The United States surgeon general, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, issued a public advisory on Tuesday warning of the risks of social media use to young people. In a 19-page report, Dr. Murthy noted that although the effects of social media on adolescent mental health were not fully understood, and that social media can be beneficial to some users, “there are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”
The surgeon general called on policymakers, tech companies, researchers and parents to “urgently take action” to safeguard against the potential risks.
I don’t think anyone sane really needs to be convinced of the dangers of poorly-run and terribly moderated social media like Twitter and Facebook, but I do wonder why the supposed dangers stop at the age of 18? If we look at the past 10-15 years, it seems like to me the people who most easily fall prey to misinformation and targeted troll campaigns on social media are people of older generations, who then proceeded to to incredible damage to our societies in voting booths – something that can still get a lot worse in the coming years.
I have no idea how to fix any of this – social media will always exist, and so will its dark side – but we better start thinking of something, fast, because I’m afraid the damage to our society we’ve seen so far from gullible idiots falling for obvious nonsense on social media is only going to get worse from here on out.
You don’t even have to go that far. Social media. Most young people in this day and age stare in their iPhone or Android device. Like all the time. That ought to be enough of an indicator. But of course general public will deny it. As this for sure isn’t a mental health issue. Like for sure it is not.
Generally, the idea that a 12-year-old can have unrestricted access to the internet was and is a controversial proposition. So, what’s the solution? An age rating for sites and then giving kids technology that can’t access unrated sites or sites rated for above their age?
I am surprised how little standardization exists in that area, so even if you are a parent who doesn’t want to give the kids access to the full unfiltered web, your options are pretty slim. Other than installing some filter that blocks most of the web, there is nothing else you can do.
About older people, the internet is doing what “yellow journalism” newspapers were doing in the past. I know because, in my country (Greece), two newspapers are responsible for the majority of conspiracy theory spread among the senior population. As long as those newspaper call their conspiracy theories “a vision some monk saw”, they are good with the authorities. And you can’t ban newspapers (don’t even think about it, no seriously). So, personal responsibility plays a role here. But when it comes to kids. they aren’t supposed to have personal responsibility, not the personal responsibility of an adult anyway.
I don’t know if the term conspiracy theory even means anything anymore. It should be phrased as knowledge manipulation. Throw some ideas up on the internet, see who flocks to those ideas, manipulate them. One person who doesn’t understand and thinks it is stupid thinks it is a conspiracy, the ones believing it have a new religion.
Seen a few things recently point out the psychology of needing to belong to some group or another, and what it comes down to is there have been so many (for perfectly legitimate reasons) left whatever religion they would have typically belonged to, but search out some other group to be a part of. Some of these groups definitely do more manipulative things than others, just as the old churches used to do.
Social Media is just a way for these group thinkers to spread more.
Let’s take YouTube for example. There have been enough people that have started up new platforms because YouTube appears to block / demonetize certain types of content. But if you try to look at those other platforms, you end up mostly seeing only conservative or far right stuff.
This crap should stop and everyone should have their right to say stuff. And let the viewers feed the algorithm. That was the whole point of the like / dislike buttons. Without that, the videos that get shown to you end up just being propaganda.
leech,
I don’t log into youtube, so it’s not custom tailored to me, but you’re right there’s so much crap on there by default and clicking on just one of those clickbaity youtube trolls immediately causes the whole platform to start spamming you with propaganda channels.
While youtube’s algorithm is designed to maximize their profits, content creators have figured out that playing into people’s confirmation bias is an extremely effective way to manipulate the algorithm into promoting their content very heavily and there’s no opposing view points. The result is those who specialize in spewing mindless propaganda get rewarded with millions of views by youtube and people become dumber for it.
The report seems to be touching this but the keyword is:
There is already extensive research on this:
https://www.jeffersonhealth.org/your-health/living-well/the-addictiveness-of-social-media-how-teens-get-hooked
Basically, they use the dopamine hormone to literally get you addicted to whatever you are doing. (This is different than serotonin, one is for anticipation and other for happiness).
We have the same effect on “free to play” games, and even casinos. Here, they are not only stealing your time, but they are also taking your money. (How many people would agree to pay hundreds of dollars to a “free” game it asked upfront, before they get addicted)?
So, you “pull to refresh”, or “click the lootbox” action becomes your entire purpose.
When this is tried on mice (by hardwiring a button to the dopamine section of brain):
https://sciencenordic.com/addiction-denmark-neuroscience/mice-experiments-explain-how-addiction-changes-our-brains/1436634 … They die of starvation.
It’s simple, if it’s a Twitter paying/verified account, then it’s unlikely to be a bot, cause that’s too expensive to run at scale.
Otherwise, it’s statistically going to be an AI.
For the record, I don’t use Twitter, so I don’t care either way, but the logic is sound.
drstorm,
It’s not dissimilar from the idea to solve spam by charging small fees to send emails. The logic is sound only if there’s a per spam cost. For example it could make it cost prohibitive to send millions of spams if the sender were paying per email. But unfortunately such schemes don’t have the support of innocent users feel it penalizes them too, which it does.
In terms of twitter, there are millions of businesses using it for spammy advertising and honestly I don’t think any flat fee that is reasonable for users would dissuade them at all assuming it buys them meaningful results. The problem with spam is that even if nearly everyone ignores it, it just takes a tiny fraction of people to buy something to encourage the spammers.
I’d say the opposite. For the large organised “botnet for hire” schemes, verified accounts are a small investment for a massive increase in effectiveness/credibility. If you’re a customer of these schemes trying to spread a message; would you rather pay $100 to hire 100 bots that everyone is likely to ignore or pay $100 to hire 10 verified bots that people are likely to believe?
Of course its the same for actual humans. A normal person without any agenda who just wants to chat with friends has nothing to gain by paying subscription fees; and people trying to influence you in some way (whether its self-promotion, a cooperate account, a marketing agency or a political campaign) have a reason to pay.
Ironically; this only works because people were trained to think “blue tick = trustworthy” for years before it was changed into a subscription service, so a lot of people still think “blue tick = trustworthy” now that it has changed. It might take 10 years before that training wears off and twitter users acclimatize to the current reality (“blue tick = must’ve had some reason to pay”).
For organizations twitter’s plan charges organizations $1k/mo. This was met with a very cold reception. $12k/year…yikes! A lot of legitimate companies and organizations said they weren’t going to pay it. So to avoid the situation where unverified organizations become the norm, twitter decided to give the popular accounts the check for free…
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/31/23664923/twitter-verification-for-organizations-free-for-most-followed
So as it stands, popular companies get it for free to keep the status symbol relevant and make people expect it, but less popular companies will be on the hook to pay up.
That’s such a bad bad assumption that bots aren’t profitable at any given price point to scale. You’re just raising the level, and knocking out some bots. The profitable ones at that cost are still going to exist.
Anything can be a ‘profound risk’. E.g. eating, driving, reading this post.
You’re looking for danger and threat – you’ll find it.
Is the risk any higher than believing the crap that’s on mainstream media 24/7 just because it’s been produced by a giant corporation with the Ministry of Truth on its side?
I guess the Ultra-Orthodox Jews were right along with their Kosher phones!