How Weak Evidence Is Fueling a National Push to Ban Social Media for Youth

How Weak Evidence Is Fueling a National Push to Ban Social Media for Youth(eff.org)

24 points by hn_acker 7 days ago | 10 comments

tamimio 7 days ago |

The children cause is obviously a justification to push for digital ID, digital ID will be the ultimate tool to use to further domesticate the public and control them. It was pushed during covid lockdowns and when that didn’t work, other justifications are waiting, sometimes children, sometimes illegal immigrants, depending on your audience.

But the children one is very effective, because there’s this overprotective hysteria about them, especially when most aren’t technically children (a 16yo isn’t a child for example), and this is very new concept that had serious impact on both the young ones or their parents, back in the day kids used to play outside, used to live their lives and learn, now in the Karen-led society kids can’t be even left alone in the house, or having your 3 kids using the public transportation to go to school (https://globalnews.ca/news/7145065/vancouver-dad-appeal-kids...), it destroyed kids independence or learning how to be one, while adding extra overhead on parents that eventually they stopped having kids entirely.

remarkEon 7 days ago |

I don’t need 1000 studies from Harvard or MIT to confirm what I can see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears. Part of the reason we are in this mess at all is an over reliance on statistical modeling and peer reviewed literature etc and so on when if you are of a certain age you can literally just notice how things are different. I would vote to ban it, and a bunch of people with fancy regression analyses are not going to change my mind.

With subjects like this, the outcome variables are things like “suicide” and “eating disorders”. So, what, we have to wait until R² > .95 to be convinced of the utility regulation? Seems the least-harm approach is actually to index on the side of regulation first instead of pretending the null is true in this case.

drugstorecowboy 7 days ago | |

Oh absolutely, we don't need "science" and "evidence" to decide what to do, it's so much easier to use the "well I just know it" standard. Historically, that kind of thinking created a wonderful utopia, I have no idea why we have abandoned it in modernity. I mean seriously, think of the children!

remarkEon 6 days ago | | |

I do, in fact, know it. For five 9s of human history we did not need a bunch of nerds in a classroom to tell us what to do. I have no idea how this happened, where everyone is suddenly terrified of being confident in their own observable reality and needs and endless stream of academic papers - often written, again, by people with zero functional experience in the domains they write about - to confirm their decision making for them. No, I can literally just collect my own data and make my own decisions. Here’s an example of the motivated reasoning in this essay, providing a clue about why the author is pretending you can’t make a decision without listening to “The Experts”:

> We also know that young people’s relationship with social media is complex, as it provides them essential spaces for civic engagement, identity exploration, and community building

Complete and total bullshit. This essays acts like no social activity occurred before we figured out how to send 1s and 0s along wires we hang on our houses.

Separately, I wish do address your tone. You are intentionally not engaging with the idea that normal people do not need a mountain of over credentialed experts to explain things to them, which is in itself interesting. Do you need a study that says you’re allowed to?

kelseyfrog 7 days ago |

If the evidence were undeniable would that be cause to ban social media for the youth?

We cannot simply ban things if they are bad, however weak or strong the evidence is. We have to examine access on the basis of rights alone. If the right exists then it could kill all kids and it would still be the correct decision to allow it.

illiac786 6 days ago | |

What is being modified _is_ the right. Examining the right is not the point here. Unless you mean something else than the law?

a34729t 7 days ago |

If i was dictator i would straight up ban social media for everybody. I would even consider disabling the internet and tv on the weekends and forcing people to have a mandatory vice, subsidized by the government.

hn_acker 7 days ago |

The full title is:

> The Science is Not Settled: How Weak Evidence is Fueling a National Push to Ban Social Media for Youth