News ReporterElon Musk calls Pedro Sánchez 'tyrant' over plans to ban minors from using social media
AxolotlHow so? It’s pretty much a fact now that social media use is extremely addictive and bad for children’s development.
I don’t know what age limit I’d set but Australia set it at 16 which most people seemed to agree with as reasonable.
How so? It’s pretty much a fact now that social media use is extremely addictive and bad for children’s development.
It is not a fact, stop feeding into the moral panic.
When examining the reviews, it becomes evident that the research field is dominated by cross-sectional work that is generally of a low quality standard. While research has highlighted the importance of differentiating between different types of digital technology use many studies do not consider such necessary nuances. These limitations aside, the association between digital technology use, or social media use in particular, and psychological well-being is—on average—negative but very small. Furthermore, the direction of the link between digital technology use and well-being is still unclear: effects have been found to exist in both directions and there has been little work done to rule out potential confounders.
link.springer.com/article/…/s00127-019-01825-4?Ar…
Social media bans and severe restrictions are a rigid, ineffective response to evolving issues that warrant continuous evaluation. Social media bans inhibit adolescent psychosocial needs by keeping adolescents from a source of meaningful connection without offering a valuable alternative. Strict social media restrictions and bans for adolescents have resulted in several negative consequences, such as instilling feelings of isolation, fostering rebellion against authority, and contributing to underdeveloped digital literacy skills [10].
Additionally, legislators have been attempting to impose time restrictions on social media use for minors [11,12] but have faced challenges in passing such regulations due to constitutional concerns. Even if implemented, these time restrictions do not address the quality of adolescents’ social media interactions and other contextual factors, which are critical for evaluating their impact on mental health.
While there are considerable concerns regarding the negative impacts of social media on adolescents, it also serves as a vital resource for adolescents and young adults. Much of the current research conducted on social media use has relied on focus groups and qualitative interviews, which can be vulnerable to reporting bias. Observational studies and objective tracking of social media may be needed to better understand social media use. Research has shown that social media engagement varies by race, gender, and other social factors, and future studies should explore how these demographic differences impact the positive outcomes associated with social media. Overall, social media can be an important tool for adolescents to find social connection, seek social support, and gain access to health information. Physicians can adopt a nuanced approach to addressing adolescent social media use.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12356748/
Unfortunately, given the cross-sectional nature of most studies, it remains unclear whether social media use affects identity development in adolescence, whether the adolescent identity development process influences social media use, or whether these associations are perhaps bidirectional. Consequently, there is a need for well-designed longitudinal studies to capture the temporal direction of this relationship. Lastly, measuring only the time spent on social media limits the understanding of the relationship between social media engagement and identity development. Future research should focus on adolescents’ activities, interactions, and the content they engage with on social media to provide a more complete picture of this relationship.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12084248/
Social media and technological advancements’ impact on adolescent mental health is complex. It can be both a risk factor and a valuable support system.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12165459/
This review has highlighted how social media use can contribute to poor mental health – through validation-seeking practices, fear of judgement, body comparison, addiction and cyberbullying. It also demonstrates social media’s positive impact on adolescent wellbeing - through connection, support and discussion forums for those with similar diagnoses. Future research should consider adolescent views on improvements to social media, studying younger participants, and the impact of COVID-19 on social media use and its associated mental health implications.
Teenagers, screens and social media: a narrative review of reviews and key studies - Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
Introduction In light of growing concerns about an increasingly digital adolescence, the academic field investigating how digital technologies affect adolescents’ psychological well-being is growing rapidly. In the last years, much research has amassed, and this has been summarised in over 80 systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Materials and Methods Systematic reviews, meta-analyses and key studies are reviewed to provide insights into the state of current research linking digital technology and social media use to well-being; possible future directions and improvements are discussed. Results When examining the reviews, it becomes evident that the research field is dominated by cross-sectional work that is generally of a low quality standard. While research has highlighted the importance of differentiating between different types of digital technology use many studies do not consider such necessary nuances. These limitations aside, the association between digital technology use, or social media use in particular, and psychological well-being is—on average—negative but very small. Furthermore, the direction of the link between digital technology use and well-being is still unclear: effects have been found to exist in both directions and there has been little work done to rule out potential confounders. Conclusions Reviewing the last decade of reviews in the area, it is evident that the research field needs to refocus on improving transparency, interpreting effect sizes and changing measurement. It also needs to show a greater appreciation for the individual differences that will inherently shape each adolescent’s reaction to digital technologies.
I agree with all of those, but they point towards adolescents, where people are gaining adulthood.
For kids under say, 14 years old, you can simply look at children in your direct vicinity and observe the impact of abundant use of things like Youtube, Roblox and others (sorry I’m not hip with it), where it is impacting their motor and cooperative skills, as well as their confidence.
Saying that the platforms used by minors are an important aspect of their social life feels incredulous to me, given that spending time together IRL is such a big factor in learning how to converse with people with differing opinions, without being shielded from them by some engagement-optimizing algorithm.
Where I live, all of that, combined with the enormous pressure social media puts on these kids to always have to take others’ cameras in mind, with the ads showing them all sorts of bs, makes me feel like I wouldn’t have made it out of childhood like I have done.
Of course there are positives too, as you pointed out. Having an easily accessible network of peers could be a great help with questions you’d never ask anyone in your direct vicinity. Except that no platform where kids gather is actually safe, and easily transforms into grooming platforms.
So yea, a ban is definitely a ham-fisted approach, but in my opinion, given the already sketchy situation surrounding the privacy for such an age check, I personally can’t think of a better solution or middle ground to keep the positives of social media. Maybe force the platforms to abandon their current algorithms?
Sorry if it’s hard to read, i tried to proofread but I’m on mobile.
For kids under say, 14 years old, you can simply look at children in your direct vicinity and observe the impact of abundant use of things like Youtube, Roblox and others (sorry I’m not hip with it), where it is impacting their motor and cooperative skills, as well as their confidence.
Where is are your sources for this?
Why did you throw Roblox in there?
Video games have been shown with abundant evidence to benefit hand eye coordination…?
So yea, a ban is definitely a ham-fisted approach, but in my opinion, given the already sketchy situation surrounding the privacy for such an age check, I personally can’t think of a better solution or middle ground to keep the positives of social media. Maybe force the platforms to abandon their current algorithms?
So because of your failure to imagine a solution, kids should be barred from all of it? The solution is take the money out of social media (like here) and have MORE human adult moderators in online communities who have a vested interest in clamping down on toxic people, not lock kids in a box in a way that destroys all of our freedom including theirs.
Yes, I threw Roblox in there because until just weeks ago it was primarily used as a social platform, at least by the few dozen kids I work with regularly. Cherry picking the fact that “games” increase hand-eye coordination is completely disregarding what type of game is being played, and is besides the point I was making.
As for a failure to imagine a solution, hosting a platform that
- has appeal to kids
- shouldn’t be monetized
- actually verifies the age of its users is MUCH harder than what you make it seem like, especially if we want to preserve the privacy that they deserve. Should it be run by the government for something like eID? Should it be run by a bunch of volunteers like lemmy, disregarding the age check? Neither of these sound very attractive to me.
Also, comparing “ban social media use” to “destroy our freedom” is completely unhinged imo. As I said before I do think there should be a space for kids to talk to other kids, but I just don’t see a way for this to be realistically achievable online.
At the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at a cloud, this space for me was based in “real life” (not online) and here I found friends for life.
Yes, I threw Roblox in there because until just weeks ago it was primarily used as a social platform, at least by the few dozen kids I work with regularly. Cherry picking the fact that “games” increase hand-eye coordination is completely disregarding what type of game is being played, and is besides the point I was making.
It isn’t cherry picking, 3d games like Roblox absolutely train hand eye coordination? So do most games younger people are interested in?
For the same reason we don’t expose children to potentially addictive substances, we should not expose them to potentially addictive social media.
Each parent should se their own rules but sometimes folks don’t do that and we end up with a lot of adults who can’t take care of themselves cuz no one ever showed them how
For the same reason we don’t expose children to potentially addictive substances, we should not expose them to potentially addictive social media.
Comparing subjecting kids’ bodies to physically addictive chemicals is a poor comparison to the idea of communicating with others online through a digital identity.
Ideas and actions can become just as addictive mentally. It’s the main reason kids aren’t allowed to gamble.
Please stop trying to argue from a place of intellectual dishonesty
Ideas and actions are fundamentally different than physically giving someone an addictive chemical!?
What?
Well to entertain the offtopic games point, yes it’s a 3d game, but it also isn’t. It completely depends on what you’re actually doing inside Roblox. You can play extremely challenging parkour games, or literally just stand around in some lobby. To add onto that, it’s often played on tablets and phones, where all controls are condensed into left and right thumb controls.
And even giving that point to you that yes, some games are good for development, it isn’t at all related to the social media ban. I picked roblox specifically because of the chat function it has, and changed, to dodge the Australian age limit for social media.
An easier example would be discord, where, because of its more private nature, grooming has gone absolutely wild (youtube link). In these cases restricting their accounts to just DM’s would already help a ton, but having nuanced solutions like that for every platform that serves minors is nearly impossible I think.
The Disturbing Truth about Discord
In these cases restricting their accounts to just DM’s would already help a ton, but having nuanced solutions like that for every platform that serves minors is nearly impossible I think.
Why?
Because it’s not sustainable. It’s very easy to just start something new whenever the law catches up. And as you said, the law shouldn’t be too restrictive, lest you lose the whole reason for having a social platform. Striking that balance for every niche and edge case would be a gargantuan task, even disregarding the technical requirements for something like that.
and restricting kids from social media period is going to be LESS of a gargantuan task!??
Yes? Instead of creating a whole set of laws tailor made to whatever techbros come up with next?
How are you going to enforce your “no kids on social media” rule?
Why are you continuously moving the goalposts? As I said I don’t believe there’s a good solution, but I do support the idea behind it.
In an ideal, hypothetical world, the age check could be an anonymous government system where they can’t see what site is requesting the age check, and the site can’t see the real identity of the user: this would provide enough privacy and reliability. Unfortunately I don’t believe such a system can be made.