Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access • Hacker News Board

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#551

Post by rayiner » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

dgacmu wrote: post #546

rayiner wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do those things help the vast majority? What you deride as “theism” and “monoculture” have been declining in sync with broad indicators of mental health showing more problems. Your problem is minoritarian thinking, where you’re focused on how those social structures might harm small groups of people, while overlooking the benefits they provide for the broader majority. For example, scientific studies consistently…

These generalizations ignore the specific - Utah has long been an outlier on things like teen suicide rates (about #10), antidepressant use (#1) [1], and before that valium. It has a very specific set of cultural features that are not necessarily the same as the broader studies you note. (I'm from Utah; three of my friends killed themselves as a teenager, and all three had aspects of what the GP was talking about. It…

Utah isn’t an outliers: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/.... Sparsely populated rural areas tend to have high suicide rates. Vermont and Oregon are at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of theism and culture, but have similarly high suicide rates. New Hampshire and Maine are also higher than Mississippi and Alabama.

Reducing theism (mandatory social interaction and social support) may well increases suicide rates in these places.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#552

Post by sacnoradhq » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

prpl wrote: post #275

Buttons840 wrote: post #205

A Utah resident connects to a server in California, controlled by a company in California. This seems like interstate commerce to me, and is thus regulated by federal law, not the laws of individual states. Consider Wickard v. Filburn[0], in which the courts ruled that a farmer growing crops on his own land, to feed to his own animals, all within a single state, was participating in "interstate commerce". Given this…

In a fun twist, the data centers are quite possibly in Utah. That said, assuredly Meta, Twitter, etc… have some kind of foot print in Utah

Meta has Eagle Mountain. It's ~ $3B CapEx + ? OpEx. If it means billion in losses, it would pull up stakes and move.

https://datacenters.atmeta.com/all-locations/#united-states

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#553

Post by nicoburns » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

swexbe wrote: post #424

nicoburns wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t the fact that drugs, alcohol and tobacco (which are already illegal for kids) are available in this way illustrate how useless a ban would be? If you want to protect your kids from these things then you need to educate them and get them to enforce the rules themselves.

The vast majority of 13 y.os do not have access to drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

This probably varies depending on where you live, but where I grew up (in a small town in the UK), the vast majority of 13 year olds did have access to drugs, alcohol and tobacco (which didn't necessarily mean the vast majority were indulging in those things, but they were definitely available).

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#554

Post by sacnoradhq » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 5:58 PM UTC

blintz wrote: post #245

The idea that nobody is entitled to privacy until they turn 18 is crazy. I shudder for all the LGBT kids whose parents all now have a (state enforced!) right to snoop on them. (Honestly headline should be: “Utah bill gives parents full access to their children's online accounts, including posts and private messages”)

"Entitled to privacy" from whom?

1. Corporations?

2. Educators?

3. Strangers?

or

4. Parents?

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#555

Post by sacnoradhq » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

jquery wrote: post #505

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Straw man.

The most likely parents to exercise a right to read their 16-year-old teenager's online messages would be abusive, controlling ones.

That's a further, unsubstantiated assumption of malice.

Some involved, worrying parents want to know their kids aren't getting mixed up with bad lifestyle habits or dangerous persons.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#556

Post by vxNsr » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #487

vxNsr wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would your local community attack you for campaigning for anonymity?

It doesn't necessarily have to be these laws, it could be anything, but to answer your question - they might paint me as somehow being "against the children", having bought in to the angle that these laws make children safer.

Just curious is the any different from what happens right now, when someone campaigns against something you disagree with? If someone online, pseudo-anonymously posts something that is perceived to be against trans rights or pro-life, there is already a mob of people working to de-anonymize and punish them for their wrong-think. How is it any different or better to have the current system?

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#557

Post by seizethegdgap » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

dgacmu wrote: post #546

rayiner wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do those things help the vast majority? What you deride as “theism” and “monoculture” have been declining in sync with broad indicators of mental health showing more problems. Your problem is minoritarian thinking, where you’re focused on how those social structures might harm small groups of people, while overlooking the benefits they provide for the broader majority. For example, scientific studies consistently…

These generalizations ignore the specific - Utah has long been an outlier on things like teen suicide rates (about #10), antidepressant use (#1) [1], and before that valium. It has a very specific set of cultural features that are not necessarily the same as the broader studies you note. (I'm from Utah; three of my friends killed themselves as a teenager, and all three had aspects of what the GP was talking about. It…

It's possible Utah's high teen suicide and antidepressant use rates have something to do with altitude.

https://theconversation.com/the-curious-relationship-between...

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#558

Post by rayiner » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #443

morbia wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gay guy here. I have always said that these sort of laws designed to protect children will do precisely the opposite. An LGBTQ child is effectively forcibly outed by this law, potentially before they've come to terms with their sexuality / gender themselves. Whilst I don't doubt social media causes a lot of harm on children growing up, giving parents full access to your messages is not the solution. In my opinion, ba…

Yes. This should be seen in the context of the huge set of anti-trans laws and the Florida book banning. There is going to be another attempt at making it illegal for kids to hear about non-straight people at all. And outing kids to their parents, even at risk of violence, is a part of that. The "land of free speech" always has a big "not you" exemption that can be wielded against people who aren't WASPy enough. Edit…

> The "land of free speech" always has a big "not you" exemption that can be wielded against people who aren't WASPy enough

WASPs are the ones pushing pornographic books in schools. Florida is one of the most diverse states in the country.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#559

Post by philwelch » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #534

chrisan wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any answers to the problem but teen mental health issues have grown quite a lot since social media. My wife works in PICU and she has never seen so many suicide attempts in all her career (going back to 2006) as she has in past few years. She talks to other doctors who come from other areas and their concerns/experiences are the same. I feel like every week she is talking to me about some new kid's attem…

> My wife works in PICU and she has never seen so many suicide attempts in all her career (going back to 2006) as she has in past few years. Social media has been around a lot longer than the last few years. (In fact, while they weren’t even the first wave of widely-used-by-young-people social media, both Twitter and Facebook opened to the public in 2006.) There have been a few major events that have occurred in the…

> Social media has been around a lot longer than the last few years.

Setting aside the (valid and important) point about the lockdowns, it also took time for social media to evolve into its current form. Snapchat and Vine came out in the early 10’s and TikTok in 2017. Twitter has never been especially widely used; it has outsized influence because corporate media types use it, but it’s not what the masses are scrolling. Social media might not be new, but the short-form video style of social media has taken off a ton in the past decade.

At the risk of speculation, I’d also surmise that this is a major part of the problem. Humans have a primal desire to interact face to face. Full motion video of people talking to the camera is sort of a junk food version of human interaction. It’s the same reason watching people play video games on Twitch is more engaging when you can see their face in the corner of the screen, and why so many YouTube thumbnails include some recognizable face either looking into the camera or expressing an emotion. Photos and text don’t scratch the same itch, so they’re less addictive.

(Some people can be addicted to text-based social media. I am one of these people. But we were the ones who got addicted to webforums and Usenet; probably not the typical user.)

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#560

Post by Izkata » Sun, Mar 26, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #550

Izkata wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they were referring to lockdowns, not covid. Kids weren't really affected by covid, but lockdowns and school closures were massive. To see if there was an effect on this from that you'd have to account for duration and severeness of lockdowns in various places, not look at overall rates.

The link I posted is data for the change in teen mental health between 2019 and 2021. The data incorporates all of the effects of COVID, Lockdowns and school closures, and does not show a significant change from pre-pandemic trends. I was using "COVID" as a shorthand for all of the changes during the pandemic.

> The link I posted is data for the change in teen mental health between 2019 and 2021. The data incorporates all of the effects of COVID, Lockdowns and school closures

Yes, my point is that is exactly the problem with your data. It needs to be broken down by location to account for differences in lockdowns and school closures, to claim there was any or no effect.