictive filler fine tuned for each person.

You can already see it on kids channels on YouTube where the content is at least part machine generated and is pure mindless drivel. The adult version is coming I’m sure.

Edit: actually I think Replika may be the first adult AI Skinner box of note. Imagine that model crossed with TikTok.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#543

Post by api »

hedora wrote: post #536
whats_a_quasar wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about not having a theistic culture? How about not stigmatizing kids who don't fit into the blonde white monoculture that Utah pushes everywhere? The teen mental health crisis is happening everywhere in the US, and in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It started about the same time everywhere. Utah's particular culture doesn't have anything to do with it. They're just the state that has reacted first…

There’s no evidence regulation would help, and strong evidence the form of regulation being proposed will make things worse, which the article outlines. Things that could work, that are not known to be harmful: - Parental education campaigns. - Elimination of tracking and other privacy invading technologies for all age groups, not just children. The latter eliminates the need for age blocks, and matches consumer pref…

Regulation is needed to kill the peer pressure factor that almost forces teens into social media. Without it even if the parents try to enforce healthy boundaries it won’t stick. Network effects are a thousand times more powerful for teens that are deeply and pervasively immersed in peer pressure and social anxiety.

This is the same reason alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, and drugs have age limits. Anything addictive needs to at least be age restricted until people are old enough to enforce their own boundaries about it.

At this point it should be obvious that social media is highly addictive and is designed that way on purpose. In some cases the same kinds of spaced repetition techniques as slot machines are used.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#544

Post by hedora »

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #541
hedora wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no evidence regulation would help, and strong evidence the form of regulation being proposed will make things worse, which the article outlines. Things that could work, that are not known to be harmful: - Parental education campaigns. - Elimination of tracking and other privacy invading technologies for all age groups, not just children. The latter eliminates the need for age blocks, and matches consumer pref…

> Strong evidence the form of regulation being proposed will make things worse, which the article outlines. The only evidence in the article that the law will be harmful is a quote from a free speech lawyer, which doesn't cite any research. If there is strong evidence that the law will be harmful it hasn't been presented yet. These laws certainly might be harmful! But I think it's much more likely they will have no e…

> But Common Sense Media and other advocacy groups warned some parts of the new legislation could put children at risk.

So, at least three groups concurred. Also, the only proponents quoted in the article were “commons sense media”, which is either a typo (implying the proponents are actually ambivalent) or someone trademark squatting (implying malicious intent).

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#545

Post by Izkata »

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #539
dragonwriter wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My wife works in PICU and she has never seen so many suicide attempts in all her career (going back to 2006) as she has in past few years. Social media has been around a lot longer than the last few years. (In fact, while they weren’t even the first wave of widely-used-by-young-people social media, both Twitter and Facebook opened to the public in 2006.) There have been a few major events that have occurred in the…

I will continue posting links to Jonathan Haidt's review docs all over this thread. Social media and smartphones became widespread in the early 2010s, and that's exactly when teen suicides started rising. [1] COVID does not appear to have significantly affected teen mental health [2] If you have evidence that something else is driving the rise in teen suicide rates, I'd love to see it. [1] https://jonathanhaidt.subst…

I think they were referring to lockdowns, not covid. Kids weren't really affected by covid, but lockdowns and school closures were massive. To see if there was an effect on this from that you'd have to account for duration and severeness of lockdowns in various places, not look at overall rates.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#546

Post by dgacmu »

rayiner wrote: post #529
prh8 wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How do those things help the vast majority? What you deride as “theism” and “monoculture” have been declining in sync with broad indicators of mental health showing more problems. Your problem is minoritarian thinking, where you’re focused on how those social structures might harm small groups of people, while overlooking the benefits they provide for the broader majority. For example, scientific studies consistently…

These generalizations ignore the specific - Utah has long been an outlier on things like teen suicide rates (about #10), antidepressant use (#1) [1], and before that valium. It has a very specific set of cultural features that are not necessarily the same as the broader studies you note.

(I'm from Utah; three of my friends killed themselves as a teenager, and all three had aspects of what the GP was talking about. It's a culture that blames people's mental difficulties on themselves, instead of encouraging getting help)

[1] https://www.brainerddispatch.com/community/study-finds-utah-...

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#547

Post by dragonwriter »

Izkata wrote: post #545
whats_a_quasar wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will continue posting links to Jonathan Haidt's review docs all over this thread. Social media and smartphones became widespread in the early 2010s, and that's exactly when teen suicides started rising. [1] COVID does not appear to have significantly affected teen mental health [2] If you have evidence that something else is driving the rise in teen suicide rates, I'd love to see it. [1] https://jonathanhaidt.subst…

I think they were referring to lockdowns, not covid. Kids weren't really affected by covid, but lockdowns and school closures were massive. To see if there was an effect on this from that you'd have to account for duration and severeness of lockdowns in various places, not look at overall rates.

> I think they were referring to lockdowns, not covid.

Both were among (but not, even together, the totality of) the things I was referring to.

> Kids weren't really affected by covid

A massive wave of death, incapacitation, and serious illness that very likely struck sonewhete in their families? Kids may not have had particularly severe acute health cobsequences from COVID, but that doesn't mean they weren't affected by it.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#548

Post by sacnoradhq »

japhib wrote: post #538
paxys wrote: post #16

Whether this is a reasonable law or not, my big problem with it is that it puts the burden of enforcement on tech platforms rather than the kids' parents. There is no way for any company to check for something like this without also affecting every other user of the site, whether they are in Utah or not and whether they are a teen or not. What do they do exactly, start collecting government IDs from us before every v…

For exactly this reason, there is no way this law will stand in court

Utah's political system, and by virtue, judiciary, is run by LDS. Don't consider anything rational will necessarily prevail when powered by magical thinking.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#549

Post by Scalestein »

dragonwriter wrote: post #540
whats_a_quasar wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will continue posting links to Jonathan Haidt's review docs all over this thread. Social media and smartphones became widespread in the early 2010s, and that's exactly when teen suicides started rising. [1] COVID does not appear to have significantly affected teen mental health [2] If you have evidence that something else is driving the rise in teen suicide rates, I'd love to see it. [1] https://jonathanhaidt.subst…

> Social media and smartphones became widespread in the early 2010s Among adults (or in “household” surveys where adults were surveyed? Sure, but the majority of teen internet users were using “social networking sites” in 2006.) [0] If your contention is that adult social media use is driving teen suicide rates…well, that’s actually more plausible than teen use, but none of the policy responses address that. [0] http…

It isn't just social media, it is the combination of social media and smartphones. This makes social media far more pervasive in a teen's life.

See section 6[0] where they discuss how mental health declines correlating with Facebook coming to college campuses and with high speed internet arriving in cities for some evidence.

[0] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#550

Post by whats_a_quasar »

Izkata wrote: post #545
whats_a_quasar wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will continue posting links to Jonathan Haidt's review docs all over this thread. Social media and smartphones became widespread in the early 2010s, and that's exactly when teen suicides started rising. [1] COVID does not appear to have significantly affected teen mental health [2] If you have evidence that something else is driving the rise in teen suicide rates, I'd love to see it. [1] https://jonathanhaidt.subst…

I think they were referring to lockdowns, not covid. Kids weren't really affected by covid, but lockdowns and school closures were massive. To see if there was an effect on this from that you'd have to account for duration and severeness of lockdowns in various places, not look at overall rates.

The link I posted is data for the change in teen mental health between 2019 and 2021. The data incorporates all of the effects of COVID, Lockdowns and school closures, and does not show a significant change from pre-pandemic trends.

I was using "COVID" as a shorthand for all of the changes during the pandemic.

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