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Comment by estimator7292 | Hacker News Reader

Companies are legally prohibited from marketing and selling certain products like tobacco and alcohol because they historically tried to.

Parents are legally and socially expected to keep their kids away from tobacco and alcohol. You're breaking legal and social convention if you allow your kids to access dangerous drugs.

Capitalist social media is exactly as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco. Somebody should be held responsible for that, and the legal and social framework we already have for dealing with people who want to get kids addicted to shit works fairly well.

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So we should ban social media is what you're saying but not what OC is saying.

At least give it a try.

All "social media" that uses recommendation algorithms should be unavaliable to children.

Banning access to social media for kids under 18 similar to how tobacco and alcohol is banned to underage people would be the more direct line.

This argument is quite close to what gov'ts are "trying" to do here! And I tihnk you'll find very few people ammenable to the idea that we should allow cigarettes to be sold to underaged people (even if in practice they still get access).

The argument on the "don't do the social media ban" side is quite an uphill battle if you dig into this metaphor too much

"Capitalist social media is exactly as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco. Somebody should be held responsible for that, and the legal and social framework we already have for dealing with people who want to get kids addicted to shit works fairly well."

They work hand in hand with governments around the world, that's why they get the tax breaks. In return they hand over details about your opinions, social networks and whereabouts, not to mention facial recognition data via Facebook. They aren't remotely capitalist in any real sense since they have a bad business model.

> Capitalist social media is exactly as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco.

Most actual studies done on this topic find very little evidence this is true.

It's a run-of-the-mill moral panic. People breathlessly repeating memes about whatever "kids these days" are up to and how horrible it is, as adults have done for thousands of years.

I expect some emotional attacks in response for questioning the big panic of the day, but before you do so please explore:

[1] Effects of reducing social media use are small and inconsistent: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032...

[2] Belief in "Social media addiction" is wholly explained by media framing and not an actual addiction: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2

[3] No causal link between time spent on social media and mental health harm: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/14/social-media-t...

[4] The Flawed Evidence Behind Jonathan Haidt's Panic Farming: https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evide...

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