> Not a single social media restriction experiment has included people under the age of 16. We do not know how social media bans will affect the young people being targeted by them because we have never tested this with them!
I've also never tested my ability to survive a 100ft fall. Maybe I can! We have no way of knowing!
> Virtually all schools in the United States report that they use social media for communications, including for key announcements such as making families aware of upcoming opportunities, educational programming, and key deadlines. The reliance on social media for communication and resource sharing, while banning youth from these same platforms, sends mixed messages to young people and limits their access to health promoting information and resources.
That's a good point. There's no other way that schools could communicate such things. My childhood in the 80s and 90s certainly didn't include Scouts, 4-H, Band, Drama, Cross-Country, etc! I'm sure with social media bans for youth, schools will just continue to use social media to try to communicate to kids rather than adapting.
I have to assume the authors of this paper know how dumb it is and just don't care since most people will only read the headline.
droidjj 11 seconds ago [-]
The title of the paper this blog post is based on, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/developmental-psycholog..., is "We don't know how social media bans will affect youth but we're doing it anyway!" Which is a little cheeky for my taste given the seriousness of the issue these bans are trying to address.
alistairSH 3 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, the "but they use the socials to communicate!" is laughable. Basically none of the parents I know want school comms to be via Meta or Tweet or whatever.
Email lists work great for the type of comms schools need to make. And/or an RSS feed on the schools homepage.
nairboon 37 minutes ago [-]
> Candice L. Odgers serves on the Youth and Families Advisory Committee for YouTube.
jmward01 11 minutes ago [-]
Who is 'Candice L. Odgers'? The article's author is 'Monika Neff Lind, PhD'. 'Candice L. Odgers' isn't mentioned in the article anywhere that I see. What was your goal of implying this is a quote/this person was relevant?
uniqueuid 8 minutes ago [-]
The link is only to the marketing fluff piece, the paper is here and has three authors [1]
Thanks for the clarification. For others, here is the full conflict of interest disclosure from the linked paper in the article:
ML has an equity interest in Ksana Health Inc. No Ksana Health services or products were used in the current project. SS serves on the scientific advisory board for Headspace, for which he receives compensation. He has received consulting fees from Boehringer Ingelheim and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. CO serves on the Youth and Families Advisory Committee for YouTube.
I agree that this could be a conflict worth noting but I don't know the structure of that board to say how big. The link to the board is here [1] and implies independence and doesn't mention that youtube does or doesn't give funding/other support. (at least I didn't see any)
Always good to look into potential conflicts of interest though.
In fairness to the article, they are saying there is no evidence on how it will affect teens because all the studies excluded the audience that the ban was for.
"Not a single social media restriction experiment has included people under the age of 16. We do not know how social media bans will affect the young people being targeted by them because we have never tested this with them!"
I know anecdotally my own experience without social media has been more of a positive association, but that is because I am not attracted to it anymore. I have been on it for several years and it is no longer novel. To a teenager, it may be the way they relate to their peers and being unable to have access to it could have a negative consequence.
Maybe with all these countries and states that have banned social media, we should see evidence of increased mental health wellness as a proof that banning it was the right thing to do.
rwbt 34 minutes ago [-]
> First, enforcing a youth social media ban raises major ethical concerns. Enforcement efforts invade people’s privacy and are likely to hurt marginalized people more. For example, the technology that determines age based on selfie uploads makes more mistakes with young faces and people of color. Banned youth may also miss out on important resources and communications provided via social media, as schools, clubs, and most other youth-serving organizations use social media as a main form of communication.
Really grasping the straws with this argument...
droidjj 7 minutes ago [-]
This severely underplays the "risks" of not banning social media for teenagers. The link between social media use and mental health problems in teens is extremely well documented.
pacman1337 39 minutes ago [-]
this is why science credibility is going down, what we call science is abused. This is like saying smoking has no evidence it causes harm.
Nasrudith 33 minutes ago [-]
You are providing an accidental illustration of why science is under attack - because people don't like having their beliefs undermined by pesky evidence.
You should learn the difference between correlation and causation, and maybe read the summary of the study you're posting:
There is an independent association between problematic use of social media/internet and suicide attempts in young people. However, the direction of causality, if any, remains unclear. Further evaluation through longitudinal studies is needed.
Also your claim that "all evidence" points anything out is contradicted by the fact that "all evidence" is not contained within a single study, and the posted article points out that the evidence itself is in dispute.
AmbroseBierce 15 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, I'm sure surviving adolescence needs even more insecurities brought by comparing yourself to the ad-fueled fake happiness machinery that is social media, let's wait for the damage during a couple of decades so we can have conclusive data that satisfies you before we decide to do something, feels like not having enough people with terminal cancer to decide to do something about cigarettes.
krapp 7 minutes ago [-]
That's an emotional statement, not a rational one, which kind of proves the point that what's going on here is a moral panic. As does a cursory glance at this thread. It's all heat and very little light.
AmbroseBierce 3 minutes ago [-]
The issue of having to prove things beyond any doubt before we do something is a systemic problem that science itself it's aware of about itself and have been discussed extensively in purely rational settings, how many lives would have been saved from lung cancer if academics had took more seriously the initial research about smoking?. So no I don't believe for a second you are discussing in good faith, instead it seems like you quite a clear agenda and wouldn't care much about any evidence against social media, maybe because you work at one of those corporations or just are ideologically attached to one.
sieabahlpark 22 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
gadders 3 minutes ago [-]
I mean there is no large RCT where a bunch of teenagers were denied social media since birth whereas a different cohort were allowed access, and then they were tracked well into adulthood and mental health outcomes tracked.
But phronesis is a thing. It's obviously bad.
My one caveat - the current excuse we have for a UK government are likely to try and use the ban as a reason to force through digital IDs.
kgwxd 45 minutes ago [-]
Everyone should get off the engagement driven platforms, but the government shouldn't have a single thing to do with it.
AmbroseBierce 33 minutes ago [-]
Why? If asbestos is killing us we ban it, if hipotericllly some new form of asbestos is more harmful to young people than the rest we ban it too, why put the pressure of that responsibility in already stressed out population. Corporations know this very well, that's why they love when people have the opinion you just shared here.
iamalizard 20 minutes ago [-]
From what I know, asbestos is bad when it gets airborne. If it's installed correctly, if workers wear PPE when handling it and if there are periodic checks for cracks, leaks and so on, it's safe. From what I've read, at least - I'm not an expert by any means. I've removed asbestos from a few old buildings but wore PPE. It was very uncomfortable to have the masks and suit on. I even threw away the cloth bags I had to my tools in, just to be safe. We disposed of the asbestos as per regulation. I feel safe and would do it again.
So maybe banning asbestos altogether is overkill.
I'd love to be proven wrong. I don't have any financial interest in asbestos besides the few jobs I've done over the years removing it.
lesuorac 4 minutes ago [-]
Yeah and C yields bug free performance software when used correctly.
fyrabanks 41 minutes ago [-]
good parenting, as always, remains the best solution
AmbroseBierce 31 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, tell that to those parents with 3 jobs and can barely make any time with their kids that they have to keep an eye on even more things, things that weren't even a thing in their childhood or their predecessors.
iamalizard 17 minutes ago [-]
Wouldn't the correct solution be to empower those parents with subsidies or free child care? If you have to work 3 jobs, parent or not, there is something wrong with how we've structured our society. Banning social media in your example seems like a bandaid put on a person with external and internal bleeding. You'll stop some of the bleeding but the person will still suffer and die.
AmbroseBierce 11 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, there is almost always better solutions to all problems than the one society goes to, but history has taught us that that a lot of times if we wait for the "better solution" we end up years and even decades without either solution.
iamalizard 2 minutes ago [-]
But this solution has several negatives that likely make it net negative.
It normalizes age verification online which will likely lead to a less free internet. We could wait for decades until a really privacy-preserving way of age verification will come but what will happen is we'll have to give up our privacy and anonymity to a few large governments and companies.
It opens to door for regulating any kind of communication channels amongst the people. It will start with big social media but it will likely expand to any kind of forums, chats and even open protocols like AT. It will normalize the government interfering in all kinds of online activities.
These may seem distant and abstract to most people but the people in power want or will want to get power over every kind of communication. We should oppose this now, not when it's normalized and has happened for "platforms bigger than X users".
SoftTalker 29 minutes ago [-]
Parenting has never been the sole answer. We need a general sense of social responsibility to not expose children to risks of harm that they are not developmentally ready to deal with. Companies producing the harmful things have never been able to resist this temptation (see how tobacco companies had strategies to advertise to children while denying they were doing it) so often times regulations are needed.
dyauspitr 8 minutes ago [-]
No. Parents cannot fight the tide if everyone else is doing it.
Anduia 37 minutes ago [-]
for those with parents yes
sucrosesucrose 40 minutes ago [-]
You have too much faith in the masses.
psychoslave 41 minutes ago [-]
Formally the same as stating "Everyone should get off the addiction driven drug cartel, but the government shouldn't have a single thing to do with it."
kgwxd 13 minutes ago [-]
Yes. They don't actually care about the drug part anyway, beyond the excuse it gives them to operate outside their jurisdiction. We already have sane laws to cover the other crimes a "cartel" might do.
Nasrudith 35 minutes ago [-]
To be fair for the literal example prohibition is what creates the drug cartels in the first place so it is more coherent than it sounds at first blush. Enforcement is effectively a subsidy to those who don’t get caught.
For social media it is a whole different problem from it being entangled with protected speech. We don't want 'arrested for spreading misinformation defined as anything which contradicts the offical line' to be a thing.
AmbroseBierce 29 minutes ago [-]
Except social media is the full opposite, you can't even mention Palestine on TikTok.
bflesch 34 minutes ago [-]
I take a very large grain of salt if a researcher is literally based in California and they produce "findings" in support of a California-based megacorp such as Facebook. And then the headline is "lacks evidence" and "pose risks".
No shit sherlock, it lacks evidence because Facebook gatekeeps all the scientifically interesting data and they also don't share their findings from internal studies and human trials where they psychologically manipulatated minors.
There is a reason social media apps spam you with notification popups if you have not been active for the last 23 hours. They employ every trick in the book to keep you hooked and monetize your attention.
It is clear scientific misconduct by people working for Facebook who do numerous human trials on minors in order to increase their metrics and monetization. The fact they have crossed this red line should stop the discussion for every credible researcher in that field, because human trials on minors without consent are not ethical and there is no excuse for such behavior.
rambojohnson 31 minutes ago [-]
What "scientists?” People just throw that word around now to give an article fake credibility. Total horse shit.
selectively 31 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 16:47:10 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I've also never tested my ability to survive a 100ft fall. Maybe I can! We have no way of knowing!
> Virtually all schools in the United States report that they use social media for communications, including for key announcements such as making families aware of upcoming opportunities, educational programming, and key deadlines. The reliance on social media for communication and resource sharing, while banning youth from these same platforms, sends mixed messages to young people and limits their access to health promoting information and resources.
That's a good point. There's no other way that schools could communicate such things. My childhood in the 80s and 90s certainly didn't include Scouts, 4-H, Band, Drama, Cross-Country, etc! I'm sure with social media bans for youth, schools will just continue to use social media to try to communicate to kids rather than adapting.
I have to assume the authors of this paper know how dumb it is and just don't care since most people will only read the headline.
Email lists work great for the type of comms schools need to make. And/or an RSS feed on the schools homepage.
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/developmental-psycholog...
ML has an equity interest in Ksana Health Inc. No Ksana Health services or products were used in the current project. SS serves on the scientific advisory board for Headspace, for which he receives compensation. He has received consulting fees from Boehringer Ingelheim and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. CO serves on the Youth and Families Advisory Committee for YouTube.
I agree that this could be a conflict worth noting but I don't know the structure of that board to say how big. The link to the board is here [1] and implies independence and doesn't mention that youtube does or doesn't give funding/other support. (at least I didn't see any)
Always good to look into potential conflicts of interest though.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/kids-and-teens/advis...
Too much social media in young years?
"Not a single social media restriction experiment has included people under the age of 16. We do not know how social media bans will affect the young people being targeted by them because we have never tested this with them!"
I know anecdotally my own experience without social media has been more of a positive association, but that is because I am not attracted to it anymore. I have been on it for several years and it is no longer novel. To a teenager, it may be the way they relate to their peers and being unable to have access to it could have a negative consequence.
Maybe with all these countries and states that have banned social media, we should see evidence of increased mental health wellness as a proof that banning it was the right thing to do.
Really grasping the straws with this argument...
But phronesis is a thing. It's obviously bad.
My one caveat - the current excuse we have for a UK government are likely to try and use the ban as a reason to force through digital IDs.
So maybe banning asbestos altogether is overkill.
I'd love to be proven wrong. I don't have any financial interest in asbestos besides the few jobs I've done over the years removing it.
It normalizes age verification online which will likely lead to a less free internet. We could wait for decades until a really privacy-preserving way of age verification will come but what will happen is we'll have to give up our privacy and anonymity to a few large governments and companies.
It opens to door for regulating any kind of communication channels amongst the people. It will start with big social media but it will likely expand to any kind of forums, chats and even open protocols like AT. It will normalize the government interfering in all kinds of online activities.
These may seem distant and abstract to most people but the people in power want or will want to get power over every kind of communication. We should oppose this now, not when it's normalized and has happened for "platforms bigger than X users".
For social media it is a whole different problem from it being entangled with protected speech. We don't want 'arrested for spreading misinformation defined as anything which contradicts the offical line' to be a thing.
No shit sherlock, it lacks evidence because Facebook gatekeeps all the scientifically interesting data and they also don't share their findings from internal studies and human trials where they psychologically manipulatated minors.
There is a reason social media apps spam you with notification popups if you have not been active for the last 23 hours. They employ every trick in the book to keep you hooked and monetize your attention.
It is clear scientific misconduct by people working for Facebook who do numerous human trials on minors in order to increase their metrics and monetization. The fact they have crossed this red line should stop the discussion for every credible researcher in that field, because human trials on minors without consent are not ethical and there is no excuse for such behavior.