This is pointlessly reductive. Bans don’t have to be 100% effective to reduce harm.
Sure, less people habitually got drunk and beat their wives/kids during prohibition, but approximately the same harm still happened, it was just concentrated in all the people who had their lives ruined or got killed by the gangsters or the feds.
And as an adult, you know how to cope with dopamine and its deficits. As a young teenager you stop reaching for your parents and start reaching for your peers to help you with your problems (including neurochemicals). But if you reach for distraction and gambling and drugs instead, you fill these gaps with things that alienate you from the rest of the world.
I'm highly skeptical here, largely due to all the other moral panics based on questionable science that have come before claiming everything from phones (as in landlines) to video games were as addictive as crack.
The lawsuit cites one group within the company, called “TikTank,” which noted in an internal report that compulsive usage was “rampant” on the platform. It also quotes an unnamed executive who said kids watch TikTok because the algorithm is “really good.”
“But I think we need to be cognizant of what it might mean for other opportunities. And when I say other opportunities, I literally mean sleep, and eating, and moving around the room, and looking at somebody in the eyes,” the unnamed executive said, according to the complaint.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/tiktok-aware-risks-kids-...
Straight from the horse’s mouth
“Higher levels of dopamine release” is a nonsense metric. To the extent that it matters, it matters due to its ability to steer decision-making, and TikTok here is saying they know their product distorts decision-making in exactly the problematic manner.
The particular mixture of hormone signals yielding those behaviors is a red herring.
Then the correct answer to the parent comment's request for evidence to the claims of higher levels of dopamine release is "no, there isn't any, and it is likely a fabricated claim" and not "here is something completely different that I am falsely going to claim is evidence to the question you asked."
In this case the poison is in the dose. Sex also releases a cascade of neurochemicals, but I challenge you to have more sex in a day than you can watch videos on TikTok in two hours. You can essentially hold down the button in the Skinner Box.
You can use Google just like I can. You’re not asking because of curiosity, you’re asking because you’re hoping you won’t have to think.
https://theconversation.com/debunking-the-6-biggest-myths-ab...
Unfortunately he doesn’t single out games versus social media, and that seems to be because his position is that video games aren’t a blight on children.
His belief in how few people this actually affects doesn’t line up with my own anecdotes about gaming addiction. And “goes away”? Well yes it’s not like heroin, you can quit without the aid of a doctor, but these people all had lifelong consequences from their overindulgence. It doesn’t “go away” like a rash, it goes away like a wound - leaving scar tissue.
If you read all the way to the end, he concludes that overuse is a symptom of another neurological problems. Which makes it self medication, and to that I say, if you find a child with depression or ADHD self medicating with large quantities of caffeine, or an adult using cocaine to do the same, you don’t leave them on that much caffeine/narcotics. You get them on medicine that works better and reduce the stimulant abuse.
Also wouldn't HN count as social media too, as we are interacting here?
You joke, but I worry about this if Norway implements an age limit based on geographic location - it either gets kids onto the shittiest possible free VPN which MITMs everything, or gets them onto imageboards/apps with even fewer facilities for handling abuse than FB and Snapchat have
E: > Also wouldn't HN count as social media too, as we are interacting here?
Family minister Toppe was immediately asked afterwards if the age limit would cover newspapers with comment sections, and she responded that it would - so parents would have to consent to you sharing personal info with the newspaper, which seems like a long way to say "your parents decide whether you get to read the news"
https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/mPzg0q/regjeringen-vil-innfoere-...
“Without this place I would be dead. Simply, the MSIC saves lives.” Uniting MSIC client https://www.uniting.org/community-impact/uniting-medically-s...
“We also have strong evidence to say that SIFs not only save the lives of people who inject drugs, but also improve their lives,” George Dertadian, a senior lecturer of criminology at the UNSW https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-12/safe-injecting-facili...
I dove into this topic to understand what went wrong to the best of my ability. From what I gather, countries with successful decriminalization also have government assistance for the addicted. That’s much different than the US’s “shoot up anywhere, any time.”
That being said, the point I was responding to is that, of the two extremes, total prohibition seems better than total decriminalization.
But either way, people underestimate how expensive addiction treatment is, and overestimate how effective it is. Prohibition of alcohol, or rather the teetotaller movement, came because they realized society had a problem it couldn't individualize and pay itself out of.
We still haven't, but for a good 80 years we've had enough money to hide the problem.
Not a ban. A restriction. Which does have evidence of reducing use.
> There is no way to draw a boundary around any behavior other than theft without comparing outcomes to a subjectively valuable ideal
Isn’t this more to do with a society’s viewpoint on moral subjectivity vs. objectivity? And not the act itself?
> It's a costly systemic virus we wield out of desperation
Desperation or practicality? There is always going to be a downside to any prohibitive law put into effect. But should there be no prohibitive laws to curb self harm in a society? To reflect the values of that society? That seems extremely idealistic.
> Social media's most fundamental problem is… it creates an environment that allows people to sidestep existing restrictions
I think it’s pretty well understood that this is not social media’s most fundamental problem. I don’t think sidestepping porn guardrails (for instance) is anywhere near as damaging as ever-radicalizing echo chambers or exposure to ideas that accelerate depression and anxiety and contribute to low self worth and self harm.
I’m sorry but this whole post just comes off as overly idealistic and completely missing the point of how harmful social media is to everyone (but especially children). I actually sympathize with the war on drugs creating more issues around drug use, but I don’t think we should then conclude that all restrictions are bad and cause more harm.
Criminalization is criminalization. If you don't like word "ban", please feel free to substitute "restriction", "regulation", "guardrails", or any other euphemism. A liquor restriction is drug prohibition even if you're still allowed to trade beer.
Yes, prohibition is fundamentally a conflict about state subjectivity. This is a critically under-developed aspect of virtually all democratic constitutions. That's not weird; those were developed before modern philosophy, and industry has in no small way distracted us from the development and implementation of philosophy. Industry has simultaneously provided a vector for a vast host of terrifying emerging behaviors. One of my central concerns is that prohibition is a vicious pattern that reemerges in a wide variety of domains. That's a key component of its entrenchment: we're usually too concerned with the symptom—perceived harmful behavior—to address the disease: moralization of the state and therefore the application of force.
Regarding pragmatism, let's remember that most prohibitive systems begin very reasonably: small, well-intentioned limits being enforced uniformly with apparent marginal success. The fundamental problem is that it's never as effective as everyone wants to believe (but few dare to promise) it will be. In combination with the precedent created by the first generation, this is a strong incentive for further prohibition. The topic at hand is a great example. I don't want to make doomsayer predictions but there's no way Norway is finished increasing the severity and complexity of their social media restrictions.
Prohibited behaviors are eventually driven underground, breaking the state's ability to measure them or track their mutation. When they reemerge, they are more concentrated. In The Economics of Prohibition, Mark Thornton argues that crystal meth, crack cocaine, and the ever-expanding list of synthetic opioids with microscopic lethal doses are all the direct product of prohibition, especially law enforcement "crackdown".
You think Facebook was bad? Have you seen what people get up to on the image boards of the disenfranchised? Same concept. Norway's youth will flock to them. The state will crack down. I don't want to speculate about what will happen next.
There's much more to say on pragmatism and the quantifiable costs of increasing legal complexity and eroding the prosecutor's obligation to prove criminal intent. If you're interested, I'd strongly recommend The Overcriminalization of Social and Economic Conduct by Paul Rosenzweig.
https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/the-over-c...
Finally, you mentioned the specific perceived harms associated with social media. As I said, I think this is a narrow view. I don't want to discuss those any more than I want to discuss the harms of eating Tide Pods (Big Bleach Kills Kids! Parents Outraged! Twitch.TV Does Damage Control!) but I would like to point out that echo chambers and depression and anxiety are issues that exist independently of social media. When I say that the fundamental problem is an environment, I mean technology creates autonomous microcosms for which our existing defenses against the horrors of human existence are not adapted. In my view, the least wasteful solution is to develop the tools and skills required to navigate these microcosms.
I wouldn't ban prohibition, by the way. That would be paradoxical. I would focus on enhancing the democratic ability to dismantle legislation that didn't work according to the professed standards of its own advocates. It's funny being called an idealist for railing against moralization. I see how that perspective works, but please believe that my concerns are justice and viability.
Regardless of that, I don’t think prohibition or criminalization is a bad thing. The government is defined by their ability to monopolize violence. To say we should never wield that violence against certain behaviors as a vote of the culture, I just don’t buy.
That said thanks for the thoughtful response!
For example, a user with social anxiety can find a refuge where they can discuss and socialize on social media, sometimes by talking about specific topics and joining marginalized communities. In fact, speaking of marginalized communities, social media would have greatly helped homosexuals in the 1970s to meet people their age who were also gay, something that was very difficult at the time.
However, this very clearly positive aspect of social media can also backfire on people who fall into far-right conspiracy rabbit holes. This creates communities that are no longer so marginal, like incels or people who believe that the election was rigged to make Donald Trump lose. Incels are particularly young people who experience a societal problem (loneliness, emotional deprivation, social issues, leading to involuntary celibacy and what they perceive as sexual frustration) and are influenced to fight against the wrong issue (women instead of capitalism and patriarchy).
For me, if these harmful communities become so popular, it's primarily the fault of capitalism: social media platforms are all managed by private companies, whose main goal is profit. Elon Musk changed Twitter's algorithm to favor confrontation, to increase user engagement. This boosts the time spent on Twitter, allowing for more ad exposure, but I believe it also harms mental health and encourages harassment (especially against the LGBT community).
That's why I see no other solution than decentralized, free, and open-source alternatives, as you mentioned.
I have watched my kid eat tons of sugar then feel terrible a few hours later and be totally unable to connect the dots between the behavior and the outcome. Their brains are not developed enough to practice self-control with highly addictive things.
Prohibition is a feedback loop initialized by ignorance, fear, and economic limitations. It creates precedent and democratic legal systems suck at backtracking. If banning harmful behavior meaningfully reduced harmful behavior, all society's ills would have been resolved long ago by the people who prefer to invest in legislation, law enforcement, and legal integration over harm reduction, causal research, and development of alternative mechanisms.
There is no way to draw a boundary around any behavior other than theft without comparing outcomes to a subjectively valuable ideal which ignores the right of the minority to determine their own purpose. It's a costly systemic virus we wield out of desperation, and the cycle won't end with this redefinition any more than it ended when they created the law in the first place.
Social media's most fundamental problem is the same as every other system that develops rapidly in a complex economy: it creates an environment that allows people to sidestep existing restrictions. If you want to do better, build a decentralized alternative that's vigorously decoupled from users' legal identities and free for everyone, forever. It would cost less than Internet Police.