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The case for banning children from social media

newyorker.com

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Re: The case for banning children from social media

#231

Post by iudqnolq »

Animats wrote: post #207
iudqnolq wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's far far more complicated than that. See for example: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1029

The court upheld the City of Austin on prohibiting off-premises digital signs, even if some of what they displayed was non-commercial. So that's not a problem.

The court engaged in a complex analysis to determine the appropriate framework for analyzing this specific first amendment advertising case.

This shows there isn't a blanket exemption from first amendment scrutiny for advertising.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#232

Post by whatever1 »

tastysandwich wrote: post #46

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

Computer games are also addictive. Back in my days soccer and basketball were addictive as well. I vividly remember my grandpa despising my uncle for having obsession with playing soccer and not spending more time on his homework.

It seems like a pattern, grown ups just don’t like the way youngsters are spending their time.

Maybe it’s totally normal in your teens to just spend aimlessly time in seemingly useless things ?

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#233

Post by erfgh »

whatever1 wrote: post #232
tastysandwich wrote: post #46

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

Computer games are also addictive. Back in my days soccer and basketball were addictive as well. I vividly remember my grandpa despising my uncle for having obsession with playing soccer and not spending more time on his homework. It seems like a pattern, grown ups just don’t like the way youngsters are spending their time. Maybe it’s totally normal in your teens to just spend aimlessly time in seemingly useless thin…

I didn't know any kids who were addicted to soccer in the sense of spending 15+ hours 365 days per year playing soccer. It's just not feasible physically.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#234

Post by boxed »

unixgoddess wrote: post #225

Few months ago there was some sort of challenge on tiktok, most kids at my local middle school arrived to school with self-inflicted bruises on the face. With this shit, if you don't do it too you are out of the group and goodbye social life. Social media are preying on the group-belonging instincts of kids with tremendous damage not only on the kids themselves, but on society as a whole. However, it's up to parents…

Be glad no one died, like with the blackout challenge or the cinnamon challenge.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#235

Post by camgunz »

iudqnolq wrote: post #231
Animats wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The court upheld the City of Austin on prohibiting off-premises digital signs, even if some of what they displayed was non-commercial. So that's not a problem.

The court engaged in a complex analysis to determine the appropriate framework for analyzing this specific first amendment advertising case. This shows there isn't a blanket exemption from first amendment scrutiny for advertising.

I didn't delve into the opinions but it seems like the decision relied on basic content-neutral doctrine. That's par for the course 1A stuff.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#236

Post by whatever1 »

erfgh wrote: post #233
whatever1 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer games are also addictive. Back in my days soccer and basketball were addictive as well. I vividly remember my grandpa despising my uncle for having obsession with playing soccer and not spending more time on his homework. It seems like a pattern, grown ups just don’t like the way youngsters are spending their time. Maybe it’s totally normal in your teens to just spend aimlessly time in seemingly useless thin…

I didn't know any kids who were addicted to soccer in the sense of spending 15+ hours 365 days per year playing soccer. It's just not feasible physically.

Ok, fellow southern European and Latin American HN folks, help me out here.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#237

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

tastysandwich wrote: post #46

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

> That's why I think, don't bother trying to regulate social media. Just ban it for under 18s when they're most vulnerable.

> I don't relish this solution either. When I was 13, I was on forums making online friends. I loved it. But it was clearly different back then, before smartphones, before content-creators, when the internet was mostly nerds.

The main difference between forums like that (which still exist) and social media is monetization, which leads to optimizing for "engagement" and incentivizing addictive behavior.

So IMO the solution would be to ban corporate/for-profit social media.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#238

Post by debugnik »

9dev wrote: post #214
kevinmchugh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is unlike drugs in that if you abstain while your peers use you're in some ways worse off. I wonder if there's a narrower ban to be had, either on image usage or especially on filters

Not drinking in social settings will make you worse off by a lot. People feel uneasy and judged if someone refuses to drink alcohol with them, so unless you're very strong-willed, this coerces most people into drinking. This isn't as easy as it sounds at first.

> People feel uneasy and judged if someone refuses to drink alcohol with them

I always read this on HN but I've never cared, or met any adult that seemed to care, when only a few of us drink beer in a group. Is this a US/Anglosphere thing maybe?

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#239

Post by erfgh »

whatever1 wrote: post #236
erfgh wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know any kids who were addicted to soccer in the sense of spending 15+ hours 365 days per year playing soccer. It's just not feasible physically.

Ok, fellow southern European and Latin American HN folks, help me out here.

I am Southern European by the way and I played more soccer than most kids. Even so, it wasn't possible for me to take soccer out of my pocket when I went to the toilet or when I was in bed and should be sleeping or when I was in class.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#240

Post by Karrot_Kream »

hattmall wrote: post #43
p1necone wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder sometimes how much of the supposed ills of social media are just social media making things that were already happening much more visible. I and many others were bullied relentlessly at school through regular non technological means, and I'm sure it had a pretty negative psychological impact. I'm not really convinced it would be any worse if I was more active on Instagram/TikTok/whatever.

Did the bullying stop or slow down when you got home? Did you have to check online every 5 minutes to see what pictures of you were posted? Was embarrassing content being spread around to people you had never even interacted with on a regular basis. Did Photoshopped images of you hanging from a ceiling fan with a Nike Swoosh and a caption saying "Just Do it" get 10,000 likes? IMO bullying today is orders of magnitude…

> Did the bullying stop or slow down when you got home? Did you have to check online every 5 minutes to see what pictures of you were posted? Was embarrassing content being spread around to people you had never even interacted with on a regular basis.

Yes, it happened over AIM and before that it happened via phone calls between friends. I'm too young to have gone to school before phones.

> Did Photoshopped images of you hanging from a ceiling fan with a Nike Swoosh and a caption saying "Just Do it" get 10,000 likes?

People did horrible pranks like this all the time when I was in school. They didn't get likes, they were just passed out between periods in school or taped up on windows. Photoshop was released in 1990, I can guarantee you that 15 years ago kids were Photoshopping people too.

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