I’m still stunned that so many techies of the generation that grew up in the Wild West era of early internet freedom are now quick to applaud silly legislation to let parents sue social media companies for vaguely defined offenses.
Back when I was younger, the internet evilness was chat rooms and video games, both of which were supposedly addicting us and corrupting our young, helpless minds. We all knew it was ridiculous and mocked the “think of the children” attacks. We also turned out fine.
Then a couple decades pass and many of the same people are in full on “think of the children” mode over the latest generation of internet social interactions. I know commenters will claim it’s different this time, but I think the real difference is that people are getting older and out of touch. I’m guessing most of the anti-social media crusaders on HN don’t even use social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, but instead get their opinions from exaggerated news stories, just as our parents did back when the internet was new.
Does anyone here really think there is an “addictiveness” feature in the Facebook algorithm that can be toggled on and off like this article suggests? Does anyone think kids will just shrug and accept whatever limitations are imposed on them, or will they find creative ways to get a second account and set the age to 18 like we found creative ways around primitive internet content blockers? It’s the same stuff all over again and I think it’s getting quite hypocritical to pretend that heavy-handed internet controls were bad for us but good for them.
I think there’s a story here that no one has talked about. It’s that the “traditional” media has fought back against social media by attacking them ruthlessly and getting everyone to believe their some great blight on the world.
Facebook et al are not doing anything traditional media hasn’t been doing since its inception. Spreading fake news? The original name for it was “Yellow Journalism”[1]. Making teenage girls insecure about themselves? Just look at magazines like Cosmopolitan from just a few years ago. Highlighting divisive, polarizing stories to drive engagement? Cable news doesn’t do anything else. Let’s not forget all the crazy racist, and seriously impactful shit local news has done over the years.
Social media and the internet stole a lot of eyeballs from traditional media outlets. They’ve successfully responded by convincing everyone that Facebook and the rest of big tech is some crazy super villain.
Journalists love to talk about the danish study that paid people to quit Facebook and found that they were measurably happier. They conveniently ignore that the other measurable change was that people were less informed about current events/consumed less news. Which is a pretty unsurprising finding - the thing that people argue most about on social media is the very news/opinion clickbait that journalists produce.
Put it another way, if peopled replaced time spent on social media with time spent reading NYT/FOX/CNBC/CNN, would they become more or less upset and polarized? My money would be on more...
I wager less upset but more polarized. While filter bubble is a term coined in the social media age, these news stations make for some of the easiest ways to create them IRL. one person of "authority", with complete, uncontested control on how to frame the news, typically gathering like minds who want to listen to it.
At least comment sections challenging a news piece gives some avenue for the audience to consider other angles to the story. I may not agree with every comment here on how they interpret this bill, but it gives me a wider look on the issue than if I listened only to LATime's take on it.
Traditional media didn't take over human socialization. You could socialize without having "traditional media" watch over and control who you talk to and what you talk about.
TV can absolutely be evil, but you can choose to not watch TV and still be able to socialize with peers using the telephone or paper mail back in the day.
Nowadays, the "TV" (which now fits in your pocket) is also the primary way humans communicate, so you can't switch off the "TV" without also severely hampering your ability to communicate with other people.
Hell, a lot of small businesses don't even have websites anymore, it's all in some bullshit social-media platform.
Traditional media was constrained to the TV, radio and newspapers. It didn't try to take over human communication. You could opt out entirely and still be able to participate in society just fine.
Social media is a cancer that spread to a lot of day-to-day necessities and keeps spreading - some businesses don't even have websites anymore.
>some businesses don't even have websites anymore.
I think that opens a differnet discussion altogether. Yelp can be considered a "social media". It's a website where users provide content (in this case, reviews) with some various algorithms made to encourage businesses to play ball to get high visibility. but I doubt any of the proposals discussed here would affect Yelp. Kids sure as heck aren't concerned with ratings over businesses they often can't pay for.
So would it be bad if a company lacked a website and relied on Yelp, whose goal isn't the same as Instagram's?
I can see where you're coming from, but let's be real, those IRC and game chat rooms were far from well run or safe for minors, and made minimal to no effort to keep minors out. Most still don't.
And modern social media really is different in that it's deliberately designed to be addictive and basically prey on insecurities. (or just outright create new ones) They don't do much if anything in terms of not straight up enhancing bullying etc either.
Another difference is, unlike our parents, who simply didn't know much about the internet, and as a result had lots of unfounded fears, our generation are digital natives and very familiar with all the problems. We're just used to and desensitized to them.
With adults, that's one thing, but with minors, it's pretty inexcusable imo. It's not unreasonable to want to protect your children and adolescents from harm, whether from smoking or from social media.
I think the harms of social media are overblown and distorted. The infamous Facebook leaks were studies conducted with under 50 girls. Only 3% and 18% said Instagram made them feel "much worse" or "somewhat worse" respectively. 8% and 29% respectively said it made them feel "much better" or "somewhat better". The rest were neutral. My take reading the actual data [1][2] after reading media coverage is that was way overblown. The main negative feelings "body image", "FOMO", "social comparison" and so forth were definitely the main negative feelings affecting girls before social media, too - I can say that from firsthand experience.
I worry that social media is a red herring, distracting things that may really be contributing to stress and anxiety. Remember, social media isn't the only change society has and continues to experience. Things like, declining labor force participation, rising inequality, and more are likely more significant changes. Narrow example: 45% of teens reported that fear of climate change "negatively affected their daily life and functioning" [3].
I try to be evidence based but social media being harmful is one of those things I personally don't really need a lot of hard data and evidence to be convinced. At this point it just seems self evident to me. (and I don't just mean harmful for me personally - I think it's blatantly obvious is harms basically every individual and societies as a whole as well)
+ if you're worried about climate change, isn't social media the medium through which a huge part of all the nonsense denial gets spread and popularized? (same for COVID and any number of other things)
Social media is good and bad like everything else. I don’t think it’s self evident.
Climate change denial is spread on social media, but so is climate change activism. Propaganda is spread on social media by Russia, but it’s also used by Ukrainians to share their story easily with the world.
In broad strokes I agree, and I'm pretty sure social media is here to stay.
But I do very much think the current implementations are net-losses, probably primarily due to advertising having horrifically perverse incentives for human behavior. And they are all advertising platforms first and foremost at the moment.
Easier communication brings out a lot of higher highs and lower lows, I think that's unavoidable. But I do think it can be substantially better than it is now.
> primarily due to advertising having horrifically perverse incentives for human behavior. And they are all advertising platforms first and foremost at the moment.
no different from the rest of society as we know it today. Games now include ads, paid streaming platforms are STILL having ads for customers (needing to pay extra to opt-out), TV has commercials, real life has anything you can paint on, etc.
But most of us learn to filter out the ads. I don't see them as the biggest problem here so much as a lack of moderation.
>social media being harmful is one of those things I personally don't really need a lot of hard data and evidence to be convinced.
I do. This same stance has been made for every media at some point in history. I feel in every case it's simply a smokescreen to hide deeper symptoms that no one wants to consider acknowledging, let alone treating.
> if you're worried about climate change, isn't social media the medium through which a huge part of all the nonsense denial gets spread and popularized?
it's a double edged sword. It's also why many youth may find out about climate change to begin with. cutting off all access simply creates ignorance instead of at the bare minimum awareness of the arguments being made. Maybe instead of blaming Facebook for the loonies not being listened to (if you're worried about climate change, the loonies clearly failed) we actually take actino to start preserving the envionment? But no, that takes actual congress bills to agree on.
> The main negative feelings "body image", "FOMO", "social comparison" and so forth were definitely the main negative feelings affecting girls before social media, too - I can say that from firsthand experience.
The difference is the impact and ubiquity.
Those negative you mention are now on steroids, because they're <<everywhere>> <<all the time>>.
> I can see where you're coming from, but let's be real, those IRC and game chat rooms were far from well run or safe for minors, and made no to minimal efforts to keep minors out. Most still don't.
I wouldn't be here if not for those!
I grew up in a conservative town with little exposure to outside ideas and my parents were overly protective. The early internet sans filters and "filter bubble" algorithms gave me much needed perspective on the world.
IRC and forums were fundamentally a part of shaping who I am today.
>Does anyone here really think there is an “addictiveness” feature in the Facebook algorithm that can be toggled on and off like this article suggests?
I mean, kinda. That's pretty much the whole purpose of their current algorithmically-ranked feed - maximize engagement (which is most-maximized by addiction).
There is a massive difference social media today is run by the largest corporations that exist and design in a way that it is the most addictive possible.
I would argue it is similar to alcohol or tabacco this way. Shouting think of the children because some kids/teenagers get drunk at some point is way overkill. However once the tabacco/alcohol industry started directly marketing to them it was quite a different matter.
> grew up in the Wild West era of early internet freedom
The Wild West era of Internet freedom was much more tame than that.
Sure, you had trolls and other nasties, but not only were those trolls for the most part doing their mischief for personal entertainment, their impact was relatively localized - their trolling didn't scale.
Now compare this to an industrial-scale trolling & spamming operation where billions are poured into research, development and infrastructure.
You're comparing a small-scale spammer using their email client to spam manually against an industrial-scale automated spamming operation. The first one can be dealt with locally, the second one might require some out-of-band intervention.
Also, back in the day, you didn't need to go into IRC or the dark corners on the Internet to participate in society day to day. Nowadays, you have to be in the social media cesspool to even be able to lookup some business' opening hours or contact them.
> Does anyone here really think there is an “addictiveness” feature in the Facebook algorithm that can be toggled on and off like this article suggests?
Yes - just give the user a chronological feed with no extra bullshit inserted into it and let the user choose what they want to see based on their follows, instead of the engagement-maximizing algorithm choosing for them.
Is there any reason to believe that the people who came up with this legislation grew up using IRC and forums? Are you sure they wouldn't have been consistent with their 'protect the children' stance 25 years ago, against something like AOL?
Unless the users of HN collectively wrote the bill I'm failing to see where the hypocrisy is lol
> the people who came up with this legislation grew up using IRC and forums
IIRC the average age of a congressman is the mid 50's, and the senate the early 60's. That would be right before their time.
I think that user was more talking about the audience here at HN agreeing with it. "we" won't be in congress for another 20 years on average (given current congress age).
It's more like restricting McDonalds. Which yes, was and still is a hotly debated topic.
I think its extremely hyperbolic to compare FB to morphine. Social media addiction isn't something that is commonly worried about on a clinical level (in a day and age where "video game addiction" is officially recognized).
It took decades since its introduction for doctors to recognize morphine was dangerously addictive, so the fact that social media isn't currently something commonly worried about on a clinical level doesn't really say much.
And we've known for centuries that eating a lotta food makes you fat. There's an entire clinical wing of physical and mental health illnesses dedicated to highlighting the ramifications of being overweight. Alcoholism was similar, but at least justified centuries back in the times where it was still safer to consume than most forms of water.
Maybe some breaking study brings something up, but it's still a long debate after that to determine how and if society should control those activities. Even with alcohol, it's not illegal for a minor to drink, it's illegal for vendors to sell to them.
Back when I was younger, the internet evilness was chat rooms and video games, both of which were supposedly addicting us and corrupting our young, helpless minds. We all knew it was ridiculous and mocked the “think of the children” attacks. We also turned out fine.
Then a couple decades pass and many of the same people are in full on “think of the children” mode over the latest generation of internet social interactions. I know commenters will claim it’s different this time, but I think the real difference is that people are getting older and out of touch. I’m guessing most of the anti-social media crusaders on HN don’t even use social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, but instead get their opinions from exaggerated news stories, just as our parents did back when the internet was new.
Does anyone here really think there is an “addictiveness” feature in the Facebook algorithm that can be toggled on and off like this article suggests? Does anyone think kids will just shrug and accept whatever limitations are imposed on them, or will they find creative ways to get a second account and set the age to 18 like we found creative ways around primitive internet content blockers? It’s the same stuff all over again and I think it’s getting quite hypocritical to pretend that heavy-handed internet controls were bad for us but good for them.
Amazing how it comes full circle.