Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?
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I've been considering and trying to practice being kinder to myself, my phone, and my relationship with it. I still want to use less of it, but it's now a part of us, and will take time to almost amputate. I want to just stop feeding it, and let it die off slowly, peacefully instead of amputating it with a hacksaw.
Any kind of self-control based on shame seems doomed to be a vicious cycle.
It's not that I don't understand the fun of reading news, including places like HN, but I just can't get a proper hit on something like a phone so I'm not very tempted. Even typing in a URL is unpleasant on the phone.
Turn it off. (Where I’m lost is in bed.)
But yes, there's a component of self-control, too. I could easily pull out my phone and start scrolling Google News, reading alarmist headlines and getting myself wrapped up in them. And sometimes that does happen. But for the most part I just... realize I don't like how I feel when I do it, so I don't do it[0]. If I'm waiting around for something (transit, waiting room, etc.), I'll first see if there's anything else to occupy myself with, even if it's just people-watching or enjoying being outside. If I'm not feeling it, then sure, I might take out my phone and read something in the Kindle app, open messaging apps to find someone to chat with, open the browser and check out HN or a news site I enjoy, etc. And that's fine. The key thing is that I've looked at the world around me and actively decided that I'd rather read something on my phone to pass the time.
I don't think you need to develop this self-control through shame. Think about why you want to stop being on your phone so much. Frame that with respect to how you feel when you're using it. Not the results of the dopamine hits, but how you actually feel. Do you dislike the mindless aspects? Do you dislike all the inflammatory, outrage-inducing stuff that the algorithms throw at you? When you finally do put the phone away, do you lament the time you wasted, and think of other, more productive/useful/joyful things you could have been doing? Don't be ashamed, but do let the actual feelings associated with your phone use wash over you, and if you don't like them, start committing to doing things that don't make you feel that way. I'm not saying it's going to be easy for everyone to do that, but I think it's necessary.
If you can't develop self-control that way, try to leave the phone at home sometimes. Not in the "amputating it with a hacksaw" sense, but in short, easy, low-stakes situation. When you go into your kitchen to have lunch, leave your phone behind. It'll still be there, a couple rooms away, and you can pick it up again after you finish eating. Next try leaving the house without it. Got outside for a 20-minute walk around your neighborhood, without your phone. Next leave the house for longer without it. You know how to get to the grocery store. You've done it a hundred times and don't need your GPS. Write or print your grocery list on a piece of paper, and leave the phone at home. You'll be home in an hour or so, and then you get it back. Realize that there are actually a lot of situations in our lives where we can do this, and give it a try.
I think I'm lucky that I was a child of the 80s and 90s. I grew up without the internet until my teens (and then it was just intermittent dial-up until college), and without a smartphone until I was nearly 30. I got to see the evolution of a lot of this technology, and I believe that allows me to be more mindful about what I do and don't use. I know plenty of zoomers and younger millennials who have had always-on internet in their pockets for most of their lives, certainly for the entirety of their adult lives. It's all they know. And I think it's becoming harder and harder for today's parents to limit or deny screen time, as there can be severe social consequences for the children when that happens.
[0] This is how I got myself off social media. I examined how it made me felt, committed to a month with no access to it, examined how that felt, and realized I was so unhappy scrolling my feeds all the time. I still have the accounts open, but I've deleted all the apps from my phone, signed out on desktop, and disabled all the email notifications they send.
EDIT: I would rather not have needed to convince my partner that social media FB, tiktok and instagram is obviously bad and I'd have liked to have some laws to give me some basic protection.
More complex the network, less control any individual has on anything.
The Borg has no purpose other than to survive. These networks currently have no purpose other than to capture, trade, steal Attention.
That has to be reimagined to escape the current trajectory.
What's the point of pointing the finger at that amorphous, anonymous mass of people? Incarcerate parents if they don't educate their children properly? Fine them if they allow their offspring too much phone time?
You're blaming parents for letting their kids on their own device. If they'd follow your advice, you could then blame them for not letting their kids get bored [0]. And if they're reading you can blame the lack of exercise, or otherwise the lack of reading/writing by hand. Or if they're doing all of that in turn, you can go for the over-parenting angle.
It's infinite, no situation will be blame free if we look at the right angle.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/well/family/kids-summer-b...
You're inserting yourself between them and their grand parents, close family etc. not letting them navigate a safe social circle.
You're closing their world and this is a different angle to blame.
PS: I am heavily biased, but in general I think we can give parents a break. Some of them must be shitty, but traditionally the rest of society has been the escape hatch in these situations. If we really think there's an issue, the first question should be why it's not solved at the social/systemic level. Putting kids in a cage and blaming parents can always be done at the very end, when all other solutions have been tried.
I also don't buy the argument that they'll be behind in digital skills or whatever. I was born in the 80s and didn't have access to a computer until I was 8 or 9, (intermittent dial-up) internet access until I was in my teens, and a smartphone until I was nearly 30. I had no problem acquiring all these "digital skills".
My parents grew with no TV, no internet and not that much radio either, and boy they aren't fine. They have other skills, but they're also really bad at understanding what's happening in the world today. What's neither in their local paper nor facebook feed could as well not exist, and they're not better for it.
Do 7 yo kids benefit from having a decent dictionary instead of some skimped "portable" paper version or a 4kg reference with still sizeable limitations ? Does it help if they can google how many legs ants have instead of waiting for you to be available and google it for them ?
You do you, but I also don't buy blanket statement on how technology is wasted on kids, just because we can come up with random scenari where it's not that great.
I get you want me to focus on the downsides, and I offer you to look at the upsides. We do that balancing act for any tool or resource: does pool have positive effects that are worth the drowning risks ? Does letting kids walk the city alone let them do things that outweight the potential of getting run by a car or getting kidnapped ? etc.
I am definitely in favour of having kids as independent as possible and get them accustomed earlier than later with the tools they'll be using as adults.
When you have thousands of devs trying to break your will power, you're really gonna struggle.
Social media has passed me by (almost 50yo) and I have zero interest in it but I have no doubt that if I did start using it, their algorithms would break me down, no matter how strong willed I am.
Unfortunately, like all addictions, the solution is probably abstinence.
But then real challenge starts - folks with microscopic attention spans themselves are supposed to actually spend hours with their kids on activities that hardly give any dopamine kicks. Kids are really just a brutally honest mirror image of the parents, and very few parents these days like that.
Had few colleagues recently visiting wedding in Singapore. The stuff they said about the city itself is pretty sad - no western parent they saw was actually raising their own kids, cheap (often abused) nannies from ie Philippines were in charge of that. They allow kids anything, no discipline, no boundaries because who wants to be fired if kids complain. And then when whole family minus mighty nanny goes to ie restaurant, they often saw a parent literally begging 7 year old to have 30 minutes for themselves ('I'll buy you any toy, any food, anything, just give us 30 mins please' kind of story). I wonder why they even bothered having kids these days if they couldn't care less about them afterwards, while giving it all to some empty corporate careers and partying.
Or those 'super parents' who travel with kids in the car a lot. Then you look inside and there are X tablets neatly arranged in the back. Our kids are used to stare outside instead or read books/magazines, important 'boredom management skills' that can't be taught otherwise.
I used to get angry but I genuinely feel sorry for the child now: I suspect they will have zero attention span when they grow up and probably won't read books etc - There is no long-term upside to it.
That doesn't bode well, discussing this on a community site.
That also means to ask our kids to only ever establish social ties in setups we control: as adults have moved online (again, we're on a forum having this discussion), there's so fewer places irl to get random information. So a kid has to go through us to get anything, including information about what they want to watch/read/see.
A kid won't stumble upon a movie when there's no local theaters. Bookstores have also become way more limited if they're still there. Record shops are dead. Other kids recommendations only go so far, especially if they are also restricted. Libraries are the last bastion for a modicum of natural discovery imho.
Today for a kid to come into contact with something their parents don't care about, social media access is the main avenue left.
I can't realistically monitor what my children are looking 24/7, like I can't listen to every conversation that they have.
I could ban all social media / phones but how is that going to prepare them for life in a world where social media is all encompassing? Plus they likely would be ostracized by their peers.
[I'm talking here about older children, teenagers. We also have a 5 year old and it's pretty easy with him, he doesn't have access to any form of social media.]
This is not the future that I expect. Rather, in my observation/bubble, "radical privacy advocates" are more and more spreading. So, I would expect that you rather prepare the children for a wrong (and worse) world.
> Plus they likely would be ostracized by their peers.
In my school time, the "nerds" (who were also privacy advocates, keywords: Diffie-Hellman key exchange, RSA, war against cryptography) found friends among each others. So, I wouldn't fear that your child becomes ostracized - it very likely will find (better) friends.
There exist quite some other groups of people who reject social media: I just chose the "nerd crowd" example because many HN readers are very familiar with it. For example
- people who are somewhat skeptical about technology
- people who are "anti establishment"/"anti big tech")
- ...
I can easily imagine that if "(mostly) everybody" uses social media, a pubescent girl might easily come to the decision to reject social media completely just to be annoying to other people, and tell them to f... off.
I'm in your same situation but the previous sentence helps to stand my ground.
I also think companies should be required to provide tools to strictly control what gets recommended to you. Social media companies think people "like" stuff if they engage with it, but that's only half the story. Those who are struggling with porn addiction or gambling addiction etc need a way to opt-out from any softcore thirst trap content or slots videos, etc.
Having single point of failure accounts, like seeing your email account banned because your YouTube videos got Copyright struck was insane.
It's clear we can't just leave everything to the free market, when a lot of the internet and digital services end up controlled by a couple of giant players who seem to align on anticonsumer behavior instead of competing for better consumer benefits as we were taught the free market works. Oligopolies need to be reigned in.
We definitely aren't doing that. But these services are enormously hard to get right, work really well, and are entirely opt-in. You're critiquing luxury services, which isn't a strong need for regulation.
If you sleepwalk into this, and they 'fix' it, what's to keep you sleepwalking into the next thing?
People struggling with addiction should seek professional help if they really struggle rather than waiting for laws to protect them... - this is never going to solve their additions...
We also don't allow drugs to be distributed and marketed. There are many limitations to cigarette sales and they have shown to be successful.
Maybe the next thing someone sleepwalks into is a pleasant conversations with people or coding a great open source project and that is not something that needs to be fixed.
I do agree, it's naive in the sense that you say, most people do seem unaware for the large part, atleast of the effect it has on them untill its too late (and they complain about it themselves - it's all subjective ofcourse).
I don't think the next thing is someone sleepwalking into pleasant conversations with people coding etc. - I would love that, but i don't see a company earning billions from it - so it's unlikely.
The reason they get you to sleepwalk into things is because they know you wouldn't consume it when awake. Its not because people naturally sleepwalk all their lives...
I'm not sure how well that work work given the very fuzzy lines between "enough to connect with peers" versus "everything else". For example, a "show off your pictures" company could obey the letter of the rule but break the spirit, but not allowing the images-being-discussed in the chats, making participation pointless.
I think a more-robust approach would be a scheme permitting the development of third-party "frontends" for these services (possibly already permitted by law [0]) with the compromise that they must pass-through any non-personalized ads the service makes available.
That way it creates competition of "kid safe" versions--whatever blend of functionality that really means--and companies come under pressure to have a not-too-shitty version of their own.
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/02/was-there-a-trojan-horse...
Like WhatsApp? Before TikTok, children would get hundreds of messages per day on WhatsApp. I don't know if/how that changed, but chat-only isn't a solution. Complete prohibition is the only way out.
Possibly so, to a certain extent, but in the end it's our personal responsibility to stay as much away as possible from the above things.
But I don't think laws, while necessary, can really solve the problem. If well thought out, they can limit the damange that is done, but not solve the problem.
In smoking it has had a huge impact.
You educate people and tell them it is addictive, you can make it illegal and hard for people to get, you can put people in jail for getting hooked on it. It is still addictive.
Nothing short of making heroin not heroin makes it less addictive, but then it is no longer heroin and heroin itself is still just as addictive.
A: Many people are not aware that's a thing: "I did not click like on a racist video, but it keeps showing them to me", when in reality, the algorithm detected that you slowed down when shown that type of content so decided to feed more of it to you.
B: I targets your worse instinct (oh a half naked girl, maybe she has something interesting to say?), and if you're not aware of point A, it's a loosing battle. If you are aware of point A, it's constantly tiring to have to adjust you speed scroll etc.
I would personally make a GDPR type law that would require: "Any feed of user data must be presented in a non-opaque way, such as chronological, ranked by upvotes etc. Any personalized feed based on expectations of user preference should be entirely transparent, by allowing the user to access, modify their profile, as well as locking them (preventing future behaviour from changing the type of content you see).