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I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social med

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be totally forgotten about. That's why I think, don't bother trying to regulate social media. Just ban it for under 18s when they're most vulnerable. I don't relish this solution either. When I was 13, I was on forums making online friends. I loved it. But it was clearly different back then, before smartphones, before content-creators, when the internet was mostly nerds. (I don't use social media, but I do use YouTube. I was amazed how quickly, after watching one fitness video, it immediately started showing videos of the most ripped, steroid-abusing bodybuilders, and how I could achieve their "amazing" physiques. Then videos started popping up about all types of performance-enhancing drugs. SARMs, trenbolone - it was crazy how quickly it devolved to this)

XorNot 4y ago
As noted by another poster[1]: how are you going to enforce it? The idea of banning people from seeking things they want to do to themselves is incredibly stupid with the "War on Drugs" and it's equally stupid here with all the same consequences: a sudden explosion of either unregulated social media alternatives (back in the day Napster had a chat function even), or suspiciously immature "18 year olds" on Facebook and Tiktok. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35447990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35447990
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > As noted by another poster[1]: how are you going to enforce it? The number of comments here that haven’t realized that any regulations would require huge privacy intrusions for everyone is weird to see. It’s like people are imaging some magical set of rules that would only apply to kids but wouldn’t impact themselves negatively.
  - tastysandwich 4y ago
    Totally, that's why I figured it's easier to just ban it for under 18s, then leave it alone for over 18s. I'm an adult - I don't want to be told what I can and can't see. (Obviously, "banning it" is not so clear-cut. Are you going to force Instagram to require that everyone uploads an ID to verify their age?)
    - hunter-gatherer 4y ago
      To me, it seems the only way to enforce this is to invoke some sort of KYC mandate for social media sites. Obviously, in practice this would only target legitimate companies. So yeah, I think you would simply need to require that people verify their accounts in the same manner that say a Cryptocurrency exchange verifies a person. In such a universe Elon Musk might finally gets all his users to buy a blue mark.
      - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
        Such regulations would drive me to use only foreign-owned shady companies who do not care about US law. I'd be sure to spread the word to my fellow citizens.
    - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
      > Totally, that's why I figured it's easier to just ban it for under 18s, then leave it alone for over 18s. There is no such thing as "leave it alone for over 18s". If you institute strict age requirements, those have to be enforced for every user account. So yes, that means every site you use would require you to go through something like a KYC process. Privacy on the internet would be gone. You can't enforce age restrictions if you allow users to remain private.
      - dotandgtfo 4y ago
        Not sure how viable this is in the US due to reasons but a centralized auth service could in theory not provide any PII back to the service requesting an age verification, and the auth provider wouldn't necessarily have to be get data back from the service except for the first time a user registers an account.
- tastysandwich 4y ago
  That's a really good point. And a case in point - I remember when I was 12, joining forums, there was always a prompt asking me if I was over the age of 13. Obviously I clicked yes and registered anyway! But part of the danger is the ubiquity of it I think. Every teenager has social media, so there's this massive peer-pressure. If you don't have it, you get picked on. I wonder if banning it would reduce the numbers at least enough to reduce this effect. I'm definitely not saying this is some silver bullet... But I think we have to do something, and maybe this is a reasonable starting point.
- protocolture 4y ago
  Its weird how far modern society just assumes laws are code that is run flawlessly on flawless hardware.
- nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  I think this is pretty silly arguments. People love to say that the war on drugs didn't work, but I for one haven't consumed illegal drugs even though I have been curious at times. Since I haven't spent time with people who regularly break the law I have not been introduced to any element where I could have had access to illegal drugs. So war on drugs has worked at least on me and I live under to illusion that I am somehow unique. Yes. Of course addicts will addict. If we ban social medias tomorrow some people will still use them or build new ones, but putting any kind of barrier for entry does have an effect. This is why we complain when something is opt-out instead of opt-in since people do the default thing and if default thing is that social medias are illegal then that will deter many if not even most people from using them.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    I reiterate my first question: how are you going to enforce it? Because the war on drugs has a very specific enforcement mechanism: people who take drugs are given criminal records, locked up in prison, and have their future opportunities permanently curtailed. Is this your plan for an under-18 accessing social media? Do you think a policy of "we're going to help teens with their mental health" is going to accomplish that goal by specifically and overtly destroying it? And if that's not your plan, then what is it?
    - master-lincoln 4y ago
      Of course it would be the parents getting criminal records and being locked up, not the kids (or whoever enabled access)
    - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
      Require by law that everyone on social media authenticates their age (maybe also their names, this would be good way to get rid of bots as well). This can be done with government ID or with via your bank or even with requiring social security number when creating an account. Or government can just make a new digital ID system that you have to go and register at whatever place is suitable for this and you can use that ID for anything and everything you need. And if that doesn't seem to work just fine social media companies say a million dollars per minor per day that minor uses the service. You see enforcement go up fast AF. Banning all social media is even simpler.
andrepd 4y ago
> just ban it I don't disagree, but how do you propose we do that exactly?
- dustedcodes 4y ago
  Everyone must do an ID check when signing up to social media. If you are not an adult yet then your account will be locked until you become 18. This would also eliminate all the bots and fake people or double/triple anonymous accounts which are trying to game the algorithm to push for certain toxic agendas. Nobody should be anonymous on social media. Social media is to connect with humans, not with trolls or bots, so being anonymous is an oxymoron to being social in the sense of social media. Whistleblowers, which often get mentioned, don't need to be anonymous on social media. We have journalists and whistleblowers can already anonymously reach out to journalists and leak information so that journalists can publicise it under the protections of their profession.
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    > Everyone must do an ID check when signing up to social media. If you are not an adult yet then your account will be locked until you become 18. what is the definition of social media? does that include messaging apps? > This would also eliminate all the bots and fake people or double/triple anonymous accounts which are trying to game the algorithm to push for certain toxic agendas. any places (countries) where this was instituted and worked out as you describe? > Whistleblowers, which often get mentioned, don't need to be anonymous on social media. they dont? > We have journalists and whistleblowers can already anonymously reach out to journalists and leak information so that journalists can publicise it under the protections of their profession. and what if you don't have access to a journalist....?
    - hooverd 4y ago
      Well, at least this does the work of doxxing people we don't like for us.
    - fernandotakai 4y ago
kevinmchugh 4y ago
Social media is unlike drugs in that if you abstain while your peers use you're in some ways worse off. I wonder if there's a narrower ban to be had, either on image usage or especially on filters
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  Drugs also have this property- although I think it’s probably more true in the case of drugs than it is for social media.
- brigadier132 4y ago
  How are you worse off? Also, do we count whatsapp as social media?
  - hyperhopper 4y ago
    Missing invites to parties, social gatherings etc. Even for not having an iphone I suffer from this, and would miss out on tons more if not for Facebook for event invites, Snapchat/Instagram stories, etc.
    - baq 4y ago
      Green bubble/blue bubble issue?
      - hyperhopper 4y ago
        Yes. Apparently it downgrades the group chat experience if a non iOS user is added
  - rysertio 4y ago
    > How are you worse off? Everyone in my middle school used social media to know when to submit assignments, class schedules etc. Without social media you're going to be left out.
    - 4y ago
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
> but I do use YouTube I don't have Google auth cookies on my primary browser and every Google property has cookie autodeletion when the last tab is closed. Every time I start YouTube fresh, I get a new profile that I have to mold back to the content I prefer. On a fresh window I'm constantly bombarded with superficial crap I never click on. I'm also perplexed by the amount of T&A clickbait that gets offered in the shorts specifically. I have to spend time clicking animal videos to steer that to something less obnoxious.
- SomewhatLikely 4y ago
  Whenever I visit YouTube or Reddit on a new browser where I haven't logged in it's like I'm seeing an entirely different site it's so jarring. Instead of seeing a page off mostly educational and technical content they're filled with click bait. I'm embarrassed to even tell others I use them for fear they don't understand the extent to which the experiences can be curated.
- prawn 4y ago
  I'm not familiar with how cookies work these days, but could you build up your base profile, then back up the cookie and overwrite with it periodically to maintain a certain balance?
- em500 4y ago
  I never found youtube particularly addictive. I'm guessing that's because (1) I don't have the app installed on my phone and (2) out of habit I only use it in a webbrowser in a new Incognito/Private tab, so the default recommendations tends to crap.
johnisgood 4y ago
Why ban at all? Enforcing it is an issue. Privacy-intrusion is a given for everyone, not just kids. It probably would not work, similarly to any related bans. Again, why ban at all? Let the parents do the parenting... I guess? Or ban having sex without the use of contraceptives if you are so keen on banning.
- tastysandwich 4y ago
  It's incredibly hard for parents to intervene. Even if you ban your child from using it, since every other kid is using it, the harmful effects are still there. The best you can do is try to explain and contextualise everything your kid might be seeing, which is very hard to do. Also, not all parents are engaged with their kids as well as they should be. Having bad parents doesn't mean you're not worth protecting. > Or ban having sex without the use of contraceptives if you are so keen on banning. I'm not sure what that means.
  - johnisgood 4y ago
    Who else would it be if not parents, the Government? How would that really go? Would we really have to provide our ID to Facebook and such? That would suck.
    - JanSt 4y ago
      The government checks or disallows many things, i.e. drugs. Individualism is strong in the US, but if parents sucks kids suffer.
      - goatlover 4y ago
        The disallowing of drugs has not fared any better than disallowing alcohol did.
      - inkblotuniverse 4y ago
        Yes, the war on drugs has been really successful. I certainly want governments doing more of that!
marcodiego 4y ago
> I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. Ok. Now, how do we counter this very same argument against tv and video games?
- Mr-Frog 4y ago
  I would say that the main difference is that most modern social media apps use adaptive learning algorithms to curate an intentionally addictive feed. Traditional TV is not personally adaptive and video games with lootboxes have a comparable dopamine impact and have been seeing (justifiable) regulation.
- meowkit 4y ago
  Video games nowadays are just as bad. Children don't really watch TV (anecdotally). They watch YouTube, which is just as bad. The key difference between television and video games of yore is the feedback loop. TV and video games were one shot deployed and then ratings were gathered after, averaging across the entire audience. Now YT and video games don't have end states - same thing as social media. While you often won't have individual-centric recommendation algorithms in a video game, you have dark patterns and gambling mechanics in all the most popular games which is just as bad. The argument really isn't that we need to ban children from social media, we need to guard their dopaminergic regulation the way we guard their physical and mental health... oh wait. Ultimately its the responsibility of the parent (at least in the US). Parents who are aware of the pitfalls of high-dopamine-low-effort activities, poor diet, and low physical activity are going to guard against these things. The ones who don't will likely suffer later in life.
  - slothtrop 4y ago
    > Video games nowadays are just as bad. They're more boring than ever. Games people tend to be most addicted to appear to be glorified network social platforms, i.e. MMORPGs/LoL and the massive online communities extending them.
    - 4y ago
htag 4y ago
> The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. I'm sorry, this sentence doesn't explain to me why banning social media is necessary. What are "dopaminergic" effects? Why is it so awful that social media is addictive?
- 49erfangoniners 4y ago
  "Please explain everything to me from scratch so I can summarily dismiss anything you say."
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    The phrase “the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive” is very unclear. Very few people know what dopaminergic means. It might not be a real word. “Is not dissimilar from” is a stock phrase used in an academia and by people trying to sound very smart. The poster included just enough technobabble and stock phrasing to imply they are a specialist. But specialists know when speaking to non-specialists you should avoid technical language and stock phrasing. So it really just seems the poster was signaling “I am very smart and possibly have a degree in something related and a current on research.”
    - htag 4y ago
      "Dopaminergic effects" clearly means something along the lines of 'activity of dopamine within the human brain'. I just think we need more than an analogy to reach the conclusion that social media needs to be banned. The sentence "the dopaminergic effects of exercise are not dissimilar to drugs" is equally as true. Clearly dopaminergic effects alone aren't enough to ban something. When I read that the top comment thought banning social media was clearly necessary I was flabbergasted. I read the comment multiple times looking for a compelling argument. I read the article multiple times looking for a compelling argument too. I'm still struggling on this. I would really like to read a concise logical argument for why we should ban social media.
      - 4y ago
slothtrop 4y ago
> But it was clearly different back then If you go back far enough. I think in part we see forums through rose-tinted glasses. Moderation was looser than people are accustomed to now, and I've seen several taken over by conspiracy nuts. Some still make friends online almost the exact same way, using discord or whatever. I've been a part of communities, but never made "friends" online. The idea is a farce to me. I was an "always-online" teenager. That was a mistake, but I didn't know then, Neither did parents. Just as no one knew that frequently watching pornography could lead to problems. Internet access and culture led to a brave new world. You can pin certain issues more specifically to modern social media (e.g. endless scroll), but it's deeper than that. Most of what is identified as addicting content is an extension of what existed before, but with a far larger pool people accessing it. At any rate - banning is redundant. Parents are apparently receptive to to the idea that it could pose a problem, to a neurotic level for some. This is a new idea. Let them do their jobs.
- sw104 4y ago
  The idea of making "friends" on the internet, on forums, Facebook, or Discord, has always been ludicrous. Unless you reach a stage where you meet up in real life and share human experiences, you're basically just talking with the equivalent of an AI chatbot.
  - slothtrop 4y ago
    There's a semantic problem, because we have no other word for it. There's certainly some value to what people deem online friendship, by virtue that they experience it, but that does not mean it's a replacement or substitute for in-person friendship and interaction. Even that argument can get a strong reaction sometimes which I suspect is a defense-mechanism.
  - Thedarkb 4y ago
    I owe my career to friends made online. Online friends are no substitute for in-person interaction but it's perfectly possible to have a meaningful relationship with a person over the internet.
marcus_holmes 4y ago
Forcing social media companies to charge for accounts would be my first approach. Either by taxing it so much that they have to, or by explicitly requiring payment. I'm not sure how you'd define "social media" vs say, HN (or is HN social media?). Taxing advertising revenue at a higher rate could also do it (hmm, thinking about this, this might solve a lot more problems too). For countries that don't do credit cards, there are other means - usually through the telco that provides mobile access. Anyway - making users pay for it would associate the account with a credit card, and kids would have to do the same thing they do with mobile games and other paid-for stuff online - negotiate with their parents to get access. At least their parents would be aware.
- lelandbatey 4y ago
  I'd happily pay ~$3 a month for HN or other social media; I already pay way more on average per creator on Patreon and I frequently don't get a monthly benefit from that.
- klyrs 4y ago
  HN is social media. So are old-school forums. Hell, Usenet and IRC qualify in my opinion.
  - PurpleRamen 4y ago
    Which means, a more detailed naming is necessary. Like, "personalized media" or something like that, to distinguish it from classical media where the user is not the target of engagement fishing.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  > Forcing social media companies to charge for accounts would be my first approach. It may work at first, but it will devolve into a stratified system of people who can afford it, and those who can't.
  - Thlom 4y ago
    Something Awful are charging $10 for an account and it's basically just trolls. :-)
uptownfunk 4y ago
18.. hell I’m close to 40 and I have trouble self regulating. YouTube needs an option to disable shorts. It’s just not healthy. TikTok I won’t even touch it. It’s virtualized crack.
- sgt 4y ago
  It's your (our) generation who built all this stuff. We thought it would be "neat".
  - rocketbop 4y ago
    We thought it would be lucrative.
    - barrkel 4y ago
      We thought we had no alternative because if we didn't do it, someone else would, and they'd eat our lunch.
  - account42 4y ago
    It's a very small subset of our generation that built all this stuff.
    - Mezzie 4y ago
      It gives me very big Ariel signing the contract with Ursula vibes. We signed away our integrity for validation and money.
  - dghughes 4y ago
    Millennials blame Boomers for the economy, housing now Gen Z will blame Millennials for inventing social media. :D
- rocketbop 4y ago
  > YouTube needs an option to disable shorts. It’s just not healthy. I have disabled them along with suggestions with a browser extension, but the temp station is always there to enable again even briefly. Shorts are particularly addictive and must play hell with our dopamine receptors.
hackernewds 4y ago
if the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs, and evidently just as bad, why not ban them for adults as well?
- ATMLOTTOBEER 4y ago
  Agreed we should!
- startupsfail 4y ago
  HackerNews included? It does seem like a reasonable solution. A rewind back to the age when it had been just the newsgroups. Without +1 algorithms that result in the algorithm making a choice what users see and not the opposite. Certainly a better solution, if compared to forcing everyone to show their Real Id, just to verify their age to access the Internet.
  - tehnub 4y ago
    With HN and other sites with a non-personalized feed, at least what you see is the same as what everyone else sees. And if there's voting, which isn't perfect, it's based on community feedback.
    - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
      How hard is it to add "upvotes" to TikTok and fake that it is based on community feedback? How do you know that HN isn't personalized for you?
      - burnished 4y ago
        Well, you can go ahead and independently verify something like that pretty easily. Kind of weird to veer towards lies and malice at the drop of a hat here
        nextlevelwizard 4y ago
deafpolygon 4y ago
What I propose is the banning of algorithms-powered social media. There's a huge difference between a moderated age-appropriate forum and TikTok.
- MandieD 4y ago
  Not only is it the most effective thing that doesn't require an invasion of privacy, it would increase privacy and user autonomy. But how on earth do we start a political movement around it? Difficulty: needs a 10-second blurb that does not rely on the word "algorithm". "See what you want to see, not what's being pushed at you" is the best I can come up with.
  - jen20 4y ago
    I doubt there is a unified campaign that can attract both poles of US society, they’d need to be targeted at each individually.
    - MandieD 4y ago
      Addressing center-left, middle-class women (like myself): "Worried about your son being sucked into the incel movement because he watched some video game playthroughs? Concerned that your daughter's depression is being driven by the unrealistic standards of femininity that influencers are pushing into her Instagram feed? Is your kid a zombie after spending more than a few minutes on TikTok? Did your mother become irrationally scared of trans people after she started spending too much time on Facebook? Is your husband getting into stupid arguments with people he doesn't know and doesn't follow on Twitter? Did you miss your kid's school snow-day announcement because you were trying to scroll past all the crazy right-wing conspiracy garbage that keeps coming up on Facebook?" "Our attention should belong to us, not to advertisers and influencers."
      - cykros 4y ago
        Whoa whoa whoa, you had me until the husband part. You can't just go letting people be WRONG on the Internet without stepping up and doing something about it. https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
Animats 4y ago
> It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff It's not hard. It just upsets vested interests. Make it illegal to show ads to kids. You don't have to make "kid" identification airtight, because few people of any age want to opt into ads. The ad industry was very upset when the American Psychological Association proposed this back in 2004.[1] This doesn't raise constitutional issues because ads are considered commerce rather than speech. [1] https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/advertising-children https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/advertising-children
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  Great point about speech
  - iudqnolq 4y ago
    No it's far far more complicated than that. See for example: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1029 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1029
    - Animats 4y ago
      The court upheld the City of Austin on prohibiting off-premises digital signs, even if some of what they displayed was non-commercial. So that's not a problem.
      - iudqnolq 4y ago
        The court engaged in a complex analysis to determine the appropriate framework for analyzing this specific first amendment advertising case. This shows there isn't a blanket exemption from first amendment scrutiny for advertising.
        camgunz 4y ago
        I didn't delve into the opinions but it seems like the decision relied on basic content-neutral doctrine. That's par for the course 1A stuff.
xbmcuser 4y ago
Funnily enough with ChatGpt like language models available even without banning censorship will become very prevalent. Instead of banning your child from social media outright you will be able to get a bot to monitor their account and filter out what you feel is inappropriate. So instead of their social feed being controlled by a company it can be monitored and controlled by parents.
- hbs18 4y ago
  > So instead of their social feed being controlled by a company it can be monitored and controlled by parents. Huge win for helicopter parents
  - xbmcuser 4y ago
    I am not promoting this nor do I agree with it but I am predicting this will happen. The internet bubble people live in will go to the extreme.ie the chinese firewall available to every government, corporation or parent. Citizens of western countries are under the misconception that their governments do not try to hide information or topics they do they are just not that successful at it.
whatever1 4y ago
Computer games are also addictive. Back in my days soccer and basketball were addictive as well. I vividly remember my grandpa despising my uncle for having obsession with playing soccer and not spending more time on his homework. It seems like a pattern, grown ups just don’t like the way youngsters are spending their time. Maybe it’s totally normal in your teens to just spend aimlessly time in seemingly useless things ?
- erfgh 4y ago
  I didn't know any kids who were addicted to soccer in the sense of spending 15+ hours 365 days per year playing soccer. It's just not feasible physically.
  - whatever1 4y ago
    Ok, fellow southern European and Latin American HN folks, help me out here.
    - erfgh 4y ago
      I am Southern European by the way and I played more soccer than most kids. Even so, it wasn't possible for me to take soccer out of my pocket when I went to the toilet or when I was in bed and should be sleeping or when I was in class.
    - skydhash 4y ago
      Football was practically the only sport we could play (anything can be a ball if it can be kicked) but you can only play at recess and after school outside. And most of the time is hanging out with kids learning social norms (you lose sometimes, somebody may be better than you, it is mostly a team effort, rules are for a reason,…). I’m glad I got to spend my childhood offline.
- jmathai 4y ago
  I’m not sure if you have children. Soccer and basketball exist today. I don’t think you’ll find many parents who struggle with their kids’ habits with them relative to current video games like roblox. (Super Mario Kart doesn’t have the same addictive and predatory aspects) Find a random parent and you’ll see for yourself. It’s not that parents are frustrated that their kids are playing too many video games. It’s that they are concerned their kids are becoming addicted before they turn 10.
Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
> That's why I think, don't bother trying to regulate social media. Just ban it for under 18s when they're most vulnerable. > I don't relish this solution either. When I was 13, I was on forums making online friends. I loved it. But it was clearly different back then, before smartphones, before content-creators, when the internet was mostly nerds. The main difference between forums like that (which still exist) and social media is monetization, which leads to optimizing for "engagement" and incentivizing addictive behavior. So IMO the solution would be to ban corporate/for-profit social media.
- _heimdall 4y ago
  I don't think you'd even have to ban for-profits. If someone wants to run a niche forum and try to make a small business around it there's nothing wrong with that. https://diysolarforum.com https://diysolarforum.com comes to mind, Will runs a related informational site and YouTube channel. I don't know if he technically made a business for it but he could have, and if it continued to grow there could be good reason to hire a few employees. I think the real difference between social media and forums is the algorithmic feed. We could likely codify a ban on algorithmic feeds of user generated content. That would go a long way and would be much easier to spell out in a law than a targeted ban on advertising, social media use by age, or certain types of business models.
- pandemicsoul 4y ago
  That's not the only difference. Social media has a strong effect on the way kids talk to each other, treat each other, and most importantly: Bully each other. It's a vector for allowing petty childhood dramas go viral in dangerous ways that cause serious mental health issues up to and including suicide. Advertising to kids is obviously a big part of the problem. But it's not the ONLY problem with social media – it's just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
smeagull 4y ago
This fits with my theory that "woke" is actually "change I'm too old to deal with" and "hate speech" is "speech I hate". The worst part of either is having to fucking hear about the complaints about either, which I actually hear about, rather than the things they complain about, which may as well not exist for how much I see them. Social media is a punishment for those to stupid to avoid it.
cabalamat 4y ago
> It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be totally forgotten about. A good start would be to ban feeds based on algorithms; instead your feed would be a chronological list of new posts from channels you've chosen to follow.
- arbitrage 4y ago
  > A good start would be to ban feeds based on algorithms; instead your feed would be a chronological list of new posts from channels you've chosen to follow. The replacement you've described for an algorithm is still an algorithm.
  - cabalamat 4y ago
    Stop being pedantic; you know what I mean.
- drc500free 4y ago
  So ban HN?
  - cabalamat 4y ago
    HN has no concept of following certain individuals, and is a niche website aimed at a particular audience. I mean in things like Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.
cykros 4y ago
When I was 14, I too was chatting with strangers on the Internet, be it on IRC or AIM, or sites like Livejournal or independent forums. That said, I've been contending with this situation having a 14 year old of my own at this point. The reality is, at that time, swatting was not a thing. Pictures on the Internet were like, something a minority of people had, because it involved taking a film picture and scanning it in (assuming you had access to a scanner). Video? Forget it. Honestly I wouldn't have blamed my own parents for being more restrictive with me had they known how to, but the tech went entirely over their head. Seeing how far it's come in that time and just how much more damage can be VERY rapidly done, particularly with the more developed blackmail scams, or just kids making poor choices that result in some very real criminal charges, have me pretty okay with taking a much heavier hand on the matter than was taken with myself. I suppose I'd liken it to "free range children" in farmland, vs. free range children in a gangland ghetto. While we can certainly lament the lack of a good environment for kids to run free, the alternative is an unsafe environment. Perhaps platforms can be made to bring back a corralled in space that would be sensible, but allowing them loose on what the modern Internet has turned into would be frankly irresponsible. That all said, there's only so much we can do at the legislative level. Kids are already not allowed on many sites they get onto (now, just the same as back then). What I find most necessary as a parent is the ability to lock down devices so that I can allow my child access to specific resources without being forced into allowing access to others. iPhones are frankly AWFUL at this -- I'm happy to report my experience on Android has been much smoother, and Windows is quite a bit better than my initial expectations as well (though router-level configuration is handy for home devices as well). IF we must use the heavy hand of government to address the matter, requiring the availability of usable, effective parental control measures that engage in app-level (if not hardware level in the case of cameras) whitelisting would be where I think we'd have the most bang for our buck without too much in the way of collateral damage. Better still would be some market pressure, but unfortunately, most parents I talk to seem to just feel entirely helpless and don't even know what to look for, and just assume there's no choice but to let their kids get raised by the Internet. If you're new to raising kids in this era, do yourself and your kid a favor -- familiarize yourself with tools available, and demand platforms that give you the ability to effectively administrate your devices.
- 4y ago
croes 4y ago
How to implement such a ban without opening the door for user tracking?
- vasco 4y ago
  We can't track kids so instead we'll track every single internet user so that we can stop tracking kids. Nevermind you'll need to remember this is a kid in the browser session to show them the nerfed / non-tracking version anyway.
dustedcodes 4y ago
100% agree. Social media is as addictive as drugs but even more damaging with life long effects on that person. A big part of going through teenage years is the development of one's own personality and finding YOUR OWN identity. Figuring out who you are and who you want to be, building real relationships with real people to learn about social contracts, trust, bonds, friendships, mistakes, and most importantly it is a key part of building a healthy amount of confidence and self-love which are important character traits that everyone should establish to some level in order to weather through tough times in life later on. Social media makes all of the above impossible. Even worse, it makes this important development phase very toxic. It teaches teenagers and children the opposite of friendships, the algorithm is constantly looking to outrage children and to rattle their feelings in order to drive engagement. The algorithm is tuned to feed into young people's insecurities in order to drive clicks on ads and increase their ad revenue. This is why so many kids suffer from mental health issues, are immensely under confident, unhappy, feel alone and worthless. It's shameful that policy makers are not acting fast enough. There is already a huge generation of damaged children who just turned or are turning into adults now and we already see the effects of that.
- thfuran 4y ago
  >but even more damaging with life long effects on that person. I suspect heroin has led to considerably more felony convictions and fatal overdoses than any social media platform.
  - nervousvarun 4y ago
    heroin would definitely lead social media in the "fatal overdoses" department...unless you categorize suicide as "fatal overdose".
    - thfuran 4y ago
      About twice as many people die from drug overdoses as from suicide in the US. Not all of those ODs are heroin, but surely not all suicides are caused by social media.
  - 4y ago
watwut 4y ago
Young people should be driven to school and from school from parents. They should not have phones and all their movement should be controlled by parents all the time. Even better, they should be homeschool, so that you can exclude influence of peers in school. I am sure they will turn out just fine after being released from constant surveillance and prison only after 18.
pevey 4y ago
The main goal of raising children, after keeping them alive, is teaching them the skills they need to survive and (hopefully) thrive in their world. These skills have changed over time and vary based on environment, society. Today, that means teaching kids how to cope with social media. It is in their world. It’s not going away. As a parent, I can understand the temptation to just want to ban it. I wish I could ban a lot of things I would rather my kids not have to deal with. But parenting just doesn’t work like that. They need to learn to deal with it, and it’s my job to try my best to help them do that.
- istjohn 4y ago
  Today that means teaching them how to cope with [nicotine | gambling | hand guns | fentanyl]. It is in their world. It is not going away. As a parent, I can understand the temptation to just want to ban it. I wish I could ban a lot of things I would rather my kids not have to deal with. But parenting just doesn’t work like that. They need to learn to deal with it, and it’s my job to try my best to help them do that. Actually, we protect children from lots of things that they will need to confront as adults. My baby will need to learn how to safely navigate stairs eventually, but for now, the staircase is gated so she doesn't hurt herself before she's ready. And as this comment explains[1], social media is hurting our children in real and profound ways. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35447798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35447798
  - 10000truths 4y ago
    > Today that means teaching them how to cope with [nicotine | gambling | hand guns | fentanyl]. It is in their world. It is not going away. As a parent, I can understand the temptation to just want to ban it. I wish I could ban a lot of things I would rather my kids not have to deal with. But parenting just doesn’t work like that. They need to learn to deal with it, and it’s my job to try my best to help them do that. Well yes. Once your child turns 21, they’ll have legal access to all of these things. A parent is still obligated to educate their children to make good choices, regardless of what the legal age is. > Actually, we protect children from lots of things that they will need to confront as adults. My baby will need to learn how to safely navigate stairs eventually, but for now, the staircase is gated so she doesn't hurt herself before she's ready. Fortunately, the government does not ban the usage of stairs by minors in an attempt to “protect the children”.
ojosilva 4y ago
Just like the popular saying, "it's the economy, stupid!", when it comes to kids and social media we might as well say "it's the parents, stupid!" > Like so many parents these days, my wife and I have ceded So the parents are to blame here. "Ceded" to what exactly? To your kids unsupervised wishes? Most of the inadequate and harmful use of these addictive social networks is done at home, so, it's your jurisdiction, not the government's. Teach your kid how to use tech early on. Even if imperfect, put digital guard-rails and time limits and be on top of it at all times with discernment, commentary and openness. > L.G.B.T.Q. child living in a household with disapproving parents might have fewer resources to find community and support because their parents would be able to look into their messages Good argument. But, again, the disapproving parents are to blame here, not the kids. Educate the parents while giving children more channels and more people to talk to, so they don't need to go into dark digital alleys seeking relief. You can blame polarization, the Chinese (TikTok), advertising, the Government or free-speech, but raising kids is a full-time job parents, not Uncle Sam, are supposed to do. I'm learning it the hard way -- it's not easy being a parent of two, but the rewards are good when you are loving, persistent and listen to their needs. Trust me, if you put in the time and effort, your kids will beat addictive algorithms any time of day.
- Joeri 4y ago
  Show me a reliable way to set a time limit on social media, and I’ll concede the point. You can set a time limit on particular paths to reach social media, but as I saw with trying to block youtube, it is effectively impossible without blocking it at router level for the whole household. Kids are so creative, and nothing is more fun than subverting digital locks. I do agree to the point that talking and listening to your kid is key. Kids that don’t feel comfortable showing vulnerability to their parents are at risk in the digital world.
  - lucumo 4y ago
    How old are your kids? I've had no trouble just controlling the terminals. The tablets and laptop that can be used by them are stored in shared spaces. If they want to access them, they'll have to get past us. But I can see that get more difficult when they need to have both more access and more privacy. I hope to have taught them enough by then that tripping up won't be a big issue. It's not far into the future, but I think they'll be fine.
_heimdall 4y ago
If it's clear that social media is terrible for children (and I'd argue it's terrible for everyone), why can't we leave it up to parents to stop their kids from using it? I'm not sure how realistic it would be to enforce ban on social media under a certain age. The ban would have to be enforced on social media companies but they'd likely only be held to doing a best effort solution. They already set a minimum age at 13 for creating a social media account but that hasn't stopped kids from getting into TikTok, Instagram, etc
- blitz_skull 4y ago
  I mean that’s the status quo already. Parents who understand the inherent risks, probably already stop their children from using it. Legislation would benefit children who were born to parents who do not understand the risks.
  - _heimdall 4y ago
    If parents are okay with their kids using social media, I'm not sure that I should have the right to tell them otherwise. How would a ban even work though, without ultimately depending on parent intervention? Companies could throw up a "are you over 18?" banner, but those don't work. They could go full KYC and require users to provide government issued IDs, but that feels like a drastic step away from privacy and data security and could still be dodged when a kid grabs a picture of their parent's ID.
    - Joker_vD 4y ago
      If some parents are okay with their kids smoking and drinking and peddling drugs, are you still not sure that you (or rather, "the state") should have the right to tell them otherwise?
    - blitz_skull 4y ago
      I'm not saying there's a clear path forward. And to be honest, I'm not even really advocating for a government ban. The cynic in me says, "Hey if I raise my kid better, it's just an opportunity for them to be better prepared than someone else's kid." (i.e. Less competition) But the optimist in me says once a kid grows up, there's a ton of "past wrongs" that they can choose to right, given they have the proper self awareness. There's also a chance I'm just flat-out wrong, but... I'm betting my child's future that I'm not.
GuB-42 4y ago
I think social media are too useful to ban, even to children. And while it is not clear how we are going to regulate them, or more generally deal with the negative effects, it is something we must figure out, a blanket ban is not the solution. You have to realize that even sites like Stack Overflow can be considered social media. They certainly have addiction potential, maybe not dissimilar to drugs, but guess what, even some hard drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine are not banned, they are regulated, because they have some use in medicine. Sugar is addictive too, and as of now, a serious health problem, but no one talks about banning sugar of course, instead calling for regulation.
nonbirithm 4y ago
It's interesting how all the overblown controversy around violent video games decades ago can now actually be applied to social media in its current state. It was like some of the pundits were correct in forecasting the potential behavioral motivators from massively popular media, but were incorrect in the degree of harm. Video games with blood and gore were not able to cause upticks in violence, but being exposed to millions of people in one network can cause kids to show up with bruises to school. I think it's the human factor. People aren't going to empathize with an avatar or 3D model the same way they do with a real person filming themselves with a smartphone. It makes me think that the real bar for extreme content in video games is having a politically opinionated theme, not just subtext (which no AAA studio would ever risk producing) with sufficient realism.
webkike 4y ago
> I don't relish this solution either. When I was 13, I was on forums making online friends. I loved it. But it was clearly different back then, before smartphones, before content-creators, when the internet was mostly nerds. If I were to ban social media for my children, I would ban specific sites like Facebook, Instagram, etc. I wouldn't ban niche forums.
BeFlatXIII 4y ago
Bring back the time-honored practice of teens lying about their age. If nothing else, it would force kids who circumvent the ban to pretend to be adults. Plus, "you type like a child" could become a legitimate reason to get annoying adults who type immaturely in trouble.
Scalene2 4y ago
Dopamine addiction is a myth.
yamtaddle 4y ago
The dragnet spying that forms the core of social networks' business model ought simply be illegal. It's disgusting and tremendously dangerous. That'd help a lot—by destroying some of the companies, and removing many of their worst incentives. Also, they shouldn't be able to launder responsibility for editorial choices by saying "an algorithm did it!" and hiding behind laws meant to protect email and IM providers and web hosting companies and ISPs and such. I expect that combo'd fix a lot of problems.
naasking 4y ago
> I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. This is greatly exaggerated, if not outright false: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/04/addicted-to-social-media-is-this-even.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/04/addicted-to-social... Which is not to say social media isn't harmful, but let's refrain from imputing pseudoscientific explanations for the dangers.
avgcorrection 4y ago
I don’t know what “dopaminergic” is but processed sugar is like a drug to kids (pre-teen kids). And you would never be able to ban that (for pre-teens).
than3 4y ago
tasty, while I agree with your sentiment, I disagree with your characterization because it falls into a trap of giving legitimacy to groups that have no legitimacy or credibility. Whenever you start talking about banning a specific group, your efforts are wasted because who decides the group. Someone at the top, and can they always be trusted to decide that? No. If you need to talk about banning something outright, that's a far more approachable argument that doesn't add to the noise. Also, it is known that the brain continues to develop after 18, there isn't some magic switch at 18 that says these people aren't still vulnerable. Addiction and exploitation continue to happen regularly after that age, just look at gaming in general how many people are now in their 40s and spend more than 10 hours a week on gaming? Some people are more equipped than others to deal with addiction than others, what that difference is between success outcomes and others should be promoted and studied. Any system that can amplify or de-amplify a message runs into these problems. Its not just social media. Its algorithms too, and they are designed to exploit you and your psychology to get what they want which is profit or control in one way or another. That's what the humans who built these algorithms optimized for.
msla 4y ago
Banning everyone from social media is not possible, especially not based on whatever pseudoscience you're pretending to know about this week.

XorNot 4y ago

As noted by another poster[1]: how are you going to enforce it? The idea of banning people from seeking things they want to do to themselves is incredibly stupid with the "War on Drugs" and it's equally stupid here with all the same consequences: a sudden explosion of either unregulated social media alternatives (back in the day Napster had a chat function even), or suspiciously immature "18 year olds" on Facebook and Tiktok. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35447990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35447990

PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> As noted by another poster[1]: how are you going to enforce it? The number of comments here that haven’t realized that any regulations would require huge privacy intrusions for everyone is weird to see. It’s like people are imaging some magical set of rules that would only apply to kids but wouldn’t impact themselves negatively.
- tastysandwich 4y ago
  Totally, that's why I figured it's easier to just ban it for under 18s, then leave it alone for over 18s. I'm an adult - I don't want to be told what I can and can't see. (Obviously, "banning it" is not so clear-cut. Are you going to force Instagram to require that everyone uploads an ID to verify their age?)
  - hunter-gatherer 4y ago
    To me, it seems the only way to enforce this is to invoke some sort of KYC mandate for social media sites. Obviously, in practice this would only target legitimate companies. So yeah, I think you would simply need to require that people verify their accounts in the same manner that say a Cryptocurrency exchange verifies a person. In such a universe Elon Musk might finally gets all his users to buy a blue mark.
    - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
      Such regulations would drive me to use only foreign-owned shady companies who do not care about US law. I'd be sure to spread the word to my fellow citizens.
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    > Totally, that's why I figured it's easier to just ban it for under 18s, then leave it alone for over 18s. There is no such thing as "leave it alone for over 18s". If you institute strict age requirements, those have to be enforced for every user account. So yes, that means every site you use would require you to go through something like a KYC process. Privacy on the internet would be gone. You can't enforce age restrictions if you allow users to remain private.
    - dotandgtfo 4y ago
      Not sure how viable this is in the US due to reasons but a centralized auth service could in theory not provide any PII back to the service requesting an age verification, and the auth provider wouldn't necessarily have to be get data back from the service except for the first time a user registers an account.
tastysandwich 4y ago
That's a really good point. And a case in point - I remember when I was 12, joining forums, there was always a prompt asking me if I was over the age of 13. Obviously I clicked yes and registered anyway! But part of the danger is the ubiquity of it I think. Every teenager has social media, so there's this massive peer-pressure. If you don't have it, you get picked on. I wonder if banning it would reduce the numbers at least enough to reduce this effect. I'm definitely not saying this is some silver bullet... But I think we have to do something, and maybe this is a reasonable starting point.
protocolture 4y ago
Its weird how far modern society just assumes laws are code that is run flawlessly on flawless hardware.
nextlevelwizard 4y ago
I think this is pretty silly arguments. People love to say that the war on drugs didn't work, but I for one haven't consumed illegal drugs even though I have been curious at times. Since I haven't spent time with people who regularly break the law I have not been introduced to any element where I could have had access to illegal drugs. So war on drugs has worked at least on me and I live under to illusion that I am somehow unique. Yes. Of course addicts will addict. If we ban social medias tomorrow some people will still use them or build new ones, but putting any kind of barrier for entry does have an effect. This is why we complain when something is opt-out instead of opt-in since people do the default thing and if default thing is that social medias are illegal then that will deter many if not even most people from using them.
- XorNot 4y ago
  I reiterate my first question: how are you going to enforce it? Because the war on drugs has a very specific enforcement mechanism: people who take drugs are given criminal records, locked up in prison, and have their future opportunities permanently curtailed. Is this your plan for an under-18 accessing social media? Do you think a policy of "we're going to help teens with their mental health" is going to accomplish that goal by specifically and overtly destroying it? And if that's not your plan, then what is it?
  - master-lincoln 4y ago
    Of course it would be the parents getting criminal records and being locked up, not the kids (or whoever enabled access)
  - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
    Require by law that everyone on social media authenticates their age (maybe also their names, this would be good way to get rid of bots as well). This can be done with government ID or with via your bank or even with requiring social security number when creating an account. Or government can just make a new digital ID system that you have to go and register at whatever place is suitable for this and you can use that ID for anything and everything you need. And if that doesn't seem to work just fine social media companies say a million dollars per minor per day that minor uses the service. You see enforcement go up fast AF. Banning all social media is even simpler.

andrepd 4y ago

> just ban it I don't disagree, but how do you propose we do that exactly?

dustedcodes 4y ago
Everyone must do an ID check when signing up to social media. If you are not an adult yet then your account will be locked until you become 18. This would also eliminate all the bots and fake people or double/triple anonymous accounts which are trying to game the algorithm to push for certain toxic agendas. Nobody should be anonymous on social media. Social media is to connect with humans, not with trolls or bots, so being anonymous is an oxymoron to being social in the sense of social media. Whistleblowers, which often get mentioned, don't need to be anonymous on social media. We have journalists and whistleblowers can already anonymously reach out to journalists and leak information so that journalists can publicise it under the protections of their profession.
- andrekandre 4y ago
  > Everyone must do an ID check when signing up to social media. If you are not an adult yet then your account will be locked until you become 18. what is the definition of social media? does that include messaging apps? > This would also eliminate all the bots and fake people or double/triple anonymous accounts which are trying to game the algorithm to push for certain toxic agendas. any places (countries) where this was instituted and worked out as you describe? > Whistleblowers, which often get mentioned, don't need to be anonymous on social media. they dont? > We have journalists and whistleblowers can already anonymously reach out to journalists and leak information so that journalists can publicise it under the protections of their profession. and what if you don't have access to a journalist....?
  - hooverd 4y ago
    Well, at least this does the work of doxxing people we don't like for us.
  - fernandotakai 4y ago

kevinmchugh 4y ago

Social media is unlike drugs in that if you abstain while your peers use you're in some ways worse off. I wonder if there's a narrower ban to be had, either on image usage or especially on filters

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
Drugs also have this property- although I think it’s probably more true in the case of drugs than it is for social media.
brigadier132 4y ago
How are you worse off? Also, do we count whatsapp as social media?
- hyperhopper 4y ago
  Missing invites to parties, social gatherings etc. Even for not having an iphone I suffer from this, and would miss out on tons more if not for Facebook for event invites, Snapchat/Instagram stories, etc.
  - baq 4y ago
    Green bubble/blue bubble issue?
    - hyperhopper 4y ago
      Yes. Apparently it downgrades the group chat experience if a non iOS user is added
- rysertio 4y ago
  > How are you worse off? Everyone in my middle school used social media to know when to submit assignments, class schedules etc. Without social media you're going to be left out.
  - 4y ago

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

> but I do use YouTube I don't have Google auth cookies on my primary browser and every Google property has cookie autodeletion when the last tab is closed. Every time I start YouTube fresh, I get a new profile that I have to mold back to the content I prefer. On a fresh window I'm constantly bombarded with superficial crap I never click on. I'm also perplexed by the amount of T&A clickbait that gets offered in the shorts specifically. I have to spend time clicking animal videos to steer that to something less obnoxious.

SomewhatLikely 4y ago
Whenever I visit YouTube or Reddit on a new browser where I haven't logged in it's like I'm seeing an entirely different site it's so jarring. Instead of seeing a page off mostly educational and technical content they're filled with click bait. I'm embarrassed to even tell others I use them for fear they don't understand the extent to which the experiences can be curated.
prawn 4y ago
I'm not familiar with how cookies work these days, but could you build up your base profile, then back up the cookie and overwrite with it periodically to maintain a certain balance?
em500 4y ago
I never found youtube particularly addictive. I'm guessing that's because (1) I don't have the app installed on my phone and (2) out of habit I only use it in a webbrowser in a new Incognito/Private tab, so the default recommendations tends to crap.

johnisgood 4y ago

Why ban at all? Enforcing it is an issue. Privacy-intrusion is a given for everyone, not just kids. It probably would not work, similarly to any related bans. Again, why ban at all? Let the parents do the parenting... I guess? Or ban having sex without the use of contraceptives if you are so keen on banning.

tastysandwich 4y ago
It's incredibly hard for parents to intervene. Even if you ban your child from using it, since every other kid is using it, the harmful effects are still there. The best you can do is try to explain and contextualise everything your kid might be seeing, which is very hard to do. Also, not all parents are engaged with their kids as well as they should be. Having bad parents doesn't mean you're not worth protecting. > Or ban having sex without the use of contraceptives if you are so keen on banning. I'm not sure what that means.
- johnisgood 4y ago
  Who else would it be if not parents, the Government? How would that really go? Would we really have to provide our ID to Facebook and such? That would suck.
  - JanSt 4y ago
    The government checks or disallows many things, i.e. drugs. Individualism is strong in the US, but if parents sucks kids suffer.
    - goatlover 4y ago
      The disallowing of drugs has not fared any better than disallowing alcohol did.
    - inkblotuniverse 4y ago
      Yes, the war on drugs has been really successful. I certainly want governments doing more of that!

marcodiego 4y ago

Mr-Frog 4y ago
I would say that the main difference is that most modern social media apps use adaptive learning algorithms to curate an intentionally addictive feed. Traditional TV is not personally adaptive and video games with lootboxes have a comparable dopamine impact and have been seeing (justifiable) regulation.
meowkit 4y ago
Video games nowadays are just as bad. Children don't really watch TV (anecdotally). They watch YouTube, which is just as bad. The key difference between television and video games of yore is the feedback loop. TV and video games were one shot deployed and then ratings were gathered after, averaging across the entire audience. Now YT and video games don't have end states - same thing as social media. While you often won't have individual-centric recommendation algorithms in a video game, you have dark patterns and gambling mechanics in all the most popular games which is just as bad. The argument really isn't that we need to ban children from social media, we need to guard their dopaminergic regulation the way we guard their physical and mental health... oh wait. Ultimately its the responsibility of the parent (at least in the US). Parents who are aware of the pitfalls of high-dopamine-low-effort activities, poor diet, and low physical activity are going to guard against these things. The ones who don't will likely suffer later in life.
- slothtrop 4y ago
  > Video games nowadays are just as bad. They're more boring than ever. Games people tend to be most addicted to appear to be glorified network social platforms, i.e. MMORPGs/LoL and the massive online communities extending them.
  - 4y ago

htag 4y ago

> The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. I'm sorry, this sentence doesn't explain to me why banning social media is necessary. What are "dopaminergic" effects? Why is it so awful that social media is addictive?

49erfangoniners 4y ago
"Please explain everything to me from scratch so I can summarily dismiss anything you say."
- pyuser583 4y ago
  The phrase “the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive” is very unclear. Very few people know what dopaminergic means. It might not be a real word. “Is not dissimilar from” is a stock phrase used in an academia and by people trying to sound very smart. The poster included just enough technobabble and stock phrasing to imply they are a specialist. But specialists know when speaking to non-specialists you should avoid technical language and stock phrasing. So it really just seems the poster was signaling “I am very smart and possibly have a degree in something related and a current on research.”
  - htag 4y ago
    "Dopaminergic effects" clearly means something along the lines of 'activity of dopamine within the human brain'. I just think we need more than an analogy to reach the conclusion that social media needs to be banned. The sentence "the dopaminergic effects of exercise are not dissimilar to drugs" is equally as true. Clearly dopaminergic effects alone aren't enough to ban something. When I read that the top comment thought banning social media was clearly necessary I was flabbergasted. I read the comment multiple times looking for a compelling argument. I read the article multiple times looking for a compelling argument too. I'm still struggling on this. I would really like to read a concise logical argument for why we should ban social media.
    - 4y ago

slothtrop 4y ago

> But it was clearly different back then If you go back far enough. I think in part we see forums through rose-tinted glasses. Moderation was looser than people are accustomed to now, and I've seen several taken over by conspiracy nuts. Some still make friends online almost the exact same way, using discord or whatever. I've been a part of communities, but never made "friends" online. The idea is a farce to me. I was an "always-online" teenager. That was a mistake, but I didn't know then, Neither did parents. Just as no one knew that frequently watching pornography could lead to problems. Internet access and culture led to a brave new world. You can pin certain issues more specifically to modern social media (e.g. endless scroll), but it's deeper than that. Most of what is identified as addicting content is an extension of what existed before, but with a far larger pool people accessing it. At any rate - banning is redundant. Parents are apparently receptive to to the idea that it could pose a problem, to a neurotic level for some. This is a new idea. Let them do their jobs.

sw104 4y ago
The idea of making "friends" on the internet, on forums, Facebook, or Discord, has always been ludicrous. Unless you reach a stage where you meet up in real life and share human experiences, you're basically just talking with the equivalent of an AI chatbot.
- slothtrop 4y ago
  There's a semantic problem, because we have no other word for it. There's certainly some value to what people deem online friendship, by virtue that they experience it, but that does not mean it's a replacement or substitute for in-person friendship and interaction. Even that argument can get a strong reaction sometimes which I suspect is a defense-mechanism.
- Thedarkb 4y ago
  I owe my career to friends made online. Online friends are no substitute for in-person interaction but it's perfectly possible to have a meaningful relationship with a person over the internet.

marcus_holmes 4y ago

Forcing social media companies to charge for accounts would be my first approach. Either by taxing it so much that they have to, or by explicitly requiring payment. I'm not sure how you'd define "social media" vs say, HN (or is HN social media?). Taxing advertising revenue at a higher rate could also do it (hmm, thinking about this, this might solve a lot more problems too). For countries that don't do credit cards, there are other means - usually through the telco that provides mobile access. Anyway - making users pay for it would associate the account with a credit card, and kids would have to do the same thing they do with mobile games and other paid-for stuff online - negotiate with their parents to get access. At least their parents would be aware.

lelandbatey 4y ago
I'd happily pay ~$3 a month for HN or other social media; I already pay way more on average per creator on Patreon and I frequently don't get a monthly benefit from that.
klyrs 4y ago
HN is social media. So are old-school forums. Hell, Usenet and IRC qualify in my opinion.
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  Which means, a more detailed naming is necessary. Like, "personalized media" or something like that, to distinguish it from classical media where the user is not the target of engagement fishing.
deafpolygon 4y ago
> Forcing social media companies to charge for accounts would be my first approach. It may work at first, but it will devolve into a stratified system of people who can afford it, and those who can't.
- Thlom 4y ago
  Something Awful are charging $10 for an account and it's basically just trolls. :-)

uptownfunk 4y ago

18.. hell I’m close to 40 and I have trouble self regulating. YouTube needs an option to disable shorts. It’s just not healthy. TikTok I won’t even touch it. It’s virtualized crack.

sgt 4y ago
It's your (our) generation who built all this stuff. We thought it would be "neat".
- rocketbop 4y ago
  We thought it would be lucrative.
  - barrkel 4y ago
    We thought we had no alternative because if we didn't do it, someone else would, and they'd eat our lunch.
- account42 4y ago
  It's a very small subset of our generation that built all this stuff.
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    It gives me very big Ariel signing the contract with Ursula vibes. We signed away our integrity for validation and money.
- dghughes 4y ago
  Millennials blame Boomers for the economy, housing now Gen Z will blame Millennials for inventing social media. :D
rocketbop 4y ago
> YouTube needs an option to disable shorts. It’s just not healthy. I have disabled them along with suggestions with a browser extension, but the temp station is always there to enable again even briefly. Shorts are particularly addictive and must play hell with our dopamine receptors.

hackernewds 4y ago

if the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs, and evidently just as bad, why not ban them for adults as well?

ATMLOTTOBEER 4y ago
Agreed we should!
startupsfail 4y ago
HackerNews included? It does seem like a reasonable solution. A rewind back to the age when it had been just the newsgroups. Without +1 algorithms that result in the algorithm making a choice what users see and not the opposite. Certainly a better solution, if compared to forcing everyone to show their Real Id, just to verify their age to access the Internet.
- tehnub 4y ago
  With HN and other sites with a non-personalized feed, at least what you see is the same as what everyone else sees. And if there's voting, which isn't perfect, it's based on community feedback.
  - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
    How hard is it to add "upvotes" to TikTok and fake that it is based on community feedback? How do you know that HN isn't personalized for you?
    - burnished 4y ago
      Well, you can go ahead and independently verify something like that pretty easily. Kind of weird to veer towards lies and malice at the drop of a hat here
      - nextlevelwizard 4y ago

deafpolygon 4y ago

What I propose is the banning of algorithms-powered social media. There's a huge difference between a moderated age-appropriate forum and TikTok.

MandieD 4y ago
Not only is it the most effective thing that doesn't require an invasion of privacy, it would increase privacy and user autonomy. But how on earth do we start a political movement around it? Difficulty: needs a 10-second blurb that does not rely on the word "algorithm". "See what you want to see, not what's being pushed at you" is the best I can come up with.
- jen20 4y ago
  I doubt there is a unified campaign that can attract both poles of US society, they’d need to be targeted at each individually.
  - MandieD 4y ago
    Addressing center-left, middle-class women (like myself): "Worried about your son being sucked into the incel movement because he watched some video game playthroughs? Concerned that your daughter's depression is being driven by the unrealistic standards of femininity that influencers are pushing into her Instagram feed? Is your kid a zombie after spending more than a few minutes on TikTok? Did your mother become irrationally scared of trans people after she started spending too much time on Facebook? Is your husband getting into stupid arguments with people he doesn't know and doesn't follow on Twitter? Did you miss your kid's school snow-day announcement because you were trying to scroll past all the crazy right-wing conspiracy garbage that keeps coming up on Facebook?" "Our attention should belong to us, not to advertisers and influencers."
    - cykros 4y ago
      Whoa whoa whoa, you had me until the husband part. You can't just go letting people be WRONG on the Internet without stepping up and doing something about it. https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/

Animats 4y ago

> It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff It's not hard. It just upsets vested interests. Make it illegal to show ads to kids. You don't have to make "kid" identification airtight, because few people of any age want to opt into ads. The ad industry was very upset when the American Psychological Association proposed this back in 2004.[1] This doesn't raise constitutional issues because ads are considered commerce rather than speech. [1] https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/advertising-children https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/advertising-children

galaxyLogic 4y ago
Great point about speech
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  No it's far far more complicated than that. See for example: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1029 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1029
  - Animats 4y ago
    The court upheld the City of Austin on prohibiting off-premises digital signs, even if some of what they displayed was non-commercial. So that's not a problem.
    - iudqnolq 4y ago
      The court engaged in a complex analysis to determine the appropriate framework for analyzing this specific first amendment advertising case. This shows there isn't a blanket exemption from first amendment scrutiny for advertising.
      - camgunz 4y ago
        I didn't delve into the opinions but it seems like the decision relied on basic content-neutral doctrine. That's par for the course 1A stuff.

xbmcuser 4y ago

Funnily enough with ChatGpt like language models available even without banning censorship will become very prevalent. Instead of banning your child from social media outright you will be able to get a bot to monitor their account and filter out what you feel is inappropriate. So instead of their social feed being controlled by a company it can be monitored and controlled by parents.

hbs18 4y ago
> So instead of their social feed being controlled by a company it can be monitored and controlled by parents. Huge win for helicopter parents
- xbmcuser 4y ago
  I am not promoting this nor do I agree with it but I am predicting this will happen. The internet bubble people live in will go to the extreme.ie the chinese firewall available to every government, corporation or parent. Citizens of western countries are under the misconception that their governments do not try to hide information or topics they do they are just not that successful at it.

whatever1 4y ago

Computer games are also addictive. Back in my days soccer and basketball were addictive as well. I vividly remember my grandpa despising my uncle for having obsession with playing soccer and not spending more time on his homework. It seems like a pattern, grown ups just don’t like the way youngsters are spending their time. Maybe it’s totally normal in your teens to just spend aimlessly time in seemingly useless things ?

erfgh 4y ago
I didn't know any kids who were addicted to soccer in the sense of spending 15+ hours 365 days per year playing soccer. It's just not feasible physically.
- whatever1 4y ago
  Ok, fellow southern European and Latin American HN folks, help me out here.
  - erfgh 4y ago
    I am Southern European by the way and I played more soccer than most kids. Even so, it wasn't possible for me to take soccer out of my pocket when I went to the toilet or when I was in bed and should be sleeping or when I was in class.
  - skydhash 4y ago
    Football was practically the only sport we could play (anything can be a ball if it can be kicked) but you can only play at recess and after school outside. And most of the time is hanging out with kids learning social norms (you lose sometimes, somebody may be better than you, it is mostly a team effort, rules are for a reason,…). I’m glad I got to spend my childhood offline.
jmathai 4y ago
I’m not sure if you have children. Soccer and basketball exist today. I don’t think you’ll find many parents who struggle with their kids’ habits with them relative to current video games like roblox. (Super Mario Kart doesn’t have the same addictive and predatory aspects) Find a random parent and you’ll see for yourself. It’s not that parents are frustrated that their kids are playing too many video games. It’s that they are concerned their kids are becoming addicted before they turn 10.

Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago

> That's why I think, don't bother trying to regulate social media. Just ban it for under 18s when they're most vulnerable. > I don't relish this solution either. When I was 13, I was on forums making online friends. I loved it. But it was clearly different back then, before smartphones, before content-creators, when the internet was mostly nerds. The main difference between forums like that (which still exist) and social media is monetization, which leads to optimizing for "engagement" and incentivizing addictive behavior. So IMO the solution would be to ban corporate/for-profit social media.

_heimdall 4y ago
I don't think you'd even have to ban for-profits. If someone wants to run a niche forum and try to make a small business around it there's nothing wrong with that. https://diysolarforum.com https://diysolarforum.com comes to mind, Will runs a related informational site and YouTube channel. I don't know if he technically made a business for it but he could have, and if it continued to grow there could be good reason to hire a few employees. I think the real difference between social media and forums is the algorithmic feed. We could likely codify a ban on algorithmic feeds of user generated content. That would go a long way and would be much easier to spell out in a law than a targeted ban on advertising, social media use by age, or certain types of business models.
pandemicsoul 4y ago
That's not the only difference. Social media has a strong effect on the way kids talk to each other, treat each other, and most importantly: Bully each other. It's a vector for allowing petty childhood dramas go viral in dangerous ways that cause serious mental health issues up to and including suicide. Advertising to kids is obviously a big part of the problem. But it's not the ONLY problem with social media – it's just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.

smeagull 4y ago

This fits with my theory that "woke" is actually "change I'm too old to deal with" and "hate speech" is "speech I hate". The worst part of either is having to fucking hear about the complaints about either, which I actually hear about, rather than the things they complain about, which may as well not exist for how much I see them. Social media is a punishment for those to stupid to avoid it.

cabalamat 4y ago

> It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be totally forgotten about. A good start would be to ban feeds based on algorithms; instead your feed would be a chronological list of new posts from channels you've chosen to follow.

arbitrage 4y ago
> A good start would be to ban feeds based on algorithms; instead your feed would be a chronological list of new posts from channels you've chosen to follow. The replacement you've described for an algorithm is still an algorithm.
- cabalamat 4y ago
  Stop being pedantic; you know what I mean.
drc500free 4y ago
So ban HN?
- cabalamat 4y ago
  HN has no concept of following certain individuals, and is a niche website aimed at a particular audience. I mean in things like Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.

cykros 4y ago

When I was 14, I too was chatting with strangers on the Internet, be it on IRC or AIM, or sites like Livejournal or independent forums. That said, I've been contending with this situation having a 14 year old of my own at this point. The reality is, at that time, swatting was not a thing. Pictures on the Internet were like, something a minority of people had, because it involved taking a film picture and scanning it in (assuming you had access to a scanner). Video? Forget it. Honestly I wouldn't have blamed my own parents for being more restrictive with me had they known how to, but the tech went entirely over their head. Seeing how far it's come in that time and just how much more damage can be VERY rapidly done, particularly with the more developed blackmail scams, or just kids making poor choices that result in some very real criminal charges, have me pretty okay with taking a much heavier hand on the matter than was taken with myself. I suppose I'd liken it to "free range children" in farmland, vs. free range children in a gangland ghetto. While we can certainly lament the lack of a good environment for kids to run free, the alternative is an unsafe environment. Perhaps platforms can be made to bring back a corralled in space that would be sensible, but allowing them loose on what the modern Internet has turned into would be frankly irresponsible. That all said, there's only so much we can do at the legislative level. Kids are already not allowed on many sites they get onto (now, just the same as back then). What I find most necessary as a parent is the ability to lock down devices so that I can allow my child access to specific resources without being forced into allowing access to others. iPhones are frankly AWFUL at this -- I'm happy to report my experience on Android has been much smoother, and Windows is quite a bit better than my initial expectations as well (though router-level configuration is handy for home devices as well). IF we must use the heavy hand of government to address the matter, requiring the availability of usable, effective parental control measures that engage in app-level (if not hardware level in the case of cameras) whitelisting would be where I think we'd have the most bang for our buck without too much in the way of collateral damage. Better still would be some market pressure, but unfortunately, most parents I talk to seem to just feel entirely helpless and don't even know what to look for, and just assume there's no choice but to let their kids get raised by the Internet. If you're new to raising kids in this era, do yourself and your kid a favor -- familiarize yourself with tools available, and demand platforms that give you the ability to effectively administrate your devices.

4y ago

croes 4y ago

How to implement such a ban without opening the door for user tracking?

vasco 4y ago
We can't track kids so instead we'll track every single internet user so that we can stop tracking kids. Nevermind you'll need to remember this is a kid in the browser session to show them the nerfed / non-tracking version anyway.

dustedcodes 4y ago

100% agree. Social media is as addictive as drugs but even more damaging with life long effects on that person. A big part of going through teenage years is the development of one's own personality and finding YOUR OWN identity. Figuring out who you are and who you want to be, building real relationships with real people to learn about social contracts, trust, bonds, friendships, mistakes, and most importantly it is a key part of building a healthy amount of confidence and self-love which are important character traits that everyone should establish to some level in order to weather through tough times in life later on. Social media makes all of the above impossible. Even worse, it makes this important development phase very toxic. It teaches teenagers and children the opposite of friendships, the algorithm is constantly looking to outrage children and to rattle their feelings in order to drive engagement. The algorithm is tuned to feed into young people's insecurities in order to drive clicks on ads and increase their ad revenue. This is why so many kids suffer from mental health issues, are immensely under confident, unhappy, feel alone and worthless. It's shameful that policy makers are not acting fast enough. There is already a huge generation of damaged children who just turned or are turning into adults now and we already see the effects of that.

thfuran 4y ago
>but even more damaging with life long effects on that person. I suspect heroin has led to considerably more felony convictions and fatal overdoses than any social media platform.
- nervousvarun 4y ago
  heroin would definitely lead social media in the "fatal overdoses" department...unless you categorize suicide as "fatal overdose".
  - thfuran 4y ago
    About twice as many people die from drug overdoses as from suicide in the US. Not all of those ODs are heroin, but surely not all suicides are caused by social media.
- 4y ago

watwut 4y ago

Young people should be driven to school and from school from parents. They should not have phones and all their movement should be controlled by parents all the time. Even better, they should be homeschool, so that you can exclude influence of peers in school. I am sure they will turn out just fine after being released from constant surveillance and prison only after 18.

pevey 4y ago

The main goal of raising children, after keeping them alive, is teaching them the skills they need to survive and (hopefully) thrive in their world. These skills have changed over time and vary based on environment, society. Today, that means teaching kids how to cope with social media. It is in their world. It’s not going away. As a parent, I can understand the temptation to just want to ban it. I wish I could ban a lot of things I would rather my kids not have to deal with. But parenting just doesn’t work like that. They need to learn to deal with it, and it’s my job to try my best to help them do that.

istjohn 4y ago
Today that means teaching them how to cope with [nicotine | gambling | hand guns | fentanyl]. It is in their world. It is not going away. As a parent, I can understand the temptation to just want to ban it. I wish I could ban a lot of things I would rather my kids not have to deal with. But parenting just doesn’t work like that. They need to learn to deal with it, and it’s my job to try my best to help them do that. Actually, we protect children from lots of things that they will need to confront as adults. My baby will need to learn how to safely navigate stairs eventually, but for now, the staircase is gated so she doesn't hurt herself before she's ready. And as this comment explains[1], social media is hurting our children in real and profound ways. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35447798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35447798
- 10000truths 4y ago
  > Today that means teaching them how to cope with [nicotine | gambling | hand guns | fentanyl]. It is in their world. It is not going away. As a parent, I can understand the temptation to just want to ban it. I wish I could ban a lot of things I would rather my kids not have to deal with. But parenting just doesn’t work like that. They need to learn to deal with it, and it’s my job to try my best to help them do that. Well yes. Once your child turns 21, they’ll have legal access to all of these things. A parent is still obligated to educate their children to make good choices, regardless of what the legal age is. > Actually, we protect children from lots of things that they will need to confront as adults. My baby will need to learn how to safely navigate stairs eventually, but for now, the staircase is gated so she doesn't hurt herself before she's ready. Fortunately, the government does not ban the usage of stairs by minors in an attempt to “protect the children”.

ojosilva 4y ago

Just like the popular saying, "it's the economy, stupid!", when it comes to kids and social media we might as well say "it's the parents, stupid!" > Like so many parents these days, my wife and I have ceded So the parents are to blame here. "Ceded" to what exactly? To your kids unsupervised wishes? Most of the inadequate and harmful use of these addictive social networks is done at home, so, it's your jurisdiction, not the government's. Teach your kid how to use tech early on. Even if imperfect, put digital guard-rails and time limits and be on top of it at all times with discernment, commentary and openness. > L.G.B.T.Q. child living in a household with disapproving parents might have fewer resources to find community and support because their parents would be able to look into their messages Good argument. But, again, the disapproving parents are to blame here, not the kids. Educate the parents while giving children more channels and more people to talk to, so they don't need to go into dark digital alleys seeking relief. You can blame polarization, the Chinese (TikTok), advertising, the Government or free-speech, but raising kids is a full-time job parents, not Uncle Sam, are supposed to do. I'm learning it the hard way -- it's not easy being a parent of two, but the rewards are good when you are loving, persistent and listen to their needs. Trust me, if you put in the time and effort, your kids will beat addictive algorithms any time of day.

Joeri 4y ago
Show me a reliable way to set a time limit on social media, and I’ll concede the point. You can set a time limit on particular paths to reach social media, but as I saw with trying to block youtube, it is effectively impossible without blocking it at router level for the whole household. Kids are so creative, and nothing is more fun than subverting digital locks. I do agree to the point that talking and listening to your kid is key. Kids that don’t feel comfortable showing vulnerability to their parents are at risk in the digital world.
- lucumo 4y ago
  How old are your kids? I've had no trouble just controlling the terminals. The tablets and laptop that can be used by them are stored in shared spaces. If they want to access them, they'll have to get past us. But I can see that get more difficult when they need to have both more access and more privacy. I hope to have taught them enough by then that tripping up won't be a big issue. It's not far into the future, but I think they'll be fine.

_heimdall 4y ago

If it's clear that social media is terrible for children (and I'd argue it's terrible for everyone), why can't we leave it up to parents to stop their kids from using it? I'm not sure how realistic it would be to enforce ban on social media under a certain age. The ban would have to be enforced on social media companies but they'd likely only be held to doing a best effort solution. They already set a minimum age at 13 for creating a social media account but that hasn't stopped kids from getting into TikTok, Instagram, etc

blitz_skull 4y ago
I mean that’s the status quo already. Parents who understand the inherent risks, probably already stop their children from using it. Legislation would benefit children who were born to parents who do not understand the risks.
- _heimdall 4y ago
  If parents are okay with their kids using social media, I'm not sure that I should have the right to tell them otherwise. How would a ban even work though, without ultimately depending on parent intervention? Companies could throw up a "are you over 18?" banner, but those don't work. They could go full KYC and require users to provide government issued IDs, but that feels like a drastic step away from privacy and data security and could still be dodged when a kid grabs a picture of their parent's ID.
  - Joker_vD 4y ago
    If some parents are okay with their kids smoking and drinking and peddling drugs, are you still not sure that you (or rather, "the state") should have the right to tell them otherwise?
  - blitz_skull 4y ago
    I'm not saying there's a clear path forward. And to be honest, I'm not even really advocating for a government ban. The cynic in me says, "Hey if I raise my kid better, it's just an opportunity for them to be better prepared than someone else's kid." (i.e. Less competition) But the optimist in me says once a kid grows up, there's a ton of "past wrongs" that they can choose to right, given they have the proper self awareness. There's also a chance I'm just flat-out wrong, but... I'm betting my child's future that I'm not.

GuB-42 4y ago

I think social media are too useful to ban, even to children. And while it is not clear how we are going to regulate them, or more generally deal with the negative effects, it is something we must figure out, a blanket ban is not the solution. You have to realize that even sites like Stack Overflow can be considered social media. They certainly have addiction potential, maybe not dissimilar to drugs, but guess what, even some hard drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine are not banned, they are regulated, because they have some use in medicine. Sugar is addictive too, and as of now, a serious health problem, but no one talks about banning sugar of course, instead calling for regulation.

nonbirithm 4y ago

It's interesting how all the overblown controversy around violent video games decades ago can now actually be applied to social media in its current state. It was like some of the pundits were correct in forecasting the potential behavioral motivators from massively popular media, but were incorrect in the degree of harm. Video games with blood and gore were not able to cause upticks in violence, but being exposed to millions of people in one network can cause kids to show up with bruises to school. I think it's the human factor. People aren't going to empathize with an avatar or 3D model the same way they do with a real person filming themselves with a smartphone. It makes me think that the real bar for extreme content in video games is having a politically opinionated theme, not just subtext (which no AAA studio would ever risk producing) with sufficient realism.

webkike 4y ago

> I don't relish this solution either. When I was 13, I was on forums making online friends. I loved it. But it was clearly different back then, before smartphones, before content-creators, when the internet was mostly nerds. If I were to ban social media for my children, I would ban specific sites like Facebook, Instagram, etc. I wouldn't ban niche forums.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago

Bring back the time-honored practice of teens lying about their age. If nothing else, it would force kids who circumvent the ban to pretend to be adults. Plus, "you type like a child" could become a legitimate reason to get annoying adults who type immaturely in trouble.

Scalene2 4y ago

Dopamine addiction is a myth.

yamtaddle 4y ago

The dragnet spying that forms the core of social networks' business model ought simply be illegal. It's disgusting and tremendously dangerous. That'd help a lot—by destroying some of the companies, and removing many of their worst incentives. Also, they shouldn't be able to launder responsibility for editorial choices by saying "an algorithm did it!" and hiding behind laws meant to protect email and IM providers and web hosting companies and ISPs and such. I expect that combo'd fix a lot of problems.

naasking 4y ago

> I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. This is greatly exaggerated, if not outright false: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/04/addicted-to-social-media-is-this-even.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2023/04/addicted-to-social... Which is not to say social media isn't harmful, but let's refrain from imputing pseudoscientific explanations for the dangers.

avgcorrection 4y ago

I don’t know what “dopaminergic” is but processed sugar is like a drug to kids (pre-teen kids). And you would never be able to ban that (for pre-teens).

than3 4y ago

tasty, while I agree with your sentiment, I disagree with your characterization because it falls into a trap of giving legitimacy to groups that have no legitimacy or credibility. Whenever you start talking about banning a specific group, your efforts are wasted because who decides the group. Someone at the top, and can they always be trusted to decide that? No. If you need to talk about banning something outright, that's a far more approachable argument that doesn't add to the noise. Also, it is known that the brain continues to develop after 18, there isn't some magic switch at 18 that says these people aren't still vulnerable. Addiction and exploitation continue to happen regularly after that age, just look at gaming in general how many people are now in their 40s and spend more than 10 hours a week on gaming? Some people are more equipped than others to deal with addiction than others, what that difference is between success outcomes and others should be promoted and studied. Any system that can amplify or de-amplify a message runs into these problems. Its not just social media. Its algorithms too, and they are designed to exploit you and your psychology to get what they want which is profit or control in one way or another. That's what the humans who built these algorithms optimized for.

msla 4y ago

Banning everyone from social media is not possible, especially not based on whatever pseudoscience you're pretending to know about this week.