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this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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They said this about TV. And game consoles. And computers. And every social media website. They said this about movies when they first came out too.
Social media is a reality of the world. This ban isn't getting rid of that, just banning one specific platform. Why is Intagram Reels acceptable but Tik Tok isn't? Because ones is owned by a Chinese company and the other isn't. That's all this ban is about. Literally nothing else.
They said it about stories that were written down instead of memorized and told our loud.
Yeah, I'm almost 100% sure the "tiktok is damaging kid's brains" is the millennial equivalent of boomers "videogames and TV are damaging kid's brains".
I'm a millennia by the way, and we are starting to sound a bit afraid of technologies.
Short form video is genuinely pretty bad though... Most social media is too, it's not just a new medium people are scared of, it deliberately trains people to maximize use of it
Facebook pioneered most of the (unethical) experiments that make it so bad. They experimented with what makes people use the app for longest - controversial topics, quickly decreasing the amount of "desired" content as you scroll to push you to the optimal reinforcement schedule in operant conditioning, and copious amounts of alerts to give you fomo
Video games can be bad for the same reason - they can also be built to cultivate addiction. And social media can be built without it... The difference between Reddit pre-investment (which coincidentally, I think was also related to tencent/bytedance... They have an obscene amount of money invested everywhere) and Reddit now is a good example
It's not just people clutching pearls about the new thing or a rise in mental illness coinciding with the growth of social media - there's a science-backed arms race between engineering more time in app and understanding/treating the effects
(That being said, I agree we millennials are starting to emotionally reject new technology - in this case there's just solid science showing how this is being misused with bad effects)
Check out the new video by "some more news", it's more comedy than anything, by it deals with some reputable sources.
https://youtu.be/5aFQY6-Mxcw?si=IFkuuPCQ6Pmv7YOK
The effect is not clear cut, and there are many other confounding effects that might be more important, and being glued to your phone might be a symptom more than a cause, but I agree that excessive social media and short format videos are bad for you, but that can be said about video games or even regular games.
Like you said, that guy is more comedy than anything. I really can't stand his videos... While I agree with most of the positions I've seen him take, there's a clear bias (maybe in the name of humor... He seems like he's going for a Jon Steward/John Oliver thing, but I just don't find him funny)
Most of all, he seems like he's got researchers pumping out scripts at a furious pace
I don't think that's a great source for this, the guy isn't a science communicator - social issues and current events sure. This is a hot pop science issue turned cultural - you really want to hear from experts on this kind of topic, it's such a muddied issue. They've been writing articles about how "social media is destroying the children" and "social media isn't as bad as it seems" for a decade and a half.
I agree there's a lot of confounding factors. Smart phones exploded along with social media after all, that alone was transformative
But that's if you look at it all together, I'm not claiming that social media is the source of all our problems (I'd argue there's a good case, but one near impossible to prove)
I'm saying social media is bad for you, particularly short form video. And by that, what I mean specifically is that it's highly addictive, incentivices the spread of misinfo, and is a displacement activity (eats up any amount of time) that doesn't improve mood or life satisfaction. And unlike the previous new forms of media, it was designed to be addictive by big data crunching - sensationalism isn't new, but this was too fast and too centralized for the natural push and pull to happen
I can go into each of those aspects deeper, but I don't think anyone is arguing this is a better way to socialize or a net good for mental health