Taylor Lorenz is the one who doxxed Libs of TikTok, who came this close to lionising the murderer Luigi Mangione, and who for some reason habitually lies about her age, but she makes some excellent points in this article: “The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all”.
Excerpt:
While social media bans may seem like a prudent measure to protect children, they are not only ineffective, they endanger both children and adults. There is little evidence that social media is driving any type of widespread mental health crisis in children. Studies have repeatedly shown the opposite. Removing anonymity from the web, which will inevitably happen when tech companies are required to identify and ban children, allows for easier government tracking and censorship of journalists, activists and whistleblowers, who rely on online anonymity.
And while some claim the laws would curb big tech’s power, only the largest tech companies have the resources to shoulder the extensive costs of age verification systems. Non-profit and indie platforms could be forced to close, consolidating big tech’s power further. Mass surveillance systems, once constructed, could also be easily leveraged by governments and bad actors.
If we want to fix the problems with social media, the place to start is through comprehensive data-privacy reform and consumer protections. Governments could also take action to break up big tech companies and prosecute them for anti-competitive behaviour. Lawmakers, who claim to care about children, could pass broader social and economic policies that we know would meaningfully improve children’s lives. Social media is a lifeline, especially for marginalised youth such as LGBTQ+ teens. Any policies that limit online access should centre on the most vulnerable children and adults.
To enact the social media bans being proposed around the world requires some system of age verification, which inherently means expanding surveillance technology. Because algorithmic systems cannot accurately estimate age, verifying a user’s age also requires collecting highly sensitive data or government documents to support the biometric data harvested. The laws being considered don’t all stipulate which system will be used, but there are significant privacy and safety concerns with all of them.
There is a fairly easy method of age verification and kicking off kids too young to handle it.
It is called parenting. We might give that a try.
For kids who have disengaged or “don’t care” parents, social media is the least of their problems.
How? One super simple step (that’ll hit 80% of the problem): if you wanna use social media, I your parent, are on there as a friend so I can see what is going on. Then ask them every once in a while about one of their posts just so that they remember mom or dad are watching.
This is actually false. There are several studies showing that social media use is *strongly* correlated with adverse mental health outcomes.
Further more there are studies that show that there is a relationship between screen time and negative mental and physical health outcomes.
This is trivially verifiable with a simple web search.
Now, you can claim those studies are wrong, you can assert studies that show the opposite (I didn’t look, but I assume they are there) are better studies, etc. etc. But there IS evidence, and it’s not “little”.
It is also fairly trivial to have relatively strong anonymity (or at least pseudo anonymity) and also have a *third party* (not government) age verification system. If Perry Metzger is the same guy I remember from the CypherPunk List days, he should be able to verify my claim.
The problem with social media is:
1. Algorithms that feed the dopamine production in our brains.
2. People on social media using that as a mechanism to to gain (or to simulate the gain) of social status.
Human brains are designed to deal with social status in groups of about 150. Not in groups of about 3 billions.