When my son was an infant - Victoria Dunckley's book "Reset your Child's Brain" changed my life - and the one line from that book that I keep in my mind is "I would rather have someone give my young child a cigarette than a screen device."
The idea is that both can be extremely addictive and both hijack brain development. But the device is acceptable to be seen with in public as a child so the habit is almost nurtured. Whereas a 7 yr old with a cigarette will be highly discouraged and shamed. It takes more effort to create a smoking habit than a screen habit.
Aristotle and Putnam are right - we have to invest in ourselves. Teens need clubs or groups that instill some respectable moral code, or we'll wind up with serial killers, pedophiles, and Nazis among all the rest.
I noticed the effect on girls doubled the effect on boys, who actually appeared to do better with a little social media. This supports that girls are more right-brain-dominant, and boys left. There is the same amount of activity on each side, but there is also the question of which side administers the activity. I'm speaking in harmony with Iain McGilchrist - a leader on the topic. To consider a very high-level view upon modern times, consider how much we are moving into our minds and out of our bodies. I introduce McGilchrist and the topic here: https://markgmeyers.substack.com/p/building-communities-1-of-3
The female is far more susceptible to the acceptance of and embracement by the larger group than the male. Girls in general are always going to be more susceptible to anything that focuses around group acceptance. Whether you believe in evolution or a creator theory both account for this biological differences in the sexes. The male is more reckless, more wiling to try things of risk than is the female. The female is more concerned with group or tribal level acceptance because the female views group acceptance as more important than anything else. Feels are far more sociable than males because they seek group acceptance. Anything that can tug at that need/desire of group acceptance can be used to more easily manipulate the female than the male.
Women do appear to have more extensive social networks than men. What would be in keeping with my hemispherical thinking is how it appears that women are more often intimate than men, which I view as more right-brained. We can see men forming groups in more outward ways in more hierarchical landscapes, which seems to me to be more left-brained.
It boils down to biology. In a non-safe environment, sexually reproducing species require that the one not carrying offspring to term be more lethal and stronger which then gets hormones involved which in turn impacts other behaviors. I'm guessing it also impacts brain usage. In general women are far more sympathetic than men which in a dangerous world can be a dangerous behavior; causes the female to allow in other humans that she should not. In general men are better at 3 dimensional thinking, seeing X sides of an object and visualizing the complete object, all sides of it including those currently vit visible, in their head. Women are better at walking into a group of others and quickly sizing everyone up.
The varying degrees of hormones each sex has greatly impacts behavior. Women are terrible at leadership and governance because they can't typically make the tough calls when needed or hand out proper justice. They also place too much emphasis on providing as much as possible to as many as possible without any thought to the cost of doing that. They are too quick/easy to allow in foreigners.
You might find it interesting to examine the Democrat party today vs the party of the Bill Clinton Era. You can see a stark contrast in thinking between the 2 copies of the same party and its like seeing 1 right brain focused group vs a Left Brain focused group. Many things they used to defend like freedom of speech they now try to censor when its speech they don't like. The party looks and acts so differently between the 90's and today and I believe it's because at some point in the last 10 years the % of women in the Democrat party grew to a large enough % that those women could then start forcing the party to embrace more feminine ideals and means. The Democrat party turned into the Femocrat party.
I do see more right-brained as not not merely more sympathetic, but more emotionally-located, and I support that, but bear in mind, when the roles are reversed, women are shown to be more competitive than men. I think what happens with social media is that it distances us from ourselves, and this is not good for the more intimate social creatures we may be. Perhaps men going out aren't as removed from themselves when doing so.
Tough luck with the parties. With gen Z, I think it looks like we're becoming increasingly fractured, where the increase in women on the left appears to be accompanied by an increase in men on the right, with greater separation between. Perhaps of interest: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-growing-gender-gap-among-young-people/
This is a strong piece. When you line the evidence up like this, it’s hard to keep calling it just correlation.
The push to limit or delay exposure, especially for kids, makes a lot of sense based on what you’re showing.
What I keep coming back to though is how much of the response still feels like it’s happening around the edges.
Screen time tools, prompts, parental controls. All good, but they don’t really change what the system is optimizing for.
It actually feels similar to earlier cycles like the Industrial Revolution. The benefits show up first, then the costs, and when pressure builds, the companies don’t just change. They push back with influence, money, and messaging before anything structural really shifts.
So even if we make real progress with younger users, the core dynamic is still there and probably still getting refined.
Feels like we’re in that middle phase where the harm is becoming obvious, but the system itself hasn’t really shifted yet.
In the meantime, there’s another layer that feels just as real. How people operate inside these systems while they’re still working exactly as designed.
That part doesn’t get talked about as much, but it seems like it matters more than it gets credit for.
The more I thought about it, the more it feels like we’ve seen this kind of cycle before with things like tobacco and alcohol. Not the same, but the pattern is hard to ignore once you look at it that way.
I checked StatsCan after this piece. Their March longitudinal study tracked Canadian youth and found those who stuck to screen time guidelines reported excellent or very good mental health at 58 percent. Those exceeding the limits dropped to 38 percent. It lines up exactly with the randomized trials showing less use cuts anxiety. MPs on the heritage committee keep hearing the same stories from families. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2026001/article/00003-eng.htm
Thanks for this article. It's a helpful and eye opening summary. At the risk of poking the bear (in the thread above), I wanted to say that the 'each to their own' / 'you're responsible for the consquences of your own actions' position above doesn't really hold water.
There are literally thousands of instances across every part of society where we collectively create limits (rules, regulations, laws etc) on products or actions to help deliver outcomes that benefit the greater society. When something is known to do harm, or even potentially do harm, we create rules or obligations to help limit that harm.
Limiting harm is a benefit because: it saves money, fewer people suffer and the medical / health system is better able to focus on harms we cannot so easily prevent. There are zillions of examples of this, but here's a basic one: we know bleach is harmful if swallowed. So, we label the product with that information, and we add a child proof safety cap so the bottle cannot be easily opened. My question is, if we know the social media is designed to cause harm (and does harm some people), what should we do to help mitigate or prevent that risk?
Holding these companies liable for what people read and react to is like holding our phone communications firms for robo calls and such. Adults have some responsibility for what their families consume - including information.
Just as a quick reply to this one, I do all the limits and boundaries with my child, I really promise you I do, and I do everything I can to have off-screen time, outdoors play with the neighbours' kids, loving times together, BUT she still wakes up crying some days that I am putting limits on her information consumption that other peers don't have. We don't live in a vacuum.
Thanks so much for your reply. It's just so difficult to know sometimes, what the right thing to do is. We're not even into social media yet here - it is Roblox that is causing the issues at the moment - she's allowed a fair amount of time on there, and I do play games with her, but recently had to block a game that was massively age inappropriate, and that has been a really tricky fallout. But already some of her peers have smartphones and are using social platforms, and she is now asking for them regularly too - can feel the wave incoming. Having read The Anxious Generation, the evidence for me is clear, so gearing up for the ride to come! I do agree with Rick, it is about proactive parenting too, totally up for that - but sometimes it feels like a vertical challenge.
I hear you; that sounds really hard. I have read that it's SO much easier to do this with a community or school initiative, instead of one parent on their own. I feel so lucky to live in a community like that - many kids do have smart phones and interact with social media, but there also is a decent enough handful who don't that my teen feels she is not alone. And I don't feel alone.
I read an AWESOME article about studies that say that it's not enough to simply take the tech away; we must fill that void with positive real-life connections with people. That makes so much sense to me! Good on you for finding ways for her to have positive interactions to make up for missing the phone. A sense of belonging is so ultimately important for teens especially. Do you know any families who set similar limits you and your daughter could connect with?
I agree with D Elvin. I heard a successful musician who thanked their parents for not allowing them all the screens, because it left them time to be bored and spend hours playing their instrument.
Despite what teens express and what is the going attitude, I believe teens actually deeply want their parents to set limits and create a strong container for them.
So I actually went and read the meta-analysis of RCTs of social media intervention and it raises a bunch of red flags. The only intervention made was to ask participants to restrict their social media use -- we don't see any interventions asking people to increase their social media use.
Why does this matter? Because if you suggest to someone that some intervention *might* improve things and they do that intervention most people will tend to report some kind of improvement. People want to please and are easily suggestable. Social science research (most notoriously education) are litered with cases where studies intervening in opposite directions show both show benefits.
Now if we'd seen a strong effect in one measure (say reduction in loneliness) and no effect in other measures I might be less suspicious but we see reductions in social media produce across the board all of about the same size (not all are significant but that's just an arbitrary cutoff). On top of this looking at the plot of the study results shows studies all over the place even for the larger studies. Not to mention these studies lasted at most 90 days.
In short, whether or not the underlying claim is true this is extremely poor evidence for the claim. Everything is completely consistent with the hypothesis that all effects are a consequence of the fact that people are primed to believe they *should* feel better if they reduce their social media consumption.
In all this BLAH, BLAH, BLAH you wrote, Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch. where's the truism that a person is responsible for their actions and the consequences of?
Children's brains are not fully formed and are not equipped to fight the pull of this addictive technology. It's not a fair fight. I would venture to say that adults' brains aren't equipped either.
If the BLAH BLAH BLAH you speak of is the corporate heads who are getting rich off depravely getting children addicted to their products, then: yes! They should absolutely be held responsible for their actions and the consequences of!
Where's you outrage over companies than makes alcohol, guns, fat and salt laden 'snack foods,' produce porn, offer gambling, etc..?
We live in a world where we are surrounded by things that are 'not good for us' simply because someone is profiting from them. If people took responsibility for their actions and understood the consequences of their choices, the companies you're raging against—which is futile—either wouldn't exist or would be significantly smaller.
haha - you don't know me at all. i have outrage for those companies too. but tech is very dangerous and dramatically impacting society on all fronts.
I won't argue with you anymore; I think you're a troll and I hope you don't sleep well at night for arguing against such things. But thanks for entertaining my reply.
When someone virtue-signals their outrage, I can pretty much tell what kind of person they are.
The fact that you are deflecting from people being responsible for their life choices and the consequences gives me a very clear picture of the type of person you are.
I am terrible at arguing; you can ask my husband. I am a parent who cares a lot and I believe there's a lot at stake. I will not interact with you anymore.
I'm genuinely skeptical that you think there's a large contingent of parents who think that social media is bad but don't show "outrage" about pornography or gambling.
Pretty sure the Venn diagram of parents who don't want their kids to use social media and who don't want their kids to watch pornography and who don't want their kids to gamble on a phone is just a circle.
One can worry about something even if it doesn't affect your kids personally.
Lots of people, for example, are worried about things happening to kids in Palestine, even though it isn't THEIR kids. Likewise, people can be worried about children who are sexually abused by teachers or bad priests or hollywood weirdos even though it isn't THEIR children. Likewise, people can be worried about a generation of children hurt by parents who are too frivolous with the dangers of constant internet connection.
How did you create an equivalency correlation between "A circle created by parents buying and giving their children a smartphone" and "sexually abused by teachers or bad priests or Hollywood weirdos"?
Two things can be true, right? Parents need to take more responsibility, and corporations should be held accountable when they act with "malice, oppression, or fraud." In other words, a lack of parental responsibility doesn't justify a malicious absence of corporate responsibility.
Explain your logic: How is a company acting with 'malice, oppression, or fraud' simply by placing a product (e.g., cigarettes, fat-laden snack food, alcohol) on a retail shelf for consumers to have the choice whether or not to buy, or by launching a social media platform or app that people freely choose to use?
What part of 'people are responsible for the consequences of their own choices' do you not understand?
Clearly you don’t have a adolescent child plopped in front of screens at school and peers with cell phones snd social media accounts. Post covid tech adoption by schools has made the issue harder to be under control.. just parents or a single kids will are no match with this tech drug these kids are exposed to everywhere
Who's raising your child? You or "the world"? Do you not control what your children put in their mouths (They pass how many fast food places in a given day?) and heads?
You're trying to make excuses for "lazy parenting," hence why so many children today are mentally unable to deal with the real world. As a parent, how your child grows up, turns out, the beliefs and values they adopt are ENTIRELY on you.
Would you live in a neighborhood where drug peddlers and criminals abound and hope your fantastic parenting skills will keep your kids safe? This is far from lazy parenting. We are fighting every day to keep our kids safe from easy access to these predatory technology. If we had drug dealers sitting in every house in every school and neighborhood would you seek as a concerned parent as a concerned citizen to get law enforcement to help? This is a societal problem not a simple fast food issue.
I am an average person not a lawyer or activist. I will not respomd to any more of your replies here. If you are not affected by it great good for you. Maybe write a parenting book on how you did it.
What kind of design changes are you all talking about? I keep seeing stuff like this but you aren't providing design change idea that don't involve censoring adults (like me).
Thank you for pulling all this evidence together. It's good to see this through the focus on young people. However, do you have any views about the impacts on 1) older people in the population or 2) and / or people with learning disabilities?
When my son was an infant - Victoria Dunckley's book "Reset your Child's Brain" changed my life - and the one line from that book that I keep in my mind is "I would rather have someone give my young child a cigarette than a screen device."
The idea is that both can be extremely addictive and both hijack brain development. But the device is acceptable to be seen with in public as a child so the habit is almost nurtured. Whereas a 7 yr old with a cigarette will be highly discouraged and shamed. It takes more effort to create a smoking habit than a screen habit.
The cigarette has at least one pro (looking cool as fuck). iPad has none
Well said
Thank you for your pioneering, fearless leadership. I get such hope from your work.
Aristotle and Putnam are right - we have to invest in ourselves. Teens need clubs or groups that instill some respectable moral code, or we'll wind up with serial killers, pedophiles, and Nazis among all the rest.
I noticed the effect on girls doubled the effect on boys, who actually appeared to do better with a little social media. This supports that girls are more right-brain-dominant, and boys left. There is the same amount of activity on each side, but there is also the question of which side administers the activity. I'm speaking in harmony with Iain McGilchrist - a leader on the topic. To consider a very high-level view upon modern times, consider how much we are moving into our minds and out of our bodies. I introduce McGilchrist and the topic here: https://markgmeyers.substack.com/p/building-communities-1-of-3
The female is far more susceptible to the acceptance of and embracement by the larger group than the male. Girls in general are always going to be more susceptible to anything that focuses around group acceptance. Whether you believe in evolution or a creator theory both account for this biological differences in the sexes. The male is more reckless, more wiling to try things of risk than is the female. The female is more concerned with group or tribal level acceptance because the female views group acceptance as more important than anything else. Feels are far more sociable than males because they seek group acceptance. Anything that can tug at that need/desire of group acceptance can be used to more easily manipulate the female than the male.
Women do appear to have more extensive social networks than men. What would be in keeping with my hemispherical thinking is how it appears that women are more often intimate than men, which I view as more right-brained. We can see men forming groups in more outward ways in more hierarchical landscapes, which seems to me to be more left-brained.
It boils down to biology. In a non-safe environment, sexually reproducing species require that the one not carrying offspring to term be more lethal and stronger which then gets hormones involved which in turn impacts other behaviors. I'm guessing it also impacts brain usage. In general women are far more sympathetic than men which in a dangerous world can be a dangerous behavior; causes the female to allow in other humans that she should not. In general men are better at 3 dimensional thinking, seeing X sides of an object and visualizing the complete object, all sides of it including those currently vit visible, in their head. Women are better at walking into a group of others and quickly sizing everyone up.
The varying degrees of hormones each sex has greatly impacts behavior. Women are terrible at leadership and governance because they can't typically make the tough calls when needed or hand out proper justice. They also place too much emphasis on providing as much as possible to as many as possible without any thought to the cost of doing that. They are too quick/easy to allow in foreigners.
You might find it interesting to examine the Democrat party today vs the party of the Bill Clinton Era. You can see a stark contrast in thinking between the 2 copies of the same party and its like seeing 1 right brain focused group vs a Left Brain focused group. Many things they used to defend like freedom of speech they now try to censor when its speech they don't like. The party looks and acts so differently between the 90's and today and I believe it's because at some point in the last 10 years the % of women in the Democrat party grew to a large enough % that those women could then start forcing the party to embrace more feminine ideals and means. The Democrat party turned into the Femocrat party.
I do see more right-brained as not not merely more sympathetic, but more emotionally-located, and I support that, but bear in mind, when the roles are reversed, women are shown to be more competitive than men. I think what happens with social media is that it distances us from ourselves, and this is not good for the more intimate social creatures we may be. Perhaps men going out aren't as removed from themselves when doing so.
Tough luck with the parties. With gen Z, I think it looks like we're becoming increasingly fractured, where the increase in women on the left appears to be accompanied by an increase in men on the right, with greater separation between. Perhaps of interest: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-growing-gender-gap-among-young-people/
This research and reporting could not be more important -- thank you for putting evidence to what we all feel intuitively!
This is a strong piece. When you line the evidence up like this, it’s hard to keep calling it just correlation.
The push to limit or delay exposure, especially for kids, makes a lot of sense based on what you’re showing.
What I keep coming back to though is how much of the response still feels like it’s happening around the edges.
Screen time tools, prompts, parental controls. All good, but they don’t really change what the system is optimizing for.
It actually feels similar to earlier cycles like the Industrial Revolution. The benefits show up first, then the costs, and when pressure builds, the companies don’t just change. They push back with influence, money, and messaging before anything structural really shifts.
So even if we make real progress with younger users, the core dynamic is still there and probably still getting refined.
Feels like we’re in that middle phase where the harm is becoming obvious, but the system itself hasn’t really shifted yet.
In the meantime, there’s another layer that feels just as real. How people operate inside these systems while they’re still working exactly as designed.
That part doesn’t get talked about as much, but it seems like it matters more than it gets credit for.
The more I thought about it, the more it feels like we’ve seen this kind of cycle before with things like tobacco and alcohol. Not the same, but the pattern is hard to ignore once you look at it that way.
I checked StatsCan after this piece. Their March longitudinal study tracked Canadian youth and found those who stuck to screen time guidelines reported excellent or very good mental health at 58 percent. Those exceeding the limits dropped to 38 percent. It lines up exactly with the randomized trials showing less use cuts anxiety. MPs on the heritage committee keep hearing the same stories from families. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2026001/article/00003-eng.htm
Important work, beautifully done
Thanks for this article. It's a helpful and eye opening summary. At the risk of poking the bear (in the thread above), I wanted to say that the 'each to their own' / 'you're responsible for the consquences of your own actions' position above doesn't really hold water.
There are literally thousands of instances across every part of society where we collectively create limits (rules, regulations, laws etc) on products or actions to help deliver outcomes that benefit the greater society. When something is known to do harm, or even potentially do harm, we create rules or obligations to help limit that harm.
Limiting harm is a benefit because: it saves money, fewer people suffer and the medical / health system is better able to focus on harms we cannot so easily prevent. There are zillions of examples of this, but here's a basic one: we know bleach is harmful if swallowed. So, we label the product with that information, and we add a child proof safety cap so the bottle cannot be easily opened. My question is, if we know the social media is designed to cause harm (and does harm some people), what should we do to help mitigate or prevent that risk?
Holding these companies liable for what people read and react to is like holding our phone communications firms for robo calls and such. Adults have some responsibility for what their families consume - including information.
Just as a quick reply to this one, I do all the limits and boundaries with my child, I really promise you I do, and I do everything I can to have off-screen time, outdoors play with the neighbours' kids, loving times together, BUT she still wakes up crying some days that I am putting limits on her information consumption that other peers don't have. We don't live in a vacuum.
In the long term, I wonder if her hurt of feeling left out will be more or less than the harm of having access to the media.
Thanks so much for your reply. It's just so difficult to know sometimes, what the right thing to do is. We're not even into social media yet here - it is Roblox that is causing the issues at the moment - she's allowed a fair amount of time on there, and I do play games with her, but recently had to block a game that was massively age inappropriate, and that has been a really tricky fallout. But already some of her peers have smartphones and are using social platforms, and she is now asking for them regularly too - can feel the wave incoming. Having read The Anxious Generation, the evidence for me is clear, so gearing up for the ride to come! I do agree with Rick, it is about proactive parenting too, totally up for that - but sometimes it feels like a vertical challenge.
I hear you; that sounds really hard. I have read that it's SO much easier to do this with a community or school initiative, instead of one parent on their own. I feel so lucky to live in a community like that - many kids do have smart phones and interact with social media, but there also is a decent enough handful who don't that my teen feels she is not alone. And I don't feel alone.
I read an AWESOME article about studies that say that it's not enough to simply take the tech away; we must fill that void with positive real-life connections with people. That makes so much sense to me! Good on you for finding ways for her to have positive interactions to make up for missing the phone. A sense of belonging is so ultimately important for teens especially. Do you know any families who set similar limits you and your daughter could connect with?
Here's that one:
https://biologyofbecoming.substack.com/p/why-putting-phones-down-isnt-enough?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
I agree with D Elvin. I heard a successful musician who thanked their parents for not allowing them all the screens, because it left them time to be bored and spend hours playing their instrument.
Despite what teens express and what is the going attitude, I believe teens actually deeply want their parents to set limits and create a strong container for them.
Love all this, thank you so much for your helpful and human words. So helpful.
It's a lot, parenting at this time. Wishing you well and best of luck!
I’d love your opinion on this. (I quoted you!) And a restack if worthy!
https://substack.com/@nanamira/note/p-196318328?r=41liw7&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I’m just going to going to go back to tree farming now.
So I actually went and read the meta-analysis of RCTs of social media intervention and it raises a bunch of red flags. The only intervention made was to ask participants to restrict their social media use -- we don't see any interventions asking people to increase their social media use.
Why does this matter? Because if you suggest to someone that some intervention *might* improve things and they do that intervention most people will tend to report some kind of improvement. People want to please and are easily suggestable. Social science research (most notoriously education) are litered with cases where studies intervening in opposite directions show both show benefits.
Now if we'd seen a strong effect in one measure (say reduction in loneliness) and no effect in other measures I might be less suspicious but we see reductions in social media produce across the board all of about the same size (not all are significant but that's just an arbitrary cutoff). On top of this looking at the plot of the study results shows studies all over the place even for the larger studies. Not to mention these studies lasted at most 90 days.
In short, whether or not the underlying claim is true this is extremely poor evidence for the claim. Everything is completely consistent with the hypothesis that all effects are a consequence of the fact that people are primed to believe they *should* feel better if they reduce their social media consumption.
In all this BLAH, BLAH, BLAH you wrote, Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch. where's the truism that a person is responsible for their actions and the consequences of?
Children's brains are not fully formed and are not equipped to fight the pull of this addictive technology. It's not a fair fight. I would venture to say that adults' brains aren't equipped either.
If the BLAH BLAH BLAH you speak of is the corporate heads who are getting rich off depravely getting children addicted to their products, then: yes! They should absolutely be held responsible for their actions and the consequences of!
Where's you outrage over companies than makes alcohol, guns, fat and salt laden 'snack foods,' produce porn, offer gambling, etc..?
We live in a world where we are surrounded by things that are 'not good for us' simply because someone is profiting from them. If people took responsibility for their actions and understood the consequences of their choices, the companies you're raging against—which is futile—either wouldn't exist or would be significantly smaller.
haha - you don't know me at all. i have outrage for those companies too. but tech is very dangerous and dramatically impacting society on all fronts.
I won't argue with you anymore; I think you're a troll and I hope you don't sleep well at night for arguing against such things. But thanks for entertaining my reply.
When someone virtue-signals their outrage, I can pretty much tell what kind of person they are.
The fact that you are deflecting from people being responsible for their life choices and the consequences gives me a very clear picture of the type of person you are.
I am terrible at arguing; you can ask my husband. I am a parent who cares a lot and I believe there's a lot at stake. I will not interact with you anymore.
You’re not arguing, you’re virtue signalling.
Saying people aren’t responsible for their life choices and the consequences of is 🤣🤣🤣
I'm genuinely skeptical that you think there's a large contingent of parents who think that social media is bad but don't show "outrage" about pornography or gambling.
Pretty sure the Venn diagram of parents who don't want their kids to use social media and who don't want their kids to watch pornography and who don't want their kids to gamble on a phone is just a circle.
A circle created by parents buying and giving their children a smartphone.
Your 👍 parents don’t care about their children having access to social media, porn or salt and fat laden snack foods.
One can worry about something even if it doesn't affect your kids personally.
Lots of people, for example, are worried about things happening to kids in Palestine, even though it isn't THEIR kids. Likewise, people can be worried about children who are sexually abused by teachers or bad priests or hollywood weirdos even though it isn't THEIR children. Likewise, people can be worried about a generation of children hurt by parents who are too frivolous with the dangers of constant internet connection.
How did you create an equivalency correlation between "A circle created by parents buying and giving their children a smartphone" and "sexually abused by teachers or bad priests or Hollywood weirdos"?
Two things can be true, right? Parents need to take more responsibility, and corporations should be held accountable when they act with "malice, oppression, or fraud." In other words, a lack of parental responsibility doesn't justify a malicious absence of corporate responsibility.
Explain your logic: How is a company acting with 'malice, oppression, or fraud' simply by placing a product (e.g., cigarettes, fat-laden snack food, alcohol) on a retail shelf for consumers to have the choice whether or not to buy, or by launching a social media platform or app that people freely choose to use?
What part of 'people are responsible for the consequences of their own choices' do you not understand?
Clearly you don’t have a adolescent child plopped in front of screens at school and peers with cell phones snd social media accounts. Post covid tech adoption by schools has made the issue harder to be under control.. just parents or a single kids will are no match with this tech drug these kids are exposed to everywhere
Who's raising your child? You or "the world"? Do you not control what your children put in their mouths (They pass how many fast food places in a given day?) and heads?
You're trying to make excuses for "lazy parenting," hence why so many children today are mentally unable to deal with the real world. As a parent, how your child grows up, turns out, the beliefs and values they adopt are ENTIRELY on you.
Would you live in a neighborhood where drug peddlers and criminals abound and hope your fantastic parenting skills will keep your kids safe? This is far from lazy parenting. We are fighting every day to keep our kids safe from easy access to these predatory technology. If we had drug dealers sitting in every house in every school and neighborhood would you seek as a concerned parent as a concerned citizen to get law enforcement to help? This is a societal problem not a simple fast food issue.
I am an average person not a lawyer or activist. I will not respomd to any more of your replies here. If you are not affected by it great good for you. Maybe write a parenting book on how you did it.
I see you have all the “excuses” to not be responsible.
How’s has you “I’m a victim of my environment!” mindset—a lazy mindset—been working out for you?
P.S.
Where you choose to live is a choice. At any given moment you current circumastances are the results of the life choices you’ve made.
What kind of design changes are you all talking about? I keep seeing stuff like this but you aren't providing design change idea that don't involve censoring adults (like me).
Thank you for pulling all this evidence together. It's good to see this through the focus on young people. However, do you have any views about the impacts on 1) older people in the population or 2) and / or people with learning disabilities?
This is not so much about the court cases, more about how we solve the problem of young people and social media in future.
A 2 min read and a shiny new idea 🙂👇
https://ariesam.substack.com/p/the-alternative-to-a-social-media?r=5c0rgt&utm_medium=ios