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Child Advocates Back Surgeon General's Call for Tobacco-Like Warnings on Social Media
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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Probably yeah. The modern world is designed to hurt your mental health. Is that the fault of social media or simply the price of being aware? If I learned that many groups of people are being genocided from reading Wikipedia and that makes me depressed would you say Wikipedia causes mental issues?
That is apples and oranges. Clicking through rabbit holes isn't the result of an aggressive algorithm designed to prime you for products being advertised. The motivation for the content being hosted is the major issue and exploitation of younger people in service of that motivation.
Advertising may be your problem, but I know the government's not taking the "we dont allow kids to be served ads", so then what, they're mad it's the Chinese in the lead? The Kids aren't gonna be better off playing COD and watching action movies both of which are lightly disguised military recruitment propaganda aimed at them. You may be mad about it but based on their actions it's not the fact kids are getting exploited that made the Surgeon General speak out, it's that's kids are getting exploited and someone else is benefiting.
The mental health isn't going to get better even if social media didn't exist in general. People would just find a different outlet to develop maladaptive coping strategies with. Treating the symptoms isn't gonna cure the root issue, but the root issue is expensive so we all know they're not going to touch that.
The advertising was an easy and obvious example. I set you up for a straw man but whatever. If you don't understand the harmful effects social media has on mental health and how it's different from other forms of media/content, I'm not going to hold your hand through that. The sophistication of engagement algorithms should be obvious. The purpose of a surgeons general warning would be to raise awareness of those specific mental health issues that can be aggravated by excessive social media use. Raising the awareness of an issue is step in the right direction. Fine to call it a band aid but there's no need to shit on progress of any type.