Again, eerily similar to the violent video game panic in the 90s.
The original congressional hearings on violence in video games followed record-high gun violence in 1993 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_congressional_hearings_on... ). Politicians pushed a correlation between increasing popularity of violent video games and increasing gun homicides. It sounds dumb now, but video games were relatively new at the time.
The correlation felt right to many, especially those who hadn't grown up with video games in their own lives. I see this social media debate following the same pattern where adults feel that social media is evil and assume evidence will eventually support their feelings.
> Because there is no evidence for this. In cases where there is, like in lootboxes, we see a push for legislation.
That's rewriting history. Decades ago, there was a huge push for legislation against violent video games long before lootboxes were a thing ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_congressional_hearings_on... )
Violent video games have been called out as recently as 2019 by president Trump ( https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/trumps-... )
Violent video games have been a political scapegoat for decades. The debate about social media is following in the same footsteps.