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The kids with phones are alright

heatherburns.tech

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Re: The kids with phones are alright

#281

Post by simonask »

RealityVoid wrote: post #117
sheept wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The severity depends on where you are, even within a country, but in many places you can't authentically "function as an adult in the world" without a phone, unless you want to roleplay an adult from the previous century. In some places, payment requires a phone. Tracking unreliable public transit requires a phone. Getting rideshare requires a phone. The issue probably isn't the phone but letting them outside in the…

This is obviously an overstatement. Sure, a phone is convenient, but we managed to function just fine without smartphones. I assure you, it's possible to do all those things without a phone.

We managed without smartphones before smartphones were a requirement for participating in society. That is, if you’re a millennial or older.

We can’t just pretend that it’s possible to live an adult life without one in 2026. In 2008, certainly, but that’s not the world these kids grew up in.

But we’re talking about kids, which is a whole different matter.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#282

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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…

We imprisoned kids for making an offensive video of a burning cardboard xopy of grenfell tower

But we gave legal immunity to the corporate executives that forged fire testing certificates and caused the actual fire that killed over 100 people

And when I say we have Russia-style corruption no one believes me

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#283

Post by nekusar »

darkwater wrote: post #275
nekusar wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is capitalist companies using heavily gamified psychology to prey on people. Mastodon doesn't have this problem. Pixelfed doesn't have this problem. Lemmy doesn't have this problem. Peertube doesn't have this problem. But "social media laws" would hit all of these as well.

They are fundamentally different because they are not centralized and, if they are going to be centralized at some point, they will need to find a revenue stream because giving access for free to the whole world, literally, is technically impossible.

You basically restated that its all about profit, and centralization.

> giving access for free to the whole world, literally, is technically impossible.

Again, this is what Mastodon is doing. This is also how email works.

And its not technically impossible. Its impossible when you have investors who demand 30x growth at all costs.

Its a capitalism issue, with game theory pushing worse and worse solutions to extract smaller percentages of profit.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#284

Post by xorcist »

brabel wrote: post #251
roundabout-host wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not a good counterexample either. The link to Russian intelligence services may not be proven, but nobody seems to dispute that there were paid influencers? Also that this was not declared anywhere and the money was at best grey in origin?

In events like these it can be useful to operate on the systems thinking maxim and strictly look at who benefited, as this is interesting in itself without entertaining the suggestion that they engaged in anything illegal.

When it comes to social media in politics, I believe the burden of proof is on those who claim a net benfit. Centralization of traditional media is generally regarded as bad for open democracies, and the ultimate owners of almost all social media globally can be counted on one hand with fingers to spare.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#285

Post by xorcist »

xigoi wrote: post #274
worble wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, it's been infuriating reading these social media bans for children, as if when kids suddenly turn 16 or 18 or whatever magical nimber the courts come up with, they are suddenly immune to the psychological tricks from multi million dollar companies hiring the best psychologists with no morals money can buy. Social media needs to be heavily regulated to the point where it's safe for everyone, or banned entir…

Many things are harmful for everyone, yet we only ban them for children because banning them for everyone would create huge uproar. Make tobacco illegal and then we can talk about social media.

Case in point. There is no chance tobacco would be declared legal if it was invented today. Don't you agree?

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#286

Post by rwmj »

chrisjj wrote: post #271
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…

> Social media, as we have it today, is not healthy for anybody. Millions of employed might disagree.

I'm trying to work out what this means. The "millions" employed at Meta?

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#287

Post by ClumsyPilot »

FeteCommuniste wrote: post #5
retube wrote: post #3

Conflates a whole load of othogonal issues that really have nothing to do with each other

Interesting reversal of the "think of the kids" argument, though: think of the kids who could have used their phones to document their mistreatment at the hands of alcoholic perverts.

Why are we conflating having a camera with social media that is addictive?

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#288

Post by criddell »

xorcist wrote: post #285
xigoi wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many things are harmful for everyone, yet we only ban them for children because banning them for everyone would create huge uproar. Make tobacco illegal and then we can talk about social media.

Case in point. There is no chance tobacco would be declared legal if it was invented today. Don't you agree?

How do you reconcile this idea with the fact that marijuana is being legalized all over the place?

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#289

Post by rwmj »

bko wrote: post #227
kraf wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with what you're talking about. Can you share a real world example of a case like this? You're saying a social media comment about a crime is somehow punished harshly and much harsher than the crime itself?

Here's an example of Westmidlands police bragging about arresting a 12 year old for racist posts. There are 30 arrests a day for offensive online messages. It's not heavily reported for some reason but it's very real. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr... https://x.com/WMPolice/status/1282627004018364416

If you walk through a town shouting racist stuff you'll get arrested too, and rightly so.

Re: The kids with phones are alright

#290

Post by ymolodtsov »

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 Who said we know?
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