Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness • Hacker News Board

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#131

Post by oblio » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 5:17 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #118

miki123211 wrote: post #95

This 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…

There are two avenues to deal with a hazard. You can try to manipulate the environment to eliminate the hazard, or you can try to strengthen people to make them immune to the hazard. I think we should prefer the latter over the former whenever possible. For one thing, it's more robust. The environment is messy and control is often illusory at best. Control limits freedoms and introduces centralized points of failure…

The brain has some flaws that are very hard to overcome. Addictions are some of them.

There's a reason almost every country in the world regulates and restricts gambling.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#132

Post by mtillman » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 5:17 AM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #95

This 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…

Is anything with a share button social? What are the lines?

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#133

Post by agentgumshoe » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 5:17 AM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #107

miki123211 wrote: post #95

This 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.

Now, define 'social media' clearly and we're all good.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#134

Post by BoiledCabbage » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 5:18 AM UTC

mptest wrote: post #114

hollerith wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity I am skeptical of this push to elevate internet anonymity to a new fundamental principle for organizing society.

>elevate internet anonymity to a new fundamental principle for organizing society You mean privacy? Internet anonymity is a downstream byproduct of our right to privacy, not some new concept devised in the internet age. We've had the fourth amendment for quite some time.

OP hit the nail on the head. Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing. You can absolutely provide privacy without requiring anonymity.

I can have privacy in a conversation in my house without anonymity. I can have privacy in the woods. I don't have anonymity while walking down the street, but have pseudo-privacy. If I begin preaching on a street corner should I expect anonymity? If I join a members only fraternal hall that meets monthly, do I have anonymity? Do I have privacy? To what degree? Those are the scenarios we should be focusing on achieving.

As OP said [we should not]... > >elevate internet anonymity to a new fundamental principle for organizing society

This is probably the most important comment on this topic. You can't build a society on top of anonymity. The problem people should be out here solving is how to provide privacy without requiring anonymity. And when you have the itch to respond with a quick thought of "it's impossible," pause and think about how we accomplish it in the "real world" and then revisit.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#135

Post by oblio » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 5:18 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #116

miki123211 wrote: post #95

This 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…

> that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. This is why I can’t take any calls for banning social media for kids on HN seriously: The moment anyone introduced any legislation to limit social media access by age, this creates a de facto requirement to verify ID. The people in this thread would be up in arms as soon as the government tried to force companies to collect their ID to use…

Oooor, hear me out, that part could be a government run ID validation service (as in SaaS). Crazy, right?

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#136

Post by littlestymaar » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 5:18 AM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #95

This 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…

You're going way too far in your reasoning, acting as if the state had to directly enforce it itself. But it doesn't have to: social networks are run by companies that makes profit doing so and that can be strong-armed into doing the control by themselves or be fined if they fail to comply (and we're talking about company whose entire business is about profiling their users to maximize their ads revenues, so they have zero difficulty recognizing teenagers, and more importantly content that is targeted at teenagers).

And even more importantly you're missing the point of why people go to social networks in the first place: because everybody they know is there! If it becomes cumbersome to access, most people won't go, and then there's no more appeal. It's not as if it was porn or stuff like that, that has a purpose on its own that makes people willing to circumvent the restrictions no matter what. Social networks are “networks” and if you break the network effect, you've broken the system. American people don't go on VK not because it's less good than Facebook, but because there's no point in doing so.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#137

Post by safety1st » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 5:18 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #118

miki123211 wrote: post #95

This 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…

There are two avenues to deal with a hazard. You can try to manipulate the environment to eliminate the hazard, or you can try to strengthen people to make them immune to the hazard. I think we should prefer the latter over the former whenever possible. For one thing, it's more robust. The environment is messy and control is often illusory at best. Control limits freedoms and introduces centralized points of failure…

I think we should start with removing the immunity that large platforms possess against relevant criminal prosecutions. So let's take for example suicide, in some jurisdictions driving another individual toward suicide is a criminal matter. If evidence can be put forward in a court that they used a lot of social media and that the algorithm contributed to that suicide, well maybe the publisher should be getting prosecuted.

Do I expect that some social media companies are really going to struggle to continue to operate at their current scale because of these changes? Yes I 100% expect it and I think it's great. It may lead to a smaller and more personal web. Your business model has no inherent right to exist if it harms people. Maybe, for example, you will need to hire more humans to handle moderation so that you stop killing people, and if humans don't scale, well, too bad, you're going to get smaller. We regulate gambling, tobacco etc. to limit the harm they do, I don't see any difference with social media.

To have the biggest impact without stifling innovation we can start by applying this rule to platforms which are above a certain revenue level. There is likely a combination of legislative and judicial action here in that there may already be crimes on the books which these platforms are committing, but the judiciary has not traditionally thought of a corporation being the person who committed that crime, certainly not at scale against thousands of victims. In other cases we may need to amend laws to make it clear that just because you used an algorithm to harm people at scale, doesn't make you immune to consequences from the harm you caused.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#138

Post by _def » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 5:19 AM UTC

How is the author not seeing that both sides of this debate are right and connected to each other? I guess the will to be right enables this

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#139

Post by willvarfar » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 5:19 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #118

miki123211 wrote: post #95

This 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…

There are two avenues to deal with a hazard. You can try to manipulate the environment to eliminate the hazard, or you can try to strengthen people to make them immune to the hazard. I think we should prefer the latter over the former whenever possible. For one thing, it's more robust. The environment is messy and control is often illusory at best. Control limits freedoms and introduces centralized points of failure…

I agree that we can't effectively manipulate the environment to eliminate the hazard, but I also worry that we can't effectively strengthen people to make them immune to the hazard either.

A common thread through all human history is people being misled on-mass. Before social media we were slaves to the tabloid headlines. Before widespread papers we were slaves to the pulpit. Etc.

For the last 10 years social media has been the tabloid but personalised. Outrage = engagement so the algorithms have pushed outrage, and personalized in the sense that they have searched for the thing that outrages each of us individually.

I fear that the next 10 years of social media is very basic generative stuff (LLMs don't need to get better; social media companies just have to apply what the current art), turning them into tabloid with intimacy. By turning into your friend in how they communicate with you, they get engagement x10.

The way to change someones mind is through intimacy.

And humans are suckers for it. We can't strengthen the masses against outrage, and we can't strengthen the individual against intimacy.

Sorry for being so pessimistic.

Re: Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness

#140

Post by Buttons840 » Wed, Apr 10, 2024, 5:21 AM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #107

miki123211 wrote: post #95

This 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.

That will look real good, a parent decides certain reading and social activities are okay for their child, and now it's time for the government to punish everyone involved.