GordonGekko
Footballguy
Direct Headline: Facebook documents show how toxic Instagram is for teens, Wall Street Journal reports
Facebook has repeatedly found that its Instagram app is harmful to a number of teenagers, according to a Wall Street Journal report...cited Facebook studies over the past three years that examined how Instagram affects its young user base, with teenage girls being most notably harmed. One internal Facebook presentation said that among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the issue to Instagram.....“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,”.... Facebook also reportedly found that 14% of boys in the U.S. said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves....
.... Still, Facebook has reportedly struggled to manage the problem while keeping users engaged and coming back. Facebook is also building a version of Instagram for kids under age 13....Young users are a key to Instagram’s success. More than 40% of Instagram’s users are 22 years old and younger....Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., has made children’s mental health concerns in connection with social media use a key priority and previously rebuked Facebook for considering such a product....Following the Journal’s report, Trahan called for Facebook to “immediately abandon plans for Instagram for Kids” and focus instead on protecting existing young users.....“Facebook’s internal documents show that the company’s failure to protect children on Instagram – especially young girls – is outright neglect, and it’s been going on for years....Facebook has no business developing additional social media platforms explicitly designed for our children when they can’t be trusted to keep their current house in order.....”
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers... said Facebook “refused to comply” with a request from Republicans on the committee in March asking for its internal research on its products’ impact on kids’ mental health....“This also leaves us wondering what else they are hiding.....We will continue to demand transparency from Facebook and other Big Tech companies, especially as it relates to the harm their products have on our children....”
....Democratic FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra later tweeted, “Given the financial incentives embedded in its surveillance-based business model, it is yet another sign that the company cannot be trusted with our data....”
Jessica Bursztynsky and Lauren Feiner Tue, Sep 14 20218:10 PM EDT
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/14/facebook-documents-show-how-toxic-instagram-is-for-teens-wsj.html
Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show
By Georgia Wells , Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman Sept. 14, 2021 7:59 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739
Direct Headline: I grew up 'under a rock': My parents banned social media until I was 17. I'm glad they did.
....At the time, I was envious of friends and acquaintances at sports practices who posed for photos together, “tagged” each other in their posts, or gossiped about what Susy wore and could you believe that Jack and Jill broke up again?....I didn’t know at the time what a blessing it was to enjoy a childhood free of the constraints, anxiety and sadness social media often brings. Uninhibited by the expectations and consuming nature of social media, I had more time for real, in-person, screenless interaction....Facebook has studied the effects of its photo-sharing app on viewers over the past few years. The studies, according to The Wall Street Journal, unsurprisingly found that Instagram has detrimental effects on millions of young people, especially teenage girls.....
...Instagram algorithms facilitate a never-ending stream of photos and videos that “can send teens spiraling toward eating disorders, an unhealthy sense of their own bodies and depression,” The Journal said, citing Facebook's internal research.... Instagram exacerbated body image issues in 1 in 3 girls, and teens consistently blamed the app for increased anxiety and depression....Conversely, studies have shown that children who experienced technological withdrawals had better nonverbal cues, and were better equipped to accept delayed gratification or engage actively in the world around them....
Tech giants have demonstrated that they are aware of the downsides to the apps they have created. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs limited his own children’s use of technology and wouldn’t let them use the iPad his company created. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, wouldn’t let his children have phones until they were at least 14. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom expressed fears about his daughter growing up with the prevalence of harassment and bullying on his own platform....Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, feels “tremendous guilt” for helping to create and promote Facebook’s success. He said that Facebook has been extremely damaging to society, and that he will not let his own children use it....
Social media’s explosion in popularity has unquestionably played a role in increased eating disorders, depression and suicide..... a Facebook study of teens in the United States and the United Kingdom reporting that many Instagram users felt “unattractive,” “not good enough” or insecure about their friendships after using the app....
Young people feel enormous pressure to do more exciting things, or to make as many amazing friends as the other people flooding their timeline. Never mind if the friendships online are secretly phony and kept up only for that group photo with hundreds of likes..... An eating disorder specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital estimated that nearly 50% of her patients developed eating disorders from social media.....
Theresa Olohan 9/27/21
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/09/27/dangers-instagram-glad-my-parents-banned-social-media/5835809001/
Direct Headline: Former Facebook exec won't let own kids use social media, says it's 'destroying how society works'
....Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive and the CEO of venture capital firm Social Capital, said in a November interview that social media is damaging society and voiced concerns about its impact on his own children...said that he feels “tremendous guilt” for helping build Facebook into the behemoth it is today. Palihapitiya joined the company in 2007 as its vice president for user growth, three years after it was founded in a Harvard dorm room by Mark Zuckerberg....."I think we all knew in the back of our minds, even though we feigned this whole line of 'unintended consequences,' I think in the back recesses of our minds, something bad could happen.....It literally is at a point now we've created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. That is literally where we are. I would encourage all of you how to internalize this is - if you feed the beast, the beast will destroy you...The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse. No cooperation. Misinformation. Mistruth. And it's not an American problem. This is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem. So we are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other...."
He also added he would not let his own children use it....
By Chris Ciaccia December 12, 2017 2:48pm EST
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/former-facebook-exec-wont-let-own-kids-use-social-media-says-its-destroying-how-society-works
Direct Headline: Partisan differences in social media use show up for some platforms, but not Facebook
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they use social media overall (77% and 68%, respectively)....A majority of Americans on both sides of the political aisle say they use Facebook and YouTube. Roughly seven-in-ten Democrats (72%) and Republicans (69%) – including independents who lean toward each party ....Democrats are also about 10 points or more likely than Republicans to say they ever use Twitter, WhatsApp, LinkedIn or Reddit....
...These patterns have mostly been consistent across recent surveys. For example, use of Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Reddit was more common among Democrats than Republicans in surveys conducted by the Center in 2019 and 2018....surveys show that these sites hold appeal for some Americans as a way to get political news and show their support for causes. And some social media users have changed their views about political or social issues because of something they saw on social media in the past year. Also, majorities in both parties say that social media is at least somewhat effective as a way to influence policy decisions or get elected officials to pay attention to an issue....
.... In fact, even among younger Americans, Democrats are more likely than their Republican counterparts to say they use seven of the 11 sites asked about in the new survey....This is particularly true for Instagram: About two-thirds of 18- to 49-year-old Democrats (68%) say they use the platform, compared with 45% of Republicans in the same age group, a 23 percentage point gap. Among adults under 50, Democrats are 17 points more likely than Republicans to report using Twitter (43% vs. 26%)....
....White Democrats are 18 percentage points more likely than White Republicans to say they ever use Instagram or Twitter. They are also about 10 points or more likely to say they ever use LinkedIn, Reddit or WhatsApp...
By Emily A. Vogels, Brooke Auxier and Monica Anderson April 7, 2021
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/07/partisan-differences-in-social-media-use-show-up-for-some-platforms-but-not-facebook/
Direct Headline: The danger of making the internet safe for kids
When lawmakers focus on children’s online safety to get bills passed, they leave everyone else out....In the past, this has led to laws that are ill-considered, short-sighted, exclusive, and even unconstitutional. We all use the internet that these laws affect, yet they don’t apply to everyone, and everyone’s rights aren’t always taken into account. Laws that focus on children have also taken attention and time away from passing laws that help everyone....
....When President Joe Biden gave his first State of the Union address on March 1, he laid out his vision for how to make the internet a better place for its virtual inhabitants. Specifically, the president called for privacy protections that included a ban on targeted advertising and the collection of personal data....But there was one problem: Biden demanded all these things apply to children only. Adults, it seems, would have to continue to fend for themselves. So while Biden’s speech might have been novel in calling out the potential harms of the data-hungry internet economy, framing them as a children’s safety issue was very familiar territory....
As Congress makes yet another bipartisan push for child-focused internet laws — now with the president’s endorsement — it’s worth looking at some of the unintended consequences of past efforts. Sometimes, the laws are half-measures that help some people but leave others out. ...Some of the very first attempts to regulate the internet focused on its potential danger to children. In the mid-’90s, lawmakers became increasingly concerned about how easily children could access porn online. They tried to solve this with the Communications Decency Act, which made it illegal to knowingly transmit or display porn on the internet to anyone under the age of 18. Most of the CDA was struck down in the courts for being unconstitutional. In an effort to spare children from the potential harms of seeing sexually explicit content, courts said, the CDA violated the free speech of adults. But one part remained: Section 230, which says that internet platforms can’t be held civilly liable for content their users post. This law has allowed websites that host third-party content — think Yelp, YouTube, Facebook, even the comments sections of news sites — to exist....
....This was followed by 1998’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which gave children under 13 some privacy protections, including limits on collecting and retaining their data. More than 20 years after COPPA took effect — and with internet platforms and mobile apps collecting more of our data from more places than ever — Congress still can’t get it together to pass a consumer internet privacy law that covers the rest of us..... it can become needlessly complicated and may even introduce more privacy issues. The United Kingdom, for example, wants to make pornography sites verify ages by making users supply credit cards or passports. It also introduces a new security risk, as those sites will have another set of sensitive data that could potentially be accessed by bad actors. In the United States, websites typically verify ages through self-declaration, which means all kids have to do is lie to get access to their favorite sites..... To get around COPPA, many sites simply forbid anyone under 13 from using them, but don’t require anyone to prove how old they are when they sign up for an account. Either the age verification is essentially useless, or it’s an invasion of privacy....
“When you start looking at how to effectively verify somebody’s age on the internet without also invading their privacy as well as everybody else’s? That’s a really hard question...In order to verify somebody’s age, you have to collect a lot more information about them. How does that protect anybody’s privacy?”
....That’s not to say that COPPA is a failure by any means. In fact, COPPA was what allowed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to go after Weight Watchers for collecting data about users as young as 8 years old. Last week, Weight Watchers was forced to pay a $1.5 million fine and delete young users’ data...“It’s cynical and disturbing to use children’s safety as a way to score political points and advance legislation that won’t help children...The best way to protect children online is to protect everyone online....”
By Sara Morrison Mar 14, 2022, 7:00am EDT
https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/3/14/22971618/earn-it-sesta-fosta-children-safety-internet-laws
*********
"Yeah, well, you're not her parents anymore, you and Helen. Her parents are Axl Rose and Madonna. The five minutes a day you spend with her can't compete with that kind of constant bombardment." - True Lies
Consider the massive harm that widespread social media usage has inflicted upon adults.
Now unpack that type of pain, suffering, risk and terror onto children. And a clear strategy and pattern of negligence by Big Social Media giants who use their massive financial leverage to keep pushing for more and more growth, even to target markets that are younger and younger. Including children as young as 6 years old. Lending the impression that Big Social Media is behaving in line with how Big Tobacco inflicted itself upon America, and our children and youth, into horrible addiction with far reaching negative consequences.
Depression, eating disorders, negative body self image issues, suicide, bullying, harassment, enabling pedophiles and rapists, enabling criminals of all manner include drug cartels and organized crime, partisan political hatchet work, widespread lies and unchecked defamation, creating a digital legacy that could harm that child's chances and opportunities as an adult later by being cancelled, and on and on and on.
Information is moving faster than ever before, but at what cost?
Some Believe Big Social Media Is Using The Same Engagement/Retention Strategies That Cults Use
On the flip side, to create more safeguards for minors regarding Big Social Media, that means you need more information presented and given, and does anyone here actually believe that information won't be breached and weaponized as well? What about privacy? And should a legion of elected officials as grifter geriatrics who run our country, none of them even close to be "digital natives", be the ones to push effective legislation regarding platforms they likely barely understand at all?
"It's a private business and they can do what they want!" is just not enough here to address the incalculable risk and harm at stake. Especially considering those least capable to defend themselves. And demanding parents to "do better" is asking far too much given the complex kind of pure onslaught against them here.
This might look like a topic that fits better in the Free For All. But it's not. Because so much of the context gets very ugly, very brutal and very political.
Should Minors Be Legally Banned/Restricted From Using Social Media?
Why or why not? Or to what age or other limit do you think that it should go? Or are you content with the current outcome and process?
Do you support removal/reform of Section 230? Why or why not?
What is your view of Big Social Media making an aggressive push to market itself and push growth by targeting younger and younger children?
Can Elon Musk make a difference here if the sale of Twitter goes through as planned?
What is your own positive/negative experiences with social media? What about for your kids?
I'll leave this here for others to discuss.
Facebook has repeatedly found that its Instagram app is harmful to a number of teenagers, according to a Wall Street Journal report...cited Facebook studies over the past three years that examined how Instagram affects its young user base, with teenage girls being most notably harmed. One internal Facebook presentation said that among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the issue to Instagram.....“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,”.... Facebook also reportedly found that 14% of boys in the U.S. said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves....
.... Still, Facebook has reportedly struggled to manage the problem while keeping users engaged and coming back. Facebook is also building a version of Instagram for kids under age 13....Young users are a key to Instagram’s success. More than 40% of Instagram’s users are 22 years old and younger....Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., has made children’s mental health concerns in connection with social media use a key priority and previously rebuked Facebook for considering such a product....Following the Journal’s report, Trahan called for Facebook to “immediately abandon plans for Instagram for Kids” and focus instead on protecting existing young users.....“Facebook’s internal documents show that the company’s failure to protect children on Instagram – especially young girls – is outright neglect, and it’s been going on for years....Facebook has no business developing additional social media platforms explicitly designed for our children when they can’t be trusted to keep their current house in order.....”
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers... said Facebook “refused to comply” with a request from Republicans on the committee in March asking for its internal research on its products’ impact on kids’ mental health....“This also leaves us wondering what else they are hiding.....We will continue to demand transparency from Facebook and other Big Tech companies, especially as it relates to the harm their products have on our children....”
....Democratic FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra later tweeted, “Given the financial incentives embedded in its surveillance-based business model, it is yet another sign that the company cannot be trusted with our data....”
Jessica Bursztynsky and Lauren Feiner Tue, Sep 14 20218:10 PM EDT
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/14/facebook-documents-show-how-toxic-instagram-is-for-teens-wsj.html
Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show
By Georgia Wells , Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman Sept. 14, 2021 7:59 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739
Direct Headline: I grew up 'under a rock': My parents banned social media until I was 17. I'm glad they did.
....At the time, I was envious of friends and acquaintances at sports practices who posed for photos together, “tagged” each other in their posts, or gossiped about what Susy wore and could you believe that Jack and Jill broke up again?....I didn’t know at the time what a blessing it was to enjoy a childhood free of the constraints, anxiety and sadness social media often brings. Uninhibited by the expectations and consuming nature of social media, I had more time for real, in-person, screenless interaction....Facebook has studied the effects of its photo-sharing app on viewers over the past few years. The studies, according to The Wall Street Journal, unsurprisingly found that Instagram has detrimental effects on millions of young people, especially teenage girls.....
...Instagram algorithms facilitate a never-ending stream of photos and videos that “can send teens spiraling toward eating disorders, an unhealthy sense of their own bodies and depression,” The Journal said, citing Facebook's internal research.... Instagram exacerbated body image issues in 1 in 3 girls, and teens consistently blamed the app for increased anxiety and depression....Conversely, studies have shown that children who experienced technological withdrawals had better nonverbal cues, and were better equipped to accept delayed gratification or engage actively in the world around them....
Tech giants have demonstrated that they are aware of the downsides to the apps they have created. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs limited his own children’s use of technology and wouldn’t let them use the iPad his company created. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, wouldn’t let his children have phones until they were at least 14. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom expressed fears about his daughter growing up with the prevalence of harassment and bullying on his own platform....Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, feels “tremendous guilt” for helping to create and promote Facebook’s success. He said that Facebook has been extremely damaging to society, and that he will not let his own children use it....
Social media’s explosion in popularity has unquestionably played a role in increased eating disorders, depression and suicide..... a Facebook study of teens in the United States and the United Kingdom reporting that many Instagram users felt “unattractive,” “not good enough” or insecure about their friendships after using the app....
Young people feel enormous pressure to do more exciting things, or to make as many amazing friends as the other people flooding their timeline. Never mind if the friendships online are secretly phony and kept up only for that group photo with hundreds of likes..... An eating disorder specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital estimated that nearly 50% of her patients developed eating disorders from social media.....
Theresa Olohan 9/27/21
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/09/27/dangers-instagram-glad-my-parents-banned-social-media/5835809001/
Direct Headline: Former Facebook exec won't let own kids use social media, says it's 'destroying how society works'
....Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive and the CEO of venture capital firm Social Capital, said in a November interview that social media is damaging society and voiced concerns about its impact on his own children...said that he feels “tremendous guilt” for helping build Facebook into the behemoth it is today. Palihapitiya joined the company in 2007 as its vice president for user growth, three years after it was founded in a Harvard dorm room by Mark Zuckerberg....."I think we all knew in the back of our minds, even though we feigned this whole line of 'unintended consequences,' I think in the back recesses of our minds, something bad could happen.....It literally is at a point now we've created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. That is literally where we are. I would encourage all of you how to internalize this is - if you feed the beast, the beast will destroy you...The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse. No cooperation. Misinformation. Mistruth. And it's not an American problem. This is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem. So we are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other...."
He also added he would not let his own children use it....
By Chris Ciaccia December 12, 2017 2:48pm EST
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/former-facebook-exec-wont-let-own-kids-use-social-media-says-its-destroying-how-society-works
Direct Headline: Partisan differences in social media use show up for some platforms, but not Facebook
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they use social media overall (77% and 68%, respectively)....A majority of Americans on both sides of the political aisle say they use Facebook and YouTube. Roughly seven-in-ten Democrats (72%) and Republicans (69%) – including independents who lean toward each party ....Democrats are also about 10 points or more likely than Republicans to say they ever use Twitter, WhatsApp, LinkedIn or Reddit....
...These patterns have mostly been consistent across recent surveys. For example, use of Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Reddit was more common among Democrats than Republicans in surveys conducted by the Center in 2019 and 2018....surveys show that these sites hold appeal for some Americans as a way to get political news and show their support for causes. And some social media users have changed their views about political or social issues because of something they saw on social media in the past year. Also, majorities in both parties say that social media is at least somewhat effective as a way to influence policy decisions or get elected officials to pay attention to an issue....
.... In fact, even among younger Americans, Democrats are more likely than their Republican counterparts to say they use seven of the 11 sites asked about in the new survey....This is particularly true for Instagram: About two-thirds of 18- to 49-year-old Democrats (68%) say they use the platform, compared with 45% of Republicans in the same age group, a 23 percentage point gap. Among adults under 50, Democrats are 17 points more likely than Republicans to report using Twitter (43% vs. 26%)....
....White Democrats are 18 percentage points more likely than White Republicans to say they ever use Instagram or Twitter. They are also about 10 points or more likely to say they ever use LinkedIn, Reddit or WhatsApp...
By Emily A. Vogels, Brooke Auxier and Monica Anderson April 7, 2021
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/07/partisan-differences-in-social-media-use-show-up-for-some-platforms-but-not-facebook/
Direct Headline: The danger of making the internet safe for kids
When lawmakers focus on children’s online safety to get bills passed, they leave everyone else out....In the past, this has led to laws that are ill-considered, short-sighted, exclusive, and even unconstitutional. We all use the internet that these laws affect, yet they don’t apply to everyone, and everyone’s rights aren’t always taken into account. Laws that focus on children have also taken attention and time away from passing laws that help everyone....
....When President Joe Biden gave his first State of the Union address on March 1, he laid out his vision for how to make the internet a better place for its virtual inhabitants. Specifically, the president called for privacy protections that included a ban on targeted advertising and the collection of personal data....But there was one problem: Biden demanded all these things apply to children only. Adults, it seems, would have to continue to fend for themselves. So while Biden’s speech might have been novel in calling out the potential harms of the data-hungry internet economy, framing them as a children’s safety issue was very familiar territory....
As Congress makes yet another bipartisan push for child-focused internet laws — now with the president’s endorsement — it’s worth looking at some of the unintended consequences of past efforts. Sometimes, the laws are half-measures that help some people but leave others out. ...Some of the very first attempts to regulate the internet focused on its potential danger to children. In the mid-’90s, lawmakers became increasingly concerned about how easily children could access porn online. They tried to solve this with the Communications Decency Act, which made it illegal to knowingly transmit or display porn on the internet to anyone under the age of 18. Most of the CDA was struck down in the courts for being unconstitutional. In an effort to spare children from the potential harms of seeing sexually explicit content, courts said, the CDA violated the free speech of adults. But one part remained: Section 230, which says that internet platforms can’t be held civilly liable for content their users post. This law has allowed websites that host third-party content — think Yelp, YouTube, Facebook, even the comments sections of news sites — to exist....
....This was followed by 1998’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which gave children under 13 some privacy protections, including limits on collecting and retaining their data. More than 20 years after COPPA took effect — and with internet platforms and mobile apps collecting more of our data from more places than ever — Congress still can’t get it together to pass a consumer internet privacy law that covers the rest of us..... it can become needlessly complicated and may even introduce more privacy issues. The United Kingdom, for example, wants to make pornography sites verify ages by making users supply credit cards or passports. It also introduces a new security risk, as those sites will have another set of sensitive data that could potentially be accessed by bad actors. In the United States, websites typically verify ages through self-declaration, which means all kids have to do is lie to get access to their favorite sites..... To get around COPPA, many sites simply forbid anyone under 13 from using them, but don’t require anyone to prove how old they are when they sign up for an account. Either the age verification is essentially useless, or it’s an invasion of privacy....
“When you start looking at how to effectively verify somebody’s age on the internet without also invading their privacy as well as everybody else’s? That’s a really hard question...In order to verify somebody’s age, you have to collect a lot more information about them. How does that protect anybody’s privacy?”
....That’s not to say that COPPA is a failure by any means. In fact, COPPA was what allowed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to go after Weight Watchers for collecting data about users as young as 8 years old. Last week, Weight Watchers was forced to pay a $1.5 million fine and delete young users’ data...“It’s cynical and disturbing to use children’s safety as a way to score political points and advance legislation that won’t help children...The best way to protect children online is to protect everyone online....”
By Sara Morrison Mar 14, 2022, 7:00am EDT
https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/3/14/22971618/earn-it-sesta-fosta-children-safety-internet-laws
*********
"Yeah, well, you're not her parents anymore, you and Helen. Her parents are Axl Rose and Madonna. The five minutes a day you spend with her can't compete with that kind of constant bombardment." - True Lies
Consider the massive harm that widespread social media usage has inflicted upon adults.
Now unpack that type of pain, suffering, risk and terror onto children. And a clear strategy and pattern of negligence by Big Social Media giants who use their massive financial leverage to keep pushing for more and more growth, even to target markets that are younger and younger. Including children as young as 6 years old. Lending the impression that Big Social Media is behaving in line with how Big Tobacco inflicted itself upon America, and our children and youth, into horrible addiction with far reaching negative consequences.
Depression, eating disorders, negative body self image issues, suicide, bullying, harassment, enabling pedophiles and rapists, enabling criminals of all manner include drug cartels and organized crime, partisan political hatchet work, widespread lies and unchecked defamation, creating a digital legacy that could harm that child's chances and opportunities as an adult later by being cancelled, and on and on and on.
Information is moving faster than ever before, but at what cost?
Some Believe Big Social Media Is Using The Same Engagement/Retention Strategies That Cults Use
On the flip side, to create more safeguards for minors regarding Big Social Media, that means you need more information presented and given, and does anyone here actually believe that information won't be breached and weaponized as well? What about privacy? And should a legion of elected officials as grifter geriatrics who run our country, none of them even close to be "digital natives", be the ones to push effective legislation regarding platforms they likely barely understand at all?
"It's a private business and they can do what they want!" is just not enough here to address the incalculable risk and harm at stake. Especially considering those least capable to defend themselves. And demanding parents to "do better" is asking far too much given the complex kind of pure onslaught against them here.
This might look like a topic that fits better in the Free For All. But it's not. Because so much of the context gets very ugly, very brutal and very political.
Should Minors Be Legally Banned/Restricted From Using Social Media?
Why or why not? Or to what age or other limit do you think that it should go? Or are you content with the current outcome and process?
Do you support removal/reform of Section 230? Why or why not?
What is your view of Big Social Media making an aggressive push to market itself and push growth by targeting younger and younger children?
Can Elon Musk make a difference here if the sale of Twitter goes through as planned?
What is your own positive/negative experiences with social media? What about for your kids?
I'll leave this here for others to discuss.
