[confounder]

The preponderance of evidence, much of it from Meta's own internal communications, indicates that social media harms teens, and especially girls, in ways ranging from sleep deprivation to eating disorders to anxiety to depression to sexual grooming to suicide. Many of us adults see it as a moral duty to try to stop this, though YMMV (your morals may vary). Kids did homework before YouTube; and yes it is reasonable to propose that a teen can babysit outside their home yet not be exposed to hardcore porn on X, etc.

Your argument seems to be a false choice between "either kids play in the woods or they play online in toxic social media hellscapes". Yes it is tragic that some components of a great childhood are impossible now for so many children. But this doesn't imply we must now let them play with guns and matches and razorblades.

I have a friend who works with lots of young people whom she routinely tries to get to come to organized events but they often can't make it because they're attending the funerals of friends who've committed suicide. It's almost unbelievable how bad it is. This genie absolutely must be put back in the bottle by any means possible, and society is trying to figure out how.

[Edit: removed reference to whataboutism]

[reorder9695]

You say people did homework before YouTube, that is true; however for me I used YouTube to learn a huge amount outside of school, for example programming. I am vastly a better person for having access to YouTube pre-16 due to the amount of educational content, it is the single best way to learn stuff outside of school when you don't have much money due to being young. I genuinely would know a lot less about many, many topics if I didn't have YouTube before I was 16, and realising that has put me off the idea of a social media ban for children entirely. Although in my head YouTube was/is different to social media; I am not using YouTube to be social unlike how e.g. Instagram may be used.

To me YouTube is more comparable to if TV contained anything you were interested in or wanted to learn about, on demand, for free, and accessible to anyone than it is to social media and therefore maybe shouldn't be grouped with them.

[drpepper42]

Moral "imperatives" and "think of the children" are major red flags. The genie is not going back in the bottle - technology only moves forward. The answer is simply education - both for children and parents. This is a multi-generational effort but humanity will adapt.

Throwing bans at the problem is not the answer. Legislation is almost never the answer. As many have highlighted this will be twisted into even worse control over human thought.

The problem is simply algorithmic feeds. They are just as destructive for adults and society at large. Maybe there can be some general regulation or tooling in this space, however society really needs to arrive at this itself. Governance originates from society not the other way around. If you need governance to enforce your societal "fix" something is wrong with it.

You can not anticipate the next technological impact - and they _are_ coming. Throwing shit at the wall in the form of law is only going to make things worse for that next change. Education and upbringing has to be much more experimental and adaptive.

The answer is get better at parenting - nobody wants to hear that but that really is it. Look how people bemoan the education system these days. If you trust anyone in education it is a total disaster. Everyone wants an easy fix and the economy places no value on time spent in these pursuits. You can't paper over that with naive laws, trying to do so is only going to make things much worse, both because undoing stupid shit is hard and it ignores the real problems.

[duskdozer]

There is only so much better parenting can do against giant companies with tons of money and teams of psychologists and engineers designing products to maximally exploit "vulnerabilities" in human minds in order to modify their beliefs, emotions, and behaviors.

[GaryBluto]

"Whataboutism" (if it even counts as a fallacy) isn't when somebody refutes an argument you support.

[casey2]

I personally don't believe you have ANY evidence. More plausibly you are acting as a "useful idiot" for traditional media.

Now that Australia has banned social media, are you going to admit you were wrong? Or just double down and ban phones? If something is "unbelievable" then you better have good evidence for believing it, not just narratives.

[November_Echo]

Meta knows that deactivating Facebook causes "lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison"[1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

[nazgul17]

I'm not sure I follow; are you disputing that social media cause harm to mental health, and particularly in teenagers?