6 ms·

It's been eye-opening to watch people fall for the "social media is hurting the children" scam. The best and largest observational studies don't show a strong

by slibhb 21d ago

It's been eye-opening to watch people fall for the "social media is hurting the children" scam. The best and largest observational studies don't show a strong correlation. Studies with an intervention are mixed/the effect isn't large. Extreme and compulsive social media use is bad, but it's almost maybe always a symptom rather than a cause. I saw the trailer for the new Facebook movie last weekend. It's comical really; first people blamed Facebook for the 2016 election and now for their kids being depressed. It's classic scapegoating. What makes this worse is the irony: in the name of protecting children, we're going to further reduce their freedom. And if there is single largest cause of children being depressed, I'd bet on "lack of freedom" over "social media use".

expedition32 21d ago
Society is not some science experiment that you can run for 20 years and hit the reset button.
contagiousflow 21d ago
Would you like to link to these studies?
tsss 21d ago
I know that it's hurting me. Hard to imagine that children are any less affected by it.
CJefferson 21d ago
This is completely different to my experience and my reading of the research. Please link me to any of this research you are talking about.
- slibhb 21d ago
  Meta-analysis, very large, shows small correlation between unhappiness and social media use: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2819781 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... Large AU observational study. Moderate social media use correlates to the happiest kids, high use and no use correlates to unhappiness: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2843720 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abst... Swedish obervational study, after adjusting the data there was no correlation: https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(26)00162-X/fulltext https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(26)00162-X/full... I can't find the specific inverventional study I mentioned. As I recall, it was mixed but possibly I remembered wrongly. Some studies do show a significant correlation between unhappiness and social media use, but causation has not been established and the bigger, better done studies have weaker correlations. People believe in causation because it suits their bias against social media. I dislike social media but I doubt it's harmful. This substack summarizes my view on what really makes children unhappy: https://substack.com/home/post/p-186087964 https://substack.com/home/post/p-186087964 (school). I'd guess that lack of freedom is what makes school so awful; modern schools are like little totalitarian states, where every minute of your day is accounted for and there is no privacy.
  - jdm2212 21d ago
    This is a pretty unimpeachable causal identification strategy finding Facebook's rollout caused worse mental health issues https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20211218 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20211218 It's hard to do similarly high quality studies today because no one rolls social media out gradually anymore.
  - jrflowers 21d ago
    “There are studies that do not line up with my opinion but they aren’t as good as the studies that do” lol
seki285 21d ago
I'm confident kids before Facebook did not somehow have a "lack of freedom". Also screw social media, it's bloat on society.
- Aerroon 21d ago
  Of course they did? What do you think school is? Just because it's useful to society doesn't mean it isn't also a reduction in freedom.
  - inigyou 20d ago
    Are you sending kids to Facebook as an alternative to school?
    - Aerroon 20d ago
      Please don't try to derail the discussion. I'm clearly responding to: >I'm confident kids before Facebook did not somehow have a "lack of freedom". If you have an argument to make then do so.
      - inigyou 20d ago
        I'm responding to: > Of course they did? What do you think school is? Just because it's useful to society doesn't mean it isn't also a reduction in freedom. where you compare the loss of freedom from school to the loss of freedom from Facebook
        Aerroon 19d ago
        But I'm not making a comparison. The parent I'm responding to is asserting that kids before Facebook did not have a lack of freedom. I am saying that school is a lack of freedom, therefore his assertion is wrong. This is quite relevant when we're talking about depression in children. Eg from looking at South Korea we can see that the education system itself can be a cause of depression in kids, meaning that it's likely depressive in our countries too (just less than in SK).
red_green_yell 21d ago
I think you are conflating "the best data we have" with "sufficient data to prove something". I agree with you that the best data we have is inconclusive. Which doesn't mean social media is totally safe. Also it doesn't mean it's totally dangerous. It means there just isn't enough data to let science guide the decision. Science is very slow and very expensive. So since I can't wait another century for their to finally be good science about social media, I have no choice but to go with my gut. Which means, IMO: (1) regulation should be limited to what the general public's gut on average agrees with, since science won't be the neutral arbiter we want it to be for the foreseeable future. (2) I personally want to severely limit my kids access to social media because my gut says it's addictive and harmful. But I don't expect society as a whole to agree with me on that.
- jstummbillig 21d ago
  That seems like a very lame claim, given that Social Media is data in abundance by design, and for at least 2 decades now.
- Gormo 21d ago
  > Which means, IMO: (1) regulation should be limited to what the general public's gut on average agrees with, since science won't be the neutral arbiter we want it to be for the foreseeable future. (2) I personally want to severely limit my kids access to social media because my gut says it's addictive and harmful. But I don't expect society as a whole to agree with me on that. Well: (1) there is no "the general public's gut" -- the general public is millions of separate guts that don't agree with each other; (2) our political system defines explicit boundaries for the reach of regulatory power, especially where communication, expression, and social interaction are concerned, regardless of anyone's gut feeling on these issues; (3) science can't be the arbiter here at all, since science only answers "is" questions, but this is an "ought" question; which leads us to (4) as you alluded to in your final remark, this is a purely cultural issue which families/parents must address according to their own normative values, independently of each other, and there is no legitimate political or legal question here.
  - inigyou 20d ago
contubernio 21d ago
ODB understood this dynamic years ago - "Wu Tang is for the children"
Rover222 21d ago
Anything to shift blame from parents, I guess. Everyone is just such a 'big tech bad' sheep now. Pitchforks out.
- Gormo 21d ago
  > Anything to shift blame from parents, I guess. Shifting blame from parents presumes there is a problem to blame on them, but isn't the determination of whether anything here constitutes a problem in the first place up to the parents themselves?
  - Rover222 16d ago
    society just decided for them that there's a problem, I guess
    - Gormo 15d ago
      This "society" guy sure has a lot of opinions about other people's affairs.
- inigyou 20d ago
  You're doing the exact same pitchfork thing but against the diffuse group of "parents".
  - Rover222 20d ago
    Just seems odd to me that expecting parents to be held responsible for how their children spend their time is a "pitchfork" type of idea...
    - inigyou 20d ago
      Well it is one. Also known as a thought-stopping cliche. Once you've found someone to be angry at - in this case "parents" - thought ends there.
2OEH8eoCRo0 21d ago
That's definitely why they chose to settle.
probably_wrong 21d ago
Having seen the increase in suicide rates for girls and young women [1], and having read the arguments for why no other explanation fits that data, I am convinced social media is indeed to blame. But as someone else put it once regarding global warming, what's the worst case if we reign in social media anyway? That we make the Internet a less addictive place for nothing? [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/03/suicide-rates-for-girls-are-rising-are-smartphones-to-blame https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/03/suicide-.... Archive version: https://archive.is/wY1OH https://archive.is/wY1OH

by slibhb 21d ago

expedition32 21d ago

Society is not some science experiment that you can run for 20 years and hit the reset button.

contagiousflow 21d ago

Would you like to link to these studies?

tsss 21d ago

I know that it's hurting me. Hard to imagine that children are any less affected by it.

CJefferson 21d ago

This is completely different to my experience and my reading of the research. Please link me to any of this research you are talking about.

slibhb 21d ago
Meta-analysis, very large, shows small correlation between unhappiness and social media use: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2819781 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... Large AU observational study. Moderate social media use correlates to the happiest kids, high use and no use correlates to unhappiness: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2843720 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abst... Swedish obervational study, after adjusting the data there was no correlation: https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(26)00162-X/fulltext https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(26)00162-X/full... I can't find the specific inverventional study I mentioned. As I recall, it was mixed but possibly I remembered wrongly. Some studies do show a significant correlation between unhappiness and social media use, but causation has not been established and the bigger, better done studies have weaker correlations. People believe in causation because it suits their bias against social media. I dislike social media but I doubt it's harmful. This substack summarizes my view on what really makes children unhappy: https://substack.com/home/post/p-186087964 https://substack.com/home/post/p-186087964 (school). I'd guess that lack of freedom is what makes school so awful; modern schools are like little totalitarian states, where every minute of your day is accounted for and there is no privacy.
- jdm2212 21d ago
  This is a pretty unimpeachable causal identification strategy finding Facebook's rollout caused worse mental health issues https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20211218 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20211218 It's hard to do similarly high quality studies today because no one rolls social media out gradually anymore.
- jrflowers 21d ago
  “There are studies that do not line up with my opinion but they aren’t as good as the studies that do” lol

seki285 21d ago

I'm confident kids before Facebook did not somehow have a "lack of freedom". Also screw social media, it's bloat on society.

Aerroon 21d ago
Of course they did? What do you think school is? Just because it's useful to society doesn't mean it isn't also a reduction in freedom.
- inigyou 20d ago
  Are you sending kids to Facebook as an alternative to school?
  - Aerroon 20d ago
    Please don't try to derail the discussion. I'm clearly responding to: >I'm confident kids before Facebook did not somehow have a "lack of freedom". If you have an argument to make then do so.
    - inigyou 20d ago
      I'm responding to: > Of course they did? What do you think school is? Just because it's useful to society doesn't mean it isn't also a reduction in freedom. where you compare the loss of freedom from school to the loss of freedom from Facebook
      - Aerroon 19d ago
        But I'm not making a comparison. The parent I'm responding to is asserting that kids before Facebook did not have a lack of freedom. I am saying that school is a lack of freedom, therefore his assertion is wrong. This is quite relevant when we're talking about depression in children. Eg from looking at South Korea we can see that the education system itself can be a cause of depression in kids, meaning that it's likely depressive in our countries too (just less than in SK).

red_green_yell 21d ago

I think you are conflating "the best data we have" with "sufficient data to prove something". I agree with you that the best data we have is inconclusive. Which doesn't mean social media is totally safe. Also it doesn't mean it's totally dangerous. It means there just isn't enough data to let science guide the decision. Science is very slow and very expensive. So since I can't wait another century for their to finally be good science about social media, I have no choice but to go with my gut. Which means, IMO: (1) regulation should be limited to what the general public's gut on average agrees with, since science won't be the neutral arbiter we want it to be for the foreseeable future. (2) I personally want to severely limit my kids access to social media because my gut says it's addictive and harmful. But I don't expect society as a whole to agree with me on that.

jstummbillig 21d ago
That seems like a very lame claim, given that Social Media is data in abundance by design, and for at least 2 decades now.
Gormo 21d ago
> Which means, IMO: (1) regulation should be limited to what the general public's gut on average agrees with, since science won't be the neutral arbiter we want it to be for the foreseeable future. (2) I personally want to severely limit my kids access to social media because my gut says it's addictive and harmful. But I don't expect society as a whole to agree with me on that. Well: (1) there is no "the general public's gut" -- the general public is millions of separate guts that don't agree with each other; (2) our political system defines explicit boundaries for the reach of regulatory power, especially where communication, expression, and social interaction are concerned, regardless of anyone's gut feeling on these issues; (3) science can't be the arbiter here at all, since science only answers "is" questions, but this is an "ought" question; which leads us to (4) as you alluded to in your final remark, this is a purely cultural issue which families/parents must address according to their own normative values, independently of each other, and there is no legitimate political or legal question here.
- inigyou 20d ago

contubernio 21d ago

ODB understood this dynamic years ago - "Wu Tang is for the children"

Rover222 21d ago

Anything to shift blame from parents, I guess. Everyone is just such a 'big tech bad' sheep now. Pitchforks out.

Gormo 21d ago
> Anything to shift blame from parents, I guess. Shifting blame from parents presumes there is a problem to blame on them, but isn't the determination of whether anything here constitutes a problem in the first place up to the parents themselves?
- Rover222 16d ago
  society just decided for them that there's a problem, I guess
  - Gormo 15d ago
    This "society" guy sure has a lot of opinions about other people's affairs.
inigyou 20d ago
You're doing the exact same pitchfork thing but against the diffuse group of "parents".
- Rover222 20d ago
  Just seems odd to me that expecting parents to be held responsible for how their children spend their time is a "pitchfork" type of idea...
  - inigyou 20d ago
    Well it is one. Also known as a thought-stopping cliche. Once you've found someone to be angry at - in this case "parents" - thought ends there.

2OEH8eoCRo0 21d ago

That's definitely why they chose to settle.

probably_wrong 21d ago

Having seen the increase in suicide rates for girls and young women [1], and having read the arguments for why no other explanation fits that data, I am convinced social media is indeed to blame. But as someone else put it once regarding global warming, what's the worst case if we reign in social media anyway? That we make the Internet a less addictive place for nothing? [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/03/suicide-rates-for-girls-are-rising-are-smartphones-to-blame https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/03/suicide-.... Archive version: https://archive.is/wY1OH https://archive.is/wY1OH