Here's Nature reviewing his book:
> Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers
> These are not just our data or my opinion. Several meta-analyses and systematic reviews converge on the same message. An analysis done in 72 countries shows no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and the roll-out of social media globally. Moreover, findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the largest long-term study of adolescent brain development in the United States, has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital-technology use. Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, is a gifted storyteller, but his tale is currently one searching for evidence.
Here's his rebuttal to that article: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi....
I think you'd struggle to find someone more earnestly trying to get an unbiased understanding of the reality of this topic.
There are a lot of problems with the way these platforms treat adults too. I think an age gate is the wrong solution and in many ways it doesn't go far enough.
Why did one study in Spain find an association with the rollout of high speed internet, but a much larger international study specifically looking at Facebook usage did not? Seems like that one should even more directly measure what’s alleged to be occurring.
Some will. But I bet a lot of kids "have to be" on Instagram/TikTok/etc because everyone else is. I don't think they all gonna flock to 4chan because they got locked out of the big platforms.
Then I'd argue you haven't actually been to the darkest corners of 4chan.
Those aren't the only options. See the comments on almost any of the many other discussions of age verification on HN for details of ways to do it that do not involve giving any sensitive information to sites (other than what you explicitly trying to give to them, like your age being above their threshold) and do not involve guessing your age via LLM or any other means.
If you need to use your ID to log into a website (even if the website doesn't get any of your information) then society is only a step away from the government monitoring everything you do online. And at that point it's up to them to decide whether they want to do it or not, because you're already used to the process. If they decide to violate your privacy there's nothing you can do about it other than vaguely point at privacy laws before promptly getting ignored.
It involves your government issuing you a signed digital copy of your ID documents which gets cryptographically bound to the security hardware in your smart phone (support for other hardware security devices is planned for later).
To verify your age to a site your phone and the site use a protocol based on zero-knowledge proofs to demonstrate to the site that your phone has a bound ID document signed by your government that says your age is above the site's threshold, without disclosing anything else from your ID document to the site.
This demonstration requires the use of a key that was generated in the security hardware when the ID was bound, which shows that the site is talking to your phone and that the security hardware is unlocked, which is sufficient evidence that you have authorized this verification to satisfy the law.
Note that your government is not involved beyond the initial installation of the bound ID document on the phone. They get no information on what sites you later age verify for or when you do any age verifications.
Wow, the EU is really going hard on innovation.
I suppose the nice thing is that the dystopia has already been explored by science fiction quite well.
You cant honestly expect people to ignore the actual real world implementation right? Its not disingenuous to discuss whats actually been inflicted upon a full populace in favour of a test?
Not to forget that the UK was making lists of those it was providing digital licenses to. And that the UK has a history of leaking data like a sieve. The government making a list of known digital ID users can be coloured the same way.
Not to mention that not everyone will end up with a supported cryptographic device will they? Are we expecting this to run on linux without TPM 2.0? Lots of recent Linux migrants are there to avoid TPM 2.0 requirement. You keep mentioning hardware security, so I suspect its not going to be as easy as loading a certificate. Or even if extra methods for edge cases will be supported at all.
But its all still hypothetical anyway. We have an actual implementation to dissect. One that the Australian government is actively trying to sell to other countries.
They could point out that the EU system has been in development for years, with numerous expert reviews, all in the open with reference implementations of the protocols and apps for iOS and Android all on Github under open source licenses.
They could also point out it has been tested extensively in a series of field trials involving a large variety of sites and a large number of users, with the last two field trials scheduled to finish this year.
By simply waiting and making that the system they use they get a much more secure and privacy preserving system than what they would get otherwise, with others having already done the hard cryptographic parts and figured out usability issues and developed the apps. That's way better than going with some system that nobody was thinking about until they started working on legislation.
They could also point out that the sites they want to require age verification on will almost certain be supporting the EU system when it comes out. That's because the EU is requiring that member states that implement age verification laws require that sites accept this system. The state can allow or require accepting other system, but this one will be the one that works everywhere.
Countries that wait for the EU system and use it will then have an easier time getting companies to implement age verification in their country since those companies can simply use the same software they will be using in the EU.
As far as having a suitable device goes, in the EU somewhere in the 95-98% range of non-elderly adults have a suitable smart phone. It's higher the younger people are and is going up. Same in the US. In Australia it is around 97% of adults.
The EU is planning on later adding support for stand-alone hardware security devices which should cover those without a smart phone.
As far as government leaking lists of who has a digital ID, that's likely to be a list of most adult phone users. The overall system is not just a privacy and anonymity preserving age verification system. It's a digital wallet for storing a digital version of your physical ID card.
People will likely use it in most places they use their physical ID cards. People tend to love being able to use their phones in place of physical cards (all cards, not just ID cards), and will be getting it even if they never intend to use any sites that require age verification.
A leak that says "tzs has a digital ID on his phone" (if my country were to adopt such a system) would be about as concerning as a leak that says "tzs has his auto insurance card on his phone" or "tzs has a credit card on his phone". (This is also way car companies that let you install a digital key fob on your phone often make that a feature only on higher end trims even though it requires the exact same hardware as the lower trims. Enough people like the idea of not having to carry around the key fob that they will go up a trim level to get it).
If people can't get their government to delay until such a system is available they should be trying to get the law to include a provision that when such a system is available the government will support it and sites will have to accept it. That way they eventually get a privacy preserving option. That's a more likely way to work to get eventual privacy than trying to pass separate legislation later to add it.
Not doing it at all, is even better again.
We should fix the actual problem (engagement driven social media) which causes polarization under adults too. This is just window dressing and gives more personal data to governments and advertisers.
And no I really don't want it. Give parents the tools to manage better and make sure the worst toxic traits of social media are banned (the EU could do this under the DSA/DMA) and there is no need to ban it for all minors then.
I'm sure it will come but I will oppose and work around it as much as I can. I don't think age verification should exist at all.
Privacy-respecting, free, even technically superior options are regularly overlooked in favor of invasive and locked down options. See how often phone 2FA is forced "for security" when generic TOTP authenticators or passkeys could do better. Also see how specifications around passkeys are being set up to eventually squeeze out free implementations in favor of Google and Apple.
Every generation seems to pick their moral panic and then engages in "unintentional concern trolling" over it. The people mean well, but low quality evidence shouldn't be good enough to condemn things.
Serious question, given it kinda feels like Meta's been acting like cigarette companies back in their heyday, while X is acting like it's the plot device of a James Bond villain.
I stopped engaging in such discussions. There are some people who are reasonable and make sense, but the rest are just outright batshit crazy. They want more restraints, more censorship, more anti-privacy crap? Or they equate "good" with addictive? Come on.
Is the concept of a game just being fun that alien?
Because I can hardly imagine 70% of people in a train reading comic books. Guess what 70% are doing in the train in 2026?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/teens-and...
It’s addictive like smoking. Addictive algorithms take away agency. I don’t think there are a lot of kids wishing they read less comic books, or played less DND (there may be some percentage wishing less video games). But it’s not like a classic generational divide where parents don’t understand it and teens are fighting for this stuff, a lot are against it themselves!
I think couples' X could be interesting. But I'd prefer free association (possibly VR?)
Go to local liquor store. Present ID. Purchase $1 anonymous age verification card. Problem solved. (Card implementation left to reader.)
> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?
We used to have to visit a separate forum per community/topic/whatever. There was no realtime feed shoving posts in your face. No algorithm optimizing for engagement. How was that not better?
But there are age gate laws today, and calls to pass more of them. A hypothetical better way in the future shouldn’t excuse legally mandating a poor implementation today.
If a given government body can't manage to stand up a web API to validate one time use codes within a few months then they clearly don't have the technical knowhow to manage smart IDs in a secure manner.
My point being that this either doesn't qualify as hypothetical, or if it does, then it indicates gross incompetence to an extent that precludes more complex solutions as a matter of course.
I don't want "papers please" to be normalized. If the smart ID can do anonymous attestation of age then it can presumably also share various details with a requesting party. Next thing you know Facespace 365 is requiring you to provide your (attested) full legal name in order to register an account. I find that to be a highly objectionable outcome.
If things escalated beyond basic age checks that also adds hardware requirements. Would I find myself needing a smartcard reader to do anything online? The friction of needing to visit a bank in person seems like a feature to me.
What doesn't bother me is age restricted content guarded by a low fence. The bare minimum required to blunt the impact of something that appears to be analogous to an epidemic.
However, we're not going to get that because politicians would just say it is open to abuse. Anyone can go to a liquor store and supply alcohol to minors. The same would apply to anonymous age tokens. I don't know if it would be a big issue in practice, but it will in the minds of politicians.
Also if such identification cards are that easy to get, it is inevitable that the majority of kids are going to get access to them. I or somebody else could go across town to different stores, get 30 different ID cards, and then sell them for $15 a piece. And that is of course assuming foreign states and people don't break or circumvent the situation and sell ID codes online.
Sure, you could enter the black market. Presumably that would carry similar penalties as selling alcohol to minors. People certainly do that but at least my personal experience growing up in the US was that it was substantially easier to come by narcotics in highschool than it was alcohol.
Why would a foreign state bother to interfere with such a system? Violations are even less harmful than underage alcohol consumption. (Which is itself typically fairly benign. I will never understand why people in the US make such a big deal out of it.)
If you worry about every possible thing that can go wrong you will inevitably arrive at a surveillance state. Thus these eventualities need to balance the downsides imposed by any solution with the downsides of circumvention or other abuse. In this case all that's required is a very minor but legally enforced speedbump to force the hand of website operators and nudge cultural norms towards a healthier place.
The evidence from device bans is pretty damn compelling.
I am less familiar with the social-media literature. But I believe we have decent efforts at disentangling causation, and to my knowledge all research not coming out of Meta and TikTok points one way.
> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe
If they do this isn’t great policy. If they don’t, it is. Let’s let this natural experiment play out.
This is just a means to force logins and identity verification on every site.
"Meta’s own researchers found — in an experiment they believed was better designed than any external study done thus far — that reducing time on their platforms improved mental health and well-being, specifically depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison."
Straw man argument, much? Might as well argue "We can't make any changes, ever, just in case something else happens!
We'll address the next issue when/if it happens, same as always.
I actually disagree with you. This was the internet when I was a kid, and part of the point was you had more agency. This may seem counter-intuitive, but I might prefer my kid hang out on 4chan than tik tok all day long, because at least the former feels like they’re making an intentional choice, and there’s not a multi billion dollar algorithm getting them addicted.
This is part of the point. Kids need more unregulated spaces. Your youthTM brought to you by Mark Zuckerberg is dystopian.
This is a thin veiled propaganda that the likes of Zuckerberg quote all the time but is misattributed. Those marginalized group of people had benefits in finding like-minded people online, mostly through forums etc. (side point: same benefit exist for marginalized group such as white supremacist)
But that's social NETWORK, and not social MEDIA. Almost all benefit people that defend social media spout is simply a social NETWORK benefit. The only advantage social MEDIA have is personalized ad, for people that like that. Everything else you get by reimplementing old, boring social network without "the algorithm".
Social media "feels" like it should be uniquely bad for children but the evidence is low-quality and contradictory. For example, high social media use is associated with anxiety and depression, but which direction does that relationship run? Meanwhile there are documented benefits especially for youth who are members of marginalized groups (e.g. LGBTQ). Don't get me wrong, I think there are a lot of problems with the big social media companies. I just think they affect adults too and that we should address them directly.
But setting that aside, the practical implications of age gate laws are terrible. The options are basically to have an LLM guess your age based on your face, or uploading sensitive identity documents to multiple sites and hope they are stored and processed securely and not reused for other purposes.
But OK let's assume social media is always bad for kids and also that someone invents a perfect age gate... kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?