The Case for Banning Children from Social Media

Re:The Case for Banning Children from Social Media by clnq on Wednesday April 05, 2023 @03:55AM (#35450796)

Pharmacology, yes. But we can compare social media and other addictions in terms of social harm, health harm, psychological and emotional harm, withdrawal symptoms, financial consequences, impairment to decision-making, procrastination and distraction impacting attainability of personal goal, prerogatives and decreasing motivation, relationship harm (it is difficult to form relationships with those "terminally online" for example), cognitive/executive function impairments, self-esteem harm, sleep hygiene harm, personal hygiene harm (difficult topic for some addicted people to talk about but in my opinion, it is related to internet addiction as much as alcohol or drug addictions), harm on enjoyment of life, and many others.

The effects of dopamine bombing yourself with on line content are not very dissimilar to effects of drugs. I would argue they are more similar than dissimilar.

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Re:The Case for Banning Children from Social Media by mxkopy on Wednesday April 05, 2023 @11:56AM (#35456259)

In my experience you don't become terminally online unless there's something else going on in your life. People talking about the ills of social media seem to forget that children nowadays are: institutionalized for 8 hours of their day, raised on diets of processed garbage, etc. Like, a well adjusted kid isn't going to treat social media as more important than their friends unless they think they can make a living from it or have no friends.

I think "dopamine bombing" is not what it sounds. See discussions on dopamine fasting for what I mean. The relationship between the things you do and dopamine are complex, probably more complex than the relationship of what you physically consume and dopamine.

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Re:The Case for Banning Children from Social Media by clnq on Wednesday April 05, 2023 @12:24PM (#35456653)

> In my experience you don't become terminally online unless there's something else going on in your life

That's true, but it's also true for other addictions.

> a well adjusted kid isn't going to treat social media as more important than their friends unless they think they can make a living from it or have no friends.

Probably mostly true, but also a lot of friendships are moving online.

> I think "dopamine bombing" is not what it sounds

Can you elaborate? I think it sounds like abusing the dopamine hits you get when scrolling through SM, for example.

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Re:The Case for Banning Children from Social Media by mxkopy on Wednesday April 05, 2023 @02:15PM (#35458315)

It implies a direct connection with neurochemistry that's much less direct than drugs (and even moreso diet), which can directly stimulate the release of dopamine. For example if I'm feeling tired of scrolling through memes, I can just put my phone away. I can't stop caffeine from stimulating my neurons, or ignore a macronutrient deficiency in my body.

It might be that this is an unimportant distinction in the end, but I'm not sure we know.

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Re:The Case for Banning Children from Social Media by clnq on Wednesday April 05, 2023 @09:39PM (#35463002)

Quite many people can't just put their phone away, even when they try to concentrate on something else. The behaviour seems to be very similar to other addictions.

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