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Comment by gotoeleven | Hacker News Reader

>>>"The law was drafted in part by a British Baroness and Hollywood movie director who fell deep for the moral panic that the internet and mobile phones are obviously evil for kids."

While I agree the law should be stricken on first amendment grounds, this sentence, inasmuch as it implies anything factual about social media, is false and dumb. The evidence that social media is bad for kids especially girls is overwhelming.

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/jonathan-haidt-on-how-to-...

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> The evidence that social media is bad for kids especially girls is overwhelming.

Not so! It's bad for some kids but incredibly positive for others.

> The ability to form and maintain friendships online and develop social connections are among the positive effects of social media use for youth... Seven out of ten adolescent girls of color report encountering positive or identity-affirming content related to race across social media platforms... A majority of adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), like they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%).

"Social Media Has Both Positive and Negative Impacts on Children and Adolescents" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK594763/

> When asked about the overall impact of social media on them personally, more teens say its effect has been mostly positive (32%) than say it has been mostly negative (9%). The largest share describes its impact in neutral terms: 59% believe social media has had neither a positive nor a negative effect on them.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/11/16/connection-c...

Got any "overwhelming" evidence that isn't a podcast? I'm sure social media ain't great for anyone. It's mostly an incomprehensibly large amount of malignant noise...but pretending that justifies some kind of heavy handed government censorship is...well, I guess I'm on social media so when in Rome...overwhelmingly stupid

This is the main focus of Jon Haidt's research right now. Plenty of resources on his site dedicated to it here: https://www.afterbabel.com/

The "Coddling of the American Mind" guy? Pass. I was in college during the period he wrote about, and my impression is that he agglomerates mountains of misrepresented evidence to work the older generations into another panic about kids these days.

Do you have any support that he misrepresents mountains of evidence? Did you dig into the mountain and find a bunch of places where he misrepresented data? Or did you just go with your gut?

When I hear statements like this, I usually take it to mean "I don't like the conclusions he is drawing with the evidence"

Here's the guy who wrote this thread's article talking about it: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/22/jonathan-haidts-book-the...

In addition to what 'EMIRELADERO linked - like I said, I lived through the exact period in the American university system that Haidt reported on, and his descriptions don't match my first-hand experiences nor do they match the experiences of my peers. As a result, I do not consider him a trustworthy source. I'm not going with my gut, I'm going with my eyes and ears.

People living outside of California interfering in California law, politics, or elelections is noteworthy.

"The law was drafted in part by a British Baroness"

Non-citizens should have zero business writing laws that affect actual citizens.

Parents are failing kids. Not the government. Not big tech companies.

Nah, this isn’t something you can fight as an individual parent. Not unless you want to be seen as a tyrant anyway.

You might be able to pull it off in specific environment, but I’m not convinced the benefits of such an individual mandate outweigh the negatives (or rather, there are better alternatives).

Why is it important to be seen as not a tyrant? Past generations prioritized discipline over being liked and ultimately received more respect.

Exactly, everyone in those generations was a tyrant. Therefore nobody was. It’s not about the thing itself, it’s about how it compares.

My point is that kids need to be able to play together, regardless of what ‘play’ means in this generation. If I make mine unable to play/communicate with his peers abot any topic relevant to them, I’m essentially deliberately isolating him.

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