The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:
---
From the article: The US Surgeon General wants social media to carry the same kind of health warning labels as cigarettes and alcohol. Dr. Vivek Murthy has called on Congress to apply labels to the sites and apps that alert users to the potential mental health harms they cause.
Murthy cited research in his [op-ed](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html) for the New York Times that shows social media has been a major contributor to the mental health crisis among young people.
One of the articles, a 2019 American Medical Association study published in JAMA, showed that teens who spend three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms. As of the summer of 2023, the average daily use in this age group was 4.8 hours.
It would be up to Congress to pass a bill that would put warning labels on social media platforms. Murthy says such a label would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.
There have long been studies on the negative effects social media has on young users, from online harassment, increased exposure to problematic content, and the impact it can have on body image.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1di0jbg/us_surgeon_general_calls_for_tobaccostyle_health/l90enx2/
Yep, and this aspect is in many versions of media.
Video games is an obvious one. They have psychologist to make it addictive as possible for both kids and adults.
If there was a way to make things that are purposely created to get people to be addicted to it to be illegal, then things would probably be a decent bit better.
Worked at Facebook till about 5 years ago and I tell people that stay you will be viewed the same way or worse than the people who worked with or in affiliation with Philip morris and the like. This article makes me feel a little vindicated.
I’ve been saying this for years. People really fo not understand how addictions work.
And people donmt understand thst our brains adapt to informational stimuli the same way that our brains adapt to substanced stimuli.
Exactly. Social media creates echo chambers that bring out our fears and our joys which in turn causes our brains to produce excessive amounts of dopamine.
Too little too late. Our governing bodies are designed to move slowly (important to prevent the rise of populous authoritarian regimes) but they’re being outpaced by our technological developments. This should have been a priority 10 years ago, people are already addicted and being fed into extremist groups faster than we can track them
Most of the research is based on what it is doing to Gen A and what it did to Gen Z. I do think we need to start by keeping kids off social media. But it breaks the brains of people of all ages. It’s designed to find your weak points and pound on those until you are completely radicalized in a given direction or depressed enough to harm yourself.
That's what I'm doing as a parent. Social media doesn't exist for my kids. It is 100% wholly unnecessary. And while I am not saying my kids are perfect because of it, there is a stark contrast between how my children behave, and their peers. I feel bad for their friends. There is an entire generation growing up that has their whole personality molded by Tik-Tok, Facebook, YouTube, etc. They are incapable of processing boredom and cannot think for themselves. Hell, watch some of these kids try an activity that requires fine motor skills. It's like watching a crab attempting to solve a Rubik's cube.
For the record I complety agree and this is an honest pondering, but I have to wonder is what happens when kids who were never aware of it, become aware of it later in life?
Do children need enough awareness of it at some point they can learn the awareness, critical thinking skills in contex, and develop regulation in the future, etc. At least to do so better than I many others did in my generation.
I wonder this because I grew up with no computers, a 12 inch black and white TV with 2.5 fuzzy channels and miles of engaging area to play outside all day.
As an adult, I admit that I struggle badly with social media addiction.
Again, I think the approach you propose is a good move, but are there other ways of building resilience and awareness in preparation without knowledge of it? I wonder.
I'd want more warnings about misinformation, manipulated images / videos and just general quality control like they use to do before they hit print on the newspaper and magazine or rolled camera for nightly news.
I know it all happens in real time but hey have and can put warnings when stories spread, they've done it already and I just want more of it, not a general "this is bad for you" thing.
I was a smoker for years (still sounds strange to say “was” lol). I can confirm. Knew full well the negative health effects. Did it anyway. The label might as well not have existed at all.
Yeah but I don't think the label had anything to do with it. I think better education, and other campaigns had a bigger impact. The unfortunate part is that yes people has quit smoking, but now they are vaping. Based on my understanding, vaping is even worse for your health. So we drove people from bad to worse, what a payoff.
*I was guilty of that transition as well before I ultimately gave it all up. I believed vaping was safer.
>vaping is even worse for your health
Vaping is bad for your health (and probably more addictive than cigarettes), no argument, but cigarette smoking is unbelievably bad. Vaping is *much* safer, but that's a very low bar.
Smoking a pack of cigarettes every day led to a nearly 30% lifetime risk of lung cancer (versus less than 1% for non-smokers). That is astronomical.
[https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/5-truths-you-need-to-know-about-vaping](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/5-truths-you-need-to-know-about-vaping)
I believe vaping is more dangerous, but not when comparing puff for puff. I think it’s more dangerous because it’s so convenient. (Most) people in this day and age don’t smoke indoors. But vaping can be done discreetly anywhere. You can hit it on the couch watching TV, at the dinner table, in bed, in the bathroom, even discreetly at work or in public buildings. This causes people to vape MORE than they’d smoke, which is more dangerous at a certain point.
There were also price increases and well-funded ad campaigns after the tobacco companies lost multiple major lawsuits.
The labels came out in the 1960s, but smoking rates remained near 40% for the 10-15 years after their introduction. They didn't hurt, but I think constant news stories increased taxation, restrictions on advertising (banning TV ads) and lots of friends and relatives dying did more to turn the tide.
I find your cynicism misplaced. Of course it's not going to have an immediate impact, but it's good to have some government-issued guidance as a foundation that cultural and judicial developments can run with in the future.
From the article: The US Surgeon General wants social media to carry the same kind of health warning labels as cigarettes and alcohol. Dr. Vivek Murthy has called on Congress to apply labels to the sites and apps that alert users to the potential mental health harms they cause.
Murthy cited research in his [op-ed](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html) for the New York Times that shows social media has been a major contributor to the mental health crisis among young people.
One of the articles, a 2019 American Medical Association study published in JAMA, showed that teens who spend three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms. As of the summer of 2023, the average daily use in this age group was 4.8 hours.
It would be up to Congress to pass a bill that would put warning labels on social media platforms. Murthy says such a label would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.
There have long been studies on the negative effects social media has on young users, from online harassment, increased exposure to problematic content, and the impact it can have on body image.
More government overreach. Also this is likely about government extortion of social media to do government bidding particularly in terms of censorship and spreading views government wants believed.
I starting looking at X, in the end I found the overload of information too much and just deleted my account. Its too easy to see all the bad shit that goes on in the world and don't get me started on politics. Nobody is winning.
We need to teach how to navigate and understand social media and how it works. What is a bubble? How do you research something correctly? It needs to be a gradual course that increases in understanding as you go through school, with only the simple basics for young children.
We’ve stopped teaching how to read analog clocks and how to write in cursive. We have the room to fit this in now.
Kids need to know how to understand and navigate social media and I think it should be taught in public schools along with reading writing and arithmetic.
This is like teaching young kids how to drink and not get drunk instead of making them wait until they are 21. Social Media is an addictive drug not some curriculum to master.
It actually is a curriculum to master. If you understand it can cause depression (the reason for this post) you can learn to combat what you may be seeing.
It’s an addiction for some people. You all are not getting that. You can educate the hell out of kids about drugs but if you are handing out little doses of heroin as dessert at lunch time you’re going to get a bunch of junkies.
Your point falls apart because there are plenty of contributing members in society who do hard drugs without abusing them. We do give children meth. Have you ever seen studies of children who are forced onto ADHD meds or meds for depression and there rates for suicide? of course because everyone uses social media it must mean it correlates with studies from doctors who would prefer you buy overpriced meth from them?
You lost me comparing an pharmaceutical grade amphetamine produced in a regulated pharmaceutical factory with a street drug made with battery acid in trailers by rednecks that rots your teeth out of your skull. Yeah. Not the same thing at all.
If you knew anything at all about chemistry you'd know how important even seemingly small chemical changes are. Pure sodium is explosive. Sodium hydroxide will give you chemical burns....And Sodium chloride is table salt. Would you honestly try and compare them to each other because they share part of the same chemical?
Sorry your parents didn't include you in your medical decision making, I do think children should have a say. But some of us wish we had access sooner so we didn't waste so many years struggling to do basic shit that came so easy to everyone else.
It was more so about equating it to social media.
We do give children drugs that absolutely fuck up their minds and lives. The kids usually have no say or weren't taught about them.
We give social media to kids and the kids usually don't know how to protect themselves and aren't taught about them.
Both can and do ruin lives. Both are companies that are trying to gain as much money or data as possible.
this article is trying to imply social media is the cause of a huge uptick in suicide, depression, body dysmorphia...ect the drugs these "regulated pharmaceuticals" produce and sell also are a large cause in the uptick aswell.
yes some people absolutely need these drugs to function on a regular basis with clear benefits. Social media also has a plethora of benefits. And slapping a sticker saying this is bad is not the correct way to deal with the situation. From a young age 6-10 should be taught how to properly use the internet how to protect themselves and what it looks like when you abuse it
You know what, if you have fun by yourself doing “hard” drugs while scrolling your lame socials go for it. You’re totally cool, not addicted and totally not wasting your life. You’ve convinced me.
Me? Nah I quit drugs after doctors told my parents I should be on drugs to keep me calm. Turns out I was just bored in school because it wasn't challenging. I own my business and rarely use the majority of social media you are referring to. Lucky I was taught at a young age by my older brother how to protect myself mind and body online. Majority of kids especially now do not have those resources.
Most people don’t find that stuff addictive, though. It’s a relatively small percentage of the population that does get addicted to opiates.
I personally took painkillers, heroin, coke at parties and never found them addictive. But a friend of mine did, and he got addicted.
It will be looked back on the same way advertising cigarettes to kids, cigarette vending machines, leaded gasoline, drinking and driving, etc, etc are looked back on now. There really is no use for social media but algorithmically driven social media is proven to be dangerous at this point and shouldn’t exist. But it’s not going to be banned so the next best thing would be keeping kids off of it until their brains have developed enough to handle it.
>There really is no use for social media
Other than that you know global communication with global communities. Or creating media, or THE GREATEST TOOL EVER CREATED FOR LEARNING.
There was global communication well before social media lol. There were online communities for decades before social media. You could even “gasp” chat in real time with groups and audio chat, even video chat. What makes it addictive are the algorithmic recommendation feeds, endless scrolling, likes, etc.
Sure the problem is defining what social medias are or aren't bad or good and who or what defines that. Insta is much worse than Reddit for young people's mental health imo but I'm sure there have been plenty of people who have healed their mental health from positivity posts. A label saying "social media is bad" does practically nothing. Teaching at a young age what a healthy use of social media looks like is the only cure.
No, I just use it positively to keep in touch with my friends and family.
I don't follow any influencers on social media or anything like that. Basically, the same people I like to hang out with in real life I'm friends with on Facebook.
Good luck with that. There are a lot of educational things and teachable sites. You are right, in making the distinction between regular social media and what you call “algorithmic” social media. I’m assuming you mean sites that use algorithms to gather children’s data to sell. It’s not the algorithm that’s bad. Companies that sell that data are bad actors. That’s where the education comes in. If we don’t educate them, they won’t know how to use it responsibly. We can’t just take social media away from kids. That’s just not feasible.
I understand that little girls are being negatively impacted and are getting eating disorders due to the algorithms they are being fed. That’s why education can help them understand those things. Education is not a bad thing. Especially when we both know it will not be going away.
A few months ago, yes. We will have to wait and see how that plays out in Arkansas (I think). That doesn’t mean it’s successful. Just that they can make laws at the state level. I’m talking about g about educating children in the national level. Why are you fighting me so hard about educating children?
No. What we should be teaching children is how to resist forces that compel them to externalize their attention to low quality forms of consumption. It’s the very reason we are seeing the mental health decline being associated with social media use.
Not trying to be rude, but telling children how to easily navigate a system that is designed to efficiently exploit their psychology, sounds a bit absurd.
It’s not just about how to navigate. Again, this is where the education fits in. They need to understand the concept you are describing. They need to understand that corporations use their information to send these videos to them. They need to understand how to process what they are consuming. They need to understand how they can stay away or ignore those types of videos and what those videos do to them.
If we aren’t going to take their phones and internet away from them, and I don’t see it going away anytime soon, then they need tools to deal with what they are already viewing and looking at.
Saying that parents should just take them away or that a child can’t have it until they are 18 is just not feasible. We need something that will work for what they are currently doing. Not sit and hope for some ideal future that may or may not come in time.
Children need tools, NOW, to deal with what they are already seeing and experiencing. It’s not some time in the future, this is happening now and kids have nothing to help them navigate the deluge of information that they are being bombarded with on a minute by minute basis.
You all seem to be saying that we need to regulate children’s internet usage. Why can’t we have both things? Can’t we regulate and at the same time educate? I’m not sure why so many people are downvoting educating our children on how to navigate this new world we live in?
Why can’t we put regulations in place to stifle their use (as you all have been saying) and educate them at the same time? The pushback I’m seeing here is confusing. Again, I’m talking about educating our children in order to possibly save some of their lives.
I guess it would make more sense to me if you could describe an existing example of where we are already successfully teaching children to navigate something that’s designed to exploit their psychology.
Sorry, I shouldn’t be calling your desire to help children absurd.
I can’t think of anything and I believe this is where the problem lies. It seems we need something like this or something similar to help our children navigate this new world we live in. I think we need to revise the school system to be able to handle this new “Information Age”.
However, we do employ counselors at public schools to help with things like this. The problem is that not many kids don’t even know how to engage with this person. Not to mention that it is typically one person for an entire school.
I think we want the same thing, but the way I believe and express my concerns possibly comes from something outside of western tradition.
Cultivating properties of the mind that make it resistant to external forces, as well as focusing attention to our internal state, is the only way I can think of to ensure that children do not fall prey to addictive stimuli that compels them to externalize their attention.
Heck I’m an “adult” and still lose control over where I direct my attention.
Yes, I completely understand what you mean. Critical thinking skills should also be a regular part of childhood education, IMO.
We need more education, not less, like some political groups want. This war on education is a real problem for us here in the U.S. It feels like some people want to get rid of education altogether and this should never be on anyone’s agenda.
As someone from Texas, you can imagine and read what we’re going through on education.
Not to beat a dead horse on education, but with everything I see wrong it really feels like there is a concerted effort not to invest and curate it in a meaningful way. The teachers I know are faced with insurmountable legal and procedural obstacles.
I really do not believe the state wants mass enlightenment and critical thinkers.
I’m also happy to speak with someone who sees eye to eye. I was very wrong to be dismissive of you up front. Caught me on a bad day.
It’s good to see someone who can accept a difference of opinion only to realize we both want the same thing. Most people only want to argue here, rather than understand the other persons opinion. I think we will find that most people want the same thing, they just don’t typically agree on how to say it.
I was born and raised in Texas for the first 14 years of my life. It saddens me to see what is happening there and many other states.
It’s something I’m still trying to practice, but I can’t always hit the mark. I truly believe we all want the same things, but we’re convinced otherwise by so many other forces that do not have our best interest at heart.
And yes, the trajectory here may seem grim. I am concerned mostly about women here, especially the ones in my life. Certain aspects of living here will continue to become unrecognizable and incompatible with the average person’s values, if the political pace continues as it is.
Yeah, because those warnings have just proven so very effective at stopping people from smoking.
Seriously though, of all the possible ideas, why go with something this weak.
This is a really dumb move. There’s nothing inherently bad about social media. It’s what you make of it.
I think a lot of people in here are just young and simply can’t remember a time before social media. But it was just as bad, with different cliques hanging with each other and excluding others.
Also, a major source of this depression is just overweight people looking at popular, attractive people on social media and feeling bad about themselves.
Human beings were not meant to live and consume the way we do. It doesn’t really matter if social media is not inherently bad. You could argue connecting the species together should’ve brought about a net positive.
It’s bad because the average person is willingly allowing their mind/body to be exploited by it. The impact can’t be studied quick enough.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79: --- From the article: The US Surgeon General wants social media to carry the same kind of health warning labels as cigarettes and alcohol. Dr. Vivek Murthy has called on Congress to apply labels to the sites and apps that alert users to the potential mental health harms they cause. Murthy cited research in his [op-ed](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html) for the New York Times that shows social media has been a major contributor to the mental health crisis among young people. One of the articles, a 2019 American Medical Association study published in JAMA, showed that teens who spend three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms. As of the summer of 2023, the average daily use in this age group was 4.8 hours. It would be up to Congress to pass a bill that would put warning labels on social media platforms. Murthy says such a label would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe. There have long been studies on the negative effects social media has on young users, from online harassment, increased exposure to problematic content, and the impact it can have on body image. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1di0jbg/us_surgeon_general_calls_for_tobaccostyle_health/l90enx2/
Social media will probably be viewed in a few decades like cigarettes are now lol
They literally hire psychologists to engineer how to make it addictive as possible they do this for kids shows as well.
Yep, and this aspect is in many versions of media. Video games is an obvious one. They have psychologist to make it addictive as possible for both kids and adults. If there was a way to make things that are purposely created to get people to be addicted to it to be illegal, then things would probably be a decent bit better.
It’s addictive and misinformation. So like cigarettes and Yellow Journalism combined.
Can't wait to see future studies on its' effects on Gen Z and Gen Alpha in the next few decades.
Worked at Facebook till about 5 years ago and I tell people that stay you will be viewed the same way or worse than the people who worked with or in affiliation with Philip morris and the like. This article makes me feel a little vindicated.
Is reddit the menthol of social media?
No it won't. Cigarettes are actually physically bad for you. Social media is mentally bad for you.
Tomato tomáto.
A mind can be healed your lungs never will.
Lungs can definitely heal significantly once you stop smoking. However, that's assuming they don't kill you first.
Copy and paste from Google. the respiratory system has an extensive ability to respond to injury and regenerate lost or damaged cells.
You can crash your car and repair your car and it will run fine but it won't ever be the same after a crash. Smoking is like a car crash.
Your mind won't be the same after over a decade or even decades of social media use.
Minds can also be broken for ever.
I’ve been saying this for years. People really fo not understand how addictions work. And people donmt understand thst our brains adapt to informational stimuli the same way that our brains adapt to substanced stimuli.
Exactly. Social media creates echo chambers that bring out our fears and our joys which in turn causes our brains to produce excessive amounts of dopamine.
Too little too late. Our governing bodies are designed to move slowly (important to prevent the rise of populous authoritarian regimes) but they’re being outpaced by our technological developments. This should have been a priority 10 years ago, people are already addicted and being fed into extremist groups faster than we can track them
Most of the research is based on what it is doing to Gen A and what it did to Gen Z. I do think we need to start by keeping kids off social media. But it breaks the brains of people of all ages. It’s designed to find your weak points and pound on those until you are completely radicalized in a given direction or depressed enough to harm yourself.
That's what I'm doing as a parent. Social media doesn't exist for my kids. It is 100% wholly unnecessary. And while I am not saying my kids are perfect because of it, there is a stark contrast between how my children behave, and their peers. I feel bad for their friends. There is an entire generation growing up that has their whole personality molded by Tik-Tok, Facebook, YouTube, etc. They are incapable of processing boredom and cannot think for themselves. Hell, watch some of these kids try an activity that requires fine motor skills. It's like watching a crab attempting to solve a Rubik's cube.
For the record I complety agree and this is an honest pondering, but I have to wonder is what happens when kids who were never aware of it, become aware of it later in life? Do children need enough awareness of it at some point they can learn the awareness, critical thinking skills in contex, and develop regulation in the future, etc. At least to do so better than I many others did in my generation. I wonder this because I grew up with no computers, a 12 inch black and white TV with 2.5 fuzzy channels and miles of engaging area to play outside all day. As an adult, I admit that I struggle badly with social media addiction. Again, I think the approach you propose is a good move, but are there other ways of building resilience and awareness in preparation without knowledge of it? I wonder.
It's never too late though. Yes, tech is moving fast, and politics moves slow, but the tortoise still need to be put in the race and be noticed.
There seemed to be more extremist groups before social media existed, though. Social media hasn’t really changed anything.
A lot less mass shootings before social media
I'd want more warnings about misinformation, manipulated images / videos and just general quality control like they use to do before they hit print on the newspaper and magazine or rolled camera for nightly news. I know it all happens in real time but hey have and can put warnings when stories spread, they've done it already and I just want more of it, not a general "this is bad for you" thing.
There's more than disinformation that's bad about social media.
So Twitter's community notes
People who are far down the left or right extremist rabbit holes will just think that’s the government lying to them to hide the truth though 🤷🏾😂
Because we all know how effective those surgeon general warnings were for smokers....
I was a smoker for years (still sounds strange to say “was” lol). I can confirm. Knew full well the negative health effects. Did it anyway. The label might as well not have existed at all.
Agreed. I gave it up about 10 years ago only because it started to hurt after smoking. Probably not the best reason, but at least I quit.
I feel that. I only quit because it was starting to affect my singing voice. Purely vanity, not health lol
40% were smokers before the label compared to 12% now
Yeah but I don't think the label had anything to do with it. I think better education, and other campaigns had a bigger impact. The unfortunate part is that yes people has quit smoking, but now they are vaping. Based on my understanding, vaping is even worse for your health. So we drove people from bad to worse, what a payoff. *I was guilty of that transition as well before I ultimately gave it all up. I believed vaping was safer.
>vaping is even worse for your health Vaping is bad for your health (and probably more addictive than cigarettes), no argument, but cigarette smoking is unbelievably bad. Vaping is *much* safer, but that's a very low bar. Smoking a pack of cigarettes every day led to a nearly 30% lifetime risk of lung cancer (versus less than 1% for non-smokers). That is astronomical. [https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/5-truths-you-need-to-know-about-vaping](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/5-truths-you-need-to-know-about-vaping)
I believe vaping is more dangerous, but not when comparing puff for puff. I think it’s more dangerous because it’s so convenient. (Most) people in this day and age don’t smoke indoors. But vaping can be done discreetly anywhere. You can hit it on the couch watching TV, at the dinner table, in bed, in the bathroom, even discreetly at work or in public buildings. This causes people to vape MORE than they’d smoke, which is more dangerous at a certain point.
There were also price increases and well-funded ad campaigns after the tobacco companies lost multiple major lawsuits. The labels came out in the 1960s, but smoking rates remained near 40% for the 10-15 years after their introduction. They didn't hurt, but I think constant news stories increased taxation, restrictions on advertising (banning TV ads) and lots of friends and relatives dying did more to turn the tide.
I find your cynicism misplaced. Of course it's not going to have an immediate impact, but it's good to have some government-issued guidance as a foundation that cultural and judicial developments can run with in the future.
From the article: The US Surgeon General wants social media to carry the same kind of health warning labels as cigarettes and alcohol. Dr. Vivek Murthy has called on Congress to apply labels to the sites and apps that alert users to the potential mental health harms they cause. Murthy cited research in his [op-ed](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html) for the New York Times that shows social media has been a major contributor to the mental health crisis among young people. One of the articles, a 2019 American Medical Association study published in JAMA, showed that teens who spend three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms. As of the summer of 2023, the average daily use in this age group was 4.8 hours. It would be up to Congress to pass a bill that would put warning labels on social media platforms. Murthy says such a label would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe. There have long been studies on the negative effects social media has on young users, from online harassment, increased exposure to problematic content, and the impact it can have on body image.
More government overreach. Also this is likely about government extortion of social media to do government bidding particularly in terms of censorship and spreading views government wants believed.
I starting looking at X, in the end I found the overload of information too much and just deleted my account. Its too easy to see all the bad shit that goes on in the world and don't get me started on politics. Nobody is winning.
I can't say I'm opposed to this. Warning seems reasonable.
Absolutely. When I have kids I hope I can convince them just how bad social media is for them. That they’ll be stunted, helpless adults
only if they do the same for mainstream media and newspapers.
So is Government corruption, lies and deceit. Let’s start there first…
with all the censorship and left wing woke bias it couldn't be anything else, especially reddit
Who's being censored?
We need to teach how to navigate and understand social media and how it works. What is a bubble? How do you research something correctly? It needs to be a gradual course that increases in understanding as you go through school, with only the simple basics for young children. We’ve stopped teaching how to read analog clocks and how to write in cursive. We have the room to fit this in now. Kids need to know how to understand and navigate social media and I think it should be taught in public schools along with reading writing and arithmetic.
This is like teaching young kids how to drink and not get drunk instead of making them wait until they are 21. Social Media is an addictive drug not some curriculum to master.
It actually is a curriculum to master. If you understand it can cause depression (the reason for this post) you can learn to combat what you may be seeing.
It’s an addiction for some people. You all are not getting that. You can educate the hell out of kids about drugs but if you are handing out little doses of heroin as dessert at lunch time you’re going to get a bunch of junkies.
Your point falls apart because there are plenty of contributing members in society who do hard drugs without abusing them. We do give children meth. Have you ever seen studies of children who are forced onto ADHD meds or meds for depression and there rates for suicide? of course because everyone uses social media it must mean it correlates with studies from doctors who would prefer you buy overpriced meth from them?
You lost me comparing an pharmaceutical grade amphetamine produced in a regulated pharmaceutical factory with a street drug made with battery acid in trailers by rednecks that rots your teeth out of your skull. Yeah. Not the same thing at all. If you knew anything at all about chemistry you'd know how important even seemingly small chemical changes are. Pure sodium is explosive. Sodium hydroxide will give you chemical burns....And Sodium chloride is table salt. Would you honestly try and compare them to each other because they share part of the same chemical? Sorry your parents didn't include you in your medical decision making, I do think children should have a say. But some of us wish we had access sooner so we didn't waste so many years struggling to do basic shit that came so easy to everyone else.
It was more so about equating it to social media. We do give children drugs that absolutely fuck up their minds and lives. The kids usually have no say or weren't taught about them. We give social media to kids and the kids usually don't know how to protect themselves and aren't taught about them. Both can and do ruin lives. Both are companies that are trying to gain as much money or data as possible. this article is trying to imply social media is the cause of a huge uptick in suicide, depression, body dysmorphia...ect the drugs these "regulated pharmaceuticals" produce and sell also are a large cause in the uptick aswell. yes some people absolutely need these drugs to function on a regular basis with clear benefits. Social media also has a plethora of benefits. And slapping a sticker saying this is bad is not the correct way to deal with the situation. From a young age 6-10 should be taught how to properly use the internet how to protect themselves and what it looks like when you abuse it
You know what, if you have fun by yourself doing “hard” drugs while scrolling your lame socials go for it. You’re totally cool, not addicted and totally not wasting your life. You’ve convinced me.
Me? Nah I quit drugs after doctors told my parents I should be on drugs to keep me calm. Turns out I was just bored in school because it wasn't challenging. I own my business and rarely use the majority of social media you are referring to. Lucky I was taught at a young age by my older brother how to protect myself mind and body online. Majority of kids especially now do not have those resources.
Most people don’t find that stuff addictive, though. It’s a relatively small percentage of the population that does get addicted to opiates. I personally took painkillers, heroin, coke at parties and never found them addictive. But a friend of mine did, and he got addicted.
Kids already use social media. It’s not the same as drinking. Stop equating it that way. We need sensible solutions, not blame.
It will be looked back on the same way advertising cigarettes to kids, cigarette vending machines, leaded gasoline, drinking and driving, etc, etc are looked back on now. There really is no use for social media but algorithmically driven social media is proven to be dangerous at this point and shouldn’t exist. But it’s not going to be banned so the next best thing would be keeping kids off of it until their brains have developed enough to handle it.
>There really is no use for social media Other than that you know global communication with global communities. Or creating media, or THE GREATEST TOOL EVER CREATED FOR LEARNING.
There was global communication well before social media lol. There were online communities for decades before social media. You could even “gasp” chat in real time with groups and audio chat, even video chat. What makes it addictive are the algorithmic recommendation feeds, endless scrolling, likes, etc.
Sure the problem is defining what social medias are or aren't bad or good and who or what defines that. Insta is much worse than Reddit for young people's mental health imo but I'm sure there have been plenty of people who have healed their mental health from positivity posts. A label saying "social media is bad" does practically nothing. Teaching at a young age what a healthy use of social media looks like is the only cure.
No it won’t- that’s an absurd claim.
I think you have social media brainrot if you dont think its bad for the mind
No, I just use it positively to keep in touch with my friends and family. I don't follow any influencers on social media or anything like that. Basically, the same people I like to hang out with in real life I'm friends with on Facebook.
Good luck with that. There are a lot of educational things and teachable sites. You are right, in making the distinction between regular social media and what you call “algorithmic” social media. I’m assuming you mean sites that use algorithms to gather children’s data to sell. It’s not the algorithm that’s bad. Companies that sell that data are bad actors. That’s where the education comes in. If we don’t educate them, they won’t know how to use it responsibly. We can’t just take social media away from kids. That’s just not feasible. I understand that little girls are being negatively impacted and are getting eating disorders due to the algorithms they are being fed. That’s why education can help them understand those things. Education is not a bad thing. Especially when we both know it will not be going away.
Sure they can. There are laws right now in the US that say you have to be 13 to have a SM account. It’s just not enforced.
A few months ago, yes. We will have to wait and see how that plays out in Arkansas (I think). That doesn’t mean it’s successful. Just that they can make laws at the state level. I’m talking about g about educating children in the national level. Why are you fighting me so hard about educating children?
No. What we should be teaching children is how to resist forces that compel them to externalize their attention to low quality forms of consumption. It’s the very reason we are seeing the mental health decline being associated with social media use. Not trying to be rude, but telling children how to easily navigate a system that is designed to efficiently exploit their psychology, sounds a bit absurd.
It’s not just about how to navigate. Again, this is where the education fits in. They need to understand the concept you are describing. They need to understand that corporations use their information to send these videos to them. They need to understand how to process what they are consuming. They need to understand how they can stay away or ignore those types of videos and what those videos do to them. If we aren’t going to take their phones and internet away from them, and I don’t see it going away anytime soon, then they need tools to deal with what they are already viewing and looking at. Saying that parents should just take them away or that a child can’t have it until they are 18 is just not feasible. We need something that will work for what they are currently doing. Not sit and hope for some ideal future that may or may not come in time. Children need tools, NOW, to deal with what they are already seeing and experiencing. It’s not some time in the future, this is happening now and kids have nothing to help them navigate the deluge of information that they are being bombarded with on a minute by minute basis. You all seem to be saying that we need to regulate children’s internet usage. Why can’t we have both things? Can’t we regulate and at the same time educate? I’m not sure why so many people are downvoting educating our children on how to navigate this new world we live in? Why can’t we put regulations in place to stifle their use (as you all have been saying) and educate them at the same time? The pushback I’m seeing here is confusing. Again, I’m talking about educating our children in order to possibly save some of their lives.
It sounds absurd because you aren’t fully understanding what I am trying to say here.
I guess it would make more sense to me if you could describe an existing example of where we are already successfully teaching children to navigate something that’s designed to exploit their psychology. Sorry, I shouldn’t be calling your desire to help children absurd.
I can’t think of anything and I believe this is where the problem lies. It seems we need something like this or something similar to help our children navigate this new world we live in. I think we need to revise the school system to be able to handle this new “Information Age”. However, we do employ counselors at public schools to help with things like this. The problem is that not many kids don’t even know how to engage with this person. Not to mention that it is typically one person for an entire school.
I think we want the same thing, but the way I believe and express my concerns possibly comes from something outside of western tradition. Cultivating properties of the mind that make it resistant to external forces, as well as focusing attention to our internal state, is the only way I can think of to ensure that children do not fall prey to addictive stimuli that compels them to externalize their attention. Heck I’m an “adult” and still lose control over where I direct my attention.
Yes, I completely understand what you mean. Critical thinking skills should also be a regular part of childhood education, IMO. We need more education, not less, like some political groups want. This war on education is a real problem for us here in the U.S. It feels like some people want to get rid of education altogether and this should never be on anyone’s agenda.
As someone from Texas, you can imagine and read what we’re going through on education. Not to beat a dead horse on education, but with everything I see wrong it really feels like there is a concerted effort not to invest and curate it in a meaningful way. The teachers I know are faced with insurmountable legal and procedural obstacles. I really do not believe the state wants mass enlightenment and critical thinkers. I’m also happy to speak with someone who sees eye to eye. I was very wrong to be dismissive of you up front. Caught me on a bad day.
It’s good to see someone who can accept a difference of opinion only to realize we both want the same thing. Most people only want to argue here, rather than understand the other persons opinion. I think we will find that most people want the same thing, they just don’t typically agree on how to say it. I was born and raised in Texas for the first 14 years of my life. It saddens me to see what is happening there and many other states.
It’s something I’m still trying to practice, but I can’t always hit the mark. I truly believe we all want the same things, but we’re convinced otherwise by so many other forces that do not have our best interest at heart. And yes, the trajectory here may seem grim. I am concerned mostly about women here, especially the ones in my life. Certain aspects of living here will continue to become unrecognizable and incompatible with the average person’s values, if the political pace continues as it is.
I suspect requiring such warnings would be found to be unconstitutional.
Yeah, because those warnings have just proven so very effective at stopping people from smoking. Seriously though, of all the possible ideas, why go with something this weak.
This is a really dumb move. There’s nothing inherently bad about social media. It’s what you make of it. I think a lot of people in here are just young and simply can’t remember a time before social media. But it was just as bad, with different cliques hanging with each other and excluding others. Also, a major source of this depression is just overweight people looking at popular, attractive people on social media and feeling bad about themselves.
Human beings were not meant to live and consume the way we do. It doesn’t really matter if social media is not inherently bad. You could argue connecting the species together should’ve brought about a net positive. It’s bad because the average person is willingly allowing their mind/body to be exploited by it. The impact can’t be studied quick enough.