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Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

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Re: Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

#51

Post by pacman1337 »

krapp wrote: post #33
AmbroseBierce wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm sure surviving adolescence needs even more insecurities brought by comparing yourself to the ad-fueled fake happiness machinery that is social media, let's wait for the damage during a couple of decades so we can have conclusive data that satisfies you before we decide to do something, feels like not having enough people with terminal cancer to decide to do something about cigarettes.

That's an emotional statement, not a rational one, which kind of proves the point that what's going on here is a moral panic. As does a cursory glance at this thread. It's all heat and very little light.

This exactly the issue. Anyone with common sense knows that social media have many negative effects, attention span, negative beliefs and ideas, addiction, etc. Just like inhaling smoke into your lungs can't be healthy right? But then comes so called scientist who say well since we thought the the universe was Euclidean but now we see it is non-Euclidean what is common sense is not common sense, there is no common sense. We need some sort of impossible proof to what was originally common sense.

Re: Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

#52

Post by droidjj »

D-Machine wrote: post #44
droidjj wrote: post #34

This severely underplays the "risks" of not banning social media for teenagers. The link between social media use and mental health problems in teens is extremely well documented.

No, the evidence is quite flimsy and correlational, and this is clearly a moral panic. EDIT: See e.g. https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/27396/chapter/6#93 , and if you think this is what constitutes "clear evidence", well, you have some very questionable epistemological standards. EDIT2: Also, limit yourself to proper longitudinal studies and then look at the actual effect sizes reported. You will find, yes, the…

I'm not an expert in this area, but this seems far from flimsy.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

Can you please explain how I'm wrong?

Re: Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

#53

Post by iamalizard »

AmbroseBierce wrote: post #48
iamalizard wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this solution has several negatives that likely make it net negative. It normalizes age verification online which will likely lead to a less free internet. We could wait for decades until a really privacy-preserving way of age verification will come but what will happen is we'll have to give up our privacy and anonymity to a few large governments and companies. It opens to door for regulating any kind of communic…

Did you know the DOJ is starting to use subpoenas to unmask reddit users that criticize ICE? if you really care about free communication that's the kind of stuff you should be worrying about, not shilling for corpos trying to convince your daughter that she looks ugly so she ask her parents to buy more beauty products.

I am worried about this and completely oppose these subpoenas. In an ideal world all communications would be over a censorship/subpoena-resistant protocol and the government wouldn't try to infiltrate or stop any kind of online communication. I wish we can collectively ditch Meta, Google, Twitter, reddit and all the other centralized crap for something better. I don't have accounts there and if I had a company I wouldn't even make a company account there even it would mean I'd lose visibility and potential customers.

I hate those companies with a passion. I know most of us here do even if some of us work there (I don't and will not; I'm not even in IT right now). Yet I see how easily regulations against these centralized platforms will expand to regulations on communication in general, whether it's commercial centralized ones or an FOSS decentralized E2EE ones.

Re: Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

#54

Post by AmbroseBierce »

krapp wrote: post #50
AmbroseBierce wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue of having to prove things beyond any doubt before we do something is a systemic problem that science itself it's aware of about itself and have been discussed extensively in purely rational settings, how many lives would have been saved from lung cancer if academics had took more seriously the initial research about smoking?. So no I don't believe for a second you are discussing in good faith, instead it se…

>instead it seems like you quite a clear agenda and wouldn't care much about any evidence against social media, maybe because you work at one of those corporations or just are ideologically attached to one. And there it is. I don't agree with you so I must be a shill or a disinfo agent. No, I'm not. I just disagree with you. No one is actually arguing that things have to be proven beyond any doubt. Nor is anyone argu…

It's already impossible to even talk about Palestine in TikTok, the biggest social network used by teens, so if you think corporations will not willingly bend to distort free speech you are quite delusional, the ability to make up one's mind is also inversely related to how much propaganda you are exposed to, in other words to be free enough to think for yourself.

Re: Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

#55

Post by iamalizard »

strictnein wrote: post #43
iamalizard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I know, asbestos is bad when it gets airborne. If it's installed correctly, if workers wear PPE when handling it and if there are periodic checks for cracks, leaks and so on, it's safe. From what I've read, at least - I'm not an expert by any means. I've removed asbestos from a few old buildings but wore PPE. It was very uncomfortable to have the masks and suit on. I even threw away the cloth bags I had to…

The average person interacting with social media doesn't have a bunny suit that protects them from its ills, like you did with asbestos. This is doubly true for children. Your example thus kind of shows the opposite: dangerous things can be made safe, with a solid understanding of their risks and techniques that are proven to make them safe. We have neither the former nor the the latter for social media.

The bunny suit for a child is the parents, teachers and social workers.

Like I said in another comment - if a parent is working 3 jobs and doesn't have time for their children, change the subsidies given to the parent for having children. Make child care free or really accessible.

A child needs a parent or at least a role model. If you ban social media, the children will still see random crap on the internet, whether it's YouTube videos or content from random sites too small or shady to be regulated. Do you want 100% of the internet regulated or do you want the government to empower the children and their parents? We have the resources, we just haven't allocated them correctly. Otherwise a parent would have time to spend with their children.

Re: Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

#56

Post by chucksta »

iamalizard wrote: post #47
lesuorac wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and C yields bug free performance software when used correctly.

I get what you're saying but installing asbestos correctly is much easier than writing an app that could have security implications in C, is more easily detectable where things go wrong and it affects less people if things go wrong. And the people using asbestos in their homes, or buying homes with asbestos, are endangering themselves. How likely is that an improperly installed or maintained asbestos is going to affe…

If the neighborhood was all built around the same time or by the same developer, I would say high

Re: Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

#57

Post by D-Machine »

droidjj wrote: post #52
D-Machine wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the evidence is quite flimsy and correlational, and this is clearly a moral panic. EDIT: See e.g. https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/27396/chapter/6#93 , and if you think this is what constitutes "clear evidence", well, you have some very questionable epistemological standards. EDIT2: Also, limit yourself to proper longitudinal studies and then look at the actual effect sizes reported. You will find, yes, the…

I'm not an expert in this area, but this seems far from flimsy. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... Can you please explain how I'm wrong?

You're gish-galloping a bunch of random studies, most of which appear to be cross-sectional. I've linked a broad review.

Even the longitudinal studies are poor here. See, for example, as this Nature article notes:

    "The study has multiple limitations that need to be considered. First, to interpret the parameters from our analyses as estimates of causal effects one would need to adopt the following assumptions: (a) there are no time-varying unobserved confounders that impact the relation between social media use and life satisfaction; (b) the model adequately accounts for unobserved time-invariant confounding through the inclusion of a random intercept; (c) there is no measurement error in the variables; (d) the time interval between studies (one year) is the right length to capture the effects of interest; and (e) the bidirectional links estimated by our longitudinal model are linear in nature. Only if these assumptions are met can this observational study be said to capture the causal effects between social media and life satisfaction. Second, the data are self-report and therefore only allow inferences about the impact of self-estimated time on social media, rather than objectively measured social media use." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29296-3#Sec2
I'd also suggest looking at the coefficients (effect sizes) in the above (standardized regression coefficients barely approaching 0.2 - and this is one of the stronger findings), and other articles. The effects here, even if we were to pretend they were clearly established, are incredibly tiny. Examples:

- social media explaining only 0.4% of variance (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30944443/)

- social-media/mental-health effect around β = .061 (https://christopherjferguson.com/Social%20Media%20Meta.pdf)

These are basically nothing, and yet you have such absolute confidence from people that social media is this big harmful thing. The evidence just isn't there.

Re: Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

#58

Post by iamalizard »

chucksta wrote: post #56
iamalizard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you're saying but installing asbestos correctly is much easier than writing an app that could have security implications in C, is more easily detectable where things go wrong and it affects less people if things go wrong. And the people using asbestos in their homes, or buying homes with asbestos, are endangering themselves. How likely is that an improperly installed or maintained asbestos is going to affe…

If the neighborhood was all built around the same time or by the same developer, I would say high

But the people in each house would suffer from from asbestos in their own house. [0] If I bought a house in such a neighborhood, I'd have it checked from cracks or deterioration. If the results show a risk, I'd inform the neighboring houses, too.

Similar to how if you're using a insecure program written in C, whoever finds the bug should tell you immediately - don't use that program.

[0] You might say that asbestos from 1 house would affect the whole neighborhood but that would be similar to how a smoker smoking in the streets would affect the neighborhood. Second-hand smoking and second-hand asbestos are bad but they're negligible compared to living with a smoker who smokes indoors with the windows closed or smoking yourself.

Re: Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

#59

Post by fyrabanks »

AmbroseBierce wrote: post #14
fyrabanks wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good parenting, as always, remains the best solution

Yeah, tell that to those parents with 3 jobs and can barely make any time with their kids that they have to keep an eye on even more things, things that weren't even a thing in their childhood or their predecessors.

not to sound callous, but that's not good parenting.

my partner and i have reasonably good jobs, but we work 12-14hrs. we make mortgage and have some extra money. we are currently debating whether or not it is financially, morally, or ethically responsible to bring a child into this world and be able to provide them with the attention that they need and deserve.

Re: Social media bans for teenagers lack evidence and pose risks, scientists say

#60

Post by droidjj »

D-Machine wrote: post #57
droidjj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert in this area, but this seems far from flimsy. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... Can you please explain how I'm wrong?

You're gish-galloping a bunch of random studies, most of which appear to be cross-sectional. I've linked a broad review. Even the longitudinal studies are poor here. See, for example, as this Nature article notes: "The study has multiple limitations that need to be considered. First, to interpret the parameters from our analyses as estimates of causal effects one would need to adopt the following assumptions: (a) the…

~Qualifying all of this with the caveat that I'm not a social scientist.~

I really appreciate your response, which made me realize this is more nuanced than I thought at first blush. (I wrote that reply before you linked the National Academies review, which was quite helpful.)

Maybe I am truly morally panicked, but I'm really hesitant to brush aside the evidence as "basically nothing." Small effects are worth paying attention to (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-26026-014). And quantifying the harms of social media use is less like quantifying the harms of, say, smoking cigarettes, because social media has (indeed, is built on) network effects. You could plop a kid from the 50's into a modern American neighborhood and their mental health might decline even if they don't use social media because of the way it has changed childhood. When the social life of an entire generation is transformed by technology, it stops making sense to ask "How much does one hour of Instagram hurt mental health?" Yet that is essentially the question all the studies are designed to answer, and even still, we see an effect.

Anyway, thanks for taking to time to explain your perspective.

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