I can't answer your question, but do note that there are many who are studying this and coming to some similar conclusions. (But of course it's really hard to s

I can't answer your question, but do note that there are many who are studying this and coming to some similar conclusions. (But of course it's really hard to separate the moral panic from the real trends!) I agree that we shouldn't just ban anything that exclude some users. I'm not as shrill as some people are about the dangers, but I do have a generally negative opinion of childhoods that are spent so online. I have several young relatives—ages 9-22—that are heavily online. For the most part, they're the popular kids in their schools. Yet I see and hear constantly how they would never dare do things because of the pile-on potentials. Things I (a nerd who desperately wanted to be cool) would still have done. When I was in elementary and middle school, I was definitely in the lower quartile of popularity. I was bullied occasionally, and I would sometimes dread going to school because of my social standing. BUT, I had friends at home! I had a life outside of school that I could return to after a short day of that stress. Even in school, the social pressures abated during class. If Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok existed during my school years, I would have found no refuge from the hierarchies and drama of school. The game I was "losing" between first bell and final bell would have gone 24/7. My only saving grace would have been parents that refused to let me play the game in the first place. I think parents and schools should lean harder in this direction. Kids need to learn their social skills in small settings first, before they're exposed to literally the whole world. An awkward 11-year-old can only do so much "damage" to themselves in the limited setting of IRL. Let's get the mistakes out of the way before they're broadcast across space and time.