Comment by Eumenes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Eumenes | Hacker News Reader

> Meta, along with Snap, TikTok, and Google, now face hundreds of lawsuits claiming they are to blame for adolescents and young adults suffering anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and sleeplessness as a result of their addiction to social media. The companies also face scores of complaints by public school districts on behalf of students alleging that the platforms have created a public nuisance.

Oh I'm sure this particular lawsuit will be the one that solve these problems once and for all. Hint: it won't. This is performative politicking. Meta and co will continue to pay minuscule fines (not too much though, META is in alot of ETF and mutual funds), they'll continue to spread lobbying money around to both political parties, parents will point fingers (without taking any responsibility), young adults/teens will drone on about "mental health" because its fashionable (if social media is giving you an eating disorder or making you anxious, how about putting down the phone?), and nothing will change.

> young adults/teens will drone on about "mental health" because its fashionable (if social media is giving you an eating disorder or making you anxious, how about putting down the phone?)

To be fair, for many young adults and teens the parents are demanding the kids have their phones so that the parents can track their location and other surveillance shit.

Additionally, we know for a fact that these social media companies are hiring tams of people with full doctorate degrees in keeping you online and responding. How is a 13 year old's underdeveloped brain supposed to compete with that when most adults can't even do it?

For every parent demanding that, there's 100 kids asking for a device.

See my second point: how is a young teen supposed to handle something designed by teams of psychologists to keep them engaged in? It's why we don't let children play slot machines or don't allow tobacco advertising to children... they're children. Literally don't have the kind of judgement capacity as adults.

Things are in fact starting to change, though I wish they happened sooner. The FTC is currently looking to hire child psychologists in an effort to further investigate this kind of claim.

You don't need 'experts' to realize that social media is bad for young people. They are just going to suggest regulating content. I can see it now ... young girls cannot see content showcasing skinny or 'classically beautiful' women, because it gives them a skewed perspective of 'beauty' that may lead to eating disorders. The FTC pats themselves on the back, job well done, and nothing changes. Regulating the internet isn't going to change anything, the genie is out of the bottle. Change starts at home and at school. Put wifi and cell jamming technology in public schools. How many ads are kids shown on public school property? Kids are spending 5 hrs a day on social media. That is insanity. That time needs to be replaced doing productive things; reading books, playing sports, building things.

Put wifi and cell jamming technology in public schools.

Ah, yes, technical solutions to social problems. Those always work.

Here's a better idea: raise your kids to value things that are real, and then teach them that nothing they see on a screen is real.

And first, lead by example. If the parents cannot help looking at their phone every 5 minutes, how are the children supposed to act?

I agree about the parenting piece. But social media usage spiked for youths when children were given powerful computers in their pockets they have 24/7 access to. I'd argue it's a technical problem as much as a social one. Geofencing social media in public schools seems appropriate. My comment on wifi or cell jamming was hyperbolic.

nothing they see on a screen is real

This is just as irrational as believing anything on a screen is real.

Read some Plato. Preferably with your kids, while they're at an impressionable age.

Stop posturing. You know perfectly well that screens present true as well as false information and media literacy is a matter of distinguishing between the two rather than making categorical assumptions.

Frankly you come off a lot more like Diogenes than Plato.

cell and wifi jammers are illegal (with some very good reasons), so yeah you're going to need some experts

we know what happens when the government creates uninformed regulations, so I think it's worth supporting them when they appear to take a reasonable approach

kids need to be able to operate within the world that technology has created, and parents need informed guidelines and tools to enforce them

the all or nothing approach probably isn't the way to go... how's abstinence only sex education going, for example?

> how's abstinence only sex education going, for example?

Id say that access to Instagram isn't a biological function and normalizing it will lead to it ever entrenched in our lives. Make 18 the age requirement. I don't care about privacy concerns because you have no privacy if you participate with these companies.

> I can see it now ... young girls cannot see content showcasing skinny or 'classically beautiful' women, because it gives them a skewed perspective of 'beauty' that may lead to eating disorders.

Do you actually have any real exposure to the kind of things that are targeted to women on social media? It's more like young girls shouln't get sold that it's reasonable for them to achieve with a full schoolday and budget of a teenager the same appearance as a wealthy woman who has access to time, dieticians, personal trainers, and a plastic surgeon, except the wealthy woman tells you her one secret trick is actually a 75$ green powder she takes in the morning (the powder making company is paying her of course).

yes, I've watched my wife and female friends/family scroll Instagram ... every 3rd post is an example you provided. Body image/beauty issues for women were a thing before Instagram and social media so I don't think regulating the nature of advertisements would change much, at least in any measurable way. There are infinite influencers creating similar content as the advertisements.

If you've seen your wife and female friends scroll Instagram then you know you were inaccurately describing the scenario as trying to ban "classically beautiful" women. The problem is you think it doesn't change anything, maybe because you're ignorant that Instagram knows they are measurably worsening, on a mass scale, the self esteem and body image of young girls. Instagram has the data on all these girls and knows they have a causative relationship with negative body image.

My comment was in regards to what the FTC appointed child psychologists will inevitably suggest: that particular ad content is "bad". It will change absolutely nothing.

I'm not as pessimistic as you. There is more and more evidence (https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/13-explanations-mental-...) that social media companies have essentially engineered a harmful addictive drug - at some point they will be held accountable. I do think we are going through the tobacco company phase, where the CEO's will stand before Congress and solemnly state they think their product is not harmful, and even if it is, it is a matter of "freedom" or something.

"Just put down the phone" is this generation's Nancy Reagan "Just say no" moment. It was a joke amongst my young peers back in the day. But the real war on drugs, the War on Tobacco, has been incredibly effective - smoking used to be ubiquitous in the US, now it is just about gone. Social media, with attention-engineered timelines, is tobacco.

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