This also seems to be an obvious counter to the implied hypothesis that "rate of depression increases linearly with facebook usage" since they launched in like 2005 or so, grew steadily from at least 2007, and also have most likely seen a significant decline in usage among adolescents in the recent years.
Does your politican campaign on a policy that specifically sets out reduces self-harm or suicide in their adult electorate?
"Let me be judged if I don't reduce suicides by 5% in my term!"
No. Because that's not what we want to hear. We want to be left alone with our guns and alcohol, but by all means help me with my teenager listening to "rap music" or being upset as her bullying classmate was unkind to her on tiktok.
I think if I had to summarize, voters will vote to give themselves choices (however harmful) - whilst patting themselves on the back for voting to restrict others for their own protection.
There's an additional aspect, though. Voters will vote against new restrictions for themselves, but will vote to keep existing restrictions that have been around a long time.
A fun example (quoted from https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/11/self-serving-bias):
> Oregon is one of two US states that bans self-service gas stations. Recently, they passed a law relaxing this restriction – self-service is permissible in some rural counties during odd hours of the night. Outraged Oregonians took to social media to protest that self-service was unsafe, that it would destroy jobs, that breathing in gas fumes would kill people, that gas pumping had to be performed by properly credentialed experts – seemingly unaware that most of the rest of the country and the world does it without a second thought.
So maybe we like freedoms that we're used to, but also like the benefits (or perceived benefits in the above example) of restrictions that we're used to.
(I don't know if disapproval of allowing self-service was widespread or was just a small number of people posting on social media, but it makes a good story.)