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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

#601

Post by rayiner »

dgacmu wrote: post #587
rayiner wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless, pointing to Utah” specific “cultural features” doesn’t make much sense. Neighboring Colorado has an even higher suicide rate, and is at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of culture compared to Utah.

This is a logical fallacy - "Colorado is not X, therefore Utah is not either". In your earlier comment, you noted religion's correlation with happiness, but allow me to quote from a review article about religion and suicide specifically [1]: > Whether religious affiliation protects against suicide attempts may depend on the culture-specific implications of affiliating with a particular religion, [...] > The relations…

Just look at the map I linked. There is a clear geographic pattern, and Utah isn’t an outlier within that pattern. Yes, it’s theoretically possible that religiosity is causing suicides in Utah and something else is causing suicides in Colorado (and Oregon and Vermont), and for some reason it’s not causing suicides in Mississippi and Alabama.

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

#602

Post by pavel_lishin »

vxNsr wrote: post #556
pavel_lishin wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't necessarily have to be these laws, it could be anything, but to answer your question - they might paint me as somehow being "against the children", having bought in to the angle that these laws make children safer.

Just curious is the any different from what happens right now, when someone campaigns against something you disagree with? If someone online, pseudo-anonymously posts something that is perceived to be against trans rights or pro-life, there is already a mob of people working to de-anonymize and punish them for their wrong-think. How is it any different or better to have the current system?

> Just curious is the any different from what happens right now

Because right now you can be anonymous/pseudonymous? Of course people will try to unmask you, but I'm contrasting it in a world where you can't even attempt it.

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

#603

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

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…

> If you have evidence that something else is driving the rise in teen suicide rates, I'd love to see it.

Will reality do?

Over recent generations, kids have systematically been robbed of critical developmental environments - primarily they are denied regular hours of unsupervised alone/peer time and expansive areas to free range.

The environments that kids absolutely need to develop social and problem solving skills have been replaced with ceaseless supervision, ceaseless containment and a soundtrack of false messaging about risk from stranger kidnapping (spoiler: FBI stats are clear that kids aren't and haven't been at meaningful risk of stranger kidnappings). At the edges of all that are justice systems/LEO/authority that stand ever-ready to transform routine stupid transgressions into forever penalties that systemically ruin future life/job/housing opportunities.

We adults have erased their life prep and endlessly notched up pressure on every front. What else do we expect to follow that except poor mental health?

As for social media's part, one has to take a lot of nuance out of teen mental health studies to single out SM as the primary driver of bad mental health. ref: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/21/blaming-social-media-for...

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

#604

Post by vxNsr »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #602
vxNsr wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious is the any different from what happens right now, when someone campaigns against something you disagree with? If someone online, pseudo-anonymously posts something that is perceived to be against trans rights or pro-life, there is already a mob of people working to de-anonymize and punish them for their wrong-think. How is it any different or better to have the current system?

> Just curious is the any different from what happens right now Because right now you can be anonymous/pseudonymous? Of course people will try to unmask you, but I'm contrasting it in a world where you can't even attempt it.

But what’s the benefit if any time you actually espouse an unpopular opinion you will be unmasked.

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

#605

Post by prawn »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #328
prawn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anonymity the key issue for your example of Instagram and teen girls? I'd guess that a lot of the pressures come from their peers and professional users who are quite openly using their own identity.

Cyberstalkers use phony IDs. Consider the case of the mother who harassed her own daughter last year.

I would suggest that those cases are a minor issue and the major negative pressure comes from general interaction with peers (whose names they know) or comparing themselves and their lives to professional social media users (almost always openly using their name).

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

#606

Post by [deleted] »

pjc50 wrote: post #561
rayiner wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "land of free speech" always has a big "not you" exemption that can be wielded against people who aren't WASPy enough WASPs are the ones pushing pornographic books in schools. Florida is one of the most diverse states in the country.

Neither of those things are true? The books being banned are not pornographic?

[deleted]

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

#607

Post by pyuser583 »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #353
pyuser583 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems they’re worried about peer to peer interactions. My experience regulating my daughters internet access is that interactions with other kids have the highest potential for toxicity. They seem ok with kids passively consuming a stream of adult generated content. They’re also excluding SaaS which just emulates desktop software. I think that’s about right.

Guess we should ban all teens from stack overflow, LinkedIn, and hacker news because kids might have toxic interactions online if we don't. Let's also not mention how the only way to reliably do this is to require identity verification from all adults. Get ready to scan your drivers license to post on hacker news and every other site (except traditional news sites apparently).

I would support this. Downvote away.

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

#608

Post by pyuser583 »

frob wrote: post #476
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess we should ban all teens from stack overflow, LinkedIn, and hacker news because kids might have toxic interactions online if we don't. Let's also not mention how the only way to reliably do this is to require identity verification from all adults. Get ready to scan your drivers license to post on hacker news and every other site (except traditional news sites apparently).

Utah is small enough that some sites may just geoblock Utah. I know if I had to choose between collecting every user's ID ever and just adding a block list, I'd go with the second.

How do websites handle under 13s? Blocking the United States?

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

#609

Post by rayiner »

heavyset_go wrote: post #598
whats_a_quasar wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mental health of teens and pre-teens has gotten really bad. This isn't just another "think of the children scare." Since the early 2010s the rate of self harm among girls 10-14 has ~tripled, and the rate of suicide among 10-14 year olds has doubled [1]. And there is now lots of evidence that this is because of social media and smartphones. The social lives of kids have changed drastically, in a way that does not…

> https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-teen-mental-illness... I don't necessarily buy the premise that the economy isn't having poor effects on teenagers' mental health just because the GFC is "over". Maybe to financial markets it is, but for people who need to work for a living, things changed since 2008 for the worse. Teens are more likely to see their parents struggle to pay bills despite working full-time and…

Is that the economy, or is it the way people are socialized to think about the economy, and life in general? The suicide rate in America is four times higher than in the poor developing country I’m from.

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

#610

Post by thomastjeffery »

heavyset_go wrote: post #306

I feel like this is a response to the exponential popularity of sites like r/exmormon among younger generations. For example, look at these exceptions. It seems like organic, unapproved discussion between users is what the bill is trying to stifle: > (D) news, sports, entertainment, or other content that is preselected by the provider and not user generated, ... (Q) to permit comments on a digital news website, if th…

I think you have recognized a significant part of the motivations behind this, but you're missing a key detail: pornography.

The Corporation for the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - which is currently embarrassed to be known colloquially as the Mormon church - has declared "pornography" to be one of the most menacing and dangerous things in our society.

Most of the people in Utah's government, including the governor and both senators, are active members in the Mormon church. "Active" is a key word here: it is not by any means a casual relationship, especially if you want political support from other Mormons.

The narratives surrounding porn as "a threat to children" tend to conclude that all content a child interacts with must be curated to protect them from that danger.

It's trivial to just blacklist pornhub et al with DNS filtering. You can't go blocking Reddit or Facebook, though: that would be an overreach, placing you clearly in the realm of "helicopter parenting".

This law has two effects:

1. It gives parents the social excuse to invade their children's privacy: It's the law's fault now.

2. It gives parents the social responsibility to invade their children's privacy: it must be irresponsible not to.

To invade a child's privacy is to do harm. This law, and all of the intent it came from, demands that harm be done in the name of safety.

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