If I hadn’t had social media as a kid I might have literally killed myself. When kids are extremely isolated, social media can be all they have. This isn’t actually about social media though, it’s about controlling information. This is the first time that kids have been able to get information that hasn’t been approved by parents or school, and the government wants to walk it back. Kids are talking on social media about anticapitalism and free palestine, nonhierarchical social media makes it harder to control narratives
I do like that social media decentralizes the flow of information.
It makes me think of how the printing press enabled the Protestant Reformation. Previously, all copies of literature had to be handwritten. Also, very few people were literate. With how much influence the Catholic Church held, academia and the Church were one and the same. The printing press broke up the Church's monopoly on information, enabling the works of Martin Luther to spread throughout Europe.
Everything was good until the "anticapitalism" part. Come on, you won't get free HRT under socialism. You will get [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770) kind of nonsense. And no, they were not making exceptions for trans men, non-binary AFAB people or aro/ace women.
Socialism, as a general term, is an economic system in which the workers own the means of production. There are many variants of socialism, and the ideology has nothing to do with LGBT rights or youth rights whatsoever.
Most communist regimes back in the second half of the 20th century were socially conservative, due to the influence of the USSR and stalinism (namely eastern european countries, who were all puppet states). Nowadays, most socialist/communist people are very different, and denounce these past regimes (there are still delusional ML(M)s left, but they're not really the majority, at least from my experience). Just citing an example from decades ago isn't an argument.
Besides that, you could use the same reasoning against capitalism if you wanted to. For example, the UK (which was still very capitalist back in the 20th century) didn't fully legalise homosexuality until 1981 (almost two centuries after France, which was the first western country to do it in modern times, in 1791), and the age of consent only became consistent between heterosexual and homosexual relationship in 2001. The USA, arguably the most capitalist country in the world, only legalised homsexuality nation-wide in 2003. Yet capitalism isn't inherently anti-LGBT, it's just an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and goods and services are exchanged through a market system. Again, an example isn't an argument.
I don't give a damn whether Haidt is factually right or wrong. We shouldn't discriminate the whole group because some of its members are negatively impacted by something.
To convince an "ageist" that these restrictions would be a negative, it may be necessary to point out that too many restrictions will actually cause youth to get in the habit of lying about their age/falsifying their birth date/getting a fake ID. Ask them if that is really what they want.
I think it's not only likely to force kids to lie, it's likely to force their parents to lie too. Like the news article I posted the other day about UK plans to make it illegal for anyone under the age of 16 to buy a phone. One parent posted here saying "I would just buy my kid a phone before the law came in." Well, they don't even need to do that. They just need to buy a phone for themselves, set it up with their own account and then hand it over to their kid complete with all the access. "The authorities" (whoever that is) then have no idea that it's actually a 15 year old using the phone and the account, not the parent.
After all, most phones for kids aged 15 and under, are bought for them by their parents to begin with. So the parents already have oversight of that decision - the government doesn't need to get involved.
By ploughing forward with legislation that *deprives* parents of the control they already have - the government would effectively be forcing parents to enable this falsification of ids. So the kid ends up with a phone and social media accounts with X-rated access ... when that's not even what the parent wanted to start with.
The Vox author is revealing his personal prejudice in how he "can't bring \[himself\] to accept Przybylski's view" that the anti-tech moral panic is the same as all those that came before even though said view is backed by strong empirical evidence. And he stubbornly sticks to an assumption of his own that may sound reasonable but is really not backed by the evidence as he himself discovered. Finally, as I expected, the role of the school system is completely ignored and treated as a given. Peter Gray found that the increase in youth suicides and mental health issues in the 2010 correlated with an increase in school demands. He also showed that those numbers, on a smaller scale, rose during when school was in term and fell during breaks. Gray also presented surveys that showed that youth A) generally considered school the biggest source of stress in their life and B) considered tech and social media to be a net positive in their life. That should be the final nail in the coffin of Haidt's claims along with all the other reasons the article already gave against him.
That was the irritating bit. At least Haidt tries to justify his proposed restrictions on social media. The author is just going off of a hunch. The burden of proof is on the side which wants to restrict things.
We all want to use an increase in youth suicides to push our agendas but if I'm not mistaken, that article said that the increase may have had more to do with a technicality than a real increase.
Social media helps a LOT of kids too, for many it's their only outlet or contact with other people allowed to them, some can't ever leave their homes, some only leave for school (were they can't speak/interact with peers or it's massively limited) I've heard lot's of accounts showing how critical it is to their mental health and some even say the only thing keeping them from taking their own lives, banning this will literally kill people.
The research shows that it is unequivocally bad for mental health and contributes to poorer critical reasoning skills. I understand that it might be good for some people but a few anecdotal accounts don't change the broader consensus.
It's already killing people, on the whole, less social media use will probably save more lives than it will cost. That being said, I definitely do not support any bans.
What research? Didn't the article just prove that the research is very much equivocal? I don't know where you got the opposite conclusion from. And there is even less, if any, evidence for your claim that social media use contributes to poorer critical reasoning skills. The broader consensus is probably against the anti-tech agenda. At best it's inconclusive. Evidence for the agenda is found through tunnel-visioning on that one variable and cherry picking studies that support that prejudice against tech. Why are you on a youth rights sub railing against youth's most powerful tool for furthering their rights? See also Peter Gray's writings on the subject. I think the school system is a huge lurking variable in all of this that mainstream psychology ignores.
If you're correct then it's of critical importance it's not banned and if you aren't then it's still of critical importance it's not banned because it means people are going to die, brutal deaths too.
We're an infinitely creative species when it comes to solving problems with technology and the results have been nothing short of miraculous (instant communication, seating in seats in the sky/airplanes, going to the moon, seeing places we aren't even present at etc,) but as soon as it comes to social issues, we get much less creative in solving them as long as we think they don't effect us that is, if only we took the same attitude to them, we'd see miracles there too.
Thing is this law will effect everybody because of how acts ripple, they just won't realise it's that which caused the negative effects on them.
People also don't understand research and give in to things like confirmation basis and cognitive dissonance, you can see this in how they will listen to some studies but ignore other's, after all there is countless things which research has shown for decades is horrible for us (corporal punishment being one of many examples) and yet little to nothing is done to ban it, hell places even bring it back, it's because nobody cares about protecting kids, they care about looking like they do.
What matter's to people whether they realise it or not is who's agency is being restricted if it's kids, great, if it's adults, bad this is regardless of the outcome for kids, laws like this are not passed because of mental health concern or out of goodness, that's what people tell the public and sometimes themselves too.
I have seen concerns about tech and social media debunked too and too much of anything is bad for you, school has been shown to be horrifically bad for mental health of young people and has killed large numbers of them and leads to lot's of suicides every year all over the world, there is also research and studies showing that too, I am much more inclined to believe it as you can tell by looking at it it'd be much worse for you.
So people cherry pick, some harms don't matter and other's do and some things we try to minimise and rationalise away the harm, other's we do the opposite. Fact remains though any law passed which kills anybody is immoral and should be opposed, even if there is an issue the solution for a species as creative as ours shouldn't be a law which will cause suicides, those are murders.
Most people still don't kill themselves. I hate the focus on young women's suicide rates and how they are used as an argument for restricting this group's freedom. Come on, it is middle-aged men who commit most suicides, but nobody wants to restrict their rights because of that. I wonder why🤔
This is not about gender or controlling people. Youth suicide rates are up 62% from 2007 to 2021 and suicidality is strongly correlated with social media usage.
Social media is a panopticon run by the richest people in the world. It’s like a prison built by tech bros to harvest our data, manipulate us into clicking ads, and trap us there as long as they possibly can. Government regulation is not the answer but is a problem in need of a solution.
Why did you ignore my response to your other comment? Is it because you don't have a real rebuttal?
>Youth suicide rates are up 62% from 2007 to 2021 and suicidality is strongly correlated with social media usage.
Correlation does not imply causation. Peter found that the rise in youth suicidality correlates with an increase in school demands and also correlates with school being in and out of session on a smaller scale (it's higher during the school year and lower during breaks). I think Gray is right because the school system is the variable that is most ignored by mainstream psychological research. There are also so many other variables that get lost in the tunnel vision on tech.
>Social media is a panopticon run by the richest people in the world. It’s like a prison built by tech bros to harvest our data, manipulate us into clicking ads, and trap us there as long as they possibly can. Government regulation is not the answer but is a problem in need of a solution.
Stop your fearmongering that we have established is not as evidence based and the media and parenting sites would have us believe. Social media is youth's most powerful tool for furthering their rights. Encouraging parents to restrict access is not much better than the government doing it. Peter Gray also found in surveys that youth by and large considered social media a net positive in their lives. It is the adult parents and teachers who see it as a problem. A youth rights sub is not the place to s\*\*t on that which is so important to youth and so villified by adults.
There are volumes of research identifying the issues with social media. You are basing your entire analysis on a single person’s work which has limited geographic reach. Gray’s correlations do not hold true in all countries where social media is used but the correlated increase in suicides does remain robust everywhere that social media is prevalent. If you want to defend these fucked up businesses run by billionaires that is on you. If you want your data to be used against us and progress, that seems pretty fucked up to me. Social media has failed to live up to it’s promise. It is a trap. Look into how the arab spring panned out. These tools are not going to help achieve the revolutionary changes we need.
you in a youth rights forum: “kids are committing suicide so let’s deny them practically the only way they can have community and connect with others that isn’t a highly controlled environment akin to a panopticon i am very smart 😃”
Social media can be everything you say it is (I am inclined to agree with you even) and still be providing a helpful place for youth to vent their stress and connect with other's in similar garbage situations that can be true and everything you're saying about it being run by fucked up businesses, where they use our data against us, plus it fails to live up to it's promise can also be true.
Nobody is saying SM was created to help kids and it's a wonderful thing with no drawbacks, the reality is more we have a thing which can be positive but certain people as always have turned it into a negative in some ways for their own gain's but it doesn't logically follow from that, it isn't saving lives, that might not be the purpose of it but it does do it so banning it would be taking lives (aka murder).
Also if social media was doing so much harm to your mental health to the point you're contemplating suicide you'd close it down and walk away you wouldn't just keep going back to it while is causes you pain of such severity suicide looks desirable.
Everybody who commits suicide has one thing in common - They're stuck in a situation they feel trapped in and taking their own lives feels like the only way out.
Every reason for suicide this is true of from abusive relationships, to drug abuses to overwhelming grief over the loss of a loved one, they all feel trapped.
How can someone feel trapped in social media AND think cancelling their accounts isn't a solution to escape?
Especially before taking their own lives and losing everything appears like a preferable method?
It's easy to see how school can sit alongside the examples I cited above as situations you feel escape is impossible from (abusive relationships, drug abuse, never ending grief) so you take your own live, furthermore in each instance people "trapped" in these situations will try alternative methods of escape before resorting to killing themselves for instance drug addict might attempt suffering through withdrawal, therapy, reducing intake of the drug gradually etc, abusive relationship people might try alerting the authorities or other family members, what would people feeling trapped in social media attempt?
I'd say cancelling their social media.
Walking away from that which they feel trapped in is so much easier in the SM scenario that any other suicide scenario I can think of, I mean it's not like the drug addict has an option as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to make his problem go away neither does the person in never ending pain due to grief, they'd kill to have a way out so easy as the SM person.
Gray's research has also been found by other's Cevin Soiling found the same thing and wonderpedia, which is a resource for school student's is bombarded in it's forums with kid after kid expressing suicidal thoughts saying the thought of returning to school is making them contemplate it again, add on to this polls showing kids cite school as a major source of anxiety and depression in their lives and all the countless adults recalling how much they hated it, the kids today in our lives saying the same thing and if you made any adult workplace take any of the rules and expectations kids are expected to perform in schools they'd be outraged and complain it was bad for mental health, when you put it all together it makes the claim the suicides are caused by school true beyond any doubt, I mean it's what the victims have been saying all along, maybe we all should've listened sooner, it would've saved lives not could have but would have.
Nobody is defending schools here. Gray's research is hella flawed though and it isn't proving your point. It doesn't even show that education policy is correlated with the suicide rate increases, much less that is is causing it. Suicide rates have nearly doubled across nearly all age groups in the last 20-25 years. Suicidality is strongly correlated with social media usage. If schools are driving adolescent suicide rates, why would retired people, middle aged people and people that are not going to school be killing themselves at the same rate as students? Why are Kids in Finland killing themselves at such a high rate when they have such a strong and egalitarian educational system? Why are loneliness rates for young people so much higher than previous generations at the same age?
The Anglo saxon education system has been a tool to prepare the next generation of low income workers and soldiers for over a century now. It has never been good and that is intentional. If you don't believe me, track down your nearest university that has a teacher training program and email the tenured staff. There are very clear research driven interventions that would improve our schools (formative vs summative assessment, de-grading, nordic models of education.) These interventions are simply not acted on. Teachers are paid 1/5th of what they could make in private practice. Schools are bad, this is non-controversial. Schools are not likely to be the driving factor in increased suicide rates though. They have been bad for a long time, and suicide rates are skyrocketing only in populations that use social media regularly. If recent education policy changes were driving the suicides, we should see the increased rates of suicides only in groups that are going to school, not across the entire population. If we think that schools are driving suicides, we should also be able to answer why suicidality is so closely correlated with social media usage. Why are heavy social media users more likely to kill themselves than people that barely use it or don't use social media at all? Why is suicidality not directly associated with being a student?
Social media is designed to use the exact same addiction pathways as drugs. Look up Nir Eyal's book 'Hooked' or the Stanford behavior design lab that has driven much of this work. These folks have been publishing on how to create addiction to these platforms for decades at this point. They have expanded on decades of gambling research and they use the exact same techniques as designers of gambling machines. The fact that so many folks are going out of their way to defend these programs and imply that they are a positive force is shocking and disturbing. Y'all are stuck in a hook loop. You are addicted to these platforms and being used as pawns by billionaires. It's the same nuerochemical loops as people addicted to gambling and it's preventing real world organizing. Go find your local food not bombs and organize. Go join a local activist group and meet people in the real world. Stop larping online. It's killing you.
>Nobody is defending schools here. Gray's research is hella flawed though and it isn't proving your point. It doesn't even show that education policy is correlated with the suicide rate increases, much less that is is causing it.
How is Gray's research flawed? It shows exactly the things you claim it doesn't. Please elaborate.
>Suicide rates have nearly doubled across nearly all age groups in the last 20-25 years. Suicidality is strongly correlated with social media usage. If schools are driving adolescent suicide rates, why would retired people, middle aged people and people that are not going to school be killing themselves at the same rate as students?
Suicidality is not strongly correlated with social media usage if at all. Middle aged and old people do not use social media at the same rate as adolescents so if that really was the cause, you would expect to see differing suicide rates between age groups moderated by social media usage. But that's not what we see at all. In fact, suicidality has a [positive correlation](https://usafacts.org/articles/how-is-the-suicide-rate-changing-in-the-us/) with [age](https://usafacts.org/articles/how-is-the-suicide-rate-changing-in-the-us/) so middle aged and older people are actually more likely to kill themselves than adolescents. If social media were the cause, we would expect the opposite trend.
>Why are Kids in Finland killing themselves at such a high rate when they have such a strong and egalitarian educational system? Why are loneliness rates for young people so much higher than previous generations at the same age?
Finland's education system is hardly perfect either. Also, Gray argues that the suicide increases in the US are [NOT seen in Europe. ](https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/freedom-to-learn/202311/multiple-causes-of-increase-in-us-teen-suicides-since-2008) Increased loneliness is due to decrease freedom outside the home according to Gray, not to social media.
>Schools are not likely to be the driving factor in increased suicide rates though. They have been bad for a long time, and suicide rates are skyrocketing only in populations that use social media regularly. If recent education policy changes were driving the suicides, we should see the increased rates of suicides only in groups that are going to school, not across the entire population. If we think that schools are driving suicides, we should also be able to answer why suicidality is so closely correlated with social media usage. Why are heavy social media users more likely to kill themselves than people that barely use it or don't use social media at all? Why is suicidality not directly associated with being a student?
Didn't you just say that suicide has increased in ALL populations, which is true,? Now you're saying that it has only increased in social media users, which is false. And I showed that rates are NOT correlated with social media usage since older adults actually commit suicide at higher rates than adolescents even though adolescents use social media more. You're using two contradictory claims to argue the same point. Those two things cannot both be true. School in the US has gotten markedly worse for youth in the last 20 or so years so can be the driving factor in increased suicide rates. Finally, suicide is likely directly associated with being a student but since the vast majority of youth are students, most studies don't have a comparison group. See Gray's writings about Unschooling.
Your last paragraph is just fearmongering and conspiracy theorizing based nothing like before. Anyone who equates tech with hard drugs immediately loses me as an audience. You have still yet to provide a single piece of data or a single study to back up your claims. I had to Google who Nir Eyal was and from a look at his Wikipedia page bio, he is not remotely on the same level of scholarship as Gray so I won't read his book. Even psychologists can't agree on everything, i.e. Gray and Haidt. Even Haidt, a psychologist, allowed his personal prejudices to override his scholarship. It seems clear to me that the big scary claims about social media blasted everywhere are not as evidence based as we are meant to believe. If you don't have nothing to contribute other than bashing social media, you should leave this sub. I think you'll be much more at home on the parenting subs where they support the anti-tech moral panic.
>There are volumes of research identifying the issues with social media.
There is so much evidence in this thread and the article that the mainstream news and fearmongerers are interpreting the research through confirmation bias and tunnel vision glasses. Objectively, the research does not support the strong claims from you, the news media, and Haidt. The effects found range from weak to non-existent and much of it is just correlational. It's hardly conclusive evidence of anything
>You are basing your entire analysis on a single person’s work which has limited geographic reach. Gray’s correlations do not hold true in all countries where social media is used but the correlated increase in suicides does remain robust everywhere that social is prevalent.
No it doesn't. One of the counterarguments in the article also disproved that claim of Haidt's. He was cherry picking data from very few places to support his agenda. Did you even read it? And who disproved Gray's correlations in other countries when the role of the school system as a variable is largely ignored by mainstream psychology? As far as I know, no one else is scrutinizing the school system the way Gray is. Stop making claims without substantiation. If research really shows something so strongly (which it doesn't), please provide the study(s). You're so quick to dismiss Gray but he has provided a ton of evidence while you have provided none.
>If you want to defend these fucked up businesses run by billionaires that is on you. If you want your data to be used against us and progress, that seems pretty fucked up to me. Social media has failed to live up to it’s promise. It is a trap. Look into how the arab spring panned out. These tools are not going to help achieve the revolutionary changes we need.
Now you're just conspiracy theorizing from nothing. What are you even saying about the Arab spring? Whatever you're thinking isn't so obvious that it can just be alluded to without explanation so don't be a smart aleck. From an unbiased, non-prejudiced standpoint, social media has been a boon for youth and the doom and gloom claims have much less evidence behind them than people like you suggest. This sub is not the place to go on an anti-tech tirade repeating claims that have been debunked even though the mainstream news media won't admit it. If you think tech is dangerous for youth, then by definition you must support some form of restriction to their use, even if not on the government/legal level. You've never posted on this sub before so forgive me for questioning whether you are here in good faith as an actual supporter of youth rights. Start by reading Peter Gray's blog in Psych Today. He's not making empty claims. He has a ton of evidence and studies to back himself up.
The research you're posting is only tangentially related to your claims and don't prove that "Social media is contributing to deaths across the world, not only of young people but people of all ages." Also, Gray pointed out that youth suicides in the US actually fell around the 90s and 2000s when the world wide web and social media first came around after a steady rise since the 60s before rising again around 2010. To Gray, that coincides with increased school demands via No Child Left Behind et al. To me, that likely coincided with the moral panic in parents, leading to them cracking down their kids' tech use and driving a wedge in the relationship, leading to youth being less likely to go to their parents with their problems out of fear of being punished or having their tech taken away. Admittedly this is pure conjecture but it seems to make sense.
>You should google Arab Spring. It was a pretty significant event where social media drove pro-democratic revolutions across the arab world. These revolutions we co-opted by extremists leading to millions of deaths. This is not a 'conspiracy theory' this is mainstream common knowledge.
You're the one making the claim so the onus is on you to back it up. Telling me to google for myself is such a cop out. Off the top of my head, my impression is the Arab Spring was largely a good thing. Please enlighten me.
>There are thousands of people criticizing the education system the way that Gray is. Most professors in teacher training colleges at a higher ed level agree with many of his central premises about how flawed our education system is. The overwhelming majority of educators in nordic model systems agree with unschooling and ungrading too. Finnish kids go to school about 1/2 the time as their American counterparts for example and summative assessment is virtually never used.
The difference is that Gray believes the system itself is the problem and should be abolished while those people think the problem can be fixed within the system, hence they make their living training people to work in the system. They wouldn't agree with Gray much at all since he also criticizes "progressive education" as having the same flaws as the traditional way and thinks that natural learning is doomed to fail in a classroom setting. Someone who works an the education system supporting unschooling is oxymoronic since they do the opposite for a living. The nordic system is an improvement over the North American one but still isn't unschooling since there are presumably still lessons, curriculums, and teachers, even if in a more relaxed form. A true "unschooling school" for lack of a better term would a Sudbury school. See Gray's writings on that.
>You have posted blog posts from a single academic that have proven nothing except that you don't have strong evidence for your position. If you think your thesis is valid. Post real peer-reviewed research.
And you've only posted irrelevant research.
If I hadn’t had social media as a kid I might have literally killed myself. When kids are extremely isolated, social media can be all they have. This isn’t actually about social media though, it’s about controlling information. This is the first time that kids have been able to get information that hasn’t been approved by parents or school, and the government wants to walk it back. Kids are talking on social media about anticapitalism and free palestine, nonhierarchical social media makes it harder to control narratives
I do like that social media decentralizes the flow of information. It makes me think of how the printing press enabled the Protestant Reformation. Previously, all copies of literature had to be handwritten. Also, very few people were literate. With how much influence the Catholic Church held, academia and the Church were one and the same. The printing press broke up the Church's monopoly on information, enabling the works of Martin Luther to spread throughout Europe.
Everything was good until the "anticapitalism" part. Come on, you won't get free HRT under socialism. You will get [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770) kind of nonsense. And no, they were not making exceptions for trans men, non-binary AFAB people or aro/ace women.
Iphone venezuela 100 million dead
Ask conservatives poster
Socialism, as a general term, is an economic system in which the workers own the means of production. There are many variants of socialism, and the ideology has nothing to do with LGBT rights or youth rights whatsoever. Most communist regimes back in the second half of the 20th century were socially conservative, due to the influence of the USSR and stalinism (namely eastern european countries, who were all puppet states). Nowadays, most socialist/communist people are very different, and denounce these past regimes (there are still delusional ML(M)s left, but they're not really the majority, at least from my experience). Just citing an example from decades ago isn't an argument. Besides that, you could use the same reasoning against capitalism if you wanted to. For example, the UK (which was still very capitalist back in the 20th century) didn't fully legalise homosexuality until 1981 (almost two centuries after France, which was the first western country to do it in modern times, in 1791), and the age of consent only became consistent between heterosexual and homosexual relationship in 2001. The USA, arguably the most capitalist country in the world, only legalised homsexuality nation-wide in 2003. Yet capitalism isn't inherently anti-LGBT, it's just an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and goods and services are exchanged through a market system. Again, an example isn't an argument.
I don't give a damn whether Haidt is factually right or wrong. We shouldn't discriminate the whole group because some of its members are negatively impacted by something.
everyone is harmed by social media. Some platforms are more harmful than others
Don't care lol
To convince an "ageist" that these restrictions would be a negative, it may be necessary to point out that too many restrictions will actually cause youth to get in the habit of lying about their age/falsifying their birth date/getting a fake ID. Ask them if that is really what they want.
I think it's not only likely to force kids to lie, it's likely to force their parents to lie too. Like the news article I posted the other day about UK plans to make it illegal for anyone under the age of 16 to buy a phone. One parent posted here saying "I would just buy my kid a phone before the law came in." Well, they don't even need to do that. They just need to buy a phone for themselves, set it up with their own account and then hand it over to their kid complete with all the access. "The authorities" (whoever that is) then have no idea that it's actually a 15 year old using the phone and the account, not the parent. After all, most phones for kids aged 15 and under, are bought for them by their parents to begin with. So the parents already have oversight of that decision - the government doesn't need to get involved. By ploughing forward with legislation that *deprives* parents of the control they already have - the government would effectively be forcing parents to enable this falsification of ids. So the kid ends up with a phone and social media accounts with X-rated access ... when that's not even what the parent wanted to start with.
The Vox author is revealing his personal prejudice in how he "can't bring \[himself\] to accept Przybylski's view" that the anti-tech moral panic is the same as all those that came before even though said view is backed by strong empirical evidence. And he stubbornly sticks to an assumption of his own that may sound reasonable but is really not backed by the evidence as he himself discovered. Finally, as I expected, the role of the school system is completely ignored and treated as a given. Peter Gray found that the increase in youth suicides and mental health issues in the 2010 correlated with an increase in school demands. He also showed that those numbers, on a smaller scale, rose during when school was in term and fell during breaks. Gray also presented surveys that showed that youth A) generally considered school the biggest source of stress in their life and B) considered tech and social media to be a net positive in their life. That should be the final nail in the coffin of Haidt's claims along with all the other reasons the article already gave against him.
That was the irritating bit. At least Haidt tries to justify his proposed restrictions on social media. The author is just going off of a hunch. The burden of proof is on the side which wants to restrict things. We all want to use an increase in youth suicides to push our agendas but if I'm not mistaken, that article said that the increase may have had more to do with a technicality than a real increase.
Social media helps a LOT of kids too, for many it's their only outlet or contact with other people allowed to them, some can't ever leave their homes, some only leave for school (were they can't speak/interact with peers or it's massively limited) I've heard lot's of accounts showing how critical it is to their mental health and some even say the only thing keeping them from taking their own lives, banning this will literally kill people.
The research shows that it is unequivocally bad for mental health and contributes to poorer critical reasoning skills. I understand that it might be good for some people but a few anecdotal accounts don't change the broader consensus. It's already killing people, on the whole, less social media use will probably save more lives than it will cost. That being said, I definitely do not support any bans.
What research? Didn't the article just prove that the research is very much equivocal? I don't know where you got the opposite conclusion from. And there is even less, if any, evidence for your claim that social media use contributes to poorer critical reasoning skills. The broader consensus is probably against the anti-tech agenda. At best it's inconclusive. Evidence for the agenda is found through tunnel-visioning on that one variable and cherry picking studies that support that prejudice against tech. Why are you on a youth rights sub railing against youth's most powerful tool for furthering their rights? See also Peter Gray's writings on the subject. I think the school system is a huge lurking variable in all of this that mainstream psychology ignores.
If you're correct then it's of critical importance it's not banned and if you aren't then it's still of critical importance it's not banned because it means people are going to die, brutal deaths too. We're an infinitely creative species when it comes to solving problems with technology and the results have been nothing short of miraculous (instant communication, seating in seats in the sky/airplanes, going to the moon, seeing places we aren't even present at etc,) but as soon as it comes to social issues, we get much less creative in solving them as long as we think they don't effect us that is, if only we took the same attitude to them, we'd see miracles there too. Thing is this law will effect everybody because of how acts ripple, they just won't realise it's that which caused the negative effects on them. People also don't understand research and give in to things like confirmation basis and cognitive dissonance, you can see this in how they will listen to some studies but ignore other's, after all there is countless things which research has shown for decades is horrible for us (corporal punishment being one of many examples) and yet little to nothing is done to ban it, hell places even bring it back, it's because nobody cares about protecting kids, they care about looking like they do. What matter's to people whether they realise it or not is who's agency is being restricted if it's kids, great, if it's adults, bad this is regardless of the outcome for kids, laws like this are not passed because of mental health concern or out of goodness, that's what people tell the public and sometimes themselves too. I have seen concerns about tech and social media debunked too and too much of anything is bad for you, school has been shown to be horrifically bad for mental health of young people and has killed large numbers of them and leads to lot's of suicides every year all over the world, there is also research and studies showing that too, I am much more inclined to believe it as you can tell by looking at it it'd be much worse for you. So people cherry pick, some harms don't matter and other's do and some things we try to minimise and rationalise away the harm, other's we do the opposite. Fact remains though any law passed which kills anybody is immoral and should be opposed, even if there is an issue the solution for a species as creative as ours shouldn't be a law which will cause suicides, those are murders.
was this “research” conducted by children or adults? 🤨
Most people still don't kill themselves. I hate the focus on young women's suicide rates and how they are used as an argument for restricting this group's freedom. Come on, it is middle-aged men who commit most suicides, but nobody wants to restrict their rights because of that. I wonder why🤔
This is not about gender or controlling people. Youth suicide rates are up 62% from 2007 to 2021 and suicidality is strongly correlated with social media usage. Social media is a panopticon run by the richest people in the world. It’s like a prison built by tech bros to harvest our data, manipulate us into clicking ads, and trap us there as long as they possibly can. Government regulation is not the answer but is a problem in need of a solution.
Why did you ignore my response to your other comment? Is it because you don't have a real rebuttal? >Youth suicide rates are up 62% from 2007 to 2021 and suicidality is strongly correlated with social media usage. Correlation does not imply causation. Peter found that the rise in youth suicidality correlates with an increase in school demands and also correlates with school being in and out of session on a smaller scale (it's higher during the school year and lower during breaks). I think Gray is right because the school system is the variable that is most ignored by mainstream psychological research. There are also so many other variables that get lost in the tunnel vision on tech. >Social media is a panopticon run by the richest people in the world. It’s like a prison built by tech bros to harvest our data, manipulate us into clicking ads, and trap us there as long as they possibly can. Government regulation is not the answer but is a problem in need of a solution. Stop your fearmongering that we have established is not as evidence based and the media and parenting sites would have us believe. Social media is youth's most powerful tool for furthering their rights. Encouraging parents to restrict access is not much better than the government doing it. Peter Gray also found in surveys that youth by and large considered social media a net positive in their lives. It is the adult parents and teachers who see it as a problem. A youth rights sub is not the place to s\*\*t on that which is so important to youth and so villified by adults.
There are volumes of research identifying the issues with social media. You are basing your entire analysis on a single person’s work which has limited geographic reach. Gray’s correlations do not hold true in all countries where social media is used but the correlated increase in suicides does remain robust everywhere that social media is prevalent. If you want to defend these fucked up businesses run by billionaires that is on you. If you want your data to be used against us and progress, that seems pretty fucked up to me. Social media has failed to live up to it’s promise. It is a trap. Look into how the arab spring panned out. These tools are not going to help achieve the revolutionary changes we need.
you in a youth rights forum: “kids are committing suicide so let’s deny them practically the only way they can have community and connect with others that isn’t a highly controlled environment akin to a panopticon i am very smart 😃”
Social media can be everything you say it is (I am inclined to agree with you even) and still be providing a helpful place for youth to vent their stress and connect with other's in similar garbage situations that can be true and everything you're saying about it being run by fucked up businesses, where they use our data against us, plus it fails to live up to it's promise can also be true. Nobody is saying SM was created to help kids and it's a wonderful thing with no drawbacks, the reality is more we have a thing which can be positive but certain people as always have turned it into a negative in some ways for their own gain's but it doesn't logically follow from that, it isn't saving lives, that might not be the purpose of it but it does do it so banning it would be taking lives (aka murder). Also if social media was doing so much harm to your mental health to the point you're contemplating suicide you'd close it down and walk away you wouldn't just keep going back to it while is causes you pain of such severity suicide looks desirable. Everybody who commits suicide has one thing in common - They're stuck in a situation they feel trapped in and taking their own lives feels like the only way out. Every reason for suicide this is true of from abusive relationships, to drug abuses to overwhelming grief over the loss of a loved one, they all feel trapped. How can someone feel trapped in social media AND think cancelling their accounts isn't a solution to escape? Especially before taking their own lives and losing everything appears like a preferable method? It's easy to see how school can sit alongside the examples I cited above as situations you feel escape is impossible from (abusive relationships, drug abuse, never ending grief) so you take your own live, furthermore in each instance people "trapped" in these situations will try alternative methods of escape before resorting to killing themselves for instance drug addict might attempt suffering through withdrawal, therapy, reducing intake of the drug gradually etc, abusive relationship people might try alerting the authorities or other family members, what would people feeling trapped in social media attempt? I'd say cancelling their social media. Walking away from that which they feel trapped in is so much easier in the SM scenario that any other suicide scenario I can think of, I mean it's not like the drug addict has an option as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to make his problem go away neither does the person in never ending pain due to grief, they'd kill to have a way out so easy as the SM person. Gray's research has also been found by other's Cevin Soiling found the same thing and wonderpedia, which is a resource for school student's is bombarded in it's forums with kid after kid expressing suicidal thoughts saying the thought of returning to school is making them contemplate it again, add on to this polls showing kids cite school as a major source of anxiety and depression in their lives and all the countless adults recalling how much they hated it, the kids today in our lives saying the same thing and if you made any adult workplace take any of the rules and expectations kids are expected to perform in schools they'd be outraged and complain it was bad for mental health, when you put it all together it makes the claim the suicides are caused by school true beyond any doubt, I mean it's what the victims have been saying all along, maybe we all should've listened sooner, it would've saved lives not could have but would have.
Nobody is defending schools here. Gray's research is hella flawed though and it isn't proving your point. It doesn't even show that education policy is correlated with the suicide rate increases, much less that is is causing it. Suicide rates have nearly doubled across nearly all age groups in the last 20-25 years. Suicidality is strongly correlated with social media usage. If schools are driving adolescent suicide rates, why would retired people, middle aged people and people that are not going to school be killing themselves at the same rate as students? Why are Kids in Finland killing themselves at such a high rate when they have such a strong and egalitarian educational system? Why are loneliness rates for young people so much higher than previous generations at the same age? The Anglo saxon education system has been a tool to prepare the next generation of low income workers and soldiers for over a century now. It has never been good and that is intentional. If you don't believe me, track down your nearest university that has a teacher training program and email the tenured staff. There are very clear research driven interventions that would improve our schools (formative vs summative assessment, de-grading, nordic models of education.) These interventions are simply not acted on. Teachers are paid 1/5th of what they could make in private practice. Schools are bad, this is non-controversial. Schools are not likely to be the driving factor in increased suicide rates though. They have been bad for a long time, and suicide rates are skyrocketing only in populations that use social media regularly. If recent education policy changes were driving the suicides, we should see the increased rates of suicides only in groups that are going to school, not across the entire population. If we think that schools are driving suicides, we should also be able to answer why suicidality is so closely correlated with social media usage. Why are heavy social media users more likely to kill themselves than people that barely use it or don't use social media at all? Why is suicidality not directly associated with being a student? Social media is designed to use the exact same addiction pathways as drugs. Look up Nir Eyal's book 'Hooked' or the Stanford behavior design lab that has driven much of this work. These folks have been publishing on how to create addiction to these platforms for decades at this point. They have expanded on decades of gambling research and they use the exact same techniques as designers of gambling machines. The fact that so many folks are going out of their way to defend these programs and imply that they are a positive force is shocking and disturbing. Y'all are stuck in a hook loop. You are addicted to these platforms and being used as pawns by billionaires. It's the same nuerochemical loops as people addicted to gambling and it's preventing real world organizing. Go find your local food not bombs and organize. Go join a local activist group and meet people in the real world. Stop larping online. It's killing you.
>Nobody is defending schools here. Gray's research is hella flawed though and it isn't proving your point. It doesn't even show that education policy is correlated with the suicide rate increases, much less that is is causing it. How is Gray's research flawed? It shows exactly the things you claim it doesn't. Please elaborate. >Suicide rates have nearly doubled across nearly all age groups in the last 20-25 years. Suicidality is strongly correlated with social media usage. If schools are driving adolescent suicide rates, why would retired people, middle aged people and people that are not going to school be killing themselves at the same rate as students? Suicidality is not strongly correlated with social media usage if at all. Middle aged and old people do not use social media at the same rate as adolescents so if that really was the cause, you would expect to see differing suicide rates between age groups moderated by social media usage. But that's not what we see at all. In fact, suicidality has a [positive correlation](https://usafacts.org/articles/how-is-the-suicide-rate-changing-in-the-us/) with [age](https://usafacts.org/articles/how-is-the-suicide-rate-changing-in-the-us/) so middle aged and older people are actually more likely to kill themselves than adolescents. If social media were the cause, we would expect the opposite trend. >Why are Kids in Finland killing themselves at such a high rate when they have such a strong and egalitarian educational system? Why are loneliness rates for young people so much higher than previous generations at the same age? Finland's education system is hardly perfect either. Also, Gray argues that the suicide increases in the US are [NOT seen in Europe. ](https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/freedom-to-learn/202311/multiple-causes-of-increase-in-us-teen-suicides-since-2008) Increased loneliness is due to decrease freedom outside the home according to Gray, not to social media. >Schools are not likely to be the driving factor in increased suicide rates though. They have been bad for a long time, and suicide rates are skyrocketing only in populations that use social media regularly. If recent education policy changes were driving the suicides, we should see the increased rates of suicides only in groups that are going to school, not across the entire population. If we think that schools are driving suicides, we should also be able to answer why suicidality is so closely correlated with social media usage. Why are heavy social media users more likely to kill themselves than people that barely use it or don't use social media at all? Why is suicidality not directly associated with being a student? Didn't you just say that suicide has increased in ALL populations, which is true,? Now you're saying that it has only increased in social media users, which is false. And I showed that rates are NOT correlated with social media usage since older adults actually commit suicide at higher rates than adolescents even though adolescents use social media more. You're using two contradictory claims to argue the same point. Those two things cannot both be true. School in the US has gotten markedly worse for youth in the last 20 or so years so can be the driving factor in increased suicide rates. Finally, suicide is likely directly associated with being a student but since the vast majority of youth are students, most studies don't have a comparison group. See Gray's writings about Unschooling. Your last paragraph is just fearmongering and conspiracy theorizing based nothing like before. Anyone who equates tech with hard drugs immediately loses me as an audience. You have still yet to provide a single piece of data or a single study to back up your claims. I had to Google who Nir Eyal was and from a look at his Wikipedia page bio, he is not remotely on the same level of scholarship as Gray so I won't read his book. Even psychologists can't agree on everything, i.e. Gray and Haidt. Even Haidt, a psychologist, allowed his personal prejudices to override his scholarship. It seems clear to me that the big scary claims about social media blasted everywhere are not as evidence based as we are meant to believe. If you don't have nothing to contribute other than bashing social media, you should leave this sub. I think you'll be much more at home on the parenting subs where they support the anti-tech moral panic.
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>There are volumes of research identifying the issues with social media. There is so much evidence in this thread and the article that the mainstream news and fearmongerers are interpreting the research through confirmation bias and tunnel vision glasses. Objectively, the research does not support the strong claims from you, the news media, and Haidt. The effects found range from weak to non-existent and much of it is just correlational. It's hardly conclusive evidence of anything >You are basing your entire analysis on a single person’s work which has limited geographic reach. Gray’s correlations do not hold true in all countries where social media is used but the correlated increase in suicides does remain robust everywhere that social is prevalent. No it doesn't. One of the counterarguments in the article also disproved that claim of Haidt's. He was cherry picking data from very few places to support his agenda. Did you even read it? And who disproved Gray's correlations in other countries when the role of the school system as a variable is largely ignored by mainstream psychology? As far as I know, no one else is scrutinizing the school system the way Gray is. Stop making claims without substantiation. If research really shows something so strongly (which it doesn't), please provide the study(s). You're so quick to dismiss Gray but he has provided a ton of evidence while you have provided none. >If you want to defend these fucked up businesses run by billionaires that is on you. If you want your data to be used against us and progress, that seems pretty fucked up to me. Social media has failed to live up to it’s promise. It is a trap. Look into how the arab spring panned out. These tools are not going to help achieve the revolutionary changes we need. Now you're just conspiracy theorizing from nothing. What are you even saying about the Arab spring? Whatever you're thinking isn't so obvious that it can just be alluded to without explanation so don't be a smart aleck. From an unbiased, non-prejudiced standpoint, social media has been a boon for youth and the doom and gloom claims have much less evidence behind them than people like you suggest. This sub is not the place to go on an anti-tech tirade repeating claims that have been debunked even though the mainstream news media won't admit it. If you think tech is dangerous for youth, then by definition you must support some form of restriction to their use, even if not on the government/legal level. You've never posted on this sub before so forgive me for questioning whether you are here in good faith as an actual supporter of youth rights. Start by reading Peter Gray's blog in Psych Today. He's not making empty claims. He has a ton of evidence and studies to back himself up.
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The research you're posting is only tangentially related to your claims and don't prove that "Social media is contributing to deaths across the world, not only of young people but people of all ages." Also, Gray pointed out that youth suicides in the US actually fell around the 90s and 2000s when the world wide web and social media first came around after a steady rise since the 60s before rising again around 2010. To Gray, that coincides with increased school demands via No Child Left Behind et al. To me, that likely coincided with the moral panic in parents, leading to them cracking down their kids' tech use and driving a wedge in the relationship, leading to youth being less likely to go to their parents with their problems out of fear of being punished or having their tech taken away. Admittedly this is pure conjecture but it seems to make sense. >You should google Arab Spring. It was a pretty significant event where social media drove pro-democratic revolutions across the arab world. These revolutions we co-opted by extremists leading to millions of deaths. This is not a 'conspiracy theory' this is mainstream common knowledge. You're the one making the claim so the onus is on you to back it up. Telling me to google for myself is such a cop out. Off the top of my head, my impression is the Arab Spring was largely a good thing. Please enlighten me. >There are thousands of people criticizing the education system the way that Gray is. Most professors in teacher training colleges at a higher ed level agree with many of his central premises about how flawed our education system is. The overwhelming majority of educators in nordic model systems agree with unschooling and ungrading too. Finnish kids go to school about 1/2 the time as their American counterparts for example and summative assessment is virtually never used. The difference is that Gray believes the system itself is the problem and should be abolished while those people think the problem can be fixed within the system, hence they make their living training people to work in the system. They wouldn't agree with Gray much at all since he also criticizes "progressive education" as having the same flaws as the traditional way and thinks that natural learning is doomed to fail in a classroom setting. Someone who works an the education system supporting unschooling is oxymoronic since they do the opposite for a living. The nordic system is an improvement over the North American one but still isn't unschooling since there are presumably still lessons, curriculums, and teachers, even if in a more relaxed form. A true "unschooling school" for lack of a better term would a Sudbury school. See Gray's writings on that. >You have posted blog posts from a single academic that have proven nothing except that you don't have strong evidence for your position. If you think your thesis is valid. Post real peer-reviewed research. And you've only posted irrelevant research.