No. What parents and grownups need to do is stop violently and emotionally abusing their daughters and address their own massive, skyrocketing grownup personal crises of depression, addiction, and violence that are depressing girls. The 2021 and 2023 Centers for Disease Control surveys of 27,000 teenagers, as well as numerous long-term studies and analyses, decisively demolish the notion that social media is driving girls’ mental health crisis. Social media is just the latest culture-war distraction – popular, one politicians love to embrace to pretend they care about youth. But the case for social media destroying or rewiring teens is over.
The CDC’s latest surveys show that 43% of teenage girls who are violently and/or emotionally abused by parents and household grownups frequently use social media, compared to just 34% of girls who are not abused. Abused and depressed girls use social media more for contacts and help, which is why it superficially appears social media causes girls’ depression. In fact, the culprit is abuse. Girls are much more likely to be abused by parents and household adults than boys are, CDC surveys show, which is why girls understandably are more depressed.
Readers of this substack have to ask: why is the overwhelming issue of parents’ and adults’ abuses and severe troubles in teens’ (particularly girls’) poor mental health so completely ignored and even denied on here? The CDC’s own analysis associates parental abuses and troubles with two-thirds of teens’ depression and 90% of teen suicide attempts, while social media is a trivial issue. Of course, social media presents unhealthy topics, but these are buffered and far easier to deal with by <delete> and <block-sender> buttons than menacing real-life issues like mom’s violent boyfriend or a sexually abusive coach.
Enough. If adults on here can’t deal with the realities teenagers deal with – 76% grow up in homes with parents who are abusive and/or severely troubled; one-fifth with parents who suffer multiple problems; four-fifths of cyberbullied teens are also bullied much more at home by adults; a middle-school girl is 20 times more likely to suffer the depressing reality of a suicidal, drug-overdosing father or stepfather than the other way around; on and on – then you’re just jeopardizing teens’ safety by distracting from real hazards just as Australian officials did. I'll be glad to supply links to the many solid sources for these statements.
This strikes me as innumerate nonsense. "43% of teenage girls who are violently and/or emotionally abused by parents and household grownups frequently use social media, compared to just 34% of girls who are not abused." OK, but what percentage of girls are violently or emotionally abused by their parents?
Oh wait, here's the answer: 76% of girls "grow up in homes with parents who are abusive and/or severely troubled." Does it strike anyone as even remotely plausible that to a rough approximation practically all girls are raised in abusive households? Is this true worldwide? Did the incidence of abusive parenting jump around 2011?
The CDC reports that 76% of teens, including around 80% of girls, experience at least one “adverse experience” growing up, led by parents’ emotional abuse, domestic violence, and severe depression.
My own estimate is lower than the CDC’s, around 70% for girls, because I exclude families in which emotional abuse happens only rarely. My result is that 46% of girls suffer parents who are sometimes to frequently emotionally abusive; an additional 8% suffer violent abuses by household adults; an additional 4% have parents who are domestically violent; 6% more have parents who are not abusive but who abuse alcohol and/or drugs; 5% more have parents who are not abusive or addicted but are severely depressed; and 1% more have parents who have none of the above issues but have been jailed.
As to the second question, we know than in the U.S. and other Anglo nations, drug and alcohol abuse among parent-aged adults did indeed rise rapidly over the last 10-15 years (exactly the period teens’ depression rose), with U.S. overdose deaths among ages 30-64 soaring from 30,965 in 2010 to 85,379 in 2022, and hospital ER cases for overdoses in parent-age groups near-doubling to 5 million in 2022. See https://wonder.cdc.gov/mcd.html
Now, I have a question: in a substack concerned with teens’ mental health, why aren’t these serious parental and family troubles a subject of constant discussion?
Thanks for comment, but I don’t think the “both problems” idea works here. Of the known factors associated with girls’ frequently poor mental health in the massive CDC surveys, parents’ and household adults’ violent/emotional abuses and troubles (severe depression, addiction, jailing, domestic violence, absence) account for around 77%; social media and cyberbullying together, just 1%.
So, right away – if we’re truly concerned about girls’ mental health – we should be paying 77 times more attention to grownup-caused issues instead of 99 times more attention to social media.
Certainly, there are a fraction of teens and adults whose problems are made worse by heavy social media use, just as there are people harmed by families, churches, Scouts, sports, schools, etc. – plenty to interview for books and commentaries. But we don’t ban teens from those entities.
80+% of teens tell the Pew survey they find social media useful and beneficial. There is some evidence that social media helps girls avoid suicide attempts and self-harm that is not being explored because anti-social-media rhetoric stifles discussion.
If we are to balance priorities (including, as you point out, ones not now being studied) that affect girls and women, those who indulge wildly sensationalized panics that social media is destroying a generation and rewiring childhood etc. need to back off.
Indeed, very well-said, Mike. I am waiting and waiting for someone else here to even acknowledge those things.
(Crickets and cicadas)
Or someone may say the usual empty platitudes of "it takes a village" or some flavor thereof. All while hypocritically voting against any semblance of a decent social safety net or any other help for families with children, of course. Natch.
The incidence of abusive parenting has always been high, and may or may not have increased dramatically around 2011. But what has undoubtedly increased was the incidence of alcoholic and drug-addicted parents and parent-aged adults, and deaths from overdose and other deaths of despair, which clearly cannot be good for the children and teens around them. Add in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, following decades of ruthless neoliberalism still ongoing, and you truly have a perfect storm!
And of course, following decades of increasingly unhinged safetyism and moral panics, young people who grew up after around 1990-2000, and especially those born after 2000, have had far less freedom in the offline world than previous generations.
I'm always on the look-out for balanced arguments but your claims seem twice as incendiary as the social media hypothesis, and twice as unlikely. Having said that, you mention a lot of facts that I'd love to verify but in particular: 76% of teenagers grow up in home with parents who are abusive and/or severely troubled.
I really appreciate this substack and all the guest articles, but the recommendation/four new norms grow more absurd by the day. Handing a 13-14 year old a smartphone and letting a 16 year old sign up for Instagram, at the most impressionable time of their lives, is definitely not going to fix anything. I’m aware of the rationale for not going further, but I don’t buy it. Why not push for the norm to be no smartphones or social media apps during childhood, period? That is a recommendation that might actually help kids. Anything less seems disingenuous.
Personally I agree, but in my experience advocating in my community, even Wait Until 8th can be a hard sell with a lot of parents. I think we're in a transitional phase with this - and that we risk alienating a lot of parents of older kids if we come in hot with "no smartphones or social media til 18+ period." If the goal is truly to help kids, we need to meet people where they are. I do hope no smartphones or social media during childhood at all is where we will eventually land though--it's certainly my plan for my own kids.
You are correct in that anything higher would be unrealistic and would have unintended consequences, and in any case, the Overton window would not allow it now.
Though I disagree with you that that such a goal is even worthy at all. It is illiberal and ageist, and will only kick the can further down the road. And then they will be pushing it to 21+ and then 25+, and before you know it, no one of any age will have any civil or rights at all.
What I want to see is a shift in the societal norms around smartphones and social media. I want people of all ages to be on their phones and social media less. It needs to be a matter of free choice for 18+ certainly, not a legal ban or anything. For minors I think Australia is on the right path with banning social media for kids under 16, just as we ban children from accessing other potentially harmful products/activities (X and R rated movies, cigarettes, alcohol, driving a car, owning a gun, and so on).
Why not simply attempt to make these platforms safer for all ages then? And actually GIVE people of all ages real alternatives and freedom in the offline world? Teens already have too many restrictions (10 times more restrictions than convicted felons in the USA!), and they sure as hell don't need any more.
Absolutely. Call your rep to urge them to support KOSA; call Mike Johnson's office and urge him to stop blocking it in the house. There are so many incredible people working tirelessly to put pressure on big tech to make these platforms safer. But big tech has invested billions in fighting back on that. So it's hardly simple or something that's gonna happen over night. In the meantime, our kids need and deserve protection online, just as they deserve protection against the many other harmful products and activities I mentioned above that we already restrict them from.
They also need and deserve more autonomy in the real world...it's all related. Since you read After Babel I'm sure you're familiar with the Let Grow movement, which is another great one to support!
TL;DR: Surely we can walk and chew gum at the same time?
Unfortunately KOSA and many similar bills still have some serious issues as well in terms of acting as a potential Trojan horse for censorship. If those issues were fixed, I would be fine with it passing. But more importantly, as the EFF notes, we need comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages, which at a minimum would ban surveillance advertising and things like dark patterns. That would throw the proverbial One Ring into the fire for good. The only ones who would lose would be Big Tech and their sycophantic lackeys. So what are we waiting for?
And yes, I am familiar with the Let Grow movement, and I fully support it. Despite what her critics like to claim, Lenore Skenazy is probably one of the sanest people I have ever encountered.
You should check out ScreenStrong. Their recommendations are more like what you describe and they have many success stories and their group is growing. https://screenstrong.substack.com/
Those bloody phones and all the toxic stuff on them are destroying people. Even the most (relatively) ‘harmless’ use of phones in the public space serves as a huge irritant to others (particularly in restaurants!) It also excludes others, e.g. if you go for a coffee with someone and they spend the entire time fooling about with their phone instead of chatting normally with you. Let alone those stupid parents who go for a walk with their kids or dogs and likewise spend the entire time messing about with their phone. I feel so sorry for those kids and dogs, who long for normal interaction and attention. I can only be heartily grateful that those things were not around when I was young, and cherish the doubtless vain hope that the money-grubbing idiot who invented them is sincerely regretting it.
I see some parallels. There has always been the complaint that men are too aggressive and assertive. But it's all relative; perhpas the real problem is that women aren't assertive enough. You don't go out on a playing field and ask permission of your opponent to advance the ball. You don't seek consensus. You seek to advance the ball even as your opponent tries to stop you. And you don't blame your opponent for being in your way.
Translate that into real life. Those who assert themselves tend to get ahead of the others. They can play dirty or they can play clean. But without the assertiveness, they get nowhere. What has this got to do with social media? Those who seek their sense of self-worth from the acceptance of others, are sitting ducks. It can get ugly. Those who get their sense of self-worth from inner strength and self-reliance, don't really care so much. So, to the extent that social media has more negative effect on girls than boys, I would suggest that girls need to be taught to be self-reliant and self-defining. But of course, that runs entirely counter to the tenets of progressivism, so they will not teach that.
As a biologist I'd point out that competition is only one of several different ways that humans (and any living thing) interacts. Of course totally unassertive people will be poor at competitive sport, but they will excel in other ways.
Counterpoint: a society dominated by people who aggressively assert their individual needs over others' is 1) a crappy one to live in, and 2) ultimately unstable. Take the example of a society with no traffic rules where people plow through intersections or speed down residential streets as their needs dictate. Everyone is better off when individuals are willing to suffer the minor inconveniences of stopping at red lights or driving slower than they'd like. Assertiveness has it's place, but on the whole I'd much rather live in a society that teaches and values cooperation. So I vote in favor of men dialing down the aggressiveness over asking women to dial it up.
So, who will build the corporations, fight in defense of the country, and fight back against other people who are overly assertive. In real life, how it is and how you would like it to be are seldom a perfect match.
And in my experience, laws count for a lot less than what you might like to think they do.
Parents need to teach that in my opinion… so that by the time they go into school, they have been supported and witnessed and feel good about who they are.
We are all enclosed in a disembodied bubble and have to fight “the mob” in our own heads to make a real connection. Get off the phones. Thank you Dr. Haidt.
I grew up in a cult and experienced multiple traumas. So, as an adult, I've spent my life advocating for and working with children and teens, perhaps to cope with my issues and help kids make better choices and avoid the lifelong consequences of trauma.
I tried to make a difference and exorcise my demons as a model, musician, and portrait photographer and co-owned a model management company. I also worked in a group home for troubled kids and with CPS and presented motivational multi-media programs in schools in 46 states.
Due to my unconventional life, past trauma, and extensive experiences, I've been following cultural trends and the modeling industry for decades, and what I found on social media, fan sites, and cam sites was troubling, especially for Gen Z and future generations. There was a lack of boundaries or minimum standards, the normalization of extreme sexual behavior, distorted expectations, fraud, identity theft, underage models, mental health issues, borderline child porn (actual and AI-generated), and lonely, depressed men with limited options desperate for a genuine connection.
Recently, I read a story about a woman who made 43 million dollars in one year on her fan site, not doing hardcore, but then commented on X that it's not worth young women doing it unless they can make it big, not sunshine and rainbows 24/7, that they shouldn't quit their jobs for it, and that she's a Christian and a virgin. Talk about a mixed message and incentivizing lewd behavior! If I was a Gen Z woman, I might give it a go for 63 million dollars. But I would need to pray about it first and ask for the Lord's guidance and blessing!
Thankfully, many are starting to bring attention to these existential issues and offer solutions. But I doubt we can counter this trend and its negative consequences since we're in uncharted waters and exponential change is happening faster than we can adapt.
As someone who does not love the Internet and all of its brainwashing, I think there’s way way way too much focus on appearance and sexuality, especially with girls. It seems every photo of a girl shows cleavage; what is that message if any behind their choice of clothing and advertised flesh?
I am not someone who has their head in the sand regarding sexuality yet I don’t feel the need to advertise or to market my body to the entire world. Why do these girls feel the need to do that?
Yes, I agree that parents need to step in, absolutely and it’s also a matter of choosing what part or parts of society parents engage their children with.
Children need their parents as positive role models. Why isn’t that happening?
Social media's basic flaw is that you feel safer that you are when you use it, because 1) when you use it you're usually alone, and 2) you never know who's reading/viewing it, and out of sight, out of mind., so it's easy to picture better people at the other end of the post. The truth is that the worst sorts of people lurk behind the screen: lonely, socially awkward, jaded, and predatory looking for someone they can violate. Included in that description are the designers and coders behind the programs, many of whom also are the purveyors and consumers of porn. Their targets are not the sewer-dwellers, but the unspoiled.
The one thing that parents, teachers, and clergy don't warn children about is how many evil people there are in the world. People have had drummed into their minds that people are basically good. They are not. Decency, like civilization, is at best a thin veneer that most of us hide behind. ALL of our righteousness is like used toilet paper.
Yes, of course there are people in this world who are up to no good however it seems you are heavily leaning on only one end of the spectrum.
Of course, one has to be discerning and that’s where our intuition comes, and even with children if they tune into it, they know to be aware and conscious of who they are dealing with.
I was referencing Isaiah 64:6. While there are those who are less evil than others, there are none who are not evil. And we are all capable of the most evil acts. That is not me being negative, it is me being a realist
By that logic, let's just ban all social media for ALL ages AND genders. Problem solved, right? Banning it for some and not others is like having a designated peeing section (or age limit) in a swimming pool.
As for "dating apps", we should all start calling them what they really are: SHAGGING apps. And then simply DELETE them all, cold turkey, and never look back, at least if you are even remotely looking for any sort of semblance of a serious long-term relationship. Problem solved.
The Normal Healthy Human Mind is Detective: Sugar, Salt, Fat, Booze, Porn, Placebo, Gullibility are examples.
Develop a Dark Sense of Humor. Suicide happens when I'm 200% sure that the unbearable* pain will never end. Prevent this false certainty by developing healthy skepticism: I'm 200% certain that I'm wrong most of the time😁😁😁😁
How does anyone survive this world without Woody Allen, Kurt Vonnegut, and Late Night Comedy?🤔👍😁😁😁
Not sure about late night comedy because I don’t really respect most of those so-called comedians who aren’t funny. Especially when they think that dissing other people is funny, I’m definitely not in.
But yes, I do agree with you regarding Vonnegut and of course there’s Mark Twain and the guy who opened our eyes to all kinds of ridiculous things who passed away a few years ago I can’t remember his name… he always did a play on words…
Im making over 13k BUCKS a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do....quicksrich.blogspot.com
How do girls feel about all the boys they like being raised on porno? Watching adult women gleefully orgasm for their teen entertainment while liberal mom and dad minimize and ignore the issue. Must be uplifting.
Probably the strongest argument against age-gating is literally my own generation (Elder Millennials). We didn't gain access to smartphones and social media until we were much older, generally early to mid-20s or older, when our brains were ostensibly "fully developed", because these technologies simply didn't exist yet. And how did we turn out now that we are 40 or close to it? Spoiler alert: not very well, if the statistics are any indication. We luuurrrrve to criticize our Boomer parents, but it looks like the apple isn't falling that far from the tree. And we luuurrrrve to self-righteously criticize Gen Z, but compared to us and every previous generation alive today, they really aren't so bad.
No. What parents and grownups need to do is stop violently and emotionally abusing their daughters and address their own massive, skyrocketing grownup personal crises of depression, addiction, and violence that are depressing girls. The 2021 and 2023 Centers for Disease Control surveys of 27,000 teenagers, as well as numerous long-term studies and analyses, decisively demolish the notion that social media is driving girls’ mental health crisis. Social media is just the latest culture-war distraction – popular, one politicians love to embrace to pretend they care about youth. But the case for social media destroying or rewiring teens is over.
The CDC’s latest surveys show that 43% of teenage girls who are violently and/or emotionally abused by parents and household grownups frequently use social media, compared to just 34% of girls who are not abused. Abused and depressed girls use social media more for contacts and help, which is why it superficially appears social media causes girls’ depression. In fact, the culprit is abuse. Girls are much more likely to be abused by parents and household adults than boys are, CDC surveys show, which is why girls understandably are more depressed.
Readers of this substack have to ask: why is the overwhelming issue of parents’ and adults’ abuses and severe troubles in teens’ (particularly girls’) poor mental health so completely ignored and even denied on here? The CDC’s own analysis associates parental abuses and troubles with two-thirds of teens’ depression and 90% of teen suicide attempts, while social media is a trivial issue. Of course, social media presents unhealthy topics, but these are buffered and far easier to deal with by <delete> and <block-sender> buttons than menacing real-life issues like mom’s violent boyfriend or a sexually abusive coach.
Enough. If adults on here can’t deal with the realities teenagers deal with – 76% grow up in homes with parents who are abusive and/or severely troubled; one-fifth with parents who suffer multiple problems; four-fifths of cyberbullied teens are also bullied much more at home by adults; a middle-school girl is 20 times more likely to suffer the depressing reality of a suicidal, drug-overdosing father or stepfather than the other way around; on and on – then you’re just jeopardizing teens’ safety by distracting from real hazards just as Australian officials did. I'll be glad to supply links to the many solid sources for these statements.
This strikes me as innumerate nonsense. "43% of teenage girls who are violently and/or emotionally abused by parents and household grownups frequently use social media, compared to just 34% of girls who are not abused." OK, but what percentage of girls are violently or emotionally abused by their parents?
Oh wait, here's the answer: 76% of girls "grow up in homes with parents who are abusive and/or severely troubled." Does it strike anyone as even remotely plausible that to a rough approximation practically all girls are raised in abusive households? Is this true worldwide? Did the incidence of abusive parenting jump around 2011?
Very good questions. I recommend downloading the CDC survey, https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/data/index.html
and the CDC's analysis, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a5.htm?s_cid=su7304a5_w
and checking the numbers yourself.
The CDC reports that 76% of teens, including around 80% of girls, experience at least one “adverse experience” growing up, led by parents’ emotional abuse, domestic violence, and severe depression.
My own estimate is lower than the CDC’s, around 70% for girls, because I exclude families in which emotional abuse happens only rarely. My result is that 46% of girls suffer parents who are sometimes to frequently emotionally abusive; an additional 8% suffer violent abuses by household adults; an additional 4% have parents who are domestically violent; 6% more have parents who are not abusive but who abuse alcohol and/or drugs; 5% more have parents who are not abusive or addicted but are severely depressed; and 1% more have parents who have none of the above issues but have been jailed.
As to the second question, we know than in the U.S. and other Anglo nations, drug and alcohol abuse among parent-aged adults did indeed rise rapidly over the last 10-15 years (exactly the period teens’ depression rose), with U.S. overdose deaths among ages 30-64 soaring from 30,965 in 2010 to 85,379 in 2022, and hospital ER cases for overdoses in parent-age groups near-doubling to 5 million in 2022. See https://wonder.cdc.gov/mcd.html
Now, I have a question: in a substack concerned with teens’ mental health, why aren’t these serious parental and family troubles a subject of constant discussion?
It’s entirely plausible that both you and the column writer are correct, and there are likely still other reasons that add to the problem.
Thanks for comment, but I don’t think the “both problems” idea works here. Of the known factors associated with girls’ frequently poor mental health in the massive CDC surveys, parents’ and household adults’ violent/emotional abuses and troubles (severe depression, addiction, jailing, domestic violence, absence) account for around 77%; social media and cyberbullying together, just 1%.
So, right away – if we’re truly concerned about girls’ mental health – we should be paying 77 times more attention to grownup-caused issues instead of 99 times more attention to social media.
Certainly, there are a fraction of teens and adults whose problems are made worse by heavy social media use, just as there are people harmed by families, churches, Scouts, sports, schools, etc. – plenty to interview for books and commentaries. But we don’t ban teens from those entities.
80+% of teens tell the Pew survey they find social media useful and beneficial. There is some evidence that social media helps girls avoid suicide attempts and self-harm that is not being explored because anti-social-media rhetoric stifles discussion.
If we are to balance priorities (including, as you point out, ones not now being studied) that affect girls and women, those who indulge wildly sensationalized panics that social media is destroying a generation and rewiring childhood etc. need to back off.
Indeed, very well-said, Mike. I am waiting and waiting for someone else here to even acknowledge those things.
(Crickets and cicadas)
Or someone may say the usual empty platitudes of "it takes a village" or some flavor thereof. All while hypocritically voting against any semblance of a decent social safety net or any other help for families with children, of course. Natch.
The incidence of abusive parenting has always been high, and may or may not have increased dramatically around 2011. But what has undoubtedly increased was the incidence of alcoholic and drug-addicted parents and parent-aged adults, and deaths from overdose and other deaths of despair, which clearly cannot be good for the children and teens around them. Add in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, following decades of ruthless neoliberalism still ongoing, and you truly have a perfect storm!
And of course, following decades of increasingly unhinged safetyism and moral panics, young people who grew up after around 1990-2000, and especially those born after 2000, have had far less freedom in the offline world than previous generations.
I'm always on the look-out for balanced arguments but your claims seem twice as incendiary as the social media hypothesis, and twice as unlikely. Having said that, you mention a lot of facts that I'd love to verify but in particular: 76% of teenagers grow up in home with parents who are abusive and/or severely troubled.
Thanks for asking for sources, which we all should do more. Start with the CDC's 2024 analysis of the YRBS, at: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a5.htm?s_cid=su7304a5_w
The full set of analyses is at: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/pdfs/su7304-H.pdf
And I recommend downloading the entire survey and analyzing the data yourself: https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/data/index.html
Let me know if you find anything different than what I reported. I'm always interested in advancing this discussion.
BINGO
Amen to that! Shout it from the rooftops!
I really appreciate this substack and all the guest articles, but the recommendation/four new norms grow more absurd by the day. Handing a 13-14 year old a smartphone and letting a 16 year old sign up for Instagram, at the most impressionable time of their lives, is definitely not going to fix anything. I’m aware of the rationale for not going further, but I don’t buy it. Why not push for the norm to be no smartphones or social media apps during childhood, period? That is a recommendation that might actually help kids. Anything less seems disingenuous.
Personally I agree, but in my experience advocating in my community, even Wait Until 8th can be a hard sell with a lot of parents. I think we're in a transitional phase with this - and that we risk alienating a lot of parents of older kids if we come in hot with "no smartphones or social media til 18+ period." If the goal is truly to help kids, we need to meet people where they are. I do hope no smartphones or social media during childhood at all is where we will eventually land though--it's certainly my plan for my own kids.
You are correct in that anything higher would be unrealistic and would have unintended consequences, and in any case, the Overton window would not allow it now.
Though I disagree with you that that such a goal is even worthy at all. It is illiberal and ageist, and will only kick the can further down the road. And then they will be pushing it to 21+ and then 25+, and before you know it, no one of any age will have any civil or rights at all.
What I want to see is a shift in the societal norms around smartphones and social media. I want people of all ages to be on their phones and social media less. It needs to be a matter of free choice for 18+ certainly, not a legal ban or anything. For minors I think Australia is on the right path with banning social media for kids under 16, just as we ban children from accessing other potentially harmful products/activities (X and R rated movies, cigarettes, alcohol, driving a car, owning a gun, and so on).
Why not simply attempt to make these platforms safer for all ages then? And actually GIVE people of all ages real alternatives and freedom in the offline world? Teens already have too many restrictions (10 times more restrictions than convicted felons in the USA!), and they sure as hell don't need any more.
Absolutely. Call your rep to urge them to support KOSA; call Mike Johnson's office and urge him to stop blocking it in the house. There are so many incredible people working tirelessly to put pressure on big tech to make these platforms safer. But big tech has invested billions in fighting back on that. So it's hardly simple or something that's gonna happen over night. In the meantime, our kids need and deserve protection online, just as they deserve protection against the many other harmful products and activities I mentioned above that we already restrict them from.
They also need and deserve more autonomy in the real world...it's all related. Since you read After Babel I'm sure you're familiar with the Let Grow movement, which is another great one to support!
TL;DR: Surely we can walk and chew gum at the same time?
My bad, I just looked it up, it appears that the worst flaws of KOSA have been fixed recently. Thus, I can now say that I cautiously support it.
Unfortunately KOSA and many similar bills still have some serious issues as well in terms of acting as a potential Trojan horse for censorship. If those issues were fixed, I would be fine with it passing. But more importantly, as the EFF notes, we need comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages, which at a minimum would ban surveillance advertising and things like dark patterns. That would throw the proverbial One Ring into the fire for good. The only ones who would lose would be Big Tech and their sycophantic lackeys. So what are we waiting for?
And yes, I am familiar with the Let Grow movement, and I fully support it. Despite what her critics like to claim, Lenore Skenazy is probably one of the sanest people I have ever encountered.
You should check out ScreenStrong. Their recommendations are more like what you describe and they have many success stories and their group is growing. https://screenstrong.substack.com/
https://screenstrong.org/resources/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-free-high-schooler-trades-his-smartphone-for/id1474681355?i=1000664629259
Wondering why every time I click on the link it closes up… the screen strong link.
I don't know. Does this work? https://screenstrong.org/
Anything higher would be unrealistic and would have unintended consequences though.
Those bloody phones and all the toxic stuff on them are destroying people. Even the most (relatively) ‘harmless’ use of phones in the public space serves as a huge irritant to others (particularly in restaurants!) It also excludes others, e.g. if you go for a coffee with someone and they spend the entire time fooling about with their phone instead of chatting normally with you. Let alone those stupid parents who go for a walk with their kids or dogs and likewise spend the entire time messing about with their phone. I feel so sorry for those kids and dogs, who long for normal interaction and attention. I can only be heartily grateful that those things were not around when I was young, and cherish the doubtless vain hope that the money-grubbing idiot who invented them is sincerely regretting it.
I see some parallels. There has always been the complaint that men are too aggressive and assertive. But it's all relative; perhpas the real problem is that women aren't assertive enough. You don't go out on a playing field and ask permission of your opponent to advance the ball. You don't seek consensus. You seek to advance the ball even as your opponent tries to stop you. And you don't blame your opponent for being in your way.
Translate that into real life. Those who assert themselves tend to get ahead of the others. They can play dirty or they can play clean. But without the assertiveness, they get nowhere. What has this got to do with social media? Those who seek their sense of self-worth from the acceptance of others, are sitting ducks. It can get ugly. Those who get their sense of self-worth from inner strength and self-reliance, don't really care so much. So, to the extent that social media has more negative effect on girls than boys, I would suggest that girls need to be taught to be self-reliant and self-defining. But of course, that runs entirely counter to the tenets of progressivism, so they will not teach that.
As a biologist I'd point out that competition is only one of several different ways that humans (and any living thing) interacts. Of course totally unassertive people will be poor at competitive sport, but they will excel in other ways.
Counterpoint: a society dominated by people who aggressively assert their individual needs over others' is 1) a crappy one to live in, and 2) ultimately unstable. Take the example of a society with no traffic rules where people plow through intersections or speed down residential streets as their needs dictate. Everyone is better off when individuals are willing to suffer the minor inconveniences of stopping at red lights or driving slower than they'd like. Assertiveness has it's place, but on the whole I'd much rather live in a society that teaches and values cooperation. So I vote in favor of men dialing down the aggressiveness over asking women to dial it up.
So, who will build the corporations, fight in defense of the country, and fight back against other people who are overly assertive. In real life, how it is and how you would like it to be are seldom a perfect match.
And in my experience, laws count for a lot less than what you might like to think they do.
Parents need to teach that in my opinion… so that by the time they go into school, they have been supported and witnessed and feel good about who they are.
It doesn't actually run counter to the tenets of genuine progressivism, you're thinking of fauxgressives.
No, I'm thinking of progressives. Have you ever met a progressive who was willing to consider other people's opinions as equal to their own?
We are all enclosed in a disembodied bubble and have to fight “the mob” in our own heads to make a real connection. Get off the phones. Thank you Dr. Haidt.
And to that I say, "You first, adults".
Agree!
Got it!….interesting.
I grew up in a cult and experienced multiple traumas. So, as an adult, I've spent my life advocating for and working with children and teens, perhaps to cope with my issues and help kids make better choices and avoid the lifelong consequences of trauma.
I tried to make a difference and exorcise my demons as a model, musician, and portrait photographer and co-owned a model management company. I also worked in a group home for troubled kids and with CPS and presented motivational multi-media programs in schools in 46 states.
Due to my unconventional life, past trauma, and extensive experiences, I've been following cultural trends and the modeling industry for decades, and what I found on social media, fan sites, and cam sites was troubling, especially for Gen Z and future generations. There was a lack of boundaries or minimum standards, the normalization of extreme sexual behavior, distorted expectations, fraud, identity theft, underage models, mental health issues, borderline child porn (actual and AI-generated), and lonely, depressed men with limited options desperate for a genuine connection.
Recently, I read a story about a woman who made 43 million dollars in one year on her fan site, not doing hardcore, but then commented on X that it's not worth young women doing it unless they can make it big, not sunshine and rainbows 24/7, that they shouldn't quit their jobs for it, and that she's a Christian and a virgin. Talk about a mixed message and incentivizing lewd behavior! If I was a Gen Z woman, I might give it a go for 63 million dollars. But I would need to pray about it first and ask for the Lord's guidance and blessing!
Thankfully, many are starting to bring attention to these existential issues and offer solutions. But I doubt we can counter this trend and its negative consequences since we're in uncharted waters and exponential change is happening faster than we can adapt.
Why doesn’t this surprise me?
As someone who does not love the Internet and all of its brainwashing, I think there’s way way way too much focus on appearance and sexuality, especially with girls. It seems every photo of a girl shows cleavage; what is that message if any behind their choice of clothing and advertised flesh?
I am not someone who has their head in the sand regarding sexuality yet I don’t feel the need to advertise or to market my body to the entire world. Why do these girls feel the need to do that?
Yes, I agree that parents need to step in, absolutely and it’s also a matter of choosing what part or parts of society parents engage their children with.
Children need their parents as positive role models. Why isn’t that happening?
Alas, we seem to have have the blind leading the blind. Parents today tend to be terrible role models, for a variety of reasons.
Social media's basic flaw is that you feel safer that you are when you use it, because 1) when you use it you're usually alone, and 2) you never know who's reading/viewing it, and out of sight, out of mind., so it's easy to picture better people at the other end of the post. The truth is that the worst sorts of people lurk behind the screen: lonely, socially awkward, jaded, and predatory looking for someone they can violate. Included in that description are the designers and coders behind the programs, many of whom also are the purveyors and consumers of porn. Their targets are not the sewer-dwellers, but the unspoiled.
The one thing that parents, teachers, and clergy don't warn children about is how many evil people there are in the world. People have had drummed into their minds that people are basically good. They are not. Decency, like civilization, is at best a thin veneer that most of us hide behind. ALL of our righteousness is like used toilet paper.
Yes, of course there are people in this world who are up to no good however it seems you are heavily leaning on only one end of the spectrum.
Of course, one has to be discerning and that’s where our intuition comes, and even with children if they tune into it, they know to be aware and conscious of who they are dealing with.
I was referencing Isaiah 64:6. While there are those who are less evil than others, there are none who are not evil. And we are all capable of the most evil acts. That is not me being negative, it is me being a realist
By that logic, let's just ban all social media for ALL ages AND genders. Problem solved, right? Banning it for some and not others is like having a designated peeing section (or age limit) in a swimming pool.
As for "dating apps", we should all start calling them what they really are: SHAGGING apps. And then simply DELETE them all, cold turkey, and never look back, at least if you are even remotely looking for any sort of semblance of a serious long-term relationship. Problem solved.
(Mic drop)
Not sure I follow. There are age limits in most swimming pools. Children under a certain age can't swim unattended because it's too risky.
I meant it is like having an age limit for *peeing* in the pool, to make a point. It's a reductio ad absurdum.
The Normal Healthy Human Mind is Detective: Sugar, Salt, Fat, Booze, Porn, Placebo, Gullibility are examples.
Develop a Dark Sense of Humor. Suicide happens when I'm 200% sure that the unbearable* pain will never end. Prevent this false certainty by developing healthy skepticism: I'm 200% certain that I'm wrong most of the time😁😁😁😁
How does anyone survive this world without Woody Allen, Kurt Vonnegut, and Late Night Comedy?🤔👍😁😁😁
And Woody Allen is still around. He’s just not that funny anymore.
Not sure about late night comedy because I don’t really respect most of those so-called comedians who aren’t funny. Especially when they think that dissing other people is funny, I’m definitely not in.
But yes, I do agree with you regarding Vonnegut and of course there’s Mark Twain and the guy who opened our eyes to all kinds of ridiculous things who passed away a few years ago I can’t remember his name… he always did a play on words…
Thank you for this really essential perspective.
Im making over 13k BUCKS a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do....quicksrich.blogspot.com
How do girls feel about all the boys they like being raised on porno? Watching adult women gleefully orgasm for their teen entertainment while liberal mom and dad minimize and ignore the issue. Must be uplifting.
This is a great informative article. I would love to see you guys interview August Lamm for a future article. https://augustlamm.substack.com/p/you-dont-need-a-smartphone
Probably the strongest argument against age-gating is literally my own generation (Elder Millennials). We didn't gain access to smartphones and social media until we were much older, generally early to mid-20s or older, when our brains were ostensibly "fully developed", because these technologies simply didn't exist yet. And how did we turn out now that we are 40 or close to it? Spoiler alert: not very well, if the statistics are any indication. We luuurrrrve to criticize our Boomer parents, but it looks like the apple isn't falling that far from the tree. And we luuurrrrve to self-righteously criticize Gen Z, but compared to us and every previous generation alive today, they really aren't so bad.