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Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

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Re: Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

#51

Post by kelnos »

tgv wrote: post #21
beardyw wrote: post #12

Parents seem to get out of this scot free. I see young children who's behaviour is ignored for long periods of time while parents are "busy" on their phones. The idea of parents being responsible for the upbringing of their children seems to be something which has disappeared.

> Parents seem to get out of this scot free. What's the point of pointing the finger at that amorphous, anonymous mass of people? Incarcerate parents if they don't educate their children properly? Fine them if they allow their offspring too much phone time?

Maybe? Deliberately exposing kids to addictive things that cause depression? That sounds like child abuse to me.

Re: Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

#52

Post by kelnos »

robertlagrant wrote: post #41
Rinzler89 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, thanks to EU regs, Meta and Google were forced to allow you to finally disconnect the accounts Facebook-Oculus, Google-Youtube, the way it was in the past. Having single point of failure accounts, like seeing your email account banned because your YouTube videos got Copyright struck was insane. It's clear we can't just leave everything to the free market, when a lot of the internet and digital services end up c…

> It's clear we can't just leave everything to the free market We definitely aren't doing that. But these services are enormously hard to get right, work really well, and are entirely opt-in. You're critiquing luxury services, which isn't a strong need for regulation.

How are Google and YouTube "luxury services"? Billions of people of all walks of life have access to them.

Re: Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

#53

Post by kelnos »

robertlagrant wrote: post #43
HenryBemis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do need laws. A parent cannot fight a fight versus ten-twenty billion/trillion dollar companies. Sugar in your cornflakes, sounds and graphics in your games, insane tracking on ads, and so on. Those a-holes end up knowing more about your kid than you. And if you try to "fight" them by blocking their access to your kid, they got so many kids hooked up already that the exposure to garbage is unavoidable by some kid…

> A parent cannot fight a fight versus ten-twenty billion/trillion dollar companies Of course they can. I won't buy my kids a Javelin from Raytheon, nor a smartphone with Facebook on. With or without laws stopping me.

That's fine until your teenager becomes a social outcast because they're not allowed to use the social media and messaging apps their peers use.

Re: Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

#54

Post by makeitdouble »

kelnos wrote: post #49
makeitdouble wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you're not giving your kids access to modern tools (photo, audio recording, translation etc.). You're inserting yourself between them and their grand parents, close family etc. not letting them navigate a safe social circle. You're closing their world and this is a different angle to blame. PS: I am heavily biased, but in general I think we can give parents a break. Some of them must be shitty, but tradition…

I don't buy that. Once kids are around 10 or maybe even as late as 12 or so, sure, if they aren't connected via whatever social media or messaging platform their peers are using, there will be severe social consequences. But a 3-year-old doesn't need to be watching things on a tablet at the dinner table. A 7-year-old doesn't need "access to modern tools", at least not unfettered, whenever-they-want access. I also don…

You're giving me the "we grew fine even if X and Y" argument, and there is no real measure of how fine average people actually are.

My parents grew with no TV, no internet and not that much radio either, and boy they aren't fine. They have other skills, but they're also really bad at understanding what's happening in the world today. What's neither in their local paper nor facebook feed could as well not exist, and they're not better for it.

Do 7 yo kids benefit from having a decent dictionary instead of some skimped "portable" paper version or a 4kg reference with still sizeable limitations ? Does it help if they can google how many legs ants have instead of waiting for you to be available and google it for them ?

You do you, but I also don't buy blanket statement on how technology is wasted on kids, just because we can come up with random scenari where it's not that great.

Re: Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

#55

Post by tgv »

kelnos wrote: post #51
tgv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parents seem to get out of this scot free. What's the point of pointing the finger at that amorphous, anonymous mass of people? Incarcerate parents if they don't educate their children properly? Fine them if they allow their offspring too much phone time?

Maybe? Deliberately exposing kids to addictive things that cause depression? That sounds like child abuse to me.

You can't really check on a hundred million parents, so why not take away the root cause?

Re: Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

#56

Post by sim7c00 »

sloowm wrote: post #44
sim7c00 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying apps cause you to waste your time, is giving away your responsibility of your own life to some apps. If you sleepwalk into this, and they 'fix' it, what's to keep you sleepwalking into the next thing? People struggling with addiction should seek professional help if they really struggle rather than waiting for laws to protect them... - this is never going to solve their additions...

I think this is very naive. The whole reason marketing is so lucrative is because the human brain is so easily exploited. That exploitation is to no benefit of society or the individual and an individual practically stands no chance against it. We also don't allow drugs to be distributed and marketed. There are many limitations to cigarette sales and they have shown to be successful. Maybe the next thing someone slee…

It's naive and not naive. The brain is easily exploited mainly due to lack of awareness and education on the matter. It's not inherently exploitable itself. People simply are unaware of it happening. Those who are or become aware, generally get really turned off by it.

I do agree, it's naive in the sense that you say, most people do seem unaware for the large part, atleast of the effect it has on them untill its too late (and they complain about it themselves - it's all subjective ofcourse).

I don't think the next thing is someone sleepwalking into pleasant conversations with people coding etc. - I would love that, but i don't see a company earning billions from it - so it's unlikely.

The reason they get you to sleepwalk into things is because they know you wouldn't consume it when awake. Its not because people naturally sleepwalk all their lives...

Re: Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

#57

Post by ryandvm »

iraldir wrote: post #15

I'd personally target the "source" of the addictiveness: outlaw behavioral analytics that, on those apps, analyse any detail of your navigation (how fast you scroll, where you stop etc.). A: Many people are not aware that's a thing: "I did not click like on a racist video, but it keeps showing them to me", when in reality, the algorithm detected that you slowed down when shown that type of content so decided to feed…

Absolutely. Outlawing the "meaningful content algorithms" would go a long way towards solving this problem.

Re: Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

#59

Post by makeitdouble »

ItsBob wrote: post #26
beardyw wrote: post #12

Parents seem to get out of this scot free. I see young children who's behaviour is ignored for long periods of time while parents are "busy" on their phones. The idea of parents being responsible for the upbringing of their children seems to be something which has disappeared.

I think that parents have the overwhelming bulk of the responsibility for what their kids have access to but as I've said to my parents in the past: "You're up against Nobel Prize winners who work for an organization with the goal of getting you addicted to ". When you have thousands of devs trying to break your will power, you're really gonna struggle. Social media has passed me by (almost 50yo) and I have zero inte…

> the solution is probably abstinence.

That doesn't bode well, discussing this on a community site.

That also means to ask our kids to only ever establish social ties in setups we control: as adults have moved online (again, we're on a forum having this discussion), there's so fewer places irl to get random information. So a kid has to go through us to get anything, including information about what they want to watch/read/see.

A kid won't stumble upon a movie when there's no local theaters. Bookstores have also become way more limited if they're still there. Record shops are dead. Other kids recommendations only go so far, especially if they are also restricted. Libraries are the last bastion for a modicum of natural discovery imho.

Today for a kid to come into contact with something their parents don't care about, social media access is the main avenue left.

Re: Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

#60

Post by yipbub »

kelnos wrote: post #48
yipbub wrote: post #17

I wonder how many people talking about self-control have a good relationship with their phone? I don't know anyone personally who likes their relationship with their phone. I've been considering and trying to practice being kinder to myself, my phone, and my relationship with it. I still want to use less of it, but it's now a part of us, and will take time to almost amputate. I want to just stop feeding it, and let i…

I'm mostly happy with my relationship with my phone. Part of it is setting things up so it's not front and center in my life (disabling and/or silencing most notifications and only allowing calls and messaging apps to vibrate) and not really having a lot of "interesting" things on it that are easy to slide into and hard to pull out of (social media, which I've been fully off of for 4 or 5 years, and addictive games).…

Thank you for sharing your experience. It was valuable to me!
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