I saw this article, which made me think about it…
Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes world-first laws
Seeing what kind of brainrot kids are watching, makes me think it’s a good idea. I wouldn’t say all content is bad, but most kids will get hooked on trash content that is intentionally designed to grab their attention.
What would be an effective way to enforce a restriction with the fewest possible side effects? And who should be the one enforcing that restriction in your opinion?
In real terms, I have no idea if this is a good move or a bad one. We’ll know more in five years once the Aussie nerds can publish on the effects. I can’t think of a compelling reason not to try it though.
Social media use is bad for everyone. Tech companies have spent billions of dollars refining and optimizing their platforms to maximize engagement and usage at the expense of all other considerations.
I’ve been researching the mental health effects of social media for an unrelated project I am working on. From an incomplete read of the research, social media use has a strong correlation with mental health issues. I haven’t encountered anything peer reviewed that proposes a specific relationship between the two, but my personal (somewhat well informed) guess is that someone will find a link eventually. That’s just where the research I’ve read seems to be headed.
I’d guess they probably have a symbiotic relationship. (Certain kinds of) Mentally ill folks use social media more than others, why or if that is anything more than a red herring is still to be determined, but I have read coverage of other research that suggests that social media might be destroying attention spans (though I haven’t read that research myself yet).
Getting the political system involved in this effort is probably undesirable simply because elected officials seem to have entirely abandoned any pretense of using science to inform policy and are basically puppets for the oligarchy. Voting against the interests of their donors is unlikely.
I don’t understand. Are you honestly claiming that you don’t see any possible value in social media for teenagers? We could talk about people with eating disorders. We could talk about marginalized minorities who can find support in distant communities because where they live is ultra-conservative. We don’t have to work hard to think of those examples, they’re well documented, they’re very real.
Of course you could argue that the harms outweigh the benefits, but to pretend that there are no benefits is just mind boggling.