Who is 'Candice L. Odgers'? The article's author is 'Monika Neff Lind, PhD'. 'Candice L. Odgers' isn't mentioned in the article anywhere that I see. What was your goal of implying this is a quote/this person was relevant?
Thanks for the clarification. For others, here is the full conflict of interest disclosure from the linked paper in the article:
ML has an equity interest in Ksana Health Inc. No Ksana Health services or products were used in the current project. SS serves on the scientific advisory board for Headspace, for which he receives compensation. He has received consulting fees from Boehringer Ingelheim and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. CO serves on the Youth and Families Advisory Committee for YouTube.
I agree that this could be a conflict worth noting but I don't know the structure of that board to say how big. The link to the board is here [1] and implies independence and doesn't mention that youtube does or doesn't give funding/other support. (at least I didn't see any)
Always good to look into potential conflicts of interest though.
Cigarette manufacturer's research concluded smoking is a-okay for you. AI slop peddler CEO says, if you don't buy their stuff, you will be left behind. Biotech company says taking their pills can be only good for you.
This lady says you should let your children get hooked on YouTube, who knows what could happen if you don't!
Looks like biased research, fake coverage amplifies it, it's all manufacturing consent.
> First, enforcing a youth social media ban raises major ethical concerns. Enforcement efforts invade people’s privacy and are likely to hurt marginalized people more. For example, the technology that determines age based on selfie uploads makes more mistakes with young faces and people of color. Banned youth may also miss out on important resources and communications provided via social media, as schools, clubs, and most other youth-serving organizations use social media as a main form of communication.
The crux of the issue for a parent is that social media orgs do not require and should not receive access to my children, and there simply aren't any arguments from their position that address my concerns.
And there won't be, because the safest, cheapest, and most easily implemented solution is a moderated Kindernet they can't monetize and won't have access to.
So every conversation becomes a list of corner cases that look bizarre from a parenting point of view because these platforms are in no way essential. The answer to your quote is that the schools and clubs that aren't also handing out flyers would hand out flyers again. There's no scenario where scanning my preteen improves this process.
> Not a single social media restriction experiment has included people under the age of 16. We do not know how social media bans will affect the young people being targeted by them because we have never tested this with them!
I've also never tested my ability to survive a 100ft fall. Maybe I can! We have no way of knowing!
> Virtually all schools in the United States report that they use social media for communications, including for key announcements such as making families aware of upcoming opportunities, educational programming, and key deadlines. The reliance on social media for communication and resource sharing, while banning youth from these same platforms, sends mixed messages to young people and limits their access to health promoting information and resources.
That's a good point. There's no other way that schools could communicate such things. My childhood in the 80s and 90s certainly didn't include Scouts, 4-H, Band, Drama, Cross-Country, etc! I'm sure with social media bans for youth, schools will just continue to use social media to try to communicate to kids rather than adapting.
I have to assume the authors of this paper know how dumb it is and just don't care since most people will only read the headline.
The title of the paper this blog post is based on, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/developmental-psycholog..., is "We don't know how social media bans will affect youth but we're doing it anyway!" Which is a little cheeky for my taste given the seriousness of the issue these bans are trying to address.
Yeah, the "but they use the socials to communicate!" is laughable. Basically none of the parents I know want school comms to be via Meta or Tweet or whatever.
Email lists work great for the type of comms schools need to make. And/or an RSS feed on the schools homepage.
In fairness to the article, they are saying there is no evidence on how it will affect teens because all the studies excluded the audience that the ban was for.
"Not a single social media restriction experiment has included people under the age of 16. We do not know how social media bans will affect the young people being targeted by them because we have never tested this with them!"
I know anecdotally my own experience restricting social media has been more of a positive association, but that is because I am not attracted to it anymore. I have been on it for several years and it is no longer novel. To a teenager, it may be the way they relate to their peers and being unable to have access to it could have a negative consequence.
Maybe with all these countries and states that have banned social media, we should see evidence of increased mental health wellness as a proof that banning it was the right thing to do.
This severely underplays the "risks" of not banning social media for teenagers. The link between social media use and mental health problems in teens is extremely well documented.
EDIT2: Also, limit yourself to proper longitudinal studies and then look at the actual effect sizes reported. You will find, yes, there is broad evidence that social media is likely slightly more harmful to adolescents than beneficial / not harmful, but the actual effect size is so tiny broad interventions are unlikely to have practical consequences. I.e. the most plausible explanation is that the vast majority people are not meaningfully affected, and small subgroups benefit and/or are negatively affected.
It is the usual pseudoscientific / social science attempts to launder "statistical significance" (which you get trivially with enough samples) into practical significance, in order to justify sweeping societal changes.
You are providing an accidental illustration of why science is under attack - because people don't like having their beliefs undermined by pesky evidence.
“Social media” probably has good and bad subparts that could be allowed/banned independently, but I hope we don’t need to wait for signoff from a study before being cautious, when the harms are kinda frickin obvious.
I mean there is no large RCT where a bunch of teenagers were denied social media since birth whereas a different cohort were allowed access, and then they were tracked well into adulthood and mental health outcomes tracked.
But phronesis is a thing. It's obviously bad.
My one caveat - the current excuse we have for a UK government are likely to try and use the ban as a reason to force through digital IDs.
It is universal that authoritarians want to characterize audio-visual screens as if they directly altered incentive salicence like addictive drugs do. They do this because the false comparison, the inaccurate social memes (dopamine hit, etc), all invoke the coercion of actual drugs. But the fact is that audio-visual screens do not alter incentive salience directly. They are just like any other part of our world and sometimes present enjoyable stimuli. That is vastly unlike how addictive drugs addict people. There no need for enjoyment in the first place even exists.
Chemically addictive drugs that directly alter wanting could be argued to require use of force to prevent people from being coerced. But screens have no such justification for using force against people who look at screens. It is use of force in a situation without any coercion. And that's unethical.
Why? If asbestos is killing us we ban it, if hipotericllly some new form of asbestos is more harmful to young people than the rest we ban it too, why put the pressure of that responsibility in already stressed out population. Corporations know this very well, that's why they love when people have the opinion you just shared here.
Formally the same as stating "Everyone should get off the addiction driven drug cartel, but the government shouldn't have a single thing to do with it."
I take a very large grain of salt if a researcher is literally based in California and they produce "findings" in support of a California-based megacorp such as Facebook. And then the headline is "lacks evidence" and "pose risks".
No shit sherlock, it lacks evidence because Facebook gatekeeps all the scientifically interesting data and they also don't share their findings from internal studies and human trials where they psychologically manipulatated minors.
There is a reason social media apps spam you with notification popups if you have not been active for the last 23 hours. They employ every trick in the book to keep you hooked and monetize your attention.
It is clear scientific misconduct by people working for Facebook who do numerous human trials on minors in order to increase their metrics and monetization. The fact they have crossed this red line should stop the discussion for every credible researcher in that field, because human trials on minors without consent are not ethical and there is no excuse for such behavior.
> Candice L. Odgers serves on the Youth and Families Advisory Committee for YouTube.
Who is 'Candice L. Odgers'? The article's author is 'Monika Neff Lind, PhD'. 'Candice L. Odgers' isn't mentioned in the article anywhere that I see. What was your goal of implying this is a quote/this person was relevant?
The link is only to the marketing fluff piece, the paper is here and has three authors [1]
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/developmental-psycholog...
Thanks for the clarification. For others, here is the full conflict of interest disclosure from the linked paper in the article:
ML has an equity interest in Ksana Health Inc. No Ksana Health services or products were used in the current project. SS serves on the scientific advisory board for Headspace, for which he receives compensation. He has received consulting fees from Boehringer Ingelheim and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. CO serves on the Youth and Families Advisory Committee for YouTube.
I agree that this could be a conflict worth noting but I don't know the structure of that board to say how big. The link to the board is here [1] and implies independence and doesn't mention that youtube does or doesn't give funding/other support. (at least I didn't see any)
Always good to look into potential conflicts of interest though.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/kids-and-teens/advis...
Read and download the original paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/developmental-psycholog...
Too much social media in young years?
Cigarette manufacturer's research concluded smoking is a-okay for you. AI slop peddler CEO says, if you don't buy their stuff, you will be left behind. Biotech company says taking their pills can be only good for you.
This lady says you should let your children get hooked on YouTube, who knows what could happen if you don't!
Looks like biased research, fake coverage amplifies it, it's all manufacturing consent.
> First, enforcing a youth social media ban raises major ethical concerns. Enforcement efforts invade people’s privacy and are likely to hurt marginalized people more. For example, the technology that determines age based on selfie uploads makes more mistakes with young faces and people of color. Banned youth may also miss out on important resources and communications provided via social media, as schools, clubs, and most other youth-serving organizations use social media as a main form of communication.
Really grasping the straws with this argument...
The crux of the issue for a parent is that social media orgs do not require and should not receive access to my children, and there simply aren't any arguments from their position that address my concerns.
And there won't be, because the safest, cheapest, and most easily implemented solution is a moderated Kindernet they can't monetize and won't have access to.
So every conversation becomes a list of corner cases that look bizarre from a parenting point of view because these platforms are in no way essential. The answer to your quote is that the schools and clubs that aren't also handing out flyers would hand out flyers again. There's no scenario where scanning my preteen improves this process.
> Not a single social media restriction experiment has included people under the age of 16. We do not know how social media bans will affect the young people being targeted by them because we have never tested this with them!
I've also never tested my ability to survive a 100ft fall. Maybe I can! We have no way of knowing!
> Virtually all schools in the United States report that they use social media for communications, including for key announcements such as making families aware of upcoming opportunities, educational programming, and key deadlines. The reliance on social media for communication and resource sharing, while banning youth from these same platforms, sends mixed messages to young people and limits their access to health promoting information and resources.
That's a good point. There's no other way that schools could communicate such things. My childhood in the 80s and 90s certainly didn't include Scouts, 4-H, Band, Drama, Cross-Country, etc! I'm sure with social media bans for youth, schools will just continue to use social media to try to communicate to kids rather than adapting.
I have to assume the authors of this paper know how dumb it is and just don't care since most people will only read the headline.
The title of the paper this blog post is based on, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/developmental-psycholog..., is "We don't know how social media bans will affect youth but we're doing it anyway!" Which is a little cheeky for my taste given the seriousness of the issue these bans are trying to address.
Yeah, the "but they use the socials to communicate!" is laughable. Basically none of the parents I know want school comms to be via Meta or Tweet or whatever.
Email lists work great for the type of comms schools need to make. And/or an RSS feed on the schools homepage.
In fairness to the article, they are saying there is no evidence on how it will affect teens because all the studies excluded the audience that the ban was for.
"Not a single social media restriction experiment has included people under the age of 16. We do not know how social media bans will affect the young people being targeted by them because we have never tested this with them!"
I know anecdotally my own experience restricting social media has been more of a positive association, but that is because I am not attracted to it anymore. I have been on it for several years and it is no longer novel. To a teenager, it may be the way they relate to their peers and being unable to have access to it could have a negative consequence.
Maybe with all these countries and states that have banned social media, we should see evidence of increased mental health wellness as a proof that banning it was the right thing to do.
Strangely enough kids did fine before social media, and I would say as an adult I also do fine without it.
Concerns about age gating etc are true but as we’re already experiencing that nonsense without social media bans it’s kind of a moot point.
This severely underplays the "risks" of not banning social media for teenagers. The link between social media use and mental health problems in teens is extremely well documented.
No, the evidence is quite flimsy and correlational, and this is clearly a moral panic.
EDIT: See e.g. https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/27396/chapter/6#93, and if you think this is what constitutes "clear evidence", well, you have some very questionable epistemological standards.
EDIT2: Also, limit yourself to proper longitudinal studies and then look at the actual effect sizes reported. You will find, yes, there is broad evidence that social media is likely slightly more harmful to adolescents than beneficial / not harmful, but the actual effect size is so tiny broad interventions are unlikely to have practical consequences. I.e. the most plausible explanation is that the vast majority people are not meaningfully affected, and small subgroups benefit and/or are negatively affected.
It is the usual pseudoscientific / social science attempts to launder "statistical significance" (which you get trivially with enough samples) into practical significance, in order to justify sweeping societal changes.
this is why science credibility is going down, what we call science is abused. This is like saying smoking has no evidence it causes harm.
You are providing an accidental illustration of why science is under attack - because people don't like having their beliefs undermined by pesky evidence.
“Social media” probably has good and bad subparts that could be allowed/banned independently, but I hope we don’t need to wait for signoff from a study before being cautious, when the harms are kinda frickin obvious.
I mean there is no large RCT where a bunch of teenagers were denied social media since birth whereas a different cohort were allowed access, and then they were tracked well into adulthood and mental health outcomes tracked.
But phronesis is a thing. It's obviously bad.
My one caveat - the current excuse we have for a UK government are likely to try and use the ban as a reason to force through digital IDs.
It is universal that authoritarians want to characterize audio-visual screens as if they directly altered incentive salicence like addictive drugs do. They do this because the false comparison, the inaccurate social memes (dopamine hit, etc), all invoke the coercion of actual drugs. But the fact is that audio-visual screens do not alter incentive salience directly. They are just like any other part of our world and sometimes present enjoyable stimuli. That is vastly unlike how addictive drugs addict people. There no need for enjoyment in the first place even exists.
Chemically addictive drugs that directly alter wanting could be argued to require use of force to prevent people from being coerced. But screens have no such justification for using force against people who look at screens. It is use of force in a situation without any coercion. And that's unethical.
By your logic gambling is A-OK? I take it you never go to restaurants and see kids socially stunted by being hung up on tablets?
Everyone should get off the engagement driven platforms, but the government shouldn't have a single thing to do with it.
Why? If asbestos is killing us we ban it, if hipotericllly some new form of asbestos is more harmful to young people than the rest we ban it too, why put the pressure of that responsibility in already stressed out population. Corporations know this very well, that's why they love when people have the opinion you just shared here.
good parenting, as always, remains the best solution
You have too much faith in the masses.
Formally the same as stating "Everyone should get off the addiction driven drug cartel, but the government shouldn't have a single thing to do with it."
I take a very large grain of salt if a researcher is literally based in California and they produce "findings" in support of a California-based megacorp such as Facebook. And then the headline is "lacks evidence" and "pose risks".
No shit sherlock, it lacks evidence because Facebook gatekeeps all the scientifically interesting data and they also don't share their findings from internal studies and human trials where they psychologically manipulatated minors.
There is a reason social media apps spam you with notification popups if you have not been active for the last 23 hours. They employ every trick in the book to keep you hooked and monetize your attention.
It is clear scientific misconduct by people working for Facebook who do numerous human trials on minors in order to increase their metrics and monetization. The fact they have crossed this red line should stop the discussion for every credible researcher in that field, because human trials on minors without consent are not ethical and there is no excuse for such behavior.
[dead]
What "scientists?” People just throw that word around now to give an article fake credibility. Total horse shit.