I think the angle of these laws as well as the parenting response here in the thread are both wildly off because they both take a completely individualistic approach to something that's a systemic issue.
The litigation culture of having individual people sue for damage doesn't go to the root cause and is a bureaucratic and legal nightmare. Delegating something that is effectively an environmental issue to the responsibility of individual parents is like blaming parents for not protecting their kids from drinking lead water.
Technology and social media are ubiquitous, there's only an illusion of choice. It's digital infrastructure and the water we swim in. In fact the covid pandemic has shown that it is not even a choice as it turned into the primary means for kids to have a social life and education.
What's necessary is clear rules that align the behavior of companies with social ends. If they can't square making money with keeping public discourse healthy or not making teens mentally ill they need to be culled, it's that simple. Clear, strong and unambiguous legislation, rather than private legal threats will not harm the kind of entrepreneurs that build tools that are in the interest of the public. It will give them a better shot, just like environmental laws for cars have aided electric car makers. For every billionaire incumbent there are thousands eager to build good products to take a slice of the pie. The anti-regulatory argument has very little merit.
I agree with everything you’re saying up until this point:
> What's necessary is clear rules that align the behavior of companies with social ends. If they can't square making money with keeping public discourse healthy or not making teens mentally ill they need to be culled, it's that simple.
I don’t think it’s that simple, or simple in the way you may imagine. It’s impossible to come up with rules that even a plurality agree with. Just scroll the comment threads here when social media “censorship” comes up, which may not be directly what you’re talking about but is surely related in part if not in whole to the very real mental health issues you are describing.
The auto regulation and leaded drinking water analogies, however, incidentally hint at what the real answer is. We banned those things. If social media is the lead in our water, we don’t need better filters (or whatever) we need to get rid of it.
I think what is needed is some kind of reactive and iterative restrictions. As well as analytics. Just like how companies measure addiction as a stat to optimise, this data should become public and used as a way to measure the effectiveness of new restrictions.
An idea I had is to set some kind of guideline like “users should on average spend no more than 1 hour on the platform per day” and then if the average user starts going over that, the company gets penalised until they bring the number lower.
This way you let the companies use whatever measure they find works best to keep addiction under control.
We have nutritional labels on food. We need nutritional labels for websites/apps/services. And then maybe a small popup "You've reached your daily serving of social media use. You may continue, but know that you'll be in unhealthy territory."
And then we treat "social media addiction" as an additional insurance cost factor, just like obesity. More than 2h of facebook per day => let's double your mental health premiums.
That way, we (the society) can accurately measure and allocate the damage and resulting costs caused by social media companies.
>Just scroll the comment threads here when social media “censorship” comes up,
I mean some of the controversy here may be of the 'difficult to make someone understand something their income depends on them not understanding' variety.
> The litigation culture of having individual people sue for damage doesn't go to the root cause
Doesn’t it? The root issue is an externality: social media companies profit from the user engagement that addiction provides, but do not bear the cost of the addiction. Creating a private right of action (preferably with asymmetric fee award exposure) both enables and incentivizes the charging of those costs to the companies.
Admittedly, this “litigation culture” as you call it is inefficient. But I think it’s generally more effective than the alternative of having top-down regulatory intervention, where you have to contend with issues such as regulatory capture and the general ineptitude of government bureaucracies.
Creating regulations like this may end up acting as a regulatory moat for existing social network companies. This probably makes the overall social media pie smaller overall but guarantees incumbents slice of the pie.
We've seen this happen in other highly regulated areas such as healthcare, telecommunications, etc.
I suspect the way things are trending, in 10 years, very few entrepreneurs would be willing to start a new social media company.
Clearly the regulators see this as a potential downside, which is why the $100 million in gross revenue provision was added.
On the other hand, we want to prevent new companies forming on the premise they can make money from gamifying their product so much it becomes addictive. Now, addictiveness has to have some definition to be useful. It can't be some odd random user who suffers from some kind of condition that prevents them from self-regulating their particular addiction whereas for example other people don't get addicted. There have to be some thresholds and milestones which indicate some service is "addictive" and then regulate against that.
I think when companies consult with behavioral, and other, psychologists in order to craft better ways to wring more engagement out of their users, those companies are intentionally making their products addictive. I don't see it as being much different than exploiting the addictive potential of new nicotine salts, or exploiting additives to cigarettes to do the same.
It can be spun however anyone wants to spin it, but at the end of the day, that's exploiting biology to subvert the will of others. And yes, I know this can describe advertising, as well.
Agreed. This is why the "metaverse" needs oversight as well. It will be a new frontier ripe for gamification, explication and general behavioral control.
So, just {Facebook,} has to have a timer at the top? Above the fold? Indicating cumulative time spent? What about Amazon?
For context here, there are many existing methods for limiting ones access to certain DNS domains and applications at the client. A reasonable person can:
- Install a browser extension for limiting time spent by domain
- Buy a router that can limit access by DNS domain and time of day (with regard for the essential communications of others who could bypass default DNS blocking with a VPN that can be expected to also regularly fail)
- Install an app (with access to the OS process space of other programs in order to restrict them) to limit time spent by application and/or DNS domain
-- Enable "Focus Mode" in Android; with the "Digital Wellbeing" application
-- Enable "Screen Time" in iOS; and also report on and limit usage of apps [and also to limit access to DNS domains, you'd also need required integration with a required browser]
You can install just an IM (Instant Messenging) app, and only then learn strategies for focusing amidst information overload and alert fatigue.
Some users do manage brands and provide customer service and support non-blocked but blocking essential communications, while managing their health at a desk all day. Some places literally require you to check your mobile device at the door. What should the default timer above the fold on just facebook be set to?
> How are they supposed to know that you don't want to be in the store anymore?
Is the store - who you are not paying - a 1) business of public accomodation; or 2) obligated to provide such detection and ejection services; or 3) required to provide service?
You can't cut them off, they're Donny (who TOS don't apply to). You must cut them off, they can't they're not even. You are responsible for my behavior!
Best of luck suing the game publisher for optimizing the game, the author of a book you got for FREE for your time lost, suing the bar that you chose to frequent; do you think they're required to provide service to you? Did they prevent you from leaving? Did they prevent you from choosing to do something else, like entering a different URL in your address bar at will?
You should instead pay someone to provide the hypothetical service you're demanding fascist control over. CA is not a shareholder; and this new policy will be challenged and the state must apply said policy to all other businesses equally: you may not dog just {business you're trying to illegally dom} with an obligation to put a countdown or countup timer above the fold because they keep taking so much of your time.
EDIT: I just can't f believe they thought that only {Facebook} would have to check real name IDs at the door, run a stopwatch for each user with a clock above the fold, profile your mental health status, allow Donny to keep harassing just whoever, and tell you when it's time to go because you can't help yourself when it's time to leave the store they continued to optimize.
> we want to prevent new companies forming on the premise they can make money from gamifying their product so much it becomes addictive
Not if the existing companies are still allowed to do exactly that, or it's just called regulatory capture and serves the interests of Reddit/Twitter/Facebook/TikTok and co. Either it's illegal for everybody to exploit mental illness for profit or it's legal for everybody.
It's possible for an adult to enjoy these strongly addictive products responsibly, probably up until they figure out a way to audiovisually create heroin in your brain.
that's exactly why faecebook etc are fully onboard with other such initiatives, like fines for hate speech. they want it to be prohibitively expensive to dethrone them.
If this is a concern, lobby for applying the law to companies or social networks over set sizes. Tangential laws are proposed in the EU that apply to companies with market caps over ~$80 billion, for example[1].
If the EU was making a directive on this topic it would not differentiate between company sizes because it thinks that the company size has a relation to how addictive their product is.
The reason why it would differentiate on size is precisely the reasoning you presented in your previous post. Because it doesn't want to create moats around big existing players on the market. If you look at the act the GP linked to you'll see that one of its purposes it to tear down a non regulatory moat that those big existing player have.
And because a small company, without a doubt, has less potential for harm on a societal level than a big company.
> I suspect the way things are trending, in 10 years, very few entrepreneurs would be willing to start a new social media company.
I suspect that future social media will be even worse that Twitter/TikTok/Reddit and co, just like TikTok is even more unhinged than Facebook or Twitter. Social media is entertainment, entertainment is always pushing the limits of what is morally acceptable to broadcast because it's profitable and brings in more eyeballs. It's exactly the same reason as to why reality TV perverted television even more by turning TV into some voyeuristic dystopia. That's what social media is.
> very few entrepreneurs would be willing to start a new social media company.
I’m not sure this is a bad thing. Is the world better and happier from social media? Do we want it to keep rising from the ashes and sowing misery, ignorance, and depression? Maybe it is my nostalgia glasses but I feel like everyone I know was happier when the only way to communicate long distance for the average person was a rotary phone that weighed about 20 lbs.
Yes, it's a very bad thing. There are a lot of different types of social media. How about projects with Discourse forums? That could be considered social media. Do you want to force them onto Facebook?
> The proposal would only apply to social media companies that had at least $100 million in gross revenue in the past year
And also:
> Also, companies that conduct regular audits of their practices to identify and remove features that could be addictive to children would be immune from lawsuits.
...if a company is earning $100 million per year from their social media product I think I'm kind of okay with demanding they spend a person-day every couple months verifying that they're not adding features classed as addictive to children.
I'm not really seeing where your outrage is coming from, here.
Self-audits never work, which is why there are regulatory agencies everywhere to 'double check' a company's work when ensuring legal compliance.
The real issue with this bill is that "addiction" isn't the same for everyone. The Twitter "trends" paradigm itself could be considered addictive if you really stretched it, maybe a 15 year old looks at it every waking hour of their day and goes through it all looking for tweets to reply to? Since the law doesn't only apply in a class-action sense, any parent could bring this to court with their anecdote and the court's main argument would be on whether that specific feature is 'addictive', not "addictive to all children".
For reference:
> An operator of a social media platform shall be found to have violated their duty if the social media platform is found to have addicted a child user by either of the following means:
> (1) The use or sale of a child user’s personal data.
> (2) The development, design, implementation, or maintenance of a design, feature, or affordance.
Quite literally anything could be grounds for the $25k + 2x attorney's fees in damages.
They send notifications to your phone whenever someone messages you. Those unread icons are addictive, at least for me I always have to actively think to not open them immediately.
That’s just the natural outcome of blurring chat rooms with social media.
That still applies for non-social media. My iOS IRC client connected to my znc bouncer also shows notifications. Same for iMessage which is more profile-like, since you can send memoji and stickers and play games with your friends (eg. GamePigeon), which is why the bill tries to exclude 'chat' apps and email apps.
How much different is IRC/Discourse vs Twitter? Hashtags are effectively channels. Twitter just has more subscribers and more individuals in each channel.
The question isn't whether you think they have an addictive algorithm, the question is whether a lawyer can convince a jury that they fit the law's definition of one.
I think the person you responded to was referring to Discourse[1] forums, not Discord[2]. Although I agree with you and the gp, both Discourse and Discord have very different incentives than traditional social media FB, IG, etc.
Preventing competition in social media won't eliminate it - it will prevent innovative new entrants from solving its issues, while allowing the status quo to continue and likely deteriorate further.
> Is the world better and happier from social media?
Yes, absolutely. I actually lived in the rotary phone era and it was fucking lonely. It's much easier to stay connected with friends now. That's especially true now that I've moved out of the city and started a family.
What I've come to realize in recent years is there are an awful lot of people who have children who don't want to be parents. It's like they don't even like children but it seems like they're running down a Life checklist of things you should do.
Or maybe they like the idea of having adult children? I really don't know.
But I know so many people who don't actually like spending time with their children. I get some people actually have to work a lot but it's a shallow analysis to blame it on that (IMHO).
So expectations tend to be super-high. Their children often have to go to Ivy League schools. They themselvves need to save north of $500k+ to pay for that blue blood education. These people will bemaon the high cost of raising children while living in a 7000 sq ft 6 bedroom house with their 2 children, paying $50k/year to send each of those children to private schools and so on.
And while you can argue those things have value (I actually think that's debatable at best), the net effect is that these people actually seem to spend little time with their children. After awhile it occurs to you that's the point.
I feel like an awful lot of people are motivated by living vicariously through their children too. "I'm going to give my child the opportunities I never had". That sort of thing.
As far as social media goes, it's easy to say "don't allow your children on social media" but my guess is it's mostly childless people saying that. Those growing up now are connected socially to their peers through these networks. No social media is a form of forced social exclusion that's pretty all-encompassing. It's a hard problem.
I'd say, if anything, the problem starts way earlier than that. I actually think in an ideal world a child wouldn't even see an electronic screen (TV, phone, tablet, computer) before they're like 8 years old. That's pretty unrealistic though.
One issue with social media is because of US laws most networks are age-restricted. Some to 18 and over. Others to 13 and up. We all know that people lie and use them anyway. Where does responsibility for this lie? With the companies? The parents? I really don't know.
It does seem easy to scapegoat companies for these issues though.
> It does seem easy to scapegoat companies for these issues though
When the addictive factor is deliberately manufactured into a product (AKA engagement), the company absolutely bears some (IMO, a large amount of) responsibility.
> When the addictive factor is deliberately manufactured into a product (AKA engagement)
So, every product from every company ever. That's the goal of marketing, after all. Why not extend this law for everyone? Why can't I sue Lego because my son keeps insisting I buy them, or why can't I sue Budweiser because I keep finding myself buying their booze?
It's an unfairly targeted law to win easy political points, because everyone hates big social right now, but everyone loves Lego.
Spot on! These folks arguing for that kind of regulation, along with associated enforcement bureaucracy, are really arguing against freedom in the end. They may not have put 2+2 together yet, but I bet a lot of them haven't actually thought things beyond 1st order effects.
And considering the forum, a credible argument for everyone to sacrifice some of their freedom needs to clear a way higher bar.
Indeed, some of the smartest individuals in the world are hyper-optimizing their products for addictive properties with multi-armed bandit optimization strategies. The average overworked parent doesn’t have a chance in comparison.
If this law isn’t perfect and has some unintended side effects, we can adjust and stay flexible.
Hard disagree, this reeks of HN bias in my opinion in that the problem is clearly how disproportionately awesome tech and tech companies are. The problem is lazy parents. Everything described is a reasonable defense for why the product might be addictive but not for why parents are somehow unable to bar their child from it nor does it explain why parents are unwilling to take these measures. The reality from what I've seen of other parents at my children's schools is that most come at technology with the boomer mentality that treats having to learn new things as some sort of arduous feat and not a basic expectation of being a responsible caretaker.
Having children is generally a timebound thing. As can be a career, often within the same time period as raising children. It's not like people can retire and think "OK, time to have kids!" This conjunction inevitably creates tension and exhaustion.
Being an engaged parent is great fun, but it's intensive. Trying to be an engaged parent while juggling a heavy workload is especially difficult; people find solace at the office because almost anything is easier. In an era where work follows you everywhere - I work past midnight most nights when the kids are sleeping and for parts of most weekends - the tension is hard to escape.
I don't think most people don't want or resent their kids, just that it's another thing pulling you in more directions.
That's a very jaundiced view of parents. The problem is that social media is ubiquitous and eventually kids will be introduced to it overwhelmingly. Unless your child is repressed and not allowed around other kids, etc it's going to be a part of their daily lives. If social media companies are predatory towards minors it'll continue to get worse. Parents are trying, believe me but it's a loosing battle.
I am a high school student and I haven't used social media (insta/fb/tiktok/snapchat). I keep in touch with my friends on whatsapp, voice calling(yes that exists) and offline.
When we were online we used to talk on zoom/Google Meet whatever. I didn't feel any loss not being with my friends on social media.
> One issue with social media is because of US laws most networks are age-restricted. Some to 18 and over. Others to 13 and up. We all know that people lie and use them anyway. Where does responsibility for this lie? With the companies? The parents? I really don't know.
If they start requiring some sort of government issued ID for age verification for the services in question, those services might as well go up in flames. It's easier just to find or create an alternative that isn't affected by the legislation
Why don't we just put everyone in a box after they are born and feed them through a straw like a hamster so they can't possibly ever harm themselves? People need to take responsibility for themselves.
Do you think cigarettes and alcohol should be legal for sale to children? What about advertising specifically targeted at getting kids interested and hooked on cigarettes? What about child labor? Why not let just parents decide what's right for their kids?
There's some behaviors of corporations interacting with children that are correctly regulated in the interest of the broader society we live in. It is completely valid to argue that social media specifically isn't harmful enough to regulate, but your comment amounts to snark that implies nothing should be regulated which is a pretty extreme Anarcho-capitalist position to blanket take.
Oddly enough, in most states it's legal for a parent to furnish alcohol to a minor.
I remember being given a glass of wine or a beer occasionally growing up. I think this is something that my parents did to discourage underage drinking my making it boring (which worked, at least for me).
Okay but then you'd actually have to prove that advertising and social media rises to the same level of consistent harm with reliably addictive mechanisms as cigarettes and alcohol. You'd have to do, like, medical science and stuff, not just vague surveys that some teens get slightly lower self esteem peppered with a few irrelevant "I quit Facebook and I feel better now" anecdotes.
A lot of people were so sure and so vocal that violent video games cause violent behavior, a "just so" theory that no one bothered to prove. History loves to rhyme.
This work has been done and suppressed by the companies themselves (see multiple whistleblowers). Nobody else is in a position to access the data to do the studies.
> 1. Do you think cigarettes and alcohol should be legal for sale to children?
Yes. But age limits on them should still exist but be lowered (to say 13). Parents need to teach their kids how to responsibly enjoy vices. In general I think all vice laws should be purged from the books.
> 2. What about advertising specifically targeted at getting kids interested and hooked on cigarettes?
I'm okay with some limits on addictive advertising but I largely think it is parents responsibility to teach their kids how to properly evaluate purchases and understand what addiction is so they can avoid it.
> 3. What about child labor?
Depends on age, but I'm OK with kids working as young as thirteen in many capacities. Even younger kids can work in some more limited jobs.
> 4. Why not let just parents decide what's right for their kids?
Parents should be deciding what is right for their kids... they are _their_ kids. The government is too far abstracted away from families to know what is best for a kid.
Age 13? You can’t tell my 12yo what to do. I have every right to let them work in the coal mines. It builds character. /s
Labor laws are ruining this country (Ron Swanson, parks&rec)
It's my job to not shit in the pool. And, it's your job to avoid it if I do shit in the pool.
The idea that people can do whatever they want and the consequences are 100%, completely on the heads of other people to deal with is a hilariously juvenile view of personal responsibility.
And if someone intentionally "shits in the pool" repeatedly, they should expect legal action to be taken against them. At a minimum, being forbidden from coming back.
Kids are using phones and tablets as part of school learning programmes/homework. Additionally, my children (under 10yo) use them for educational apps, language lessons, reading library ebooks and doing word puzzles like Quordle.
Because they're different ages and with different interests, they often use them in place of TV also when they can't agree on what to watch.
I have to ask, how is it better to restrict children (not everything you can do with a smartphone is tied to social media) than the corporations that target them, that intentionally create addictive experiences?
Could you define addictive experience? When does an experience cross that (apparently bright?) line?
I ask because it looks to me like every restaurant, bar, food producer, video game company, social media company, hotel, cinematic universe, book series author, and basically any consumer product or service is optimizing for repeat business.
You're not wrong. Lots of companies do such optimizations. And some of them are creating virtually identical problems for parents and children.
But one way to tell they're going too far is when they explicitly call out these actions on investor calls, on official blog posts, ex-employees speaking out...
We should consider individuals aren't able to parent their kids effectively.
Would you rather trust two exhausted individuals or a huge army of trained professionals at payroll by government to parent the kids?
There is very less transfer of knowledge and the worldview of individual parents is often limited. If there is an organization parenting thousands of kids, they can run A/B tests, see results of changing incentives, able to better respond from all data gathering and long trail of past experience. A parenting organization at scale also has more power to push through effective policy faster and change legal system to remove harmful corporations (social media in this thread).
Individual parents on other hand are inefficient, start with nothing usually, don't have enough visibility, time or expertise to consider the most optimal choices. They are helpless.
In the US we have a system where thousands of doctors, nurses and researchers are responsible for the healthcare of soldiers, former and present.
Healthcare is a known thing. We know how to provide good healthcare. This inherently does not require innovation.
The VA is one of the most fundamentally broken and flawed systems known to man. Months and months before you can get basic care. Psychiatric care is so poor that soldiers have stupidly high rates of suicide. Basic things go misdiagnosed. There are reams of paperwork to fill out.
Do you really think we should trust kids to such a system?
Cuz we already do. Right now there are thousands of kids managed by the US government and they barely have blankets or beds. The government can barely feed them, and generally fails at showering them and clothing them.
Read into any case where a bulk group has mass raised children. Not once has it worked out. Not once.
Yeah but you can’t replace parental love so easily. So maybe a compromise solution where the government raises the children while the parents are at work in the mornings and afternoon, and the parents take over afterwards in the evening? Maybe let parents have the weekends to spend more time with their children? We can call this arrangement “public schooling”.
We could make the government portion of raising kids flexible and offer more time to parents with longer hours. Call this “extracurriculars” maybe. Thoughts on my novel idea?
While I appreciate the social cohesion and equality of opportunity such a totalitarian indoctrination and control could provide, it’s anathema to most Westerners. I would not support it.
Certainly it’s the fastest way to curb religious extremism, racism, and other social ills. Sadly it’s also the fastest way to create them.
> Certainly it’s the fastest way to curb religious extremism, racism, and other social ills.
Specifically, it eliminates extremism by extinguishing religious and cultural groups in their entirety. Under some definitions and the specific intentions/targeted groups, this can even qualify as genocide.
If you had any experience with child protection services you would know that it is just a 9 to 5 job for those people and they do not love the kids (I don't mean that harshly doctors don't cry every time a patient dies on them).
Child protective services seem like exactly the kind of job that you cannot do if you care too much about the kids you see. For very similar reasons to the doctor example. The entire job is visiting children in terrible situations and deciding whether forcibly taking them away from their homes and families would better for them on-the-balance. If you get it wrong you might make things far worse for the very kids you want to help, and even the ideal outcome may still suck for everyone involved. Personally, I could never do it. Certainly not while keeping my sanity
Exactly. Then we'll have abolished the nuclear family and the problem of generational wealth. There will be an equitable distribution of wealth and disparities along racial, sexual, and economic lines will have evaporated.
Without generational wealth or inheritance, there will be no incentive to own property. All housing will be group housing provided in return for work. All transportation will be provided as a public utility. People will no longer have anything to hide.
Couldn't the same argument be used for cigarettes? "We shouldn't regulate tobacco companies influence on kids because it's a parent's responsibility to prevent that sort of harmful thing"?
I agree that this bill is silly, but "parents are responsible for preventing all harm to children" doesn't seem like a universally applicable argument.
A big issue is how “parenting” has changed in recent decades.
Even a couple of generations ago it was much more of a group effort. Now it is just the parents versus everyone else either not caring or kicking down on them (for example, some comments over here).
You can. You just have to make a strong enough argument to prove video games cause violence for a judge to let the case proceed. There's a reason it doesn't matter and it's not because video games are beyond banning.
Why not give people both the freedom and personal responsibility instead of making assigning parental duties to the government like China has recently?
Agreed. It should be applied to all services which are optimized for addiction. Social media is just the worst of the bunch due to its built in peer pressure.
You could argue that reading is addictive, maybe some people find math so as well. I became addicted to computers when I was a kid and we didn't even have the internet. Sports can be addictive, along with dancing, or just plain socializing. Silly, yes, but you can bet that there'd be lawsuits claiming all sorts of things are addictive and some number will find sympathetic juries. Seems like a pretty bad idea to me.
What a lazy, pathetic attitude. Why don't you sue candy makers while you're at it?
If you don't want to perform a parent's job, DON'T HAVE KIDS.
I detest social-media companies in general, but clogging up our courts with this namby-pamby bullshit is offensive to every citizen.
And ugh, just as people were mocking Reddit's declining culture, a couple of them turn around and down-mod this oh-so-hurtful sentiment.
Pull up your big-boy pants and parent your kids, because taxpayers shouldn't be paying for your nanny. They're already paying for your kids' schooling.
And those same kids will be wiping your arse whilst you're drooling in an old people's home. Stop repeating this nonsense that somehow we can all just be individuals disjoint from society.
Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Given that the human brain is still forming into your 20's, the harm can happen at any age. And given how much social media pressures impact teenagers, it doesn't even require that early of an age.
Are you suggesting that my comment is incorrect, that parents are okay to allow access to smartphones/tables/etc. for their children, because our brains can be harmed by social media at many other ages?
I believe that is what they call whataboutism, unless I misunderstood the point of your comment. When people comment at me I usually assume they're attempting to correct me.
If corporations are going to go to the lengths they go to to psychologically manipulate their uses, they themselves have raised the gravity of the situation in terms of how social media affects people.
Especially when the psychology behind it is completely unknown to everyone (sure, everyone has an idea but I think some would be surprised at what they actually do).
I’m with you that it’s still on the parents, but parents taking it to the social media companies in a way is embracing their role as parents to act on their kids behalf.
All that out of the way, sounds a bit zany and I’m not sure how or if this could ever actually work.
I love talking with my kids, and I love hanging out with my kids. I don't understand the parents who go out to eat and let there kids bring a device of some sorts.
1) We decided for highschool for the first phone. Some parents give smart watches so the kids are contactable but don't have a big screen.
2) I have the Google controls. That said, its as you say kids can circumvent controls so the best thing you can do is have this conversation.
We've spoken a buch of times with the kids about how other kids will look at gore/porn out of interest/shock value but they should choose not to as its not healthy etc. And other things like staying private online, predators, come to us if they are getting bullied or do something wrong like share an embarrasing picture and its getting used against them etc.
Ultimately this one its about having a good/trusting parent child relationship I feel than via digital restrictions.
3) From the Google controls we have time restriction, both time of day and total hours.
The other thing I feel is important 1) is making sure you do things with kids. It's easy to get tired as a parent and let them entertain themself but playing board games and sports etc is so important. Making sure you have quality time beyond screens makes it a smaller part of their life. And 2) Encourage the right friendships. Put the effort to organise events with kids/families with good values as the group surrounding them will have a big impact.
> Ultimately this one its about having a good/trusting parent child relationship I feel than via digital restrictions.
Your children still need someone you trust for when they don't want to go to you. Your friend, your sister, someone. Because regardless of how good of a parent you are, there will be times they don't want to go to you.
This is excellent advice, and points out how difficult parenting actually is.
None of what you mention is easy, or path of least resistence. Especially waiting for highschool for the phone. We did sixth grade and we regret it now that our middle schooler is mildly addicted. We are spending this summer working on that.
I think it's fair to postulate that a high schooler will have the opportunity to become just as addicted. I'd even postulate that one cause will be the lack of experience self-regulating the use of a cellphone.
And let's not forget the bullying and peer pressure a child who does not have a cell phone will endure. I saw this happen with a niece I tutor first hand, sadly. Not to mention that a good portion of her assignments come via the web or an app these days - which is super frustrating for me.
single parents, parents working odd hours, divorced parents - they often must give phones to their kids at earlier ages
are you certain your kids ~~are not sneaking a flashlight under their blankets to read books until dawn~~ do not have a secondary phone to scroll tiktok until dawn, are not learning from friends about vpns, are not browsing porn
when your kids go to school or are away from home can you be certain they are not circumventing all those things you have had the talk about?
Not to mention, beyond the technical considerations, there's also social implications. To what extent can you remove kids from social media before they start feeling excessively socially constricted compared to their peers? For example, taking away phones altogether is likely to lead to a much harder social life. If the tech companies encourage more responsible use of social media, they can make it easier for both the parents and kids who may want to reduce usage of it. In the same way, the lack of any guardrails whatsoever helped bring us to where we are now. I imagine both pieces are necessary/useful. Disclaimer that I'm not a parent so haven't had to think about this too deeply but it is something I consider in a hypothetical sense at times.
Most children aren’t able to do that. Also parents can routinely verify. The responsibility for parenting should remain with parents and not the government.
It isn't much of a question of if they need to as it is a fact that they already do, thus anyone without such a social life is at a social disadvantage unless you outright legislate away internet usage for kids, which is of course absurd. At that point you might as well just lock them up and homeschool them.
1/ You do that when you get the idea that they have grown smart enough and sneaking and doing it anyway on their friends' phones.
2/ Apple phones are good and hard to hack (at least by a regular kid).
3/ Yes. Plus a reward/punishment system for additional/curtailed hours on completion of chores.
I personally have a slightly different approach.
1/ I have given them Kindle as replacement devices (they also have jailed phones) and socially engineered them to make them feel superior about that. I've also given them some RPi to play with (to practically apply the things they read and learn from the books on Kindle).
This way, they don't take the phone as a forbidden fruit (since they already have it).
2/ I have created a normal user on Android phones with Microsoft ecosystem (I have a O360 family subscription) so, apart from the regular firewall stuff, it also logs everything my kids do on the phone and reports to me. Occassionally I go through the complete logs in their phones, to see if they tried to bypass their user profiles and do something funny.
However, it's important to make them realise that all this is done for their own good. Plus I make sure not to interfere in everything they do. It's ok to make mistakes as long as I can make sure it's reversible. Otherwise I've seen deep rooted resentment in some other kids. For example, their map locations sync to me in real time. I make sure they understand that this is for their own convenience (kids don't care about safety so no point in highlighting that) like arranging an Uber if they need one or to give them directions. That way, they don't take it as spying on them and are completely comfortable with sharing their live location with me. On the contrary, they take it as their parent (me) taking care of them and are actually pretty proud about it.
3/ I avoid negative feedback loops. I don't say you can use the phone only for 2 hours daily. Rather I say, you can use the phone as long as you want but only after you finish your daily checklist. Chores/Class tasks etc. It's works pretty well.
Yes, but every time someone brings up "parenting" as a way to control their children's social media habits, a thousand man-children rush furiously to their phones to declare that the behavior is not only an infringement upon the rights of the child but worthy of estrangement.
Would you say the same thing if someone was standing outside an elementary school peddling drugs and cigarettes?
Or creepy dudes who offer to buy alcohol for minors to get in their pants?
The world is a big place and it's impossible for parents to be everywhere they need to be for their kids all the time. It's only gotten unfathomably bigger since the advent of the web and the explosion of social media.
1) We've gotten very good at making things hyper-addictive.
2) Market forces reward clicks. Without regulation, things WILL be hyper-addictive.
3) Private right-of-action is a really good way to implement regulatory frameworks; it tends to be far more efficient than DoJ or similar for these sorts of things.
Personally, I'm uninterested into being tricked into getting addicted to something. I would welcome regulation which would change those market dynamics. The older I get, the more I'd like a humane regulatory system.
Where gamification is in 2022, society will collapse if we don't get this under control. We've polarized our whole civic discourse for ad clicks.
A lot of fun things aren't addictive. For example, I've done a lot of sports. I enjoy them. I don't suffer withdrawal if I stop doing them, and I don't feel a compulsion to start doing them. Indeed, I need to motivate myself to do them.
A lot of addictive things aren't fun. A gambler might be miserable but CAN'T stop. Likewise, there were a lot of time-wasting games in the 2010s which no one enjoyed playing, but which were very hard to stop.
A popular model was:
- Click on things to gather points / resources / etc. which you can trade in to be able to do more.
- You have a constant feeling of progress. There is often exponential growth of some kind of points / diamonds / etc. as you can trade them in for things which produce more.
- There is real-world time involved. For example, plants might grow in 8 hours, and whither in 24. You need to log in periodically or you lose them. There might be weekly rewards, which are one-shot (if you don't get one some week, you lose it forever).
- There is an element of randomness on rewards (treasure boxes) and determinism on punishments (if you've failed to log in one week, you lose that reward forever).
This was well-studied. Similar techniques are used by shopping vendors to get people to buy, employers to get people to work, etc. We've gotten really good at making things addictive.
Right now, there's a similar thing happening with hate and polarization. People have a need to follow stories which often have no effect on their lives (in some cases, are statistical anomalies), but which serve to scare. We're wired to follow fear. That's a lot more effective than the 2010 model, and makes people hate each other.
A lot of drugs create a dependence too, without being fun.
something addictive is something that you can't stop even if you want to. There are lots of reasons why someone would want to stop doing something that is fun, but if it is addictive they can't.
You know how as a parent if you do something like read a book, your kid will imitate you?
Imagine majority of parents glued to a smartphone and their kid wants to imitate them. The parent allows it because they are addicted to the device and don't know how to cope / moderate it.
Kids are a reflection of their parents, if we ought to solve a problem, it should also be for internet addiction of the previous generation.
Exactly, why don't they take responsibility for making an addictive product? Why do they need to be sued to recognise their negative impact on other people?
Because suing them into compliance is easier than forcing them into creating standards that protect children. These are companies that spend many millions of dollars a year researching how to get kids hooked on their products.
"Business groups have warned that if the bill passes, social media companies would most likely cease operations for children in California rather than face the legal risk."
That might be the actual purpose of the bill. And I believe it would be a net positive for society.
Stupid thought: Perhaps if social media didn't spend so much effort aiming their products at minors, and didn't experiment on their userbase, for example to see if they could make them sad... perhaps social media companies could have avoided legislation like this.
I hope this might push towards more regulation in social media. There needs to be a way to turn on a chronological feed, hide likes/retweets/scores/comments, and hide all content made by people I don’t follow.
Doesn’t have to be default, but should be configurable. It’s harder and harder to participate in society without major social media tools so don’t just tell me to stop using these platforms.
Tell that to young children who’s brains are still developing and who don’t understand the consequences. Not every child can have a parent to teach them the rights and wrongs of the world. Sometimes policy enforcement helps situations like this. It keeps large corporations from taking advantage of our society.
Treat kids like they're irresponsible and they'll never become responsible. Adulting takes practice. You have to let them fuck up and do unhealthy things if they are to learn not to do those things. Delaying it until the stakes are high is counterproductive.
I'm not saying let your kid shoot up heroin but I'd much rather deal with social media usage problems in a 14yo than a 17yo
You'll be amazed at how little people understand the true nature of addiction. Even ex-smokers who manage to quit so quickly forget how hard it was.
This topic seems to be set into areas of black and white, just like every other political position. It seems like so few people appreciate the grey areas anymore.
Addiction isn't just a word, it's actually something that's well defined, specifically compulsively engaging in behaviour despite the negative consequences. The thing is, be it behavioural or chemical, the root of addiction is the over expression of the ΔFosB gene in response to a reward pathway. Good for you that you can use social media without being addicted (like most people). It doesn't mean everyone can.
Yeah, except that kids are communicating with each other through those mechanisms, and increasingly seem to be required to for schoolwork.
So you have the companies providing the communication mechanisms intentionally manipulating the communication to encourage specific behaviour.
A very simple “you cannot reorder or promote content for people less than X” rule would do a lot to reduce the problem for kids. Once you’re an adult you can be just as free to get addicted to Facebook as you are beer.
Before then Social media companies should be subject to similar rules that we have for alcohol. SM at least have the advantage that they can just completely remove the intentionally addictive reordering algorithms, whereas alcohol companies can’t make a meaningfully similar simulacrum when then extract the alcohol.
> Doesn’t have to be default, but should be configurable. It’s harder and harder to participate in society without major social media tools so don’t just tell me to stop using these platforms.
If the law goes through, why not tax social media businesses the way we tax tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana? Then the state can run and fund all kinds of things to educate the public.
Seems like for every bad law coming out of Texas/Florida lately, California's quick to copy it with their own twist - abortion law was copied for guns, now the social media laws.
What is the alternative to suing? US Corporations have demonstrated significant skill in destroying every regulatory agency, and paying off or bribing every legislator. That any laws get passed at all - that could hurt corporations - is stunning.
In that case, what's stopping corporations from buying off every judge? Or buying off the politicians who appoint the judges to be sure that only ones who will side with corporations in these cases are the ones who get appointed?
I think that the latter is what they are already functionally doing? It’s certainly worked for the SC.
In principle no matter the appointee judges have to follow the law, but there’s clearly huge amounts of variation and bias in terms of sentencing, penalties, how broadly things are interpreted.
In recent days, I've seen many of these topics discussed by quite well respected First Amendment lawyers on Twitter. The current that ubiquitously runs through their tweets is that their understanding of the 1A informs their advocating for courts to find that the First Amendment prohibits basically any regulation on social media sites including transparency of moderation policies or decisions, identification, regulations concerning hours, any sort of regulation on viral amplification -- this is all protected speech
And their preferred alternative is always, "parents should parent"
I believe I am a huge supporter of free speech and the First Amendment (two different things), but I find this quite frustrating and believe their approach is both unrealistic and turns the First Amendment into a "suicide pact" (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suicid...)
With some dismay, I'll note that this appears to follow in the theme of the Texas abortion ban. The law doesn't empower the state to prosecute, it empowers citizens. This approach is nothing short of an end-run on the constitution, and if it isn't stopped, the potential consequences are terrifying.
Parents should "parent" but children are not with their parents 24x7. They are often in school or in the company of peers who may offer contradictory influence advice and counsel.
The problem is that the relevant social media companies intentionally design their interfaces such that they are addictive.
If only there were some way for social media companies to not re-order or promote certain content in a way that encourages addiction? Maybe by just leaving content in temporal order, rather than order by popularity or trendiness.
That said businesses removing themselves from children in CA seems similarly effective.
Finally, while I think that while Social media companies are significantly at fault - the development of trending, popular, and other non-temporal ordering of content is explicitly and intentionally designed to be addictive, and in no different from a food company adding addictive chemicals to food. I also think that parents have to have at least tried to parent their children, not simply ignored them until it turned out they had a serious problem.
I don't have children but am closely befriended with a few couples that I see almost every week that do have children. All are of a similar age, and I've seen them grow up from birth to their current age of about 12-14. I wanted to share some observations as a "neutral" observer...
Their first device is the iPad, starting at about 3-4 y/o and I've seen a case as young as 1 y/o. Before the iPad, the children act natural. They play with physical toys, other children, and are exploratory.
There's a short "mixed" period but the iPad pretty quickly starts to dominate, effectively largely replacing other toys and more physical play. You can quite literally see the children retreat from real life and sink into their iPads.
Parents are quite aware of it, they're not neglectful. They have to fight tooth and nail to get their kids to do anything active. Sure enough you can be strict, but the draw to the device seems extremely powerful. They quite simply seem to prefer it over reality.
The iPad age lasts a long time, as smartphones are not in the picture yet. There's a strong network effect. All other children are doing it too, and when they make way to the playground, there's few or no children there. That makes it a societal addiction, not just an individual one, making it even harder for parents to sanction it.
And still I found some hope. When you really pay close and genuine attention to these children, you'll discover that they really still prefer rich in-person human experiences over their device. They're just getting very little of it, only a handful of fleeting moments a day, on a work day. Rushed interactions.
I found this out by the simple act of showing a real and sustained interest. Just asking a bunch of questions and really listening to answers. They seem almost shocked that anybody would bother with that, and I find that the saddest thing.
Further, imagine these kids sitting in a row with iPads, whilst us adults talk. They seem absent-minded, distracted, but they hear everything we say. They're listening, and they're interested. They're not at all the zombies that some think they are.
The iPad seems a filler for a massive void. They're attention starved. And I lay no blame on parents as they truly do their utmost best. Modern life is just too damn fast to allow for slow, lengthy, genuine humane interactions.
By the age of about 11-12, the smartphone arrives and for boys typically also a console. All toys are cleared out because just the smartphone replaces all of them. It's all downhill from here because now they have access to this stuff no matter where they go.
And, they have a richer vocabulary, a larger group of friends or classmates, will have their first go at even more addictive apps, and...it's just absolutely hopeless at this point. To add insult to injury, society digitizing means that also other aspects move to the device, like learning itself. Which they can't, because 5 million distractions are a tap away or a notification pulls them in.
These children just don't stand a chance. They don't really want it, nor do parents want it. But it happens regardless. It's like fighting gravity.
The issue goes far beyond wasting time. They don't know true boredom or down-time. They miss 99% of real communication (in-person) as it's all digital. They're exposed to the extremes of social networks and take it as if this is how the world really works. They're physically inactive and have a short attention span. They don't collaborate but compete as individuals by means of Tiktok, a status competition.
The only counter parents seem to have is not restrictions, rather replacements. Replace useless device time with non-device activities that are genuinely fun and engaging. Not lame things.
And I didn't even talk about sugar yet. Where for me a sugary snack was an infrequent highlight, these kids are stuffing themselves with it. Out of this small group of kids, 2 flat out refuse to eat anything else. And if they don't get it, they'll eat it at a friend's house or when older buy it themselves from their allowance.
I used to think all of this is bad parenting, but seeing it with my own eyes, I changed my mind. These kids grow up in a world of devices and unlimited sugar, which is not the world I grew up in. It is so omnipresent that parents are fighting a losing battle.
These parents ARE taking personal responsibility, but it just doesn't work when the odds are stacked against you like this.
You are effectively absolving the parents of responsibility even at ages as low as 3-4(!). I'll say this: I think it's very fashionable to put no guilt on anyone ever even when it's objectively clear who's guilty. Same goes for sugar intake. Children don't have jobs, they have no money of their own. They are not going to get addicted to sugar products unless you give them the money to buy these products or you buy them. My parents gave me 8€ a month. I got addicted to sugar products because my parents bought cereal and I ate it with milk every day and then I ate toast with nutella. Once again: This is the fault of parents, not the 4 year old or 6 year old or frankly even the 13 year old. They have no money to buy an ipad or even a single candy bar unless you give it to them. And no, they also don't "need" a smartphone. Other kids bully them if they don't have a smartphone? Tough, get over it. I got weird looks because my parents gave me rainbow colored pants to wear and I had acne. Tough stuff, I guess life isn't perfect.
Casinos, alcohol and smoking are addictive too, my parents always warned me about that. So that's why I never got into those things. I was warned by good parents (in that area). I was never warned about sugar, they didn't care or know. So I got into sugar.
I strongly disagree on that. Beating your children is lazy parenting. Great way to end up with children who want nothing to do with you as soon as they're old enough to leave.
Raising the age minimum on digital services from 13 to 16 or 17 would probably fix a lot of the ills caused by it. And/or teach media literacy from a young age.
And anyone here who reduces teenage digital addictions to “bad parenting” can pound sand. Nothing about parenting is simply the result of “the parents” and their methods. Raising a child is an impossibly multi-variate occupation and you only have so many knobs to turn and hours in the day.
As long as parents can deny their children spending money, the blame for liquor stores marketing and selling to children can be assigned to the parents.
As the parent of a young child, I strongly support this bill. Right now, keeping her away from a phone is no problem because at her age, her peers are largely kept away as well. However as she gets older, I suspect peer pressure will become an overwhelming factor and laws like this will tip the scales back into parent’s favor.
If Facebook/Instagram/TikTok or whatever stop operating in California for those under 18, good riddance.
It's really hard to take some of the arguments shifting the blame from the companies to the parents or the child themselves when their livelihood depends on those companies.
They're weaponizing hundreds of years of human psychology research for profit.
Maybe instead of suing for money and that whole circus, they could sue to modify the machine learning neural nets or models to prevent their tragedy in the future for someone else's kid? For most social networks, that is.
I don't know I'm fairly particular to this social network, Hacker News, the social network for essays. The opposite of Twitter.
So in fact I'm rate-limited because my posts are controversial, but I accept this and deliberately did not ask for full free access again. It is a better version of the no-procast (meaning no procrastination, I think it's from 2007 or 2008) feature, which can easily be worked around on short notice without talking to a human. No shame factor. Doesn't work for that reason.
And that's it! No social media addiction! And I have quite the addictive personality, been to rehab after all!
Solve my own problem in a clever way, like a hacker, hack my own Hacker News addiction! Just like it says on the box!
And I volunteer to give testimony in favor of this social network, Hacker News, in court, if it's still like it is now. Which includes suing without trying to actually solve the problem by talking to the mods, or making a post.
Note that on May 12, 2012, at 11 AM, I was declared to be a hero in terms of the Roman Law definition, at the corner of Kearney and Bush, in San Francisco California. This means victims (it can be a single victim too in other cases) call you a hero for saving them from a criminal, in the spur of the moment, right then and there, of their own accord. They had asked me to defend them and I really did defend them, the cops ended up catching the perp at the scene of the crime, it was beautiful. According to me it was beautiful, actually the victims said "That was perfect!"
I might enjoy a little more credibility because of it. That's the point of that Roman law. Apparently that law fell off the books because it flat-out never came up, not because it was a bad law. And any court can make a declaration backing this, any court, that law isn't even necessary.
Including the social addiction media court, I suppose. If you wanted to sue Hacker News you might need more ammo for that judge and jury. More expensive lawyer perhaps. More prestigious expert witnesses.
Personally, I don't care what the majority position is regarding whether this is a capitalist issue or a parenting one, but any losses the predatory social media outlets endure is fine with me.
They do enough bad in the world that they can cry me a river.
I hope they ban kids under 18 from accessing social media so I don’t have to be the bad guy when my daughter grows up. It’s cancer and kids should not be exposed to it.
I would love to be able to tell social media platforms that I only want 10 minutes of usage a day and they cut me off.
For kids, I think it's irresponsible to get kids even more addicted earlier on in life.
At this point, I don't think it's simple to blame the individual or parent for personal responsibility. The only way to avoid it is to get it out of your home completely. This is similar to televisions in the home in the 60s till today. Should we also be able to sue television and cable companies for tv addiction?
The litigation culture of having individual people sue for damage doesn't go to the root cause and is a bureaucratic and legal nightmare. Delegating something that is effectively an environmental issue to the responsibility of individual parents is like blaming parents for not protecting their kids from drinking lead water.
Technology and social media are ubiquitous, there's only an illusion of choice. It's digital infrastructure and the water we swim in. In fact the covid pandemic has shown that it is not even a choice as it turned into the primary means for kids to have a social life and education.
What's necessary is clear rules that align the behavior of companies with social ends. If they can't square making money with keeping public discourse healthy or not making teens mentally ill they need to be culled, it's that simple. Clear, strong and unambiguous legislation, rather than private legal threats will not harm the kind of entrepreneurs that build tools that are in the interest of the public. It will give them a better shot, just like environmental laws for cars have aided electric car makers. For every billionaire incumbent there are thousands eager to build good products to take a slice of the pie. The anti-regulatory argument has very little merit.