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The case for banning children from social media

newyorker.com

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Re: The case for banning children from social media

#211

Post by jen20 »

MandieD wrote: post #178
deafpolygon wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I propose is the banning of algorithms-powered social media. There's a huge difference between a moderated age-appropriate forum and TikTok.

Not only is it the most effective thing that doesn't require an invasion of privacy, it would increase privacy and user autonomy. But how on earth do we start a political movement around it? Difficulty: needs a 10-second blurb that does not rely on the word "algorithm". "See what you want to see, not what's being pushed at you" is the best I can come up with.

I doubt there is a unified campaign that can attract both poles of US society, they’d need to be targeted at each individually.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#212

Post by imadierich »

Animats wrote: post #184
tastysandwich wrote: post #46

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

> It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff It's not hard. It just upsets vested interests. Make it illegal to show ads to kids. You don't have to make "kid" identification airtight, because few people of any age want to opt into ads. The ad industry was very upset when the American Psychological Association proposed this back in 2004.[1] This doesn't raise constitutional issues because ads are con…

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Re: The case for banning children from social media

#213

Post by rocketbop »

uptownfunk wrote: post #145
tastysandwich wrote: post #46

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

18.. hell I’m close to 40 and I have trouble self regulating. YouTube needs an option to disable shorts. It’s just not healthy. TikTok I won’t even touch it. It’s virtualized crack.

> YouTube needs an option to disable shorts. It’s just not healthy.

I have disabled them along with suggestions with a browser extension, but the temp station is always there to enable again even briefly. Shorts are particularly addictive and must play hell with our dopamine receptors.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#214

Post by 9dev »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #67
tastysandwich wrote: post #46

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

Social media is unlike drugs in that if you abstain while your peers use you're in some ways worse off. I wonder if there's a narrower ban to be had, either on image usage or especially on filters

Not drinking in social settings will make you worse off by a lot. People feel uneasy and judged if someone refuses to drink alcohol with them, so unless you're very strong-willed, this coerces most people into drinking.

This isn't as easy as it sounds at first.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#215

Post by jen20 »

staunton wrote: post #202
TheBozzCL wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree with you here. It’s sad that I haven’t found a way to explain this view to others without sounding like a raving lunatic - which also speaks volumes about the state of the tracking/advertising industry. Pihole via DoH plus uBlock has changed the internet so much for me, I literally can’t stand using other people’s devices. Let’s not even talk about watching TV, going to a sports bar is downrigh…

My impression (after suggesting it elsewhere) is that a lot of HN generally agrees with banning adds.

(Except the ones who work for advertising brokers masquerading as technology companies of course)

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#216

Post by imadierich »

FractalHQ wrote: post #168
hackernewds wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs, and evidently just as bad, why not ban them for adults as well?

As someone 8 years sober from social media, I’m convinced the benefits of banning it would far outweigh the cost.

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Re: The case for banning children from social media

#217

Post by prawn »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #72
tastysandwich wrote: post #46

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

> but I do use YouTube I don't have Google auth cookies on my primary browser and every Google property has cookie autodeletion when the last tab is closed. Every time I start YouTube fresh, I get a new profile that I have to mold back to the content I prefer. On a fresh window I'm constantly bombarded with superficial crap I never click on. I'm also perplexed by the amount of T&A clickbait that gets offered in the s…

I'm not familiar with how cookies work these days, but could you build up your base profile, then back up the cookie and overwrite with it periodically to maintain a certain balance?

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#218

Post by theK »

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #54
theK wrote: post #2

This is going to be an uphill battle. Not only is enforcement on a judiciary level extremely difficult (the kids as well as the companies have ways and reason to skirt jurisdiction on the borderless Internet) but you have the problem that addictive products will remain addictive even if there are better options out there. Personal opinion but I think the best way to counter the social media plague for young people wi…

You could have said the same thing about teenage smoking. It's addictive, hard to regulate away, but teen smoking regulations had demonstrable and massive health impacts. Cultural change is best, but governments have an obligation to improve public health. Particularly for minors, the vast majority of whom can't make informed decisions about addictive technology.

I think youth smoking is a good example.

- It wasn't enough to stop sale to minors (they still got them).

- It wasn't enough to run information campaigns in schools and legislate packaging warnings (stuff like this gets blatantly ignored)

What really worked in the US (but even that with a lag of 5-7 Years) was:

1. blanket banning smoking on the media in the 90s

2. progressively blanket banning smoking in the public since the 90s

Edit: formating

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#219

Post by gambiting »

meowkit wrote: post #113
marcodiego wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. Ok. Now, how do we counter this very same argument against tv and video games?

Video games nowadays are just as bad. Children don't really watch TV (anecdotally). They watch YouTube, which is just as bad. The key difference between television and video games of yore is the feedback loop. TV and video games were one shot deployed and then ratings were gathered after, averaging across the entire audience. Now YT and video games don't have end states - same thing as social media. While you often w…

>>Video games nowadays are just as bad

I literally don't understand how anyone can say that - there are more games of any genre than ever before. Yes if you only play CoD and nothing else it's all monetised and algorithm driven to hell. But for every CoD there are literally thousands of games that tell incredible and beautifully crafted stories. Thousands more where the focus is on gameplay. Endless remakes and reimaginings of older games with all their good and bad parts. Video games aren't just the top 3 best selling titles and it's weird to judge the whole industry that way. It's like saying that all movies are the same nowadays because Marvel films have turned into a more-of-the-same gloop.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#220

Post by jen20 »

rysertio wrote: post #121
whats_a_quasar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't dismiss concerns about freedom of speech. I explicitly acknowledged them in paragraph 4. My point is that there is a tradeoff here, and reasonable people can disagree. That's reasonable a reasonable complaint about how I talked about moral panics. Updated the wording to not say that's the reason for HN's strong reaction. Though I really do think that cultural history is a major factor. > Also I think I'd obj…

There's one single problem. The addictive thing here is a dual use good. Most kids also use social media for keeping up with their classes and stuff. At this point you can miss an exam if you don't check your social media regularly. I don't know how do you go back from this point where social media is an integral part of our lives.

> Most kids also use social media for keeping up with their classes and stuff. At this point you can miss an exam if you don't check your social media regularly.

This was sure as shit not the case when I was at school, and is an abject failure of the school itself if that is true.

It’s not remotely a problem that needs to be accounted for - trivial solutions exist, ranging from putting information like the date and time of exams on a web page, or just giving them out in class and expecting people to be organised enough to show up, or fail - as usual, a “technology” problem can be solved by looking at how a process worked 70 years ago, where, presumably, people could show up for exams without needing a goddamn algorithmic feed to tell them about it.

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