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I believe that heavy social media use is extremely damaging for everyone, but particularly for young children and adolescents. Some of the reasons social media is bad for teenagers and pre-teens include the fact that it facilitates child grooming, how it tacitly encourages members of this demographic to dress and behave in sexually provocative ways and how it encourages members of this generation to obsess over their appearances in unhealthy ways. Before TikTok, did you ever hear of an eight-year-old being asked what she wanted for Christmas and her replying "skincare"? No eight-year-old should want skincare products for Christmas, and it's obscene that social media has made her think she needs them.
This is an extremely obnoxious misrepresentation of what I said. Children are not being magically defiled by the nasty brain-waves of pederasts thinking impure thoughts about them. I explained quite clearly that a major component of the audience for tweens dancing on TikTok is nonces; that tween girls (like everyone else) respond to social media incentives and engagement metrics; and that in attempting to attract as many nonces' eyeballs as possible, these tween girls end up dressing and behaving in more sexually provocative fashions than they otherwise would have. Sexualisation of children is bad, and to the extent that social media incentivises (or algorithmically encourages, or whatever term you prefer) children to dress and behave in sexually provocative fashions prematurely, social media is bad.
I do not believe that our world, in which most teenagers in the West own smartphones and use social media, is healthier overall than the counterfactual world in which most teenagers do not own smartphones and use social media. As I recently pointed out, the year 2014 (the year the iPhone achieved market penetration with a critical mass of American users) was the beginning of an enormous spike in teen suicide, self-poisoning, diagnoses of depression (and, less politically correctly, corresponding spikes in gender dysphoria and trans identification, and probably various things that are harder to quantify like loneliness, friendlessness and the ability to concentrate in class). We don't have to go way back into the mists of time to imagine a world where most Western teenagers don't own smartphones: I don't think it's remotely controversial to suggest that the average teenager was happier in 2013 than they are now. And what, exactly, are the benefits of widespread smartphone adoption among young people? This really does seem like a case of extreme costs and marginal (if any) benefits.
FWIW that was a genuine 'if'. I didn't know where you were coming from, and there are certainly many people who do think like that. That's why I put two 'if's: if you are concerned about A which I think is sensible, here is my proposal, if you are concerned primarily about A as it pertains to B which I think is less sensible, I think you should let it go. I apologise if you found my reply obnoxious.
Honestly, it's my strong impression that young girls have always been obsessed over the things that women do, including cosmetics. My mother went to an all-girl's school and they discussed this kind of thing constantly. The difference was that it was hidden from adults to protect their idea of childhood (and feminine) innocence.
That wasn't my counterfactual. My counterfactual was (in response to a potential position you don't in fact possess) that I don't think it's healthy for society to obsess over protecting the purity of women or the spread of images of women.
To go to your point, though, I am very skeptical of movements that take away something people like and do because they ought not to like and do it*. I'm all for giving people tools to control smartphone usage, and for attempting to cut down on network effects that drive people to smartphones whether they wish so or nay. But the fact is that text can be a lighter, easier way of communicating with people more like oneself (viz, this forum) and I'm reluctant to say "no! only in-person communications!". The real world can be harsh in many ways, and some of those ways are needful, but 'go and suffer' isn't necessarily always the right response. I can't say I remember my pre-smartphone childhood to be much happier or less anxious making - playground cliques are just as isolating as social media ones, and playground bullying is worse than cyberbullying. People treat smartphones as a refuge for a reason.
* Yes, I know there are surveys showing that lots of teens don’t like social media and smartphones. I look forward to more work on this being done, and would prefer to address those teens and their needs specifically rather than reach first for the ban hammer.
With regards to anxiety and depression, I don't think it's the phones, although the phones don't help. I think it's the pressure and the constantly raised standards, which is mostly downstream of globalisation.
At the age of eight?
I'm not obsessing over protecting the purity of women. Women are adults, and can do as they please. (I in fact get very annoyed at the infantilisation of adults, such as women who accuse men of having "groomed" them when the women in question were already old enough to drink.) I am, however, very invested in protecting the purity of girls, especially young girls. That's kind of the whole point of this discussion.
Some and some. Past generations of teenagers did not have to contend with embarrassing footage of them being uploaded to YouTube etc. for the entire world to see without their knowledge or consent, or their nudes leaked. Playground bullying by definition ends outside the playground: the current generation of bullies can torment their victims morning, noon and night, even after they've changed schools if it pleases them.
Well, I don't agree with you. Indeed, I'm not even persuaded that teenagers face higher pressure to succeed than they used to, if the proportion of obese teenagers and Harvard undergraduates taking remedial maths classes is anything to go by.
Yes? Young girls talk to older girls, older girls tease them for being ignorant and drip-feed knowledge of the adult world. That’s why lots of women recall being terrified of menarche, because older girls think it’s funny to torment them. The boys in my all-boys school were making pussy jokes at 10, not because they understood them but because that’s what the older boys did.
Okay, with what end? Are we, in fact, talking about icky brainwaves after all? Are we positing that making young girls aware that people do/will soon care about their looks harms them? Are you saying that competition for looksmaxxing is harmful because stressful, and the earlier it begins the worse it is? Is it a spiritual commitment to defend the innocence of childhood, and is that for both boys and girls or just girls? If you made your metaphysical commitments a bit clearer then it would be easier to discuss them.
How major? And are we talking about a generalised effect over the whole cohort specifically in that time, or specifically worsening of the most anxious 1% from quite suicidal to very suicidal, or what? Like I say, I welcome serious attempts to get to grips with this and characterise it and disentangle different factors. I would prefer solutions to be more focused than ‘let’s ban smartphones and prevent children uploading home videos to the internet’. Thus my proposal to restrict displaying like-based feedback to the underage.
None of these seem remotely similar to the specific example I gave of eight-year-olds requesting skincare products for Christmas.
Both, and that social media facilitates child grooming and sexual exploitation, and may induce assorted mental health difficulties such as depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia, and facilitate bullying. You know, all of the things I've already expounded on in this thread at great length.
The graph I was citing came from this study from Jean Twenge:
I don't see why not. I think you're blowing it massively out of proportion. Eight year old girls, just like my mother's generation, are aware that people treat pretty girls better, that cosmetics are products meant to make you prettier, and that they're exciting and adult. They don't need social media to know that, (though yes I'm sure social media hammers it home) just eyes and ears. The reason my mother's generation weren't asking for skincare products for Christmas was nothing to do with the purity of youth and everything to do with the fact that their parents would have blown a gasket at them 'painting themselves' too soon (or in the case of my grandmother, at all). Given the reality that people do care about looks, even at that age, a quiet conversation and a provision of age-appropriate cosmetic products seems potentially a far kinder thing to do than lying about how real beauty is on the inside. My mother's school like most girls' schools had deliberately drab uniforms and all the girls hated being forcibly uglified.
You've been bouncing around between quite a lot of things. And you can care about any and all of them, it's a free country, but when you're throwing out bans all over the place (no broadcast media starring children, no social media, no smartphones, no uploaded home videos (does that extend to no uploaded photos?)) then it kind of helps if you're specific. If you're really worried about the mental health of child actors, okay, there's maybe stuff the industry could do, and indeed they already do it. The Potter actors turned out basically fine. If you're worried about children being sexually groomed, then there's also things you can do (whilst bearing in mind that AFAIK that kind of stuff mostly happens in the home or at school, in the in-person community). If you're worried about depression and body anxiety, then let's see if we can isolate slightly more where that's coming from (and personally I do think it has a lot to do with academic pressure) and how large the effect size is. Those graphs are interesting but they are relative measures - the first covers only standard deviations, the second is about percentages of people who already report depression. To take a deliberately absurd example, I would not be willing to make sweeping changes to society because the average number of self-poisonings have moved from 2 to 4.
I am totally open to large RCTs with banning/controlling use of smartphones to see the effect on these metrics, and I support banning or heavily restricting smartphones in schools, at least for now.
With regards to spiritual commitments, then we are much closer to 'moral panic' territory and I get increasingly wary. I'm as keen as anyone not to foist sexual topics on children too soon, that's not quite the same as 'protecting their purity' and I can tell you from experience that endeavors to impose purity in an impure world can be both stressful and harmful. Even to the extent that I care about this, I care about lots of things and there is only a certain level to which I am happy to trade them off against the sanctity of childhood. "Think of the children!" became a punchline precisely because it allowed so many busybodies to make nuisances of themselves, which was because childhood can be plausibly made to touch so many things. I do not want to live in a world primarily optimised for the health and purity of children.
I still think you're constructing a strawman to make me sound ridiculous. I'm not demanding that our entire culture be systematically overhauled, root and branch, to optimise for the health and purity of children. I simply think a) for variety of reasons (including but not limited to premature sexualisation, grooming and body image issues) smartphones and social media are really bad for children and teenagers, and parents should not buy smartphones for their children; and b) it's weird that Western societies collectively think that child labour is bad, except child labour in the entertainment industries.
There. That's it. That's the extent of my opinion. Anything beyond that is you knowingly putting words in my mouth.
Not knowingly. I thought that's where you seemed to be pointing, and I'm relieved to find I'm wrong.
I agree to a) with caveats.
With reference to b) I don't think people consider acting child labour, rightly or wrongly. I am personally somewhat in favour of child labour - I think the current system has basically turned into "we (society) will love and support you and do anything for you right up until age 18/21, at which point you're on your own". The looming withdrawal of support and the transition to an entirely unknown form of society is a huge source of stress for children. I remember myself and my peers absolutely dreading 'employment' which we had built up in our minds as a sort of left-wing caricature of abuse and exploitation. If we could end school days a few hours early and have children work with their parents for free or for a nominal amount of money, continuing school for a couple of extra years if necessary to make up the time, I would consider that a cool proposal.
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