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The kids with phones are alright

heatherburns.tech

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Re: The kids with phones are alright

#251

Post by brabel »

roundabout-host wrote: post #208
gherkinnn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media, as we have it today, is not healthy for anybody. It is bad, truly bad, and the companies responsible know it. You can't lace beer with crack and sell it. Not to a 12yo, not to a 50yo. Regulate the proverbial crack, then we see if further regulations are required. Earlier this year (0): > “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack…

A concrete example is the annulation of the 2024 Romanian elections. It probably happened because a certain candidate was able to manipulate the TikTok algorithm using (undeclared) paid influencers and spam.

Really bad example. From the Wikipedia article:

“ No evidence established direct connections between Georgescu's campaign and Russian state actors. There were only assertions that there must have been due to his rapid rise on social media”

And:

the "National Liberal Party paid for a campaign on TikTok that ended up favoring ... Georgescu" and not Russia as previously presented to the Constitutional Court.

Also:

On 28 April 2025, right-wing conservative Hungarian think-tank Mathias Corvinus Collegium filed a complaint with the European Ombudsman because the European Commission denied access to the documents containing information on the EU's DSA proceedings in the case.

That’s not something you would expect from a proper investigation. The whole thing is a mess and what we heard on the news at the time is essentially a made up story.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusations_of_Russian_interfe...

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#252

Post by sdevonoes »

NoPicklez wrote: post #96

My question to these sorts of articles is, okay so what do we do then? What do we do when we know that social media it not healthy for kids. Its not good for their attention spans or mental health to a much greater degree than other forms of media. Nobody is saying kids shouldn't have phones, but they should be able to use them without being engulfed in social media content that has been shown to have a negative impa…

The problem to solve is addiction. When I was a kid I could spend the whole day and week in front of the play station… but my parents thought me that, well, that’s not normal (and ofc sent me to sleep every other night). Why social media or phones is different? Parents need to teach these kind of stuff to their kids. It’s the same for drugs, sex, money or any other thing

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#253

Post by bko »

inigyou wrote: post #246
bko wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there was basically a cartel in social media. You saw coordinated censorship campaigns to ban the former president of the United States for example. But I wouldn't discount the amount of political interference there as well. The last administration admitted to flagging individual posts for the social media companies. But it's true there is a lot of coordinated censorship even without state interference. But this…

If it tends to resolve itself then why has it got worse not better? reality seems to contradict your position.

How has it gotten worse? You have a lot more freedom on all social media platforms than you did 4 years ago.

What's gotten worse in some countries is the government censorship which I'm against.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#254

Post by inigyou »

Kiro wrote: post #190
StingyJelly wrote: post #47

Kids with phones are alright. Attention economy of social media is not. As did tabaco companies, they (soc. media tech giants) push proposals to regulate phone use based on age in hopes that the their information asymmetry advantage and addictive dark patterns that are the problem in the first place won't be regulated and they can keep exploiting the public held in their trap by network effect.

Attention economy is a red herring. HN shows that you don't need to do much to be more addictive than TikTok. It's human nature.

You just need easy access to an unpredictable reward. Humans or other animals will pull the lever as much as possible to try to catch a high reward.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#255

Post by adrian17 »

fragmede wrote: post #164
yogorenapan wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got my first bug bounty at 16. Not having access to compute would've drastically changed the direction of my life. I wouldn't have been able to afford university & would likely be working on a farm right now like my cousins

Access to a desktop computer vs a smartphone that they bring to bed with TikTok on it are different though. What was your bug bounty for?

AFAIK a nontrivial (5-10%?) fraction of population own a smartphone without any bigger computing device.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#256

Post by inigyou »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #157
InvisibleUp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s all of YouTube. There’s some good stuff on there, just not in the “Shorts” tab.

> There’s some good stuff on there, just not in the “Shorts” tab. Why do people get so weird about the shorts tab? There are perfectly good videos in there, they're just tilted weird. You can fit quality content into 3 minutes. And remember Elsagate? That was entirely landscape videos.

Because the incentives are very different which leads to different content being available.

Notice how Shorts recently removed the dislike button?

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#257

Post by Hikikomori »

bko wrote: post #194
gherkinnn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media, as we have it today, is not healthy for anybody. It is bad, truly bad, and the companies responsible know it. You can't lace beer with crack and sell it. Not to a 12yo, not to a 50yo. Regulate the proverbial crack, then we see if further regulations are required. Earlier this year (0): > “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack…

Just saying "regulate" it is not an answer and won't give you the results you think. What you'll get is restrictions on speech. UK arrests thousands every year for what essentially amounts to mean tweets. There have been people that comment publicly on horrendous crimes that get harsher sentences than those that commit the crimes. At any point in time politicians could have enforced existing terms of service violatio…

Regulate the algorithmic feeds and similar non opinionated regulations rather than content itself.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#258

Post by rafaelero »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #169
NoPicklez wrote: post #96

My question to these sorts of articles is, okay so what do we do then? What do we do when we know that social media it not healthy for kids. Its not good for their attention spans or mental health to a much greater degree than other forms of media. Nobody is saying kids shouldn't have phones, but they should be able to use them without being engulfed in social media content that has been shown to have a negative impa…

> What do we do when we know that social media it not healthy for kids. Its not good for their attention spans or mental health to a much greater degree than other forms of media. Do we know this? As far as I can tell, the studies are ambivalent at best. Some kids are damaged, others benefit.

The current consensus is that the effects of social media on mental health are in between minimally detrimental to non-existent.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#259

Post by recursive-call »

inigyou wrote: post #245
bko wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thousands of people aren't arrested for "mean comments" or similar What are they arrested for, or are you disputing the number?

Lucy Connolly was arrested for threatening to kill a thousand people, for example.

I think generally the argument is that these usually aren’t credible threats, they’re hyperbole, and the police are overstepping by arresting people for saying they’ll do something when they have no evidence that that person would actually do that. A free society doesn’t arrest someone for saying “I’m going to burn down so-and-so’s house.” It waits until you actually go to so-and-so’s house with a can of petrol, and then arrests you.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#260

Post by exodust »

roundabout-host wrote: post #214
cubefox wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already had a browser. You don't need an app when you have a browser. The addiction is built-in as a latent capability.

The browser itself is not the problem, but the way the platforms design themselves to be very addictive.

> very addictive

The "addictive" insisting by 2 new ones in short time? Getting bot vibes. "We need to classify social media as an addictive substance" more or less. Is that from someone's e-safety commissioner? Or someone wanting back-pay compo right back to MySpace addiction. An absurd idea.

"Some people can't control themselves around video games therefore video games bad", that's what social media has copped.

"Addictive" might mean a bloody well designed user interface that users like. Making buttons easy to access and responsive feedback and just the right amount of visual cues and spicy labels, all in harmony as designed and delivered via well engineered mechanisms. "Too addictive, you must now jump through regulatory hoops". No!

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