I'm so sorry you were bullied for being "too feminine". Kids can be cruel and stupid. If you look around, you will see many men have "feminine" traits; some are straight and some are gay so there isn't a clear cut path to being gay based on these traits. It seems as a society as of late, we put far too much emphasis on sexual orientation and identity.
I do hope you look more closely at your pathway to where you are now and reflect on what influenced you and how that took shape. What you have unwittingly described are the same paths that other detransitioners have spoken about. Perhaps looking at theirs and comparing to yours, you can see similarities.
I also do not agree with your judgement that gay, transgender and queer (whatever that is) kids do not have supportive families. Many of the transgender kids cut off their parents not the other way around. The kids were influenced by transgender people who say if they don't use the name or 100% affirm, cutting off is the only option.
Being a parent means we try to protect our kids to the best of our ability, but as you mention tech has been insidious and parents are not able to protect their kids against the reaches of SM for various reasons. Too many vulnerable kids have fallen into its trap.
Finally, as you are aware, being transgender unfortunately can mean medicalizing which is very harmful to a body. Even socially transitioning is mentally taxing. No parent wants their child to experience poor healthy, physically or mentally.
I am a proud transgender woman on HRT and I am healthy as can be. I agree that invasive medical procedures can be harmful for young children. No one is advocating for that. Gender affirming care can be as simple as a hair cut or fully reversible puberty blocker. I hope you can find it in your heart to learn more about us. We are much stronger together.
"The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021. Among teens, “top surgery” to remove breasts is more common. In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims. This tally does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket."
This is from an analysis published in JAMA Open Network:
"Results: A total of 48 019 patients who underwent GAS were identified, including 25 099 (52.3%) who were aged 19 to 30 years. The most common procedures were breast and chest procedures, which occurred in 27 187 patients (56.6%), followed by genital reconstruction (16 872 [35.1%]) and other facial and cosmetic procedures (6669 [13.9%]). The absolute number of GAS procedures rose from 4552 in 2016 to a peak of 13 011 in 2019 and then declined slightly to 12 818 in 2020. Overall, 25 099 patients (52.3%) were aged 19 to 30 years, 10 476 (21.8%) were aged 31 to 40, and 3678 (7.7%) were aged12 to 18 years. When stratified by the type of procedure performed, breast and chest procedures made up a greater percentage of the surgical interventions in younger patients, while genital surgical procedures were greater in older patients."
These are conservative numbers because private payers and minors who had their healthy breasts removed by Kaiser Permanente are not included.
There is zero basis for your claim about puberty blockers being reversible. You are misinforming people.
"Results: Sixteen studies were identified. In mammals, the neuropsychological impacts of puberty blockers are complex and often sex specific (n = 11 studies). There is no evidence that cognitive effects are fully reversible following discontinuation of treatment. No human studies have systematically explored the impact of these treatments on neuropsychological function with an adequate baseline and follow-up. There is some evidence of a detrimental impact of pubertal suppression on IQ in children."
Puberty is a timed, necessary developmental process that impacts every system, including neurodevelopment. There is no long-term data on what happens to these kids into adulthood. That’s not the same as suggesting there’s some on-off switch. Anyone who was actually interested in the well-being of these kids rather than in validating their own decisions would know that. The use of these drugs in the case of a diagnosable condition—precocious puberty, not to physically concretize an “identity,” is not parallel and even that use is not without health concerns. And given that the vast majority of teens go from blockers directly to hormones, the likely outcome is sterility and sexual dysfunction — the inability to ever have an orgasm has been noted by Dr. Marci Bowers. This is horrific and nothing to be brushed off except by the most callous and inhumane.
You’re currently healthy. Great. Taking high doses of masculinizing or feminizing hormones increases the risks of serious disease like heart attack and stroke. That’s just reality. Being healthy is great until you’re not. Doctors are not supposed to harm patients even if their patients really, really want it and accept all of the risks, but the field has lost its way. Hopefully that will change with a few more winning lawsuits.
Puberty blockers are GnRH analogues used for decades in pediatric endocrinology. When they’re stopped, puberty starts up again. There’s no peer‑reviewed evidence that blockers alone cause permanent infertility. Those fertility risks depend on whether someone later takes long‑term hormones without preservation.
The endocrine practice guidelines don't have a reliable reference. People just kept saying it was true. They don't have studies showing this.
There is also the problem that puberty blockers seem to "lock in" gender incongruence, as most on puberty blockers continue to hormones, in studies, while most who weren't put on puberty blockers...have their gender dysphoria resolve. Most of those, but not all, are gay/lesbian/bisexual.
The Cass Review summarizes a lot of this, maybe the HHS report as well.
In your second citation, it’s not all rosy. Here is the paragraph specific to transgender:
“….ing of increased body fat and a decreased lean body mass
[121]. The impact on BMD is concerning since lumbar spine Z-scores at age 22 years were found to be lower than those observed prior to treatment [122, 123), suggesting a possible permanent decrement in BMD. Thus, it is unclear how long GnRHa can safely be administered. The effects of GnRHa on adolescent brain maturation are un-clear. GRHa therapy prevents maturation of primary oocytes and spermatogonia and may preclude gamete maturation, and currently there are no proven methods to preserve fertility in early pubertal transgender adoles-cents. Care for each adolescent must be individualized, with awareness of gender fluidity and ethical guidelines….”
Seconding the question--puberty blockers are not shown to be reversible at all. Their effects in animal studies do not demonstrate reversibility, and their effects on MTF do not completely go away when hormones are taken.
See Baxendale, 2024, or the HHS peer reviewed 2025 report, which has the latest compilation of data?
Many of my transgender friends were physically or sexually abused, or kicked onto the streets as minors, for the crime of cutting their hair or asking their friends to call them a different name against their parents' wishes. The people I know with loving but imperfect parents are grateful for them, even if they wish their parents could see past their upbringings. Your suggestion is ridiculous.
Being a feminine man is not a substitute for being a woman.
You can play whatever language games you want, but that doesn't affect material reality. People like Lennon undergo social and medical transition because these are specific interventions that improve their lives, that change the appearance and function of their bodies, and that alter how they are seen in society. You refusing to call Lennon a woman does not change the fact that she is living a very different life from that of your understanding of a feminine man, one that is vastly preferable to her.
(I say "your understanding of," because some feminine men do go on estrogen or adopt new names as part of their gender expression too. Freedom is beautiful.)
It’s amazing to me how many people rush to say something along the lines of “you’re sick” to each and every transgender person they happen upon on the Internet. Similarly amazing: folks who then cite studies — selectively, of course, just the studies which back them up, never mind any others — as if medical literature absolutely trumps a particular person’s lived experience in their own skin, as if everyone conforms to statistics, and as if no trans people ever read the literature for themselves (why would they? it’s only the biggest and most consequential decision of their lives). “I don’t care what you say about yourself or your own life,” this argument goes, “because here’s a study showing a significant number of people don’t say the same thing.” It’s so condescending, so pushy and wiser-than-thou.
I admit my patience for this Stack is waning. It's one thing to use social/commercial pressure social media companies to "do better." It's fine to pressure schools to keep cell phones out of kids' hands during school hours. It's fine to educate parents (and kids and people in general) on the dangers of phone and social media over-exposure.
But there doesn't seem to be any discussion on how quickly "social media [government] regulation" can become fundamentally and incontrovertibly authoritarian, antithetical to democracy, and incongruent with free speech and 1st Amendment principles. "Smily face censorship" is still censorship and every government censor in history used "the greater good" as part of their argument.
I clearly won't be moving my donation dollars from FIRE to After Babel anytime soon.
I actually agree with you. That is why I advocate for design based legislation. Keep content out of it and put it on the technology. It is absolutely feasible.
That's precisely what this stack is not promoting, though. The authors of After Babal have unilaterally and unceasingly praised age and ID verification laws that aid in censorship and tracking as a primary feature, with child safety as a secondary benefit. They let the ecosystem stay intact, whether exploitative porn, addictive social media- or, as is becoming apparent among the over-18 crowd in the US, online gambling.
At best they're delaying the problem. It's sad because most of Jon Haidt's proposals in The Anxious Generation are either brilliant, common sense or could easily be made so.
Please look through the responses to the various laws in this stack and if you truly believe what you say, then at least acknowledge how unhelpful (and not merely imperfect) they are, if not asking for this post to be removed.
This is a great point and I've thought the same thing. I'm not trying to hijack anyone else's post, or do any advertising but wrote about this subject myself and share a little different perspective.
In America, as a society, we have protected kids from what we deem as harm. For instance, porn magazines were put behind the counter and ID was presented to purchase. Books and movies have ratings to help delineate appropriate content for children/YA. Back in the day, movie goers who looked under 18 were carded before a ticked was sold for a R movie. SM/internet is far more harmful now that we know tech shows harmful content w/o restriction and they manipulate the algorithm to show more of it and it has an addictive behavior. On the internet, adults have access to kids with no guardrails. Organizations, business and schools run background checks to catch those who have been convicted of abuse. Of course the argument is that it doesn't get those who weren't but we have protocols in place to deal with that scenario. We do not have such safeguards on the internet.
I think you're conflating free speech with protection of minors.
Good point. What I’m trying to say, is that I think the way these companies will push back is to conflate free speech with this, much needed protection. Age and content controls are absolutely needed.
I remember at 16 when a movie theater wouldn’t let me buy a ticket to see “The Blue Lagoon”. Lol.
The piece offers a forceful critique of social media design, but weakens itself by filtering that critique through an expansive and imprecise identity framework.
On its merits, the argument about platform harm is persuasive. The account of compulsive use, algorithmic amplification, and exposure to predatory behavior reflects well-documented features of the attention economy. These dynamics affect adolescents broadly—especially those who are isolated or seeking validation.
The difficulty arises when the author centers “LGBTQ youth” as a unified class. That category collapses distinct and often unrelated experiences. Same-sex attraction—long understood as a stable sexual orientation—does not map neatly onto contemporary gender identity formation, particularly when the latter is mediated through highly performative online environments. Yet the piece moves between these groups as if they were interchangeable.
The invocation of “LGBTQ” or “queer” functions less as description than as rhetorical leverage. It allows a personal narrative to be generalized across a heterogeneous population without demonstrating that the same mechanisms operate in the same way for all. In practice, the category substitutes for argument.
The claim of heightened vulnerability is similarly overstated. The harms described—addiction, validation-seeking, grooming—are not identity-specific. They are features of adolescence intensified by platform design. While some young people may be more dependent on online spaces, that condition is better explained by isolation than by membership in any particular identity category.
More importantly, the piece avoids a deeper question: whether social media merely exploits vulnerability or also helps shape how that vulnerability is understood. These platforms reward attention. The clearer, more dramatic, and more emotionally legible something is, the more it spreads. That encourages young people to present themselves in ways that are easy for others to recognize and respond to.
Over time, identity can become something that is performed and adjusted in response to feedback—likes, comments, followers—rather than something worked out privately. In that environment, it is not just that young people are expressing who they are; the platform is nudging them toward certain ways of defining themselves, especially those that can be easily packaged and shared. One concrete risk follows from this dynamic. Young people who do not conform to sex norms—boys who are feminine, girls who are masculine—may encounter online narratives that interpret that nonconformity as evidence of a different gender identity. In an environment that rewards clear, declarative self-definitions, that interpretation can be quickly reinforced. Yet there is longstanding evidence that many such adolescents would otherwise grow into gay men or lesbians. If social media channels them prematurely toward a different conclusion, then it is not simply reflecting identity but actively shaping its direction.
Finally, by relying on broad umbrella terms, the piece blurs meaningful distinctions. Gay men and lesbians—defined by same-sex attraction—are folded into a shifting, politicized category - "queer" - that obscures rather than clarifies. What is presented as inclusivity risks flattening differences that matter.
The underlying critique of social media remains strong. But it does not require this conceptual overlay. A clearer and more disciplined account would treat these harms as broadly human, distinguish between different adolescent experiences, and confront the possibility that the platforms in question are not only harmful environments, but formative ones.
Not trying to hijack this thread, but in my research, I'm seeing so much of this same concern and responses and feel like we're doing a lot to help but maybe missing the "real incentive" and "money maker" of these big tech companies and are just fighting on their left flank, rather than surrounding them.
I agree with this and all that this stack is trying to accomplish. My opinion is that this is going to follow the same pattern as what we saw during and after the industrial revolution.
Change is good, necessary, and I want everyone to feel safe and have the ability to use social media as a supporting and positive community, if they so choose. (Age Appropriate).
As you said, these big companies are already adjusting, spinning messages, appealing lawsuits, and will use political influence and spend billions of dollars so that yes, changes around the edges look like progress, but the core part of the system that is their cash cow, will not change.
I write about this briefly in this short article, and more extensively in my book.
Chapter 9 of my book goes into much more detail of the comparison of the Digital and Industrial revolution, and what is likely to happen over the next couple of decades. Chapter 6 of my book goes into detail of how AI chatbots, and AI integration into social media is taking all of this to the next level that is just beginning to be understood.
My articles and books aren't disagreeing with anything Jon Haidt and this stack are writing about, if anything, I hope I'm adding an additional layer to it all.
Just to add, many people who no longer identify as transgender feel that social influence, including online, led them to interpret their distress as meaning that they would benefit from medically transitioning, which they later realized was not the case. Many would not do it again knowing what they do now.
See the peer reviewed medical article: "Detransition and Desistance Among Previously Trans-Identified Young Adults", table 4, where "Participants were asked to rate the importance of 39 potential psychosocial influences on their becoming trans-identified on a scale from “not at all important” (which we assigned a value of 1) to “extremely important” (5)."
A lot of kids who show the "rapid onset" profile identify as transgender after spending a lot of time online, and indeed, a lot of porn (which I hear has gotten much worse nowadays, I have not checked, but apparently a lot is also extremely violent) is often involved as well. The (exponential, at some times) rise in these cases, see, e.g. the Tavistock graph, for instance on page 24 of the Cass Review Final Report, happened at the same time in as the rise in depression, etc., attributed to social media.
It is indeed a convenience sample but unfortunately, no one is keeping track of how many people eventually stop identifying as transgender or regret their interventions (surgeries, hormones, social transitioning, whatever); the studies are too poor (even the older ones, the <1% regret rate is a joke and has been rebutted several times, including in peer review, e.g. the peer reviewed article: "The Detransition Rate is Unknown"). Not waiting long enough, losing too many patients to follow-up, having indirect ways of measuring regret that are not reliable etc etc....
I should have said straight off, I agree with many of your points! And I am grateful you have spoken out. More light on this is the best way to protect kids. Thank you!
Banning social media risks mistaking the arena for the pathology. It is like treating challenging behaviour as a compliance problem rather than asking what developmental, emotional or biological state the behaviour is expressing.
Gender is just a set of stereotypes about how the sexes should look, feel, and behave. Physical sex is the only thing that matters. Male and female bodies are different.
These aren't regulations. This is just a centralized control to make sure some ideas get heard with a gatekeeper. It's illiberal at best.
The idea of children being under attack.And this actually does this does disadvantage minorities and the marginalized. The censorship is just terrible.
I was late to watching the show I Am Jazz, but it was wild to see people harass her and be violent towards her and then blame her transition for being the issue.
It couldn't be the constant exposure to addictive media and a harmful technology ecosystem. I think about her every time someone says something about how these technologies create community for queer kids. They did back before 2010 or so. Not anymore.
Lennon I'm so happy for you that you have been able to escape the harms and I hope more kids and adults can do so.
You're responsible for how much you use social media and any "addiction" you feel towards it. It's also not appropriate to push for censorship in the name of safety - what's right for you isn't going to be right for others. "Learn self control" isn't the answer to every social problem, but it generally is to problems like this. Big platforms don't need to wring hands over those of us who are not straight, or make special rules for us, or even be aware we're around. Ideally they just need to establish minimal social rules, enforce them reasonably, and otherwise step back.
where else do you get 17 chances to stop doing harm? makes me very angry...
💯
I did not know this. Thank you for telling me. I now see I was far too dismissive of the concept of addiction in this context.
Dear Lennon,
I'm so sorry you were bullied for being "too feminine". Kids can be cruel and stupid. If you look around, you will see many men have "feminine" traits; some are straight and some are gay so there isn't a clear cut path to being gay based on these traits. It seems as a society as of late, we put far too much emphasis on sexual orientation and identity.
I do hope you look more closely at your pathway to where you are now and reflect on what influenced you and how that took shape. What you have unwittingly described are the same paths that other detransitioners have spoken about. Perhaps looking at theirs and comparing to yours, you can see similarities.
I also do not agree with your judgement that gay, transgender and queer (whatever that is) kids do not have supportive families. Many of the transgender kids cut off their parents not the other way around. The kids were influenced by transgender people who say if they don't use the name or 100% affirm, cutting off is the only option.
Being a parent means we try to protect our kids to the best of our ability, but as you mention tech has been insidious and parents are not able to protect their kids against the reaches of SM for various reasons. Too many vulnerable kids have fallen into its trap.
Finally, as you are aware, being transgender unfortunately can mean medicalizing which is very harmful to a body. Even socially transitioning is mentally taxing. No parent wants their child to experience poor healthy, physically or mentally.
I wish you health, resiliency and peace.
I am a proud transgender woman on HRT and I am healthy as can be. I agree that invasive medical procedures can be harmful for young children. No one is advocating for that. Gender affirming care can be as simple as a hair cut or fully reversible puberty blocker. I hope you can find it in your heart to learn more about us. We are much stronger together.
“No one is advocating for that.”
This is from the 2022 Reuters report:
"The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021. Among teens, “top surgery” to remove breasts is more common. In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims. This tally does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket."
This is from an analysis published in JAMA Open Network:
"Results: A total of 48 019 patients who underwent GAS were identified, including 25 099 (52.3%) who were aged 19 to 30 years. The most common procedures were breast and chest procedures, which occurred in 27 187 patients (56.6%), followed by genital reconstruction (16 872 [35.1%]) and other facial and cosmetic procedures (6669 [13.9%]). The absolute number of GAS procedures rose from 4552 in 2016 to a peak of 13 011 in 2019 and then declined slightly to 12 818 in 2020. Overall, 25 099 patients (52.3%) were aged 19 to 30 years, 10 476 (21.8%) were aged 31 to 40, and 3678 (7.7%) were aged12 to 18 years. When stratified by the type of procedure performed, breast and chest procedures made up a greater percentage of the surgical interventions in younger patients, while genital surgical procedures were greater in older patients."
These are conservative numbers because private payers and minors who had their healthy breasts removed by Kaiser Permanente are not included.
There is zero basis for your claim about puberty blockers being reversible. You are misinforming people.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/apa.17150:
"Results: Sixteen studies were identified. In mammals, the neuropsychological impacts of puberty blockers are complex and often sex specific (n = 11 studies). There is no evidence that cognitive effects are fully reversible following discontinuation of treatment. No human studies have systematically explored the impact of these treatments on neuropsychological function with an adequate baseline and follow-up. There is some evidence of a detrimental impact of pubertal suppression on IQ in children."
Puberty is a timed, necessary developmental process that impacts every system, including neurodevelopment. There is no long-term data on what happens to these kids into adulthood. That’s not the same as suggesting there’s some on-off switch. Anyone who was actually interested in the well-being of these kids rather than in validating their own decisions would know that. The use of these drugs in the case of a diagnosable condition—precocious puberty, not to physically concretize an “identity,” is not parallel and even that use is not without health concerns. And given that the vast majority of teens go from blockers directly to hormones, the likely outcome is sterility and sexual dysfunction — the inability to ever have an orgasm has been noted by Dr. Marci Bowers. This is horrific and nothing to be brushed off except by the most callous and inhumane.
You’re currently healthy. Great. Taking high doses of masculinizing or feminizing hormones increases the risks of serious disease like heart attack and stroke. That’s just reality. Being healthy is great until you’re not. Doctors are not supposed to harm patients even if their patients really, really want it and accept all of the risks, but the field has lost its way. Hopefully that will change with a few more winning lawsuits.
Where do you get reversible puberty blockers? Do these also not cause sterility?
Puberty blockers are GnRH analogues used for decades in pediatric endocrinology. When they’re stopped, puberty starts up again. There’s no peer‑reviewed evidence that blockers alone cause permanent infertility. Those fertility risks depend on whether someone later takes long‑term hormones without preservation.
Some sources below:
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/146/4/e2020010611/79688/Challenges-in-Timing-Puberty-Suppression-for
https://urology.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Use-of-Gonadotropin-Releasing-Hormone-Analogs-in-Children.pdf
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/endocrinology/articles/10.3389/fendo.2025.1555186/full
https://www.endocrine.org/clinical-practice-guidelines/gender-dysphoria-gender-incongruence
also https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/apa.17150 (Baxendale)
The endocrine practice guidelines don't have a reliable reference. People just kept saying it was true. They don't have studies showing this.
There is also the problem that puberty blockers seem to "lock in" gender incongruence, as most on puberty blockers continue to hormones, in studies, while most who weren't put on puberty blockers...have their gender dysphoria resolve. Most of those, but not all, are gay/lesbian/bisexual.
The Cass Review summarizes a lot of this, maybe the HHS report as well.
In your second citation, it’s not all rosy. Here is the paragraph specific to transgender:
“….ing of increased body fat and a decreased lean body mass
[121]. The impact on BMD is concerning since lumbar spine Z-scores at age 22 years were found to be lower than those observed prior to treatment [122, 123), suggesting a possible permanent decrement in BMD. Thus, it is unclear how long GnRHa can safely be administered. The effects of GnRHa on adolescent brain maturation are un-clear. GRHa therapy prevents maturation of primary oocytes and spermatogonia and may preclude gamete maturation, and currently there are no proven methods to preserve fertility in early pubertal transgender adoles-cents. Care for each adolescent must be individualized, with awareness of gender fluidity and ethical guidelines….”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11106199/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.70533
Seconding the question--puberty blockers are not shown to be reversible at all. Their effects in animal studies do not demonstrate reversibility, and their effects on MTF do not completely go away when hormones are taken.
See Baxendale, 2024, or the HHS peer reviewed 2025 report, which has the latest compilation of data?
Look at my comment on causing sterility to Lennon, one of the studies cited by Lennon states there is no means to preserve fertility.
It might be much more nuanced. Hard to say without long term studies with controls.
Many of my transgender friends were physically or sexually abused, or kicked onto the streets as minors, for the crime of cutting their hair or asking their friends to call them a different name against their parents' wishes. The people I know with loving but imperfect parents are grateful for them, even if they wish their parents could see past their upbringings. Your suggestion is ridiculous.
Being a feminine man is not a substitute for being a woman.
Your argument of “being a woman” is nothing more than a costume. You can’t be a woman - only a person born a female can be a woman.
You can play whatever language games you want, but that doesn't affect material reality. People like Lennon undergo social and medical transition because these are specific interventions that improve their lives, that change the appearance and function of their bodies, and that alter how they are seen in society. You refusing to call Lennon a woman does not change the fact that she is living a very different life from that of your understanding of a feminine man, one that is vastly preferable to her.
(I say "your understanding of," because some feminine men do go on estrogen or adopt new names as part of their gender expression too. Freedom is beautiful.)
It’s amazing to me how many people rush to say something along the lines of “you’re sick” to each and every transgender person they happen upon on the Internet. Similarly amazing: folks who then cite studies — selectively, of course, just the studies which back them up, never mind any others — as if medical literature absolutely trumps a particular person’s lived experience in their own skin, as if everyone conforms to statistics, and as if no trans people ever read the literature for themselves (why would they? it’s only the biggest and most consequential decision of their lives). “I don’t care what you say about yourself or your own life,” this argument goes, “because here’s a study showing a significant number of people don’t say the same thing.” It’s so condescending, so pushy and wiser-than-thou.
I admit my patience for this Stack is waning. It's one thing to use social/commercial pressure social media companies to "do better." It's fine to pressure schools to keep cell phones out of kids' hands during school hours. It's fine to educate parents (and kids and people in general) on the dangers of phone and social media over-exposure.
But there doesn't seem to be any discussion on how quickly "social media [government] regulation" can become fundamentally and incontrovertibly authoritarian, antithetical to democracy, and incongruent with free speech and 1st Amendment principles. "Smily face censorship" is still censorship and every government censor in history used "the greater good" as part of their argument.
I clearly won't be moving my donation dollars from FIRE to After Babel anytime soon.
I actually agree with you. That is why I advocate for design based legislation. Keep content out of it and put it on the technology. It is absolutely feasible.
That's precisely what this stack is not promoting, though. The authors of After Babal have unilaterally and unceasingly praised age and ID verification laws that aid in censorship and tracking as a primary feature, with child safety as a secondary benefit. They let the ecosystem stay intact, whether exploitative porn, addictive social media- or, as is becoming apparent among the over-18 crowd in the US, online gambling.
At best they're delaying the problem. It's sad because most of Jon Haidt's proposals in The Anxious Generation are either brilliant, common sense or could easily be made so.
Please look through the responses to the various laws in this stack and if you truly believe what you say, then at least acknowledge how unhelpful (and not merely imperfect) they are, if not asking for this post to be removed.
This is a great point and I've thought the same thing. I'm not trying to hijack anyone else's post, or do any advertising but wrote about this subject myself and share a little different perspective.
https://substack.com/@stayingoriented/note/p-194418437?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=8150ro
Also, I have a book on this subject and chapter 9 is directly relevant to what you're saying.
https://a.co/d/0fuYbGdn
I advocate for content neutral legislation and design based regulation for that very reason.
In America, as a society, we have protected kids from what we deem as harm. For instance, porn magazines were put behind the counter and ID was presented to purchase. Books and movies have ratings to help delineate appropriate content for children/YA. Back in the day, movie goers who looked under 18 were carded before a ticked was sold for a R movie. SM/internet is far more harmful now that we know tech shows harmful content w/o restriction and they manipulate the algorithm to show more of it and it has an addictive behavior. On the internet, adults have access to kids with no guardrails. Organizations, business and schools run background checks to catch those who have been convicted of abuse. Of course the argument is that it doesn't get those who weren't but we have protocols in place to deal with that scenario. We do not have such safeguards on the internet.
I think you're conflating free speech with protection of minors.
Good point. What I’m trying to say, is that I think the way these companies will push back is to conflate free speech with this, much needed protection. Age and content controls are absolutely needed.
I remember at 16 when a movie theater wouldn’t let me buy a ticket to see “The Blue Lagoon”. Lol.
Thank you so much, Lennon, for speaking out and sharing this powerful message!
thank you!!
The piece offers a forceful critique of social media design, but weakens itself by filtering that critique through an expansive and imprecise identity framework.
On its merits, the argument about platform harm is persuasive. The account of compulsive use, algorithmic amplification, and exposure to predatory behavior reflects well-documented features of the attention economy. These dynamics affect adolescents broadly—especially those who are isolated or seeking validation.
The difficulty arises when the author centers “LGBTQ youth” as a unified class. That category collapses distinct and often unrelated experiences. Same-sex attraction—long understood as a stable sexual orientation—does not map neatly onto contemporary gender identity formation, particularly when the latter is mediated through highly performative online environments. Yet the piece moves between these groups as if they were interchangeable.
The invocation of “LGBTQ” or “queer” functions less as description than as rhetorical leverage. It allows a personal narrative to be generalized across a heterogeneous population without demonstrating that the same mechanisms operate in the same way for all. In practice, the category substitutes for argument.
The claim of heightened vulnerability is similarly overstated. The harms described—addiction, validation-seeking, grooming—are not identity-specific. They are features of adolescence intensified by platform design. While some young people may be more dependent on online spaces, that condition is better explained by isolation than by membership in any particular identity category.
More importantly, the piece avoids a deeper question: whether social media merely exploits vulnerability or also helps shape how that vulnerability is understood. These platforms reward attention. The clearer, more dramatic, and more emotionally legible something is, the more it spreads. That encourages young people to present themselves in ways that are easy for others to recognize and respond to.
Over time, identity can become something that is performed and adjusted in response to feedback—likes, comments, followers—rather than something worked out privately. In that environment, it is not just that young people are expressing who they are; the platform is nudging them toward certain ways of defining themselves, especially those that can be easily packaged and shared. One concrete risk follows from this dynamic. Young people who do not conform to sex norms—boys who are feminine, girls who are masculine—may encounter online narratives that interpret that nonconformity as evidence of a different gender identity. In an environment that rewards clear, declarative self-definitions, that interpretation can be quickly reinforced. Yet there is longstanding evidence that many such adolescents would otherwise grow into gay men or lesbians. If social media channels them prematurely toward a different conclusion, then it is not simply reflecting identity but actively shaping its direction.
Finally, by relying on broad umbrella terms, the piece blurs meaningful distinctions. Gay men and lesbians—defined by same-sex attraction—are folded into a shifting, politicized category - "queer" - that obscures rather than clarifies. What is presented as inclusivity risks flattening differences that matter.
The underlying critique of social media remains strong. But it does not require this conceptual overlay. A clearer and more disciplined account would treat these harms as broadly human, distinguish between different adolescent experiences, and confront the possibility that the platforms in question are not only harmful environments, but formative ones.
Not trying to hijack this thread, but in my research, I'm seeing so much of this same concern and responses and feel like we're doing a lot to help but maybe missing the "real incentive" and "money maker" of these big tech companies and are just fighting on their left flank, rather than surrounding them.
I agree with this and all that this stack is trying to accomplish. My opinion is that this is going to follow the same pattern as what we saw during and after the industrial revolution.
Change is good, necessary, and I want everyone to feel safe and have the ability to use social media as a supporting and positive community, if they so choose. (Age Appropriate).
As you said, these big companies are already adjusting, spinning messages, appealing lawsuits, and will use political influence and spend billions of dollars so that yes, changes around the edges look like progress, but the core part of the system that is their cash cow, will not change.
I write about this briefly in this short article, and more extensively in my book.
https://stayingoriented.substack.com/p/weve-seen-this-pattern-before-were?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
Chapter 9 of my book goes into much more detail of the comparison of the Digital and Industrial revolution, and what is likely to happen over the next couple of decades. Chapter 6 of my book goes into detail of how AI chatbots, and AI integration into social media is taking all of this to the next level that is just beginning to be understood.
My articles and books aren't disagreeing with anything Jon Haidt and this stack are writing about, if anything, I hope I'm adding an additional layer to it all.
https://a.co/d/00vDN2wd
appreciate this perspective!
Just to add, many people who no longer identify as transgender feel that social influence, including online, led them to interpret their distress as meaning that they would benefit from medically transitioning, which they later realized was not the case. Many would not do it again knowing what they do now.
See the peer reviewed medical article: "Detransition and Desistance Among Previously Trans-Identified Young Adults", table 4, where "Participants were asked to rate the importance of 39 potential psychosocial influences on their becoming trans-identified on a scale from “not at all important” (which we assigned a value of 1) to “extremely important” (5)."
A lot of kids who show the "rapid onset" profile identify as transgender after spending a lot of time online, and indeed, a lot of porn (which I hear has gotten much worse nowadays, I have not checked, but apparently a lot is also extremely violent) is often involved as well. The (exponential, at some times) rise in these cases, see, e.g. the Tavistock graph, for instance on page 24 of the Cass Review Final Report, happened at the same time in as the rise in depression, etc., attributed to social media.
It is indeed a convenience sample but unfortunately, no one is keeping track of how many people eventually stop identifying as transgender or regret their interventions (surgeries, hormones, social transitioning, whatever); the studies are too poor (even the older ones, the <1% regret rate is a joke and has been rebutted several times, including in peer review, e.g. the peer reviewed article: "The Detransition Rate is Unknown"). Not waiting long enough, losing too many patients to follow-up, having indirect ways of measuring regret that are not reliable etc etc....
I should have said straight off, I agree with many of your points! And I am grateful you have spoken out. More light on this is the best way to protect kids. Thank you!
You may appreciate what we are doing at Humma.AI, a consent-first community-governed platform.
Banning social media risks mistaking the arena for the pathology. It is like treating challenging behaviour as a compliance problem rather than asking what developmental, emotional or biological state the behaviour is expressing.
Gender is just a set of stereotypes about how the sexes should look, feel, and behave. Physical sex is the only thing that matters. Male and female bodies are different.
You didn't disprove shit?The other companies and other data is bad.Data, the studies that social media is terrible.And bad are incredibly overblown
These aren't regulations. This is just a centralized control to make sure some ideas get heard with a gatekeeper. It's illiberal at best.
The idea of children being under attack.And this actually does this does disadvantage minorities and the marginalized. The censorship is just terrible.
I was late to watching the show I Am Jazz, but it was wild to see people harass her and be violent towards her and then blame her transition for being the issue.
It couldn't be the constant exposure to addictive media and a harmful technology ecosystem. I think about her every time someone says something about how these technologies create community for queer kids. They did back before 2010 or so. Not anymore.
Lennon I'm so happy for you that you have been able to escape the harms and I hope more kids and adults can do so.
You're responsible for how much you use social media and any "addiction" you feel towards it. It's also not appropriate to push for censorship in the name of safety - what's right for you isn't going to be right for others. "Learn self control" isn't the answer to every social problem, but it generally is to problems like this. Big platforms don't need to wring hands over those of us who are not straight, or make special rules for us, or even be aware we're around. Ideally they just need to establish minimal social rules, enforce them reasonably, and otherwise step back.
Are you talking about changed algorithms, or prohibiting and requiring certain content from content creators?