The netflix series was one of the best science fiction shows I’ve seen, it was very intelligent. I’m sad so many people thought it was slow and boring, it had real moments of humanity and awe and horror. I guess if you don’t understand a lot of the concepts and scope and scale of the ideas being portrayed it may seem as convoluted and hand-wavy as any other science fiction that doesn’t make an effort.

Would you be in favor of nationalizing the internet in order for this to work? That is, no more commercial entities controlling access, no more media sites allowed to use algorithmic or artificially intelligent systems to influence the viewing habits of users, no more ads working their way into everything you see and do, no more sensationalized headlines and distracting video titles competing for attention because it will all be demonetized by law. (ideally, in a world of spherical, frictionless cows.)

In the US the government used to have standards and regulations for things like if a kid’s show could be exclusively used to market toys, or that news stations had to follow a fair press agreement. The reason for this was all access to television had to go through airwaves, and the broadcasters for those airwaves were US government property. All broadcasters had to follow a host of rules and guidelines. This is why cable news was such a world-changing thing. Cable was privately owned.

This also has the side effect of the government controlling the news narrative, and I think we have seen enough of that.

I just don’t really know if there’s a good solution here, for a problem that has to have a solution or we all suffer.

The solution is education not bans.

I agree.

But what do we do about the fact that even though our knowledge, research and understanding of the problem has increased, the problem has gotten worse? Is there more that can be done on that front that you think would be effective? Genuinely asking to help me shape my opinion.

It’s blooming into a larger-scale societal problem than just hoping enough people pull through, a lack of stable mental health and attention spans across large swaths of your population start to erode your society.

I don’t disagree with any of that.

I am mostly asking people here what they think the alternative should be. Like you say, parents who manage and monitor this are going have better outcomes… but that’s not the norm, and the problem is getting worse despite all of us having more knowledge and proof how vital it is for their kids to have their internet use managed. So I am not convinced any kind of education campaign is going to do much. Most parents are just as addicted to their phones and rather scroll than parent. This is a societal problem with many intersecting problems.

Okay so you’re just some completely unserious edgy kid who doesn’t care about the betterment of anything, I am no longer interested in your opinions. Go live in the wilderness.

Past an education campaign, that’s a them problem.

Do you understand that most of all your comforts and life-saving blessings like our medical science, our transportation and infrastructure, and our logistical distribution systems and more come as a direct product of having enough intelligent, stable people to work through complex problems not just once, but every single day? What is the critical level before loss of this population becomes an existential threat to our survival and progress?

I’m saying this is a societal problem, you may be 100% correct that it’s the parent’s responsibility to manage, but that isn’t happening and we can’t make it happen. Unless you think a law enforcing parental monitoring would be less fascist than a social media ban.

There’s basically no ethical porn. Even under capitalism. Especially under capitalism.

I don’t disagree that the industry is pretty awful in places, but what does this mean? Do you think maybe this is a bit hyperbolic or puritanical?

Hyperbolic in terms of this, consenting adults have been trading, sharing and showing off for each other for a very long time, it happened before the internet and now it’s happening all around you without any money changing hands. Sure there are things like Onlyfans where you could make the argument that the performer is being exploited for their body… but, if you set aside whatever social pearl-clutching we’ve been trained to frame around sexual activity and nudity, how is it any different than wearing your knees down for a company by doing deliveries every day? How is it different than juggling or doing magic tricks at a tourist trap for donations? Yes, you could say it’s all unethical in a capitalistic society, but that’s not the same as singling out porn just because that one deals with “naughty” stuff.

Which is what makes that statement puritanical as well. You’re viewing porn as exploitation of sexuality, like sexuality should be on this pedestal that makes it different somehow than the thousand other ways we sell our bodies, our time, our dignity to survive, as we’ve been doing for tens of thousands of years.

It’s just porn

I agree, and the more “special” we make it, the worse the problems will be around it. Can you imagine the paradise we would live in if nobody had sexual worries and insecurities and hangups? And think that this belays that maybe you don’t have an ethical framework around porn as much as a personal ambivalence. Which is fine, I just felt the need to dissect the whole statement a little.

figure holding tech giants directly accountable for the specific harms they’ve caused

I don’t disagree that the entire institution is rotten and causing harm, but in terms of just socializing online, just the act of forming communities and forums and discussion groups and sharing content, the essence of what’s becoming harmful, what is the right answer here? The stuff that causes a lot of the harm is just what people tend to do online, because humans broadly are not meant to substitute real social connections for whatever is happening when we scroll and type and read other people’s thoughts and fantasies and depressed manifestos of strangers every day.

Even now, you’re reading my text inside your head in your own voice. The act alone of having this discussion is creating an entirely new kind of information pattern in your brain that we haven’t had in the last half-million years or so since our brains evolved. Do you know what this new kind of information processing is doing to your view of the world? Do any of us?

I know if you type “research teens social media health” into google you will have days of reading material about the research done and how harmful these practices are. But I’m not sensing that anyone even cares honestly. Is it better that we let whatever happens happen? I’m not being facetious, I want to know if people genuinely think that this isn’t a problem worth fighting.

Do I think that social media should be restricted for children and teens? Sure.

Okay, I agree and I am not exactly cheering for government telling anyone what they can and can’t look at… but what’s the alternative here? I am cautiously siding with the idea behind the regulation if not the execution, but so far nobody has suggested what we do about a problem that is real, proven and studied and is leading to a worse world.

I’m being serious here and in good faith. Should we do anything?

Am I in the wrong here for thinking we need to do something about this? Or is everyone just okay with whatever the end-result will be from subsequent generations of people growing up anxious, depressed, lacking social skills, without relationship partners? We already have “loneliness” being considered a global health risk, and it’s tied directly to digital communication habits. I would ask you or anyone here to just type “research on health social media teens” in google. Just try it and see how much work has gone into studying this problem.

I can’t wait to vote in the next Republican-Amazon-Prime-Super-Spectacular-Disney-Time-Warner-Johnson&Johnson-GoogleMetaAI-Election-Extravaganza. (No need to vote, that’s already been decided, it’s entirely for entertainment purposes and coveted advertiser slots.)

Digital technologies are really the only way kids have to socialize nowadays.

I don’t disagree, but digital technologies are causing a lot of harm. I thought I would prepare for the discussion with a couple links to some suggestive studies, but there have been so many rigorous studies and scientific papers on the harm of social media on young minds that I don’t even know where to start. Denying it is like denying climate change at this point.

And maybe my take is becoming radical, but I don’t think we should be looking at it in terms of a youth/adult problem. There are likely far more adults addicted to the junk-food substitute that is arguing on twitter or making separate identities to fabricate ideas on message boards who have completely lost their handle on reality. Relationship rates are plummeting, people are so lonely it’s being declared a health emergency.

Like, seriously… what should we do? I know the popular answer is to attack the social media companies and “regulate” them but the problem is more fundamental than advertising, it’s that we’re not evolved to socialize with words on screens, seeing all these thoughts and feelings and unchecked wild, emotion-provoking, short-attention-span messages isn’t good for us. It may make you laugh spending an evening scrolling dumb memes, but if you do something like that every night, you’re missing time that you could be spending improving your life, your health, your relationships and so on.

And replacing those evolved drives with something else, something alien to us.

Yah, a lot of people are raging at this but not providing any alternative to a studied and proven problem.

but will also cause a lot of damage

Like what exactly?

The guardrails already exist. Put parental controls on your kid’s devices. Done, solved.

But nobody does that, and the problem is getting worse.

What’s your answer if you can’t get a population to make better choices and people are being harmed by something?

I’m not saying there’s a right answer here, I am genuinely looking for alternatives on a societal level to address a proven health problem.

Parents who were also raised by social media? This isn’t a new problem but it is a problem that’s getting worse, I don’t know if a ban is the answer but so far nobody has even suggested an effective alternative to reducing screen-time for both adults and kids.

This ban isn’t supposed to solve a problem overnight, but it’s supposed to influence some segment of the population to socialize, to form real communities and to hopefully grow up capable of helping their own kids not get addicted.

This is a real problem, it’s widespread across the globe and many, many studies have shown the harm social media has on a huge percentage of teens.

Also, parents work. Parents sleep. You can’t fucking hover over your teen night and day, you would hate that worse.

Social media use by kids and teens has been demonstrated factually to cause harm to people’s mental health and social lives. The sources are plenty and widespread.

I still don’t know if a ban is the answer, but at least it’s an attempt to address a problem. I’m curious what your answer would be to this growing problem?

It’s not designed to be perfect, it’s designed to influence a population towards better practices. If it even makes just 10% of young people grow up a little less alone and less asocial, it will be a success. That success can be built on and maybe in time we can push cultures in regions to not want to use social media as a substitute all the time. There is a very real effect how laws influence the attitudes of people.

We already took away all their in-person spaces.

Arcades and malls have been dead for a long time. Capitalism took them away.

Everyone is missing incentive to go outside and hang out with real people, but that’s only because we have an alternative that fills you up and requires less effort. Our “socializing” is junk food, it only harms you.

Maybe more young people will start doing what kids have been doing since the dawn of time, and making their own communities and their own places to hang out and play and do active things together, face-to-face.

Every country is worried about their currency collapsing because all economies are deeply connected. It just takes one major trading partner to collapse for a domino effect to ripple through the world.