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

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

#181

Post by brazzy »

drkleiner wrote: post #127
idle_zealot wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 used to be a village, with nice cozy places and communities but also shady weird individuals and houses you're not supposed to enter Now it is a shopping mall, sanitized, organized, brands and ads plastered all around, not really for socializing and community but more for products and marketing, you can still find a bookstore or a cafe but in the end, shopping mall is there to make you shop

And it's a shopping mall that has a bunch of big stores that openly sell meth, and advertize for it aggressively.

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

#182

Post by jajko »

rgbrenner wrote: post #145

The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…

You dont have kids, do you. Seeing them being pushed out of entire school community due to higher principles is heartbreaking to say at least, this is place from which teen suicides come from. Parents usually cave in the pressure.

I would go and even claim I would ban all current social media platforms below 18. Ther are simply not enough protections, consistently, its place ripe for abuse and tons abuse is happening every day as we speak. I know we will keep our own kids off this for as long as possible, but eventually harm from absence will be greater.

Parents shouldnt be choosing lesser evil like that, just that some meta employees can cash half a million and think what a great addition to mankind they are, when reality is closer to definition of cancer.

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

#183

Post by WalterBright »

logicchains wrote: post #158
WalterBright wrote: post #78

I find sadly amusing the argument that kids need their phones in school in case of emergency. If the kid has an emergency, the teacher can call the parents. If the parents are having an emergency, the can call the school.

>If the kid has an emergency, the teacher can call the parents. If the parents are having an emergency, the can call the school. What about if the kid's being bullied? Half the time the teacher will side with the bully, especially if the bully's a more popular kid.

Have cell phones ever stopped bullying?

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

#184

Post by qwery »

As many point out every time this comes up, regulating access to social media products by requiring ID checks and age gating will almost certainly not work effectively, will harm the web overall and that's if its not implemented in a half-arsed way. It's a bad idea.

You want people to stop buying cigarettes? Don't let the cigarette companies advertise. Require warning labels, plain packaging, increase tariffs, etc.

The society doesn't exist to support the businesses poisoning it.

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

#185

Post by thefz »

rgbrenner wrote: post #145

The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…

> And just like the Supreme Court wrote 30 years ago, the answer is the same today: if you don't like these products and feel they are negative, then don't use them. Restrict your children's access to these platforms.

100% my reply to any critic of teenage social media, but the parents' stance is always "but then my kid is going to FOMO and feel left out".

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

#186

Post by manmal »

qwery wrote: post #184

As many point out every time this comes up, regulating access to social media products by requiring ID checks and age gating will almost certainly not work effectively, will harm the web overall and that's if its not implemented in a half-arsed way. It's a bad idea. You want people to stop buying cigarettes? Don't let the cigarette companies advertise. Require warning labels, plain packaging, increase tariffs, etc. T…

I mean how would you bypass an ID check? Parents can’t share a FB account with their kids.

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

#187

Post by idle_zealot »

drkleiner wrote: post #127
idle_zealot wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 used to be a village, with nice cozy places and communities but also shady weird individuals and houses you're not supposed to enter Now it is a shopping mall, sanitized, organized, brands and ads plastered all around, not really for socializing and community but more for products and marketing, you can still find a bookstore or a cafe but in the end, shopping mall is there to make you shop

This interpretation is funny considering the other post in this thread bemoaning the loss of the shopping malls of their youth. As a metaphor it's on the right track, but the way the internet has been commercialized is even more extreme than a shopping mall, in the sense that experience is individually curated for each visitor and every tap, moment of hesitation, and utterance between friends is catalogued by the "store owner".

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

#188

Post by audunw »

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’s ridiculous to suggest that you destroy all of internet anonymity by requiring ID for mass-scale ad-funded social media

It’s the commercial side of the equation that’s the problem. It’s what gives these social media companies perverse incentives when it comes to engagement. So any social media site that can’t effectively tap into the US ad market at a significant scale will not have as much of a problem. I don’t think the pre-Facebook forums was as much of a problem even though they might have had some ads here and there.

So VPNs and all that just isn’t a concern. You don’t need a great firewall. You just need to regulate commercial business, which is not at all a crazy proposition.

The other side of this is that the US really, really should implement an effective federal ID system with two factor authentication. This is becoming commonplace almost everywhere else in the world, and not having it creates very serious security and privacy risks.

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

#189

Post by xandrius »

qwery wrote: post #184

As many point out every time this comes up, regulating access to social media products by requiring ID checks and age gating will almost certainly not work effectively, will harm the web overall and that's if its not implemented in a half-arsed way. It's a bad idea. You want people to stop buying cigarettes? Don't let the cigarette companies advertise. Require warning labels, plain packaging, increase tariffs, etc. T…

I think if social media were required to have a subscription (even $1/month), they're usage would go down overnight.

Of course, how can anyone force them (as then they could argue that a platform is social media vs online forum or else) but that could be interesting.

Also it would prevent having to be on all the platforms, since you have to pay, one would choose the one(s) they strictly prefer/need, not literally all of them.

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

#190

Post by zigman1 »

smokel wrote: post #180
rgbrenner wrote: post #145

The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…

> then don't use them This assumes that humans are rational agents. I think that drug addiction, wars in Israel and Ukraine, conspiracy theorists, and free-climbers sufficiently prove that this is not the case. If only life were so easy, we would not even need to have this discussion.

It's the country's role or more specifically, the role of education to equip citizens with skills that will help them navigate virtual, deceiving and fake internet space.
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