Sponsored Content




Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups

NoVaMoMe 2024: 06/08/2024
Arlington, VA
Details to follow


Texas MoMe 2024: 10/18/2024-10/19/2024 Corsicana,TX
Contact Ben Had for info





















« Mid-Morning Art Thread | Main | Fulton County, Georgia Grand Jury Forewoman Promises "Long List" of Names Coming for Recommended Indictments in "Election Interference" Case, But There's a Problem
UPDATE: Wiiiiiitch, Please! »
February 22, 2023

Wednesday Morning Rant [Joe Mannix]

mannixape2.jpg

Restricted to Adults

Yesterday, Ace posted a thread on the upswing in youth depression and suicide (reminder: do not comment on old threads). The article at the center of that post is focused on girls and smartphones, but the problems are not limited there. Youth depression as a whole has gotten much worse, and youth suicide has been climbing since 2010 or 2012, depending on sex.

Suicide and depression are complex problems without a single cause. The timing around the rise of the smartphone and social media, however, is too obvious to ignore. There is also enough known about the effects and deliberate design choices to give pause. Social media platforms are addictive, and their addictive properties are enhanced on purpose to drive more engagement. The Big Three features - the "like button," "pull-down to refresh" behavior and "infinite scrolling" behavior - are highly addictive. Social media firms know it, and they enhance it.


We have other examples of addictive and harmful products that are legal, but there is a key difference between things like tobacco and alcohol and social media. The former are forbidden for use by minors whereas the latter is encouraged for use by minors. If adults abuse harmful products, that's on the adult. He can legally make the choice to abuse them. Minors cannot, and so are restricted from those products. So it should be with social media.

Technically, restricting social media usage to adults is fairly straightforward. The technology for doing that already exists and there are many vendors that provide those services. Online liquor and tobacco stores use age-verification systems already, because they sell controlled products. There is no reason that social media sites couldn't do so as well. There is not a meaningful technological hurdle that has to be cleared. Age restriction could probably be implemented by the big, sophisticated platforms in a matter of weeks.

There are lots of non-technical problems, though. First, social media has to be defined. I would go with a loose definition of, "any online service, site or platform that accepts user-created content, requires registration for users to post content, and has 500,000 or more active users" but there are probably more definitions than there are words in the language. Then there is the problem of defining an adult. What is it? Is it 18, the age for contracts and tobacco? Is it 21, the age for alcohol and pot? Is it 25, the age at which childhood ends for medical insurance purposes?

The biggest problem with restricting social media usage to adults, however, is those who would be doing the restricting. The government, if it goes down this road, will use it to increase their own power and make every underlying problem worse. The answer won't be "verify age" but probably "restrict content to make it 'safe for children' according to experts." They won't take the obvious answer but instead will do something far more insidious in a 5,000 page monstrosity that makes everything worse. There is a zero percent chance that social media regulation would be rational, let alone helpful.

This problem, like all others, cannot be solved by a government that actively seeks to make every problem worse and every pathology more severe. This problem will have to be solved individually, by individual families.

digg this
posted by Open Blogger at 11:00 AM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Presidentish Joe : "Tucker C points out that we have doubled our popul ..."

Pete: "Why should one obey laws that are arbitrarily appl ..."

Thomas Paine: "Adverse possession should be illegal. If there is ..."

Montec: "The $1 houses are really $1 for the property once ..."

[/i][/b][/s][/u]I used to have a different nic: "[i]Future Headline: "California Insurers Cancel Al ..."

Our Country is Screwed: "361 Michigan wants to pay homeowners $500/month t ..."

davidt: "Eventually parasites kill their hosts. ..."

Montec: "And this is deliberate. The ultimate goal of the " ..."

Thomas Bender: "@145 >>In MO, it's only 10 years before a squat ..."

A face in the crowd.....: "Didn’t Baltimore sell row homes for $1? Gran ..."

Megthered: "I saw Harrison Floyd as Harrison Ford too. ..."

junior: "@350 I own vacant land that someday will be develo ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64