More Than 2,000 Families Suing Social Media Companies Over Kids' Mental Health (cbsnews.com) 92
schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: When whistleblower Frances Haugen pulled back the curtain on Facebook in the fall of 2021, thousands of pages of internal documents showed troubling signs that the social media giant knew its platforms could be negatively impacting youth, and were doing little to effectively change it. With around 21 million American adolescents on social media, parents took note. Now, families are suing social media. Since we first reported this story last December, the number of families pursuing lawsuits has grown to over 2,000. More than 350 lawsuits are expected to move forward this year against TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Roblox and Meta -- the parent company to Instagram and Facebook.
Kathleen Spence: They're holding our children hostage and they're seeking and preying on them. Sharyn Alfonsi: Preying on them? Kathleen Spence: Yes. The Spence family is suing social media giant Meta. Kathleen and Jeff Spence say Instagram led their daughter Alexis into depression and to an eating disorder at the age of 12. [...] Attorney Matt Bergman represents the Spence family. He started the Social Media Victims Law Center after reading the Facebook papers and is now working with more than 1,800 families who are pursuing lawsuits against social media companies like Meta. Matt Bergman: Time and time again, when they have an opportunity to choose between safety of our kids and profits, they always choose profits.
This summer, Bergman and his team plan on starting the discovery process for the federal case against Meta and other social media companies, a multi-million dollar suit that he says is more about changing policy than financial compensation. This summer, Bergman and his team plan on starting the discovery process for the federal case against Meta and other social media companies, a multi-million dollar suit that he says is more about changing policy than financial compensation. Matt Bergman: They have intentionally designed a product that is addictive. They understand that if children stay online, they make more money. It doesn't matter how harmful the material is.
Kathleen Spence: They're holding our children hostage and they're seeking and preying on them. Sharyn Alfonsi: Preying on them? Kathleen Spence: Yes. The Spence family is suing social media giant Meta. Kathleen and Jeff Spence say Instagram led their daughter Alexis into depression and to an eating disorder at the age of 12. [...] Attorney Matt Bergman represents the Spence family. He started the Social Media Victims Law Center after reading the Facebook papers and is now working with more than 1,800 families who are pursuing lawsuits against social media companies like Meta. Matt Bergman: Time and time again, when they have an opportunity to choose between safety of our kids and profits, they always choose profits.
This summer, Bergman and his team plan on starting the discovery process for the federal case against Meta and other social media companies, a multi-million dollar suit that he says is more about changing policy than financial compensation. This summer, Bergman and his team plan on starting the discovery process for the federal case against Meta and other social media companies, a multi-million dollar suit that he says is more about changing policy than financial compensation. Matt Bergman: They have intentionally designed a product that is addictive. They understand that if children stay online, they make more money. It doesn't matter how harmful the material is.
Money grab (Score:3, Insightful)
Parents let their kids use social media, fully aware of the negative impacts it can have on the mental health of both adults and children.
Parents fail to monitor their kids usage of social media.
Parents want a large pay out for their own inadequate parenting and decide to sue social media companies.
Welcome to litigious society.
Re: Money grab (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Money grab (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, it might not be perfect, just like kids can get smokes and booze (but it's more difficult)....but if most of their friends aren't on SM, there's less attraction for them to try to get on.
This seems like such an easy problem to solve.
Re: Money grab (Score:3)
Re: Money grab (Score:5, Interesting)
But we're now seeing study after study showing SM is harmful to children.
Usually "please think of the children" is the shortcut needed to enact anything....yet, with SM, not so much....why?
I mean, they got rid of Joe Camel for less.....
Re: Money grab (Score:5, Funny)
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If someone posts on SM saying "SM is bad!" is that a tautology or irony? =p
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yes
Re: Money grab (Score:4, Informative)
It's mostly about getting a working majority to pass legislation, and stuff like this is hard to get passed mainly because of the money flowing out of the social media companies and into districts and campaign accounts.
The belief that conservatives can't/don't pass laws is silly. Suggests you weren't around in the 1990s and before. I'd point out the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (House: Voice vote, 95-4 in the Senate) which is credited with contributing strongly to mass incarceration in the US or the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 which was essentially an anti-gay bill (342-67 in the House, 85-14 in the Senate). Note the bills were voted for by lots of Democrats, including the current President, and both signed by Bill Clinton. The fact that they can't get a working majority of social conservatives anymore is why you don't see them passing laws.
To be fair, and to give equal time, this is why Roe v. Wade was a Supreme Court decision rather than a law, utilizing the remnant of LBJ's appointments at that moment in history (and some liberal appointments by Nixon), analagous to the Trump/Bush remnants in today's Court. Couldn't get a working majority in favor of that, either.
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It's mostly about getting a working majority to pass legislation, and stuff like this is hard to get passed mainly because of the money flowing out of the social media companies and into districts and campaign accounts.
While that certainly doesn't help, I think there is a fundamental problem that would remain even if we had genuinely-good legislators: Clearly defining "social media" in a way that makes a law viable to enforce.
If you define it as "the product/services performed by Meta and Bytedance", congratulations, they'll restructure under a different name in less time than it takes for the new DNS entries to propagate.
If you define it as "a system where large groups of people communicate over the internet", you've bas
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You make a good point. I'd define it as the algorithm - if you control which users can talk to another user in any way short of individual block lists controlled by that user, you are a social media provider and will be regulated as per the bill.
That would capture most social media - Twitter, Bytedance, Meta, LinkedIn, etc. But it would not capture Slashdot, for instance.
It would make running such media possibly infeasible, but the harm that would do to the world would be short-lived.
It'll never happen, b
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I do agree there should be some filters, and maybe the age-litmus is the test. But at the very least I think there needs to be a license of some form issued before social media use, a license you need to train and test for like with motor vehicles. I can hear the teens screaming about how unfair it is, but it's very, EXTREMELY clear that parents absolutely, positively, refuse to raise their children now, so I guess society has to tackle it for them.
Re: Money grab (Score:1)
The lawyers and judges are idiotic as all get out as a minor under 18 cannot legally sign EULA screens of liabilities to anyone.
So all social media companies are liable!
All kids can hold them liable with zero legal waivers or forced arbitration etc.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-media-lawsuit-meta-tiktok-facebook-instagram-60-minutes-transcript-2023-06-04/
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/10/30/0010252/what-else-do-the-leaked-facebook-papers-show
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Yeah. This argument can be used with toys, cartoons, sweets and really anything aimed at entertaining children.
You're supposed to be the one who checks your child and balances how much entertainment they have access to. If anything, parents who neglect their children should be facing the legal consequences here.
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There's also strong arguments for extending existing regulations on what materials can be used to make toys, since we have a global plastic pollution crisis. Make 'em out of more durable, sustainable materials & open up possibilities for second-hand toy markets.
Just letting corporations do whatever they want is what's
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I'm just going to remind you that there are countless families who's children don't have problems with sweets, toys or cartoons. And plenty that do.
What is the differentiating feature between the two?
That is my point. These parents aren't victims as they claim. At best, they're partners in crime.
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So the next question would be, what do parents understand about those risks? Are they well-informed enough to make the appropriate decisions for the welfare of their children in this regard? Is the currentl
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I assume that "living in their brain in their ivory towers" high flying academics doing sociological experiments are impossible to replicate as is the case with majority of sociology peer reviewed shit (the only major exceptions to my knowledge are high replication rate papers on IQ and big five psychometric traits), and instead real world statistics provides much better evidence that actually can be replicated by reality as we progress forward in the timeline.
I.e. there were plenty of sweets in last centur
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Well, a lot of those are dubious too when you get down to it, but social media adds a whole new dimension of individualized strategy combined with connecting folks to folks that perhaps aren't very good for mental health, exacerbated by Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
Social media companies are analyzing and using that to the greatest extent to individually manipulate participants.
Parents must, as always, do what they can to counterbalance that possibility/preclude it, but when teenage years come about, the
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Absolutely. Novel bypasses are always a thing.
This still doesn't absolve parents. And this certainly doesn't make them victims as they claim in this lawsuit.
Re:Money grab (Score:5, Informative)
> fully aware of the negative impacts
Nonsense.
Facebook has teams of PhD psychologists on-staff to maximize addiction ("engagement") covertly and you claim median parents are equipped to look at the overt presentation and divine the algorithm and game theory?
That's so absurd it's not even apologetics.
Get on the right side of who the bad guys are here. Kids' lives depend on it.
Re:Money grab (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed.
Further, the premise of all of this is that social media companies knew what they were doing was harmful and they did it anyway. Lots of companies get away with that, but rarely if they do it to children.
And for all the commenters on here: if you don't have children, you of course have a right to your opinion and to voice it, but it really doesn't count for much. If you do have children and managed generally steer them in a good direction in life, don't break your arm patting yourself on the back. You may have been a good and conscientious parent, but that doesn't mean that parents whose children when down questionable paths are "bad" parents. It's been studied ad-infinitum; parenting is a factor in a child's behavior and success in life, but not the only one.
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And for all the commenters on here: if you don't have children, you of course have a right to your opinion and to voice it, but it really doesn't count for much.
what a load of crock.
i have a daughter, but a reasonable argument is a reasonable argument, regardless of source.
raising children does not imbue one with unfathomable wisdom.
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"parenting is a factor in a child's behavior and success in life, but not the only one."
What factors do you refer to that aren't the parents responsibility? The parents choose the country for their children, the area they live in and therefore the friends they make etc. The parents are 100 % responsible for the genes of their children. What exactly do you mean the parents aren't responsible for?
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Yes, of course. Because everyone knows that social media companies are doing these things. If you don't, it can only be willful ignorance.
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Bad parents are the bad guys. Stupid people should not breed.
Re:Money grab (Score:4, Informative)
This makes me wonder, how? You don't shadow your kids every second of the day. We want kids to have a phone so we can get in touch easily. There's no way.
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Perhaps you somehow forgot but there are still plenty of cell phones that can be had that do not have the ability to get on social media. They're quite cheap too.
Never mind the fact that for all of human history up until maybe 2 decades ago children did just fine without a constant connection to their parents.
Re:Money grab (Score:4, Interesting)
Controlling network capable devices can work reasonably well until 10-11, when the kids are pretty amenable to the parents authority. But when people get to teenage years, there's a strong drive to be independent and there's not much you can reasonably do.
You try to assert too strongly against their drive and they will still find ways, refuse to engage with you, generally doubt you across the board, and go harder into things pretty much to force that independence that they feel is absolutely needed.
As far as I've seen, best course is to stay engaged and let them participate. Do your best to contextualize and balance what they may experience even as that means some uncomfortable conversations. They won't be *as* forceful about going all in, they will take your input under consideration, and you still have the opportunity to make sure that social media is only part of things, and discuss the nuance on how seriously some people take things online and to be sensitive to it, while also helping them *not* to take things too seriously and get hurt overmuch themselves.
Like always, you have to carefully balance discipline with empowerment. This involves a huge amount of engagement.
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I'll admit to not being a parent but I have a real hard time with this whole "we can't tell our kids no" thing.
Sorry but you absolutely can and sure little Jr. will probably be upset with you for a bit but that's just parenting and is what you signed up for when you decided to have a kid.
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There's no way at all to totally keep your teenage kid off the platforms if they are determined to be on them, no matter how hard you helicopter. The best you can do is for the kid to make you *think* they are off the platforms. I mean, I suppose you could lock them in your house, never let them go to school or see another human with an internet device, but that is hardly healthy.
You can say no to things and actually enforce certain things, but complete social media blackout, you need them to be onboard wi
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There's no way at all to totally keep your teenage kid off the platforms if they are determined to be on them, no matter how hard you helicopter
All you're saying here is "well we cant solve all of the problem so we shouldnt even try to solve most or even some of it." and that's absurd.
How many kids do you think are going to develop mental health issues over only occasionally using social media? Far less I'd wager.
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Why is everyone characterizing this as an all or nothing thing? Sure kids are going to sneak around their parents on this. Never the less not being able to use this stuff without getting in trouble while at home will limit usage which will limit the number of kids developing mental health issues from it.
I mean, I'm pretty sure my parents were at least somewhat aware that I was drinking alcohol and smoking weed while I was in high school. That doesnt mean they let me do it at home though which certainly redu
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Perhaps you somehow forgot but there are still plenty of cell phones that can be had that do not have the ability to get on social media.
I mean, that sounds like a pretty "all or nothing" characterization of the situation. I was trying to offer a counterpoint with nuance to address the limitations.
Generally the worst behaving folks come from all or nothing sorts of strategies. The offspring of strict disciplinarians that thought they drew a hard line of 'off limits stuff' and called it a day, and their kid got into pretty much the worst stuff. Or offspring of folks that just don't pay attention or care and they also just get wrapped up into
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I mean, that sounds like a pretty "all or nothing" characterization of the situation
How does that sound like "all or nothing" to you when you were just telling me about how kids will always find work arounds in your last post? Plus, are you really telling me that you honestly think that the only way to access social media is a smart phone?
Furthermore, I reject your premise that a parent not buying their kid whatever material possession is in fashion with kids at a given moment is somehow being a hyper strict disciplinarian. Buying them a dumb phone still allows them to communicate with th
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I remember my parents signing up for AOL for the parental controls. Those were the bane of my existence for a couple of years.
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> We want kids to have a phone so we can get in touch easily.
People have functioned perfectly fine without this. But, even if you think giving children an phone is useful, there are phones without access to social media. If a phone is just for "staying in contact," it doesn't have to be a smart-phone with all the bells and whistles.
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This makes me wonder, how? You don't shadow your kids every second of the day. We want kids to have a phone so we can get in touch easily. There's no way.
When my (step)son was a kid, he wanted a computer. He got one, and we rearranged household furniture to set him up with a desk at one end of the dining room / living room area (we got a smaller table to make space). When he got into xbox/playstation gaming it was hooked up to the display he used for his computer.
His usage was public within the household. Nobody watched over his shoulder, but he had no privacy of use and use-time could be limited as needed. We were around, but not intrusive.
When he was a
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Parents can teach their children about social medias? Use parental controls?
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When I was a young adult, I had access to guns, tobacco, and booze; and all manner of other illegal substances.
Laws didn't really change much of anything except adding prison, termination of parental rights, fines, and and a plethora of other state sponsored complications to the mix. Truly this is protecting kids.
Being young, I resented not being able to the see behind the door myself, and luckily (and at my insistence) my parents obliged me in a controlled manner to have a healthy respect for how badly thi
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Re: Money grab (Score:2)
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Absolutely this. This is like parents giving their children vodka, then suing the distillers.
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> fully aware of the negative impacts
Unfortunately, not so much. I think a lot of parents are clueless, or even enjoy social media themselves and set a bad example.
My ex works in medicine. She aware of things like the surgeon general warning (though recent), https://www.hhs.gov/about/news... [hhs.gov]. She sees the effects of teen girls in her practice. When our tween daughter asked for Snapchat my ex had no problem with it. I have to be the one to put my foot down. My daughter and my ex act like I'm some kind o
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tl;dr (Score:3, Insightful)
Parents can't say no, get mad at media company instead.
Re: tl;dr (Score:4, Insightful)
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I sit down with the teacher and ask them what the hell they think they're doing.
Re: tl;dr (Score:4, Insightful)
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Flexible work hours are a great invention.
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Find another school, or home-school. Because clearly these teachers are beyond incompetent.
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Right, so the child lie when she clicked that she was 13. The child then downloaded an app that was not what it says it was, and proceeded to use it, also being dishonest.
The child mentions that there's no "checks" regarding age. There's literally no way, other than requiring people to use some sort of identification card or number tied into a database that can verify a person's age, to "check" to see if someone is 13 and not 11.
Moreover they show the world (Score:2)
what amoral cunts your kids, and by extension yourself, are.
Social Media is Digital Fentanyl (Score:1)
It's designed to keep the kids hooked. This is why the Chinese government limits what and how much kids can see.
social media deceptively dangerous and addictive (Score:3)
A libertarian may say that this is just free speech, free market, individual choice and responsibility. But this is an example of deceptively harming people, not unlike the libertarian conundrum over selling addictive substances like fentanyl to the innocent. I've come around to considering that a real crime.
This social media stuff is dangerous and addictive. Kids must be protected from it, and the social media companies are not behaving responsibly.
Re: social media deceptively dangerous and addicti (Score:2)
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I would happily support the wholesale banning of all social media generally. It hasn't added any societal value that wasn't already available locally beforehand. It's kind of gimmicky really.
Social media has strangled the ad industry world wide. There is a lot of governments now talking about nationalising most local media just because the commercial model is falling apart under the onslaught.
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The sophistication of the strategies used by these companies to draw people in and keep them them engaged through "gamification" is clearly working.
Agreed. They've said from the very beginning was to connect and engage people. They've said it over and over and over. And over.
The AI mechanisms employed push more and more extreme content on individuals making it seem more normal with time. That might be violence or extreme political views, or it might be body shaming for youngsters.
Agreed, but not to the full extent of your selected language. The goal of any of this engagement tech is to find out what gets you to click on a link, image, or video and to give you more of it. If you're a 14 year old girl and you're looking at weight-loss influencers a little bit, they're going to flood you with those "Hey, we thought you might like..." frames filled with "thin-s
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I think the example you've chosen reveal a selection bias in the news you view, rather than a useful descriptive of general behavior. The "extreme political views" is more useful as descriptive of general behavior, and there are other examples where there are large numbers of people engaging in similar behavior. These are the kinds of things that are generally facilitated and intensified by social media. (It's even implicit in the name we've chosen for the mode of interaction.)
OTOH, if they were made 10%
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Social media is definitely bad for kids (Score:2)
If we REALLY want to address this issue, we would hit the social media companies with a “sin tax”, which is historically the way that a modern civilization deals with behaviors that people enjoy but are damaging to society. However, taxes are extremely out of fashion nowadays. Actually, half our electorate considers any form of “tax” to be a slippery slope to evil, left-wing, Amurica-hating commie woke facism. Anyone that dar
Maybe instead of whining (Score:5, Insightful)
They should keep their kids off social media?
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That would make sense, but that’s not the world we live in. Every problem in your life is someone else’s fault. You did nothing wrong. You have no agency and cannot make your own choices. Other people make you make bad choices. Sue them!
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People who actually take this advice end up home schooling their kids, giving them some very strange ideas about the world, and not letting their social skills develop fully.
Parents can't, and shouldn't have to, watch their kids every moment of every day. It's completely reasonable to, for example, expect TV stations that show children's programming to not show them stuff that screws up their mental health. Social media is not an exception, and "on the internet" does not make is a special case.
It's not just
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And yet despite all this government oversight we still have thousands of product recalls every year due to products that can hurt, maim, or kill people.
People have abdicated their responsibilities to the government, this is a huge mistake. Nobody will care more about you and protect you better than you.
Parents are lazy and don’t care. This is why their kids stare at screens all day and the parents act like there is nothing they can do. Here’s a good start, say “no”. Put parental cont
What a joke (Score:1)
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Let's be honest here, that is hardly a new development. How many generations of parents have used the TV as a convenient babysitter? Then computer games and consoles became that crutch, and here it already started to crack until the ESRB came to the rescue and pretty much reinstalled what TV networks already had, a convenient tool that allows parents to continue ignoring their kids and what they're doing.
Too bad that doesn't work with online content created by other people because these people don't give a
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There's a problem, though. A lot of schools essentially require that the students have full internet access. I agree that the schools shouldn't do that, but they do it as a budget saving thing...and nobody's voting them enough money to do a good job. An ideal high school class shouldn't have more than 17 students, according to a study by the CTA (a couple of decades ago). Primary school classes need to be even smaller, though how much varies by age. (SOME high school classes can be effectively done as
50 years ago (Score:3)
I think the phrase is "late stage capitalism". Don't get me wrong, I'm not a communist (Democratic Socialist actually). But capitalism is like any complex machine. If you don't maintain it then it breaks down. Regulation and laws are that maintenance.
We're like a rich kid skipping the oil change on the sports car dad gave us. Dad ain't gonna buy us another when we blow out the engine.
Ffs. (Score:1)
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You have demonstrated that you prefer simple solutions that won't work.
Yes, if we got rid of "social media" (how are you defining that?) then the problems that it causes would go away (and be replaced by different problems). You are ignoring the reasons why "social media" was needed, The current implementation, however, is seriously broken, and the rules under which it is allowed to operate need to be replaced. The question is "by what?". Something that "maximizes engagement" without counting the variou
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You are ignoring the reasons why "social media" was needed...
Oh, let me just stop you right there an offer you some popcorn while you list those needs. This should be rich, because after watching liberal social media hire and sustain tens of thousands of employees just long enough to secure their leftist votes in mid-term elections before firing a metric fuckton of them, I certainly have my theories as to why politics wanted to grow and abuse it as a deadly weapon of mass distraction and delusion.
Quite frankly, the problems associated with the BBS and USENET days ca
Follow the Science (Score:4, Informative)
https://jonathanhaidt.substack... [substack.com]
‘The most mentally healthy [adult] respondents are those who did not get a phone until their late teens,’ psychologists wrote
Earlier smartphone use is associated with diminished mental health in adulthood, according to top psychologists’ analysis of the world’s largest mental health database.
“The younger the age of getting the first smartphone, the worse the mental health that the young adult reports today,” psychologist and NYU professor Jonathan Haidt and research assistant Zach Rausch wrote in a post on Haidt’s blog, After Babel.
“This is true in all the regions studied,” they wrote. “The relationships are consistently stronger for women.”
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Great plan (Score:2)
Parents fault! (Score:1)
Facebook Better Settle this Quietly (Score:1)
Facebook better settle this quietly. If this gets to