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Obesity in the US is epidemic because of food producers using your same antisocial logic. "But if we don't add sugar, people won't keep choosing our brand over the sweeter ones, this is our most important metric." Sugar should absolutely be more regulated, it's killing people.

It's a proven fact that the sugar producers have hidden the real dangers of overconsumption for decades to protect their precious money. Same thing with cigarettes, same with apps that use psychological and/or emotional manipulation to boost their "most important metric".

Here's a metric that might be more important than money to you: the teen suicide rate has increased by 62% since the advent of social media.

So, how much of the social media company's resources get spent increasing their most important metric vs educating parents and kids on the dangers of the technology they're trying to get them addicted to? If they do it responsibly, it's going to negatively impact their most important metric, and so they don't, and instead continue profiting from the negative externalities.

How many children ending their own lives is a 10% bump in your market cap worth? Perhaps that's a ratio that should be shown on an electronic display on the walls in these companies.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that obesity is an epidemic because of the misguided anti-fat crusade driven by well-meaning but naive people who (still!) believe that "eat fat get fat". You can walk down the ice cream isle and see countless sorbets advertising "fat free!" as if it's healthy.

We are at the tail of a huge shift to a carbohydrate-rich diet, and refined sugars are only part of the problem. Your body converts bread and starch to glucose almost as quickly.

The fearmongering about social media sounds a bit like the anti-fat crusade to me. The evidence is thin yet it makes people incredibly loud and angry. And remember one of the first rules of statistics, correlation is not causality. I don't need to quote the relevant xkcd number to this audience.

> ...obesity is an epidemic because of the misguided anti-fat crusade driven by well-meaning but naive people...

Except that whole thing was literally started by sugar companies paying scientists to point the blame towards fat so their profits wouldn't take a hit. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...

I would argue that apps resemble gambling more than they resemble sugar. And gambling is banned for children and heavily regulated for adults.

More to the point, I don't think it's fair to call parents stupid. Even if parenting weren't hard (which it is) it is not fair to expect everyone to get a Bachelor's in Software Engineering to use the one device that's almost indispensable for daily life. Nor is it fair to expect parents to monitor their children 24/7.

I'd argue this is one of those problems that are so ubiquitous and so difficult to solve that we appoint people to deal with them as a full-time job in order to keep them from spiraling out of control. They usually solve it with regulation, which is exactly what the EU is doing here.

Right. Social media companies explicitly use the same addictive psychological reward mechanisms that are leveraged by companies that make slot machines.

https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/social-media-copies-gambling-met...

>I would argue that apps resemble gambling more than they resemble sugar. And gambling is banned for children and heavily regulated for adults.

Gambling is just video games/table games/board games with real money betting mechanics, and as far as I'm aware most social media is free to use.

So when is the EU going to regulate actual legal children gambling in videogames, that is, microtransactions/gachapon transactions?

They have? Do you play popular video games? Many of them have had to change their presentation or behavior based on regulation that's mostly sourced from the EU. Many games have region locks so they can perform more or less spying on people.

They are looking at that as well.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/1476642/europe-is-ready-to-c...

Considering the fact that obesity rates continue to climb despite approximately everyone knowing that eating too much sugar is bad for them at some point you need to acknowledge that a systemic problem requires a systemic solution. Education is great, but seems insufficient when pitted against companies actively trying to ensnare and addict the populace. We decided that the harms done by cigarettes and drug addiction were bad enough that an intervention was necessary to stop the pervasive abuse of the public by their purveyors. Companies do not have some sacred inalienable right to actively harm their customers so long as the invisible hand of the market allows it, the only question is whether the harms of sugar or social media addiction meet a threshold such that action is warranted.

As an American who travels to Europe from time to time, I find the prevalence of smoking in Europe to be what I used to experience as a kid in the states in the 90s. I always wonder why that is when I visit.

Do European countries require printing pictures of diseased lungs on the side of cigarette boxes? Because if not that might have something to do with it. Nudging is quite effective at influencing average behavior.

> Do European countries require printing pictures of diseased lungs on the side of cigarette boxes?

They do.

I see these all over in Italy and Germany. Still confused by the youthful smokers.

When I visited Paris and Rome last summer. I was pleasantly surprised to find little to no smoking among the young people. Only old people continue that habit as far as I could see.

"approximately everyone knowing that eating too much sugar is bad for them"

That's not really the case. For many people, if they know that too much sugar is bad for them, they think of sugar as in white sugar they add to the coffee or in terms of candybars, when instead they should think about carbohydrates as a whole. Replacing soft drinks with orange/apple juice many people would consider a healthy choice, but in the end you're still trading sugary water for sugary water (unlike eating whole fruit which has fiber and other elements to balance out the fructose). Then you get into potatoes, pasta, rice and bread which don't help when trying to lose or maintain weight.

Ask around amongst your friends and family. Tell them that you're trying a low fat diet. They will congratulate you on your life choices. Tell them you're trying a low carb diet. They will tell you you're killing yourself and you should stop because body needs energy to survive. Most "diet" products replace fats with carbs, which may even be a net negative in some cases when trying to diet.

The average knowledge of dietary advice is poor at best. I’ve heard so many people tell me that the vegetable for their meal is potatoes that it stopped being funny years ago.

I don’t even blame them. I was taught similar in high school, and I specifically recall them suggesting juice over soda as if there was a big difference.

The sugar industry paid for the early studies that blamed fat for weight gain and resulting health issues. That’s why everyone hates low carb diets. I still think there needs to be a tobacco industry level lawsuit against and crackdown of high sugar items.

I also don’t think anything containing high levels of sugar should be marketed as for children. Look at the absolute trash they market to children, and half of them claim to be healthy! Fruit juice, fruit snacks, sugary breakfast cereal, garbage drinks like Capri Sun, Oreos, chips, etc.

Practically the only healthy thing marketed to children is pre-packed apple slices (as if apples dont come in natural packaging, sigh).

Why can’t we market healthy stuff to kids? Whole grain breads can be good in the right sandwich. There’s gotta be at least one veggie they like, there are like a billion different vegetables. Olives are delicious.

> Do we ban sugar, or regulate its consumption?

Actually, yes: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/how-taxing...

One attempt to reduce sugar consumption was by taxing it. I don't know how effective it is though, but it was at least attempted.

"Sugar-sweetened beverage taxes in the WHO European Region" "Taxes were in place in Belgium, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Monaco, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom" "The taxes were implemented in the context of health policy commitments to prevent NCDs, which present a major health burden." (NCD = Non-communicable disease)

I don’t think it is fair to pitch parents against multi-billion dollar international companies who have dedicated tens of thousands of staff to the job of getting children addicted to their sites, by any means they can get away with.

I think it is. What does Meta's annual revenue have to do with a parent's ability to say "no, you can't install Instagram"?

Because that's the crux of the issue; children should not have access to social media, and the solution is not to weave intricate legislation regulating the entire industry, or obliging me to hand over my ID, it is for parents to not give children access to social media.

How can a parent enforce that, though? Did you listen to your parents as a kid about what you installed on your computer or when you could use it? I know I snuck around their rules a lot.

Do you want your child to be the social pariah in the class?

This exactly.

When our kids reached 12, they were almost the only ones in their class to not have a smartphone, nor any social media.

So what to do ?

Trying by ourselves to educate every parents whom made bad decisions letting their children get access to social media way too early ?

Continue holding to our valor and isolate them from any outside school social interaction with their schoolmate ?

Bend the knee to the power of social media that have rotten our society so deep, and let our kids use WhatsApp to communicate with their mates ?

Of course, in my ideal world, it would be the first option. But I've tried and failed (may be I'm not a good talker ?) so many times that I gave up.

So if any government rule was made to protect my kids and protecting other's ones, well I'll sure want a debate on it. And a people debate, not a lobbyist one of course.

> no, you can't install Instagram

They go to the website. They turn off wifi to evade the home filter. They get a buddy from school to show them how to set up a VPN or use a proxy. They use their (required!) school computer you don't have admin rights on. They log in at a friend's house.

Now they can enjoy the "why and how you should kill yourself" content barrage in peace. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-04-20/tiktok-ef... / https://archive.is/SO98F

It is remarkably tough to keep a smart kid off a social network they're interested in.

> Educate the parents instead to spend more right time with their children.

This is kind of assuming that the parents have full control over the lives of their children. Which:

a. Isn't true b. Shouldn't be true (because some parents are bad)

As a parent you go to work for 8+ hours per day. During that time your child is in the care of "society" (school / daycare / whatever). And during that time the only thing that protects them is laws and regulations.

How can someone get so close to seeing the problem and not take the final logical step?

If your app is just addictive adtech, it has no moral, political, or even economic right to exist.

Once upon a time apps provided useful services. Many still do.

But the gamification/addiction plague is an absolute horror and needs to be shut down. It's the psychological equivalent of tobacco, alcohol, opioid, sugar, oil, and money addiction.

All of these things are incredibly toxic and cause astounding levels of social and individual harm.

"But money..." is the least credible argument for any of them.

> Sugar is addictive. Do we ban sugar, or regulate its consumption? No! Instead we educate parents to limit their childrens' sugar intake.

I don't find it totally unlikely to think of a future where sugar is more strongly regulated, since it's linked to real dangers that used to be disregarded, and children are particularly targeted by sugary food.

More importantly, how can parents protect children if the same brain-hacking, attention grabbing mechanisms target them? "Honey, don't be on your mobile constantly, while daddy is busy using his mobile all day long".

> Don't want to play devil's advocate here but it's not the apps'/platforms' fault here, but parents' fault.

I think it's both, with most of the blame with apps/platforms. And parents are as much prey as their children. It's like a "socially acceptable" addiction; maybe we shouldn't make it so acceptable, like smoking isn't anymore?

(Hello, my name is the_af and I'm an addict...)

How can parents teach their kids not to eat sugar if they're constantly eating sugar?

You might be right about regulations of sugar, but regulations shouldn't just target companies individually. They should figure out the actual problem and try and regulate that.

Agreed on regulating the actual problem. But it seems the problem in practice is concentrated on a few big companies...

That's also true for sugar. And sugar is massively subsidised. Brazil spends $2.5bn a year subsidising sugar[0], for example.

[0] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/16/steel-sugar...

Agreed about sugar! If you look at my initial comment, I find it "not unlikely" that some sort of regulation could be enacted against sugary foods in the future.

>> Sugar is addictive. Do we ban sugar, or regulate its consumption? No! Instead we educate parents to limit their childrens' sugar intake.

Wrong. Sugar is very regulated, specifically in regards to foods marketed towards children. Has been for decades.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2016-11-01/pdf/2016-2...

>> In addition, FNS is correcting the breakfast cereal sugar limit. The final rule provided a sugar limit of no more than 6 grams of sugar per dry ounce (no more than 21 grams sucrose and other sugars per 100 grams of dry cereal). The intent of that limit was to be consistent with the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Woman, Infants, and Children (WIC). However, due to rounding, the breakfast cereal sugar limit in the final rule that appears in 7 CFR 210.10(o)(3)(ii), 210.10(o)(4)(ii), 210.10(p)(2), 220.8(o)(2), 226.20(a)(4)(ii), 226.20(b)(5), and 226.20(c)(1) through 226.20(c)(3) is inconsistent with WIC’s breakfast cereal sugar limit of no more 21.2 grams of sucrose and other sugars per 100 grams of dry cereal. This correction amends the breakfast cereal sugar limit to align with WIC’s breakfast cereal sugar limit and corrects the other errors described above. Note that the Special Milk Program regulations at 7 CFR part 215 were amended in the final rule, but no technical corrections are necessary in this amendment.

https://news.sky.com/story/kelloggs-loses-legal-challenge-ag...

> Sugar is addictive. Do we ban sugar, or regulate its consumption? No! Instead we educate parents to limit their childrens' sugar intake.

And... It's not working, right? More and more kids and people are obese, sugar is added to many products that shouldn't have it in the USA because it's not regulated, so competitors adding sugar have an advantage over others who want to keep it out of their products.

> I do not work for any big social media platform nor benefit from them, but stop blaming successful social media platforms that have mastered UX optimization, for stupid parents' actions that cause their children to get addicted.

> Educate the parents instead to spend more right time with their children.

You are falling into the trap of thinking individual action will solve systemic issues.

The parents might be educated and want to curtail their children's usage of social media but for a kid in 2024 to be denied access to these platforms by their parents is to be ostracised from their peers who will continue using it. You need a majority of parents from the same social circle to curtail all of their kids usage, how do you approach that? If the most popular kids are using it and shun away the non-users as "weird" or "lame", there's an immense peer pressure to participate in it.

I will keep blaming "successful" social media companies for creating ways to manipulate people into using their products, even when those products are causing harm.

Wouldn't you blame the tobacco companies for creating products (and advertisement campaigns) that are harmful to people? Or would you also ask for people to be educated instead of actions taken by governments to forbid advertisement of tobacco products, heavy taxation to create deterrents for usage, etc.?

The how part is interesting to me. In many jurisdictions a bartender can be charged if they over serve a patron. Maybe something similar could be applied to services like Instagram and Facebook?

Their metrics are driven by advertising goals. Maybe limit the number of ads that can be shown to a user in every 24h period? If Facebook were only allowed to show ads for the first 30 minutes of any user’s session per day, a lot of the incentives for addictive design are reduced.

> Do we ban sugar, or regulate its consumption? No!

But we (in the UK) do tax it, which is arguably a form of regulation: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/soft-drinks-industry-levy... https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/sugar-ta...

This is completely backwards.

The parents are educated, they elected representatives and those representatives are pushing for this. Democratically elected officials aren't some otherworldly force, you argue that the people should act, this is the people acting.

On TV and Radio (ie Broadcast Media) in most countries in the world, there are rules on how many ads (or limit on total duration) broadcasters can show per period of time.

Big tech bypassed those rules claiming the internet has so much choice unlike in the past were Broadcasters were few. But it never mattered that the internet has more choice cause Total Available Attention of the consumer is still the same. And if a significant amount of that Attention bandwidth is dominated by Advertising/Influence Ops its very easy to manipulate people. Not just kids.

The child doesn't choose their parents.

The parents can be mistaken.

If enforcing the good habits of good parenting is not a problem, then 'apps' wouldn't have a problem with it. But they do. Because they're doing the equivalent of promoting cigarettes as a health elixr, something many on HN are complicit in through 'educational' branding of gamified (addictive) social media and even NFTs.

> but they are probably perfectly okay

Most are not, but at a certain age kids will have enormous social pressure from their peers to do that, and will relentlessly ask for that.

And sometimes you tell them "fine, just finish your homework before" or something like that.

You are arguing about what is best for the app developer vs what is best for society. It's a really hard argument and even more so growing up in a capitalist society.

> Sugar is addictive. Do we ban sugar, or regulate its consumption? No! Instead we educate parents to limit their childrens' sugar intake.

This is also incorrect, there are plenty of places where sugar is regulated/limited/outright banned.

Calling parents "stupid" reveals a deplorable lack of parenting experience on your part - you don't know what you're talking about. Children spend 8 hours per day or more outside the home, and they share devices, so it's simply not feasible for parents to exert any great control over their offspring's digital lives. Regulation seems to be the only possible response.

> Sugar is addictive. Do we ban sugar, or regulate its consumption? No! Instead we educate parents to limit their childrens' sugar intake.

I wish things worked like that with cocaine

Can you imagine how much cocaine would be in energy drinks if that was legal (again)?

> Now, who defines "addictive" using which aspect?

Addictive is whatever that creates a dependence that doesn't allow you to function correctly and productively, because it produces a natural reward.

In this case, design patterns that promote and provoke addictions, like gamification, attention grabbing, etc. that kids don't have tools to be aware of, need to be regulated. In fact, sugar content regulation in foodstuff have shown to be very effective at reducing obesity on kids. It's not a "ban", it's a regulation.

With your whole chest, think of the corporations! Let them use dark patterns! It's not their fault they didn't read carefully! It's not illegal, but it's deceptive! Also, buy my crypto AI course, it's totally legit.

This logic is akin to blaming the victim and removing all the responsibility from the perpretator.

Why not have the parents of the CEOs teach them that it's bad to make addictive products that have nefarious consequences to people and society?

> Sugar is addictive. Do we ban sugar, or regulate its consumption? No! I

I can't believe you chose sugar as an example. As a healthy lifestyle minority I would love to see some regation on cane sugar and syrups. One idea would be to tax it by volume and make it as expensive as premium honey or maple syrup. Of course, if something like this happened I think people would be mind blown at the effect of food prices as they'd immediately realize just how much of this bullshit is in everything.

Nope.

We ban cocaine and other super addictive drugs. Education is needed but it's not sufficient.

Yeahs it's a tough one, who's at fault:

Overworked parents

Or

Billionaires employing the top minds of the world using every trick in the book to make you consume as much and as long brain washing content