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New York to require social media platforms to display mental health warnings
- delichon 10mo ago[flagged]
- nutjob2 10mo agoYou seem unable to tell the difference between heroin and aspirin.
- robocat 10mo agoWhat's your point? Aspirin comes with heavy health warnings (and social warnings that have been strongly influenced by the paracetamol/acetominiphin industry). Heroin lacks the health warnings, and is recommended within the social group that accesses it? I know of plenty of people that wouldn't touch Aspirin because of its dangers...
- throaway123123 10mo agoya we should take health warnings off of smokes. And alcohol. Also we should get rid of mandatory seat belts. And restrictions on lead. And asbestos. I mean we dont want to coddle people and remove personal choice right?
- everyone 10mo agoYou dont need to become hysterical, just look at the data. There's loads coming to light about the deleterious health effects of social media, that's not the case for books.
- throaway123123 10mo agoThank God. Social Media is a parasite. The more people re-learn to live without it, the better off society will be!
- nutjob2 10mo agoA parasite that turns its host into a zombie.
- websiteapi 10mo agothese sorts of comments always make me laugh considering where they are posted. in before: "HN isn't social media!"
- joshdavham 10mo agoHN is social media and I think most people recognize that. It's just that HN is a social media that respects your time and doesn't try to get you addicted. For example, HN has a very useful 'noprocrast' feature and one of the co-founders, pg, has openly worried about HN's addictiveness in the past [0]. So while HN is social media, I feel like it's qualitatively different than other platforms. [0] https://paulgraham.com/hackernews.html https://paulgraham.com/hackernews.html
- petcat 10mo agoBut that only demonstrates that it is addictive and everyone knows it. It's the exact kind of website that this New York state law is targeting. It just seems like hn is very open about acknowledging that. They'll still very much be subject to the state law
- joshdavham 10mo agoThat's a good point. Would you personally be in favor of HN being regulated though? I'm not sure if I would.
- petcat 10mo agoIndie soda makers still have to print their ingredients on the can. So yes, I think HN should still have to acknowledge that the website is addictive in accordance with this state law.
- wtcactus 10mo ago[flagged]
- throaway123123 10mo agoYou're kidding, right? Social media is democracy now? Health warnings are fascism?
- froidpink 10mo agoWill HN add the label too?
- CSMastermind 10mo ago> auto play or infinite scroll I don't think HN has either of these.
- tekla 10mo ago> algorithmic feeds It does have these
- skilled 10mo agoWell, no. Upvoting a certain story doesn’t change the homepage to match it to similar stories.
- shagie 10mo agohttps://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S4505 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S4505 "Addictive feed" is used, but it's circularly defined. "Algorithmic feed" doesn't appear in the text.
- tzs 10mo agoIt appears in section 1 of the PDF of the bill where it is explaining the legislative intent.
- shagie 10mo agoThe summary and justification sections help set the intent of the bill, but they don't define the law itself. Those uses are: Section two of this bill adds a new Article 45-A to General Business Law to require addictive social media platforms which feature predatory features such as algorithmic feeds, push notifications, autoplay, infi- nite scroll, and/or like counts as a significant part of the provision of their service to post warning labels for all users upon access to the platform. The bill features a series of specific exemptions for certain types of notifications that fall beyond the scope of the bill (i.e. those explicitly requested by a user or which are deployed for civic communication). More broadly, the bill also exempts any feature which is determined by the Attorney General via regulation to be offered for a valid purpose unrelated to prolonging use of the addictive social media platform. ... ... Additionally, as this bill covers only social media platforms that deploy addictive features such as algorithmic feeds, push notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, and like counts, any platform not wishing to display a warning label could simply limit their use of these features. The text of the law, however, does not define "algorithmic feed" (sorting by date post could be considered "an algorithm" by some). "[S]uch as algorithmic feeds" in the description and justification remains undefined in the text of the bill itself.
- oefrha 10mo ago> Hochul compared the social media labels to warnings on other products like tobacco, where they communicate the risk of cancer, or plastic packaging, where they warn of the risk of suffocation for small children. Great. I’m sure this will be just as effective as California Prop 65 cancer warnings.
- boplicity 10mo agoResearch says, apparently, that Prop 65 has actually been affective. > The researchers analyzed concentrations of 11 chemicals placed on the Proposition 65 warning list and monitored by the CDC between 1999 and 2016. They included several types of phthalates, chemicals used to make plastics flexible; chloroform, a toxic byproduct from disinfecting water with chlorine; and toluene, a hazardous substance found in vehicle exhaust. > They found that the majority of samples had significantly lower concentrations of these chemicals after their listing. But the levels didn’t just decline in California, they fell nationwide. [1] Unfortunately, the NIH website [2] where the study is hosted is no longer operational. I don't think certain people want to support scientific inquiry. Maybe someone else can find the study text? [1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-11/study-deems-california-prop-65-warning-labels-effective https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-11/study-d... [2] https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP13956 https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP13956
- mgraczyk 10mo agoMost of the labeled chemicals aren't harmful, so decreasing concentrations is not a good thing
- andyjohnson0 10mo agoWhat about the outcome of decreasing the concentrations of chemicals that are harmful? Is that a positive result?
- mgraczyk 10mo agoYes but I think outweighed by the overall cost and harm of putting up little warning signs in every restaurant, coffee shop, parking garage, and grocery store in the state
- everyone 10mo agoThe title made me think NY would be running a mental health ad campiagn but the messages would only be visible on big social media platforms.. Tbh that seems a more likely interpretation of the title in 2025.
- stocksinsmocks 10mo agoReading the title, my mind immediately drifted to the thought that there should be mental health warnings for living in a place like New York.
- mgraczyk 10mo agoEvery time I look at the evidence, I end up finding that social media improves mental health for teens overall. Is there a new study that motivated this or are we still misinterpreting statistics?
- osti 10mo agoSocial "science" be social science.
- nielsbot 10mo agowhat evidence have you found that in?
- mgraczyk 10mo agoFor example here is a recent widely cited study that did not find a statistically significant link between Facebook/Instagram and mental health outcomes, broadly miscited as having found an effect: https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/briefs/ifs-gallup-parentingsocialmediascreentime-october2023-1.pdf https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/briefs/ifs-gallup-... They did claim to find a very small link between TikTok/YouTube and mental health, but this seems to defy the narrative of "social" media being the culprit. YouTube was not significant if you adjust for multiple hypotheses, only TikTok
- nielsbot 10mo agoThe study seems to say 1) kids with worse mental health use social media more (unhealthily) 2) parenting is (very) important Ok. Sounds about right. There is still a negative correlation with social media and mental health. So not seeing how this one paper shows we shouldn’t reasonably restrict social media. This is a conservative angle on the problem: it’s about individual choices (or individual innate fitness) not about dangerous products in society. Not sure why we should ignore the fact that people are profiting of these dangerous products. And that these are man made dangers made for profit, not wild animals that just exist in nature.
- ethin 10mo agoI'm sure this will be shot down as being just as unconstitutional as when Texas tried this stunt with porn sites.
- xyzal 10mo agoDon't fall for the illusion that major social media are somehow a modern agora. It is a personalized, individually tailored psyop.
- there_is_try 10mo agoStep 1