8 ms·

We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being

We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being taught through it. Is this how you want the next generation to be? Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company, and it has always been, and it's just sad to see the support it gets among technologists. Zuck doesn't strike me as particularly deep thinker (judging from his podcasts) to be able to steer his behavioral experiment to good, nor does he seem particularly well educated tbh. Even people who think they are doing good by being in the company (Clegg, Lecun) they are not helping, they re legitimizing a train wreck . I just hope people get bored and leave the behavioral treadmill before it s too late.

Nextgrid 5y ago
> Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company I don't want to defend Facebook, but this is not specific to Facebook. We have legitimized the modern concept of targeted advertising and Facebook just happens to play the game perfectly. Facebook is not 100% fault here (in fact there are others in this space). The fault is that we don't have regulation against something that is clearly detrimental to society. Change that, and Facebook will become better (or be replaced by something better). Edit: to be clear, I do not want to defend Facebook. I don't use it, I hate it and its effects on society, and its monopoly on social media online is a constant problem for me. However, I don't believe killing Facebook by itself will solve the problem as it will merely allow an equally-scummy competitor to take its place. Outlawing the underlying business model or making it unprofitable (such as by attaching liability to ads, stronger privacy protections, revoking Section 230, etc) would be a better long-term solution.
- atonse 5y ago
  Facebook is 100% at fault for what Facebook does though. Not to say others aren’t. I’m not interested in giving them an inch. They’ve probably caused more psychological harm and manipulation (intentionally, via “engagement” algorithms) than just about any human propaganda movement in history. I still don’t understand how people with any ethics still work for them. I guess 500k a year is enough to look away from anything.
- numair 5y ago
  I ask this sincerely: what makes you an expert on the motives and culture of Facebook, where you feel you can authoritatively state that their problems are “not specific” to them? Because, as someone who has spent time with the founders and early executives, I think you’re flat-out wrong. These are people who were way more obsessed with manipulating people and society than any other group of people I’ve encountered — including “professional” trolls on the dark web — and they remain exactly like this to this day. Manipulating young women and putting them in unhealthy/uncomfortable positions is part of the founding DNA of the company. Can you really say that about any other large corporation in Silicon Valley? If you want to defend Facebook, please provide context — and any conflicts of interest.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    I was approaching the problem from the financial/business angle of it. Facebook and similar businesses work on the basis of "engagement" - the more you get people to "engage", the more they look at ads and the more money you make, so your incentive is to maximize this engagement by any legal means possible. This isn't specific to Facebook. Whether there are more sociopaths in Facebook than a typical social media company is another question on which I don't have an answer, but if you look at it purely from a financial angle the problem would apply to any social media company. > If you want to defend Facebook, please provide context — and any conflicts of interest. My intent is not to defend Facebook and I don't have any conflicts of interest, but I just wanted to set the record straight because I believe the proper way to solve the Facebook problem is to outlaw/make unprofitable the underlying business model, otherwise if you kill Facebook something similarly scummy will simply take its place and you're back at square one.
    - numair 5y ago
      Yeah, you can’t just sort of observe things from a distance and make hand-wavy statements regarding regulation. You’re not the only one to do this, of course — it’s actually one of the Facebook’s preferred talking points for journalists and politicians, as it turns their specific problems into an “industry-wide problem” — but your position is not accurate given the specific context of the company, its strategy, its executives, and its super-voting-shareholders. What you’re saying is a bit like, “we need stronger regulations on knives or we are just going to keep having a serial killer problem.” If you don’t know the specifics of the situation — which, sorry you don’t, and simply being a user of these products or working in tech doesn’t give you any deep insight — you should try to avoid making claims that imply expertise. It’s a bit like defending the Catholic Church because you’ve read the Bible — there’s no correlation, my friend (and I didn’t choose that example randomly). You’re all over this thread defending people you don’t know, about situations about which you don’t have knowledge. A lot of people seem to do this, this playing defense for free thing, for companies once they become big ... It’s a bit weird.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  > Facebook is not 100% fault here (in fact there are others in this space). The fault is that we don't have regulation against something that is clearly detrimental to society. Change that, and Facebook will become better (or be replaced by something better). Treating Facebook employees and executives like some kind of force of nature that isn't responsible for its actions is really a bit weird. The people working at Facebook very much make these decisions and work with intent, which means they are at fault. They can be 100% at fault and we can still criticize the fact that we don't have enough regulations in place to protect society from companies like Facebook. Those two aspects are in no way mutually exclusive.
- stanleydrew 5y ago
  Facebook's terribleness runs much deeper than targeted advertising. It's been hostile and condescending to its users from day one.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    I don't disagree - but being user-hostile aligns perfectly with their business model. The problem isn't a given implementation, it's the business model itself. IMO it should be outlawed to profit off intentionally wasting people's time and promoting inflammatory content for the sake of "engagement", but drafting a law that would effectively cover this would be a major challenge (you could argue that the people doom-scrolling Instagram want the engagement-generating inflammatory content they are being fed), so my next alternative is to simply strengthen privacy regulations to make this kind of business unprofitable.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  afaik no other company tries so hard to manipulate people using their base feelings of social competition/envy/jealousy. at least not among the major ones.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    The only thing close is Big Tobacco's manipulation of the product specifically to tweak the addictiveness of the product. It's one thing for the product to naturally be addictive, but by hiring people to study ways to make the product even more addictive, then to hire people to implement those ways into the product goes towards showing intent on creating a harmful product.
- StriverGuy 5y ago
  Facebook doesn't just play the game, they are the game. There is no other ad delivery platform as influential to teens and young adults. Full stop.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    > There is no other ad delivery platform as influential to teens and young adults. Full stop. But as soon as you kill Facebook those people will just move on to the next competitor such as Snapchat or TikTok - you haven't actually solved the underlying problem.
    - spectramax 5y ago
      I don’t understand HN’s obsessive love for TikTok. It’s almost universally praised here.
    - Jcowell 5y ago
      Exactly , it’s extremely disingenuous to say Facebook is the game. No, they just really fucking good at the game. Removing them does not stop the game from being played.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - raydev 5y ago
    Teens and young adults are just as likely to be on TikTok or Snapchat as IG. The hyperfocus on Facebook (the company, kids really don't use Facebook the app) seems misguided.
amelius 5y ago
> Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being taught through it. Is this how you want the next generation to be? To be fair, isn't this how every generation looks down on the next generation? > We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens. Sorry, we can't leave this to armchair psychologists.
- sbmthakur 5y ago
  > To be fair, isn't this how every generation looks down on the next generation? Values are always subjective. However, I would not classify their comment as an example of my-generation-good bias. Any form of media that inspires obsessive behavior is bad. In the previous generation, people didn't listen to warnings against obsessive gaming. No wonder it's leading to suicides nowadays. https://www.thebridgechronicle.com/lifestyle/world-suicide-prevention-day-gaming-and-suicide-emerging-connection-55492 https://www.thebridgechronicle.com/lifestyle/world-suicide-p...
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    "An emerging connection" doesn't mean "leads to suicide". It's at best a claim of correlation (maybe depressed people are more likely to socially isolate, and games are something fun to do while doing that?).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  i m not talking about looking down, this isnt teenagers being edgy. Narcissism is something most people can easily recognize and it s generally considered unhealthy. Parents usually dont feed their children unhealthy stuff, addictive drugs or habits. Same way maybe they should stop being dazzled by technology and reconsider what is happening. If you suggest that compulsive narcissism is a harmless thing, maybe it is, but what s the definition of harm here. I also dont think that "doesn't cause her to kill herself" is the criterion that people use to decide what's appropriate for their kids. Unless you think that parenting is reduntant
treis 5y ago
We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that [radio, movies, magazines, TV, video games, the internet, cell phones] has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager Every generation has complained about the impact of some technology on kids. I don't really see a causitive link between teenager happiness and Instagram. It's an easy target to blame for sure. Especially compared with the stark increase in economic insecurity and academic pressure placed on teens these days.
- Invictus0 5y ago
  What a lazy argument. I suppose nothing then can have a bad effect on teenagers.
  - treis 5y ago
    Did you even read my post? I cited two things that I think have a bad effect on teenagers.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Well, radio and cinema paved the way for modern mass propaganda. Sure, as a society we figured mass media out. The experiments involved a world war so. Sometimes I think that we will learn to handle social media, sometimes I worry about the damage social media, either directly or indirectly, do until we learned our lessons.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    >Sure, as a society we figured mass media out. Are you saying this as in mass media is "safe" from manipulation? I would 100% disagree with that. Stating that it only took a world war to figure out mass media seems very odd as a qualifier. Along those same terms, social is leading us to world wide civil wars.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Ah no, quite the opposite. It is simply that we figured out mass media, and the ways it is manipulated and used for manipulation. We have not yet reached that with social media.
maram 5y ago
>> We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being taught through it I wonder why Snapchat is never included in any discussion regarding behavioral experiments. Facebook/Instagram to Snapchat stories is like Time/Vogue Magazine to tabloids. (This is not to defend FB) I’m just curious why Snapchat and its stories is never mentioned.
- oingodoingo 5y ago
  it’s because snapchat is a fraction of the size of facebook, a rounding error by comparison
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  it happens to be one that i m familiar with, and i see the narcissistic behavior that it encourages. it s also more public afaik
- rfvisuals 5y ago
  I use both products daily and while Snap is not immune from similar effects it seems to be designed to reduce the problems that IG is facing (body issues, viral misinformation). No one can see how popular you are or aren't unless you choose to reveal it and there's less focus on every post being 'perfect'. It's closer to iMessage on the communications apps spectrum.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    the only thing that separates SC from other messaging apps is that SC wanted to make it a social platform with accepting "followers" from any random person rather than people you know. Their use of the snap codes etc to help promote yourself is another example.
heresie-dabord 5y ago
> Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company $X is such a terrible human manipulation $enterprise. Let's not be naive about the nature of prominent elements in our society. To take action against FB, one would establish precedent to curtail many types of widely-accepted manipulation and exploitation, not to mention corporate machiavellianism. (Machiavelli seems thoroughly benign these days.) "Social media" is a delivery mechanism for propaganda and surveillance, with a smaller element of actual sociability and collaboration. I am opposed to what we see in social-media business, and I certainly don't think children should be encouraged to use it. > Is this how you want the next generation to be? One looks upon the current generations without much admiration.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. We took action against the cigarette companies and it didn't establish that precedent.
  - heresie-dabord 5y ago
    Interesting discussion. The tobacco settlement was a settlement. It didn't put the poisoners out of business. Their poison is still sold in our society. People -- including young people -- are still smoking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement#Restrictions_on_youth_targeting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre... FB isn't some harmful drug like thalidomide, nor does it cause concussions or cancer. It's going to be a subtle battle to wage, and must take into consideration that all the rotten and stupid behaviours of FB/social-media users -- as well as pathological behaviours -- were observable and demonstrable both outside of and long before social-media business. It's the implicit rule in our society that children should be protected, but foolish adults can be maximally abused. Maximally-abused adults are not going to do much for progress or for children. For example, children and young adults are still encouraged to play concussion sports, despite the evidence.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      > FB isn't some harmful drug like thalidomide All addictions go through the same systems in our brain, the same regions releasing the same neurotransmitters. Thus if i'm OK with social addiction then it should be OK to give mild drugs and gambling to kids as well , if we want to be fair. Behavioral studies need to research more the long-term effects of SM use, now that control groups still exist. I also don't think those behaviors were so frequently observed in the past, we used to call such people sociopaths, nowadays everyone is incentivized to become a sociopath and this is normal?
legutierr 5y ago
> nor does he seem particularly well educated tbh He did drop out of university in his sophomore year, after all, and has working virtually non-stop on his company since then. Very little time to catch up on reading the classics. I know there is a whole contingent of people who think it is good enough just to be admitted into a place like Harvard—that the name matters more than the experience—and surely it's Zuckerber's raw talent that has allowed him to build Facebook into what it is today, not anything he learned in school that he couldn't have just taught himself. But if he had actually completed his education, how might the world be different today? Might just that little bit of wisdom and perspective that we hope a liberal arts education will transmit to its recipients have made him think twice about implementing any of the strategies that Facebook has pursued over the years? Might have some of the horrific societal consequences been anticipated and avoided? Perhaps. But if Zuckerberg had cared enough about his education not to drop out of school, the Facebook of today probably would never have come to exist at all. A world with a Mark Zuckerberg that completed his education is likely not a world with Facebook in it.

Nextgrid 5y ago

> Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company I don't want to defend Facebook, but this is not specific to Facebook. We have legitimized the modern concept of targeted advertising and Facebook just happens to play the game perfectly. Facebook is not 100% fault here (in fact there are others in this space). The fault is that we don't have regulation against something that is clearly detrimental to society. Change that, and Facebook will become better (or be replaced by something better). Edit: to be clear, I do not want to defend Facebook. I don't use it, I hate it and its effects on society, and its monopoly on social media online is a constant problem for me. However, I don't believe killing Facebook by itself will solve the problem as it will merely allow an equally-scummy competitor to take its place. Outlawing the underlying business model or making it unprofitable (such as by attaching liability to ads, stronger privacy protections, revoking Section 230, etc) would be a better long-term solution.

atonse 5y ago
Facebook is 100% at fault for what Facebook does though. Not to say others aren’t. I’m not interested in giving them an inch. They’ve probably caused more psychological harm and manipulation (intentionally, via “engagement” algorithms) than just about any human propaganda movement in history. I still don’t understand how people with any ethics still work for them. I guess 500k a year is enough to look away from anything.
numair 5y ago
I ask this sincerely: what makes you an expert on the motives and culture of Facebook, where you feel you can authoritatively state that their problems are “not specific” to them? Because, as someone who has spent time with the founders and early executives, I think you’re flat-out wrong. These are people who were way more obsessed with manipulating people and society than any other group of people I’ve encountered — including “professional” trolls on the dark web — and they remain exactly like this to this day. Manipulating young women and putting them in unhealthy/uncomfortable positions is part of the founding DNA of the company. Can you really say that about any other large corporation in Silicon Valley? If you want to defend Facebook, please provide context — and any conflicts of interest.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  I was approaching the problem from the financial/business angle of it. Facebook and similar businesses work on the basis of "engagement" - the more you get people to "engage", the more they look at ads and the more money you make, so your incentive is to maximize this engagement by any legal means possible. This isn't specific to Facebook. Whether there are more sociopaths in Facebook than a typical social media company is another question on which I don't have an answer, but if you look at it purely from a financial angle the problem would apply to any social media company. > If you want to defend Facebook, please provide context — and any conflicts of interest. My intent is not to defend Facebook and I don't have any conflicts of interest, but I just wanted to set the record straight because I believe the proper way to solve the Facebook problem is to outlaw/make unprofitable the underlying business model, otherwise if you kill Facebook something similarly scummy will simply take its place and you're back at square one.
  - numair 5y ago
    Yeah, you can’t just sort of observe things from a distance and make hand-wavy statements regarding regulation. You’re not the only one to do this, of course — it’s actually one of the Facebook’s preferred talking points for journalists and politicians, as it turns their specific problems into an “industry-wide problem” — but your position is not accurate given the specific context of the company, its strategy, its executives, and its super-voting-shareholders. What you’re saying is a bit like, “we need stronger regulations on knives or we are just going to keep having a serial killer problem.” If you don’t know the specifics of the situation — which, sorry you don’t, and simply being a user of these products or working in tech doesn’t give you any deep insight — you should try to avoid making claims that imply expertise. It’s a bit like defending the Catholic Church because you’ve read the Bible — there’s no correlation, my friend (and I didn’t choose that example randomly). You’re all over this thread defending people you don’t know, about situations about which you don’t have knowledge. A lot of people seem to do this, this playing defense for free thing, for companies once they become big ... It’s a bit weird.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
> Facebook is not 100% fault here (in fact there are others in this space). The fault is that we don't have regulation against something that is clearly detrimental to society. Change that, and Facebook will become better (or be replaced by something better). Treating Facebook employees and executives like some kind of force of nature that isn't responsible for its actions is really a bit weird. The people working at Facebook very much make these decisions and work with intent, which means they are at fault. They can be 100% at fault and we can still criticize the fact that we don't have enough regulations in place to protect society from companies like Facebook. Those two aspects are in no way mutually exclusive.
stanleydrew 5y ago
Facebook's terribleness runs much deeper than targeted advertising. It's been hostile and condescending to its users from day one.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  I don't disagree - but being user-hostile aligns perfectly with their business model. The problem isn't a given implementation, it's the business model itself. IMO it should be outlawed to profit off intentionally wasting people's time and promoting inflammatory content for the sake of "engagement", but drafting a law that would effectively cover this would be a major challenge (you could argue that the people doom-scrolling Instagram want the engagement-generating inflammatory content they are being fed), so my next alternative is to simply strengthen privacy regulations to make this kind of business unprofitable.
cblconfederate 5y ago
afaik no other company tries so hard to manipulate people using their base feelings of social competition/envy/jealousy. at least not among the major ones.
- dylan604 5y ago
  The only thing close is Big Tobacco's manipulation of the product specifically to tweak the addictiveness of the product. It's one thing for the product to naturally be addictive, but by hiring people to study ways to make the product even more addictive, then to hire people to implement those ways into the product goes towards showing intent on creating a harmful product.
StriverGuy 5y ago
Facebook doesn't just play the game, they are the game. There is no other ad delivery platform as influential to teens and young adults. Full stop.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > There is no other ad delivery platform as influential to teens and young adults. Full stop. But as soon as you kill Facebook those people will just move on to the next competitor such as Snapchat or TikTok - you haven't actually solved the underlying problem.
  - spectramax 5y ago
    I don’t understand HN’s obsessive love for TikTok. It’s almost universally praised here.
  - Jcowell 5y ago
    Exactly , it’s extremely disingenuous to say Facebook is the game. No, they just really fucking good at the game. Removing them does not stop the game from being played.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- raydev 5y ago
  Teens and young adults are just as likely to be on TikTok or Snapchat as IG. The hyperfocus on Facebook (the company, kids really don't use Facebook the app) seems misguided.

amelius 5y ago

> Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being taught through it. Is this how you want the next generation to be? To be fair, isn't this how every generation looks down on the next generation? > We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens. Sorry, we can't leave this to armchair psychologists.

sbmthakur 5y ago
> To be fair, isn't this how every generation looks down on the next generation? Values are always subjective. However, I would not classify their comment as an example of my-generation-good bias. Any form of media that inspires obsessive behavior is bad. In the previous generation, people didn't listen to warnings against obsessive gaming. No wonder it's leading to suicides nowadays. https://www.thebridgechronicle.com/lifestyle/world-suicide-prevention-day-gaming-and-suicide-emerging-connection-55492 https://www.thebridgechronicle.com/lifestyle/world-suicide-p...
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  "An emerging connection" doesn't mean "leads to suicide". It's at best a claim of correlation (maybe depressed people are more likely to socially isolate, and games are something fun to do while doing that?).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cblconfederate 5y ago
i m not talking about looking down, this isnt teenagers being edgy. Narcissism is something most people can easily recognize and it s generally considered unhealthy. Parents usually dont feed their children unhealthy stuff, addictive drugs or habits. Same way maybe they should stop being dazzled by technology and reconsider what is happening. If you suggest that compulsive narcissism is a harmless thing, maybe it is, but what s the definition of harm here. I also dont think that "doesn't cause her to kill herself" is the criterion that people use to decide what's appropriate for their kids. Unless you think that parenting is reduntant

treis 5y ago

We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that [radio, movies, magazines, TV, video games, the internet, cell phones] has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager Every generation has complained about the impact of some technology on kids. I don't really see a causitive link between teenager happiness and Instagram. It's an easy target to blame for sure. Especially compared with the stark increase in economic insecurity and academic pressure placed on teens these days.

Invictus0 5y ago
What a lazy argument. I suppose nothing then can have a bad effect on teenagers.
- treis 5y ago
  Did you even read my post? I cited two things that I think have a bad effect on teenagers.
hef19898 5y ago
Well, radio and cinema paved the way for modern mass propaganda. Sure, as a society we figured mass media out. The experiments involved a world war so. Sometimes I think that we will learn to handle social media, sometimes I worry about the damage social media, either directly or indirectly, do until we learned our lessons.
- dylan604 5y ago
  >Sure, as a society we figured mass media out. Are you saying this as in mass media is "safe" from manipulation? I would 100% disagree with that. Stating that it only took a world war to figure out mass media seems very odd as a qualifier. Along those same terms, social is leading us to world wide civil wars.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Ah no, quite the opposite. It is simply that we figured out mass media, and the ways it is manipulated and used for manipulation. We have not yet reached that with social media.

maram 5y ago

>> We don't even need clinical reporting to tell that instagram has a bad effect on teens. Just observe a teenager of your family to see the values that are being taught through it I wonder why Snapchat is never included in any discussion regarding behavioral experiments. Facebook/Instagram to Snapchat stories is like Time/Vogue Magazine to tabloids. (This is not to defend FB) I’m just curious why Snapchat and its stories is never mentioned.

oingodoingo 5y ago
it’s because snapchat is a fraction of the size of facebook, a rounding error by comparison
cblconfederate 5y ago
it happens to be one that i m familiar with, and i see the narcissistic behavior that it encourages. it s also more public afaik
rfvisuals 5y ago
I use both products daily and while Snap is not immune from similar effects it seems to be designed to reduce the problems that IG is facing (body issues, viral misinformation). No one can see how popular you are or aren't unless you choose to reveal it and there's less focus on every post being 'perfect'. It's closer to iMessage on the communications apps spectrum.
- dylan604 5y ago
  the only thing that separates SC from other messaging apps is that SC wanted to make it a social platform with accepting "followers" from any random person rather than people you know. Their use of the snap codes etc to help promote yourself is another example.

heresie-dabord 5y ago

> Facebook is such a terrible human manipulation company $X is such a terrible human manipulation $enterprise. Let's not be naive about the nature of prominent elements in our society. To take action against FB, one would establish precedent to curtail many types of widely-accepted manipulation and exploitation, not to mention corporate machiavellianism. (Machiavelli seems thoroughly benign these days.) "Social media" is a delivery mechanism for propaganda and surveillance, with a smaller element of actual sociability and collaboration. I am opposed to what we see in social-media business, and I certainly don't think children should be encouraged to use it. > Is this how you want the next generation to be? One looks upon the current generations without much admiration.

shadowgovt 5y ago
Maybe, maybe not. We took action against the cigarette companies and it didn't establish that precedent.
- heresie-dabord 5y ago
  Interesting discussion. The tobacco settlement was a settlement. It didn't put the poisoners out of business. Their poison is still sold in our society. People -- including young people -- are still smoking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement#Restrictions_on_youth_targeting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre... FB isn't some harmful drug like thalidomide, nor does it cause concussions or cancer. It's going to be a subtle battle to wage, and must take into consideration that all the rotten and stupid behaviours of FB/social-media users -- as well as pathological behaviours -- were observable and demonstrable both outside of and long before social-media business. It's the implicit rule in our society that children should be protected, but foolish adults can be maximally abused. Maximally-abused adults are not going to do much for progress or for children. For example, children and young adults are still encouraged to play concussion sports, despite the evidence.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    > FB isn't some harmful drug like thalidomide All addictions go through the same systems in our brain, the same regions releasing the same neurotransmitters. Thus if i'm OK with social addiction then it should be OK to give mild drugs and gambling to kids as well , if we want to be fair. Behavioral studies need to research more the long-term effects of SM use, now that control groups still exist. I also don't think those behaviors were so frequently observed in the past, we used to call such people sociopaths, nowadays everyone is incentivized to become a sociopath and this is normal?

legutierr 5y ago

> nor does he seem particularly well educated tbh He did drop out of university in his sophomore year, after all, and has working virtually non-stop on his company since then. Very little time to catch up on reading the classics. I know there is a whole contingent of people who think it is good enough just to be admitted into a place like Harvard—that the name matters more than the experience—and surely it's Zuckerber's raw talent that has allowed him to build Facebook into what it is today, not anything he learned in school that he couldn't have just taught himself. But if he had actually completed his education, how might the world be different today? Might just that little bit of wisdom and perspective that we hope a liberal arts education will transmit to its recipients have made him think twice about implementing any of the strategies that Facebook has pursued over the years? Might have some of the horrific societal consequences been anticipated and avoided? Perhaps. But if Zuckerberg had cared enough about his education not to drop out of school, the Facebook of today probably would never have come to exist at all. A world with a Mark Zuckerberg that completed his education is likely not a world with Facebook in it.