One thing that social media does to young minds is it shatters their attention into pieces, with all those flashing and moving rectangles on phone screens, and squeezes all the value it can from each piece. What's left is a mind unable to focus, that passively floats from one distraction to another.
Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
101–110 of 1001 posts
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#102This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…
> completely destroying internet anonymity.
Stores that sell age restricted products already can also sell "adult passes".
Each adult pass costs less than $5, and contains a single use scratch off code that you can use to prove you are of age. When you want to sign up for social media or porn, you need a code. Mutiple companies can implement and sell them.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#103This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…
> completely destroying internet anonymity. Stores that sell age restricted products already can also sell "adult passes". Each adult pass costs less than $5, and contains a single use scratch off code that you can use to prove you are of age. When you want to sign up for social media or porn, you need a code. Mutiple companies can implement and sell them.
There would be a huge black market of selling to the underage immediately defeating the purpose.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard disagree. It’s algorithmic “engagement maximizing” systems, specifically. (Engagement is code for addiction.) If those pocket PCs had useful and creative apps only and maybe some non-addiction-optimized games they’d be fine. The problem is the apps, not the hardware. With kids the absolute worst seem to be YouTube, TikTok, and Roblox. All three are banned in our house. The kids have their own devices (with monit…
YouTube has a treasure trove of creative, stimulating, enlightening, entertaining, and didactic content. There is more interesting stuff there than you could watch in many lifetimes: science from Veritasium to lectures from Stanford on every topic imaginable, thousands of hours of high-quality content on every topic from WW2 to the most niche retro computer you can thing of, the best orchestras in the world playing a…
I understand that YouTube has zero incentive for this but this is the kids mode I would like to have. A white-list of channels that I could negotiate with my kids. A couple of their favorite streamers that I also know that release material every other day, some weekly, so that the content can run out. "oh you watched YouTube all afternoon and you watched it all? Oh too bad, go out and play". And when I think about why YouTube never will add this feature, I get angry.
Edit:sure I could also add a couple of education channels but my kids would sooner go out and play.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#105This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…
I don't think you have to destroy internet anonymity. Just fine parents like $25 or $50 bucks every time anyone can link their kid to social media use. Give people rewards for reporting it or something. Even as little as driving kids towards platforms that incentivize anonymous interaction over real name and face stuff is probably enough move the needle. That said, I think social media use has a very overlapping relationship with allowing kids unsupervised and/or frequent and lengthy use of tablets and phones from early ages, which I suspect is also destructive.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#106This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…
I don't think you have to destroy internet anonymity. Just fine parents like $25 or $50 bucks every time anyone can link their kid to social media use. Give people rewards for reporting it or something. Even as little as driving kids towards platforms that incentivize anonymous interaction over real name and face stuff is probably enough move the needle. That said, I think social media use has a very overlapping rela…
That would be immediately framed as an assault on poor families.
You can't force people to not hurt themselves.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#107This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…
It doesn’t have to be a technical ban. Just make it the law and let companies, schools, parents, and kids take their punishment when found to happen.
This should be enough for the risk averse to take open devices away from children and bolster parents.
It’s not important to stop every possible access, simply that adults have the authority to say no and be supported by society instead of undermined.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jonathan Haidt, the author of this article, was on Real Time w Bill Maher recently, and has some simple recommendations with respect to phones and social media: 1. No smartphones for kids before high school — give them only flip phones in middle school. 2. No social media before age 16. 3. Make schools phone-free, by putting devices in phone lockers or Yondr pouches. 4. Give kids far more free play and independence,…
Why 16 specifically? Apparently the brain doesn't stop developing until much later, around 25.
I mean it's a standard age for allowing privileges (driving) to start in the US at least.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#109This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…
Achieving 90% of not is simpler than you think: ban smartphones from schools during school bours. If the parents want the kid to have a phone, then the parents can get a flip phone.
Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness
#110When we was teenagers we had unrestricted broadband access to the internet but what was missing was the constant comparison hellhole like Instagram that is causing mental illness. WaReZ, KaZaA, Ogrish, CD-Keys, drugs, weapon making tutorials, Mail-order-drugs. This was the wild west days of the internet. You could literally put up anything you could sell anything and everything. Classmates were downloading roms, porn…
What you're describing sounds more socially healthy than modern usage. It was kids exploring the world digitally. Now that's been captured by digital fiefdoms actively manipulating their users into unhealthy levels of engagement by any means necessary.
Internet before 9/11 and after 9/11 basically. What the Patriot Act did was eat at the foundations of freedom that American founders set out to create and the internet became public enemy #1 overnight, something that had to be controlled, regulated, and monopolized by American corporations in the form of social media, search engines, youtube etc.
Like the rebellious soviet youths finding itself through Viktor Tsoi, the pre-911 internet offered us Western kids a brief moment of true freedom, we didn't need heroes, because our minds were free from algorithms designed to sap every bit of happiness.