It has raised awareness like never before.
It has provided an income for some.
It allows new peer groups not available locally
It provides a safer space to interact with strangers.
Where we got it wrong was connecting these profiles to real life names. That has ruined people's lives.
Japan sure as hell isn't perfect socially but they demonstrate that the source of social problems may be found in the mirror collectively and not in new technology.
The article explicitly covers this and shows a net negative. So saying there are positive effects isn’t very helpful as any gains are more than offset by negatives.
I think your argument is better through quantification. As I don’t think anyone is making the case that social media doesn’t have any benefits at all, the argument is that the negatives outweigh the benefits.
Of course, I think it’s easier to quantify the negatives than positives. How do I quantify the positive effect that offsets the probably correlated increase in preteen girl hospitalizations? [0]
[0] sorry trying to find the easiest citation for the graph in Lukiakoff and Haidt’s book Coddling of America’s Youth [1] https://livingonparr.wixsite.com/livingonparr/single-post/20...
It's hard and slow work to gain populist support for socially progressive policy. We wouldn't be talking about this stuff were it not for the truths presented to us by the people it affects most profoundly.
(and I wouldn't say the social networks where profiles don't need to be connected to real names are necessarily any better)
Sure people can change their nicknames, but people change their real names too. I've gone by three different 'real' names throughout my life. That may not be super common, but people getting married and changing their name at least once is certainly not rare. The way I see it, a 'real' name is only more real than the others insofar as it's the name the government uses for you. But that sort of realness isn't relevant for social purposes. For social purposes, the 'realest' name is the name people call you.
Sure, it's possible to stay in touch with a long list of monikers and sometimes even not much more difficult, but (going back to the OP I responded to) it's possible and often no more difficult to ruin people's lives across pseudonymous services too. Lack of real name is probably more of an impediment to the casually interested old friend than the concerted hate campaign.
I'm not sure a teenager has the same value. Anyone under 18 shouldn't have real identifying names them.
When facebook came out you had people isolated into networks of schools. Those structures provided better protections and freedom. The transition to fully public with forced real names made facebook into something not for kids but great for older folks.