> But I feel the exact same about cheeseburgers.

The problem with analogies to things like cheeseburgers, gambling, drugs, cigarettes, etc., is:

1. Availability -- you have to go somewhere to acquire/participate in these things*

2. Cost -- you have to have money to spend. That is, it's not something you can consume/participate in for free -- you have to have money to spend.

* Gambling is theoretically freely available via gambling apps. But still comes at a cost.

With social media, anybody can do it for unlimited amounts of time, and for free. All you need is a phone/laptop/desktop with internet access -- which nearly every person on the planet has.

Addiction + Free + Widely available = Destruction

To your points I would add the following difference between TikTok on the one hand and cheeseburgers, drugs, cigarettes, etc. on the other.

3. Targeting -- even under the (debatable) premise that they are intentionally designed to be addictive, cheeseburgers, drugs and cigarettes do not actively target each addict by optimising their properties to their individual addiction.

If I am addicted to smoking, the tobacco industry does indeed try to keep me hooked, among other things by offering me many flavours and alternatives. However, the cigarettes I personally consume are not constantly adjusting their formula, appearance and packet design specifically to satisfy my tastes and desires.

Yes. Target the algorithms, not the method of delivery. Hacker news also counts as social media, but here we all are seeing the same feed on the same site with minimal (if not zero) tracking to try and extract info from the audience.

Even a first step of requiring transparency in the algorithms would quickly shatter this stronghold on people's minds.

Indeed. In fact, you may notice I explicitly left out gambling from the list of 'non targeted' addictions. The reason for that is that the delivery methods for gambling cover the whole gamut from zero to fully personalised targeting, and I didn't want that to distract from the point.

case in point: lots of places have lots of restrictions (either through legislation or just industry norms, usually a combination of both) about advertising for alcohol or tobacco.

And those efforts seem effective to me, at least anecdotally. I don't feel particularly bad about those restrictions either.

nooo those restrictions aren't perfect. And if it's not perfect then it needs to be abolished! /s

Don't forget the most important part. Attempting to opt-out means social exclusion for a vast majority of the population.

So what you're saying is that we should ban porn then?

No, they saying it (and other things) should be regulated (it is)

Social media companies are also regulated, but we are talking about whether social media companies should be liable for creating addictive content when porn has the same qualities of being easily available and free.

Yes

agree

To add, McDonalds is required to list calories and nutritional information. There are various agencies and regulations guarding us from them selling us rat meat instead of cow. Education on “junk food” is widespread and has (had…) widespread government education programs.

There is a great deal of information given to parents on what is in McDonalds.

I would say that most parents, not those on a tech site, have no idea how tiktok works, what studies have shown about it or its dangers.

I agree, there's plenty of information out there and nutrition is often taught in schools.

Additionally, other content like TV and movies has content ratings, social media does not have anything of the sort.

I think the line is the same as vapes/cigarettes. It's less about the product itself and more how its advertised and marketed. Internal memos from Meta are pretty damning in that they know they're actively harming kids and not adjusting their product for harm reduction. I imagine TikTok has the same problem, prompting them to settle out early.

You're getting some mild heat in sibling comments here. Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation goes into a lot of detail on this exact point about parental responsibility.

There are others that touch on personal vs. societal responsibility too and the difficulties with parental/personal moderation and change (Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke off the top of my head).

There is an enormous amount of nuance that goes into answering your questions and addressing your assumptions that HN is probably not a great medium for, if you're serious about understanding the answers.

Food and nutritional science is something many of us know (to a degree) and has been taught often in high schools. That is partly why you know that cheeseburgers aren't great for you, because you know they're highly processed, high in salt and high in fat and that's written on the label.

But the knowledge of the harmful impacts of social media aren't as abundant, nor are they identified or classified.

McDonalds are required to list the nutritional information of what you're consuming. TV shows and movies have content ratings to know what you're going to be consuming. Social media like Tiktok does not have any form of rating to know what you're consuming or going to consume.

There is a lot of less rigour on short from content like Tiktok, in comparison with McDonalds.

> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

If McDonald’s is handing them out for free at the playground, yes.

I hate that this needs to be said, but giving kids free food is not illegal.

This requires many asterisks, as once you hit any appreciable size of "giving out food" you tend to hit tons of local ordinance about food safety, permits, and just general distrust of directly interacting with other people's kids at a playground (depending on the age we are talking about, but since we said playground, I'm assuming pretty young).

To add, little children have been arrested for having lemonade stands in the USA before.

Source?

You don't need all the asterisks if you don't stretch the metaphor beyond its breaking point.

I'm not stretching it at all. The context was McDonalds, and the added context was giving food to children at a playground. I'm completely bounded on that context.

If the food contains heroin, it's illegal. There's a line somewhere.

If you believe that, go set up a "Free Candy!" stand at a local playground and see how long before the police show up.

> go set up a "Free Candy!" stand at a local playground and see how long before the police show up

This is a sign of a broken community. Handing out candy is absolutely fine as long as the kids are old enough to understand their own allergies and limits.

But kids don't know their own allergies and limits, because they're kids. That's the point.

> kids don't know their own allergies and limits, because they're kids. That's the point

Counterpoint: Halloween.

Most kids are competent enough to manage their survival in such circumstances. Some are not. And sometimes it’s not the parents’ fault. But if a community is raising a generation too imbecilic to choose if they can eat chocolate, their life path is sort of already written.

Halloween happens once a year, that’s a big reason it’s tolerated. Also, many parents do provide guidance/control over how much and how fast the candy is eaten. Because otherwise everyone suffers.

The better comparison is what if there was a bottomless bucket of candy in your 10 year olds room all the time.

> giving kids free food is not illegal

It’s not. But if you’re giving a kid “100” burgers “in one sitting” without the parent’s explicit sign-off, you are probably liable for damages.

My personal vice is junk food. I wish they banned junk food. I'm not sure how the law would work but it would be objectively better for me as a human if they did.

(This is completely disregarding how practical such a ban would be)

A power law formula tax based on sugar/sat fat/total carbs per mass of food/drink should do the trick.

Or give everyone cheap daily GLP-1 pills.

Rest in piece literally every food in existence that isn't just a slab of meat.

Sorry for the ignorance but does GLP-1 fix all the nutrition / hyper-processed components of the food or is the implication here someone's weight is (making up a number) 90% of the negative effects.

Thanks for the reply :)

Overconsumption is the root cause of the negative effects.

The evidence doesn’t seem to support your claim that cheeseburgers are as addicting as social media.

Maybe if you had picked gambling or alcohol…

That has nothing to do with the point being made. The point was about to what level parents are responsible for things they allow their kids to do, regardless of how "addictive" it is. Particularly if they know it's harmful.

Your kids are (and should be) doing all kinds of things you have no idea about. It’s part of becoming an adult. I’m sure you modeled all the right behaviors, and provided every advantage you could. That helps, but you’re influence is waning and their friends influence is building and it’s all manipulated by the thousands of PhD’s working for TikTok and the other social media companies. You’re outgunned.

I think you might be underestimating the level of control that an average parent, especially a working parent, has over a teenage kid. Short of taking away devices, it's tough, especially if they're going through a phase of doing precisely the opposite of what you recommend / demand.

I'm not saying that parents don't have any responsibility, but it's about practicalities. If a teenager can easily buy smokes or alcohol, many will, no matter what the parents say. If you make the goods harder to buy, usage drops. So, shops / software vendors do have some responsibility for societal outcomes.

In a libertarian utopia, anything goes, but kids are... weird in that they often try to push the boundaries of their autonomy without always knowing the risk, and it's in our collective best interest not to let them go too far.

> kids are... weird in that they often try to push the boundaries of their autonomy without always knowing the risk

I'd argue most adults are just oversized kids in a trenchcoat

*all

Regardless of how addictive it is? So the same argument applies to heroin? Shoukd heroin be legalized and allowed to be sold outside of schools?

If my kid gets addicted to fent I will get in shit, regardless that Purdue Pharma was found guilty. Point is Purdue Pharma is guilty for hooking people on an addicting substance.

I have doubts most overconsumers of fast food are just getting burgers... like effectively nobody. Is it more likely that people damage themselves with cheeseburgers or the soda that comes with them?

I tried to eat as many cheeseburgers as I could in one sitting (I easily eat double the amount of food of others in one sitting normally), and tapped out at 10 or something, which is impractical and gross, there's a physical limit unless you have certain conditions

If you only go to fast food once a week or less with your kid as a treat, I feel like you could probably exclude soda and fries and tell them to get as many burgers as they want, but they have to eat them all, and it would be more of a lesson than anything lol

Yes, you should be able to recover damages from McDonald's if they made their food addictive on purpose.

I don't know if I agree with that.

I don't know how to draw even a blurred line between I've made my burger taste better because I added salt to it, but has now make it more addictive as a result.

You could argue an Oreo has been developed to taste good such that you want to eat them again.

I understand your point and I agree to an extent but I don't know how you do that. Becoming addicted to things comes with a level of personal accountability, to a degree.

>Should I be able to sue McDonald's if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

If RJ Reynolds was handing out free cigarettes to children, even though the parent either consented to this or simply didn't know about it, would you consider RJ Reynolds' responsible for the adverse effects of children smoking?

If it was legal to hand out cigarettes to children and the parents consented I don't see how the company could be held liable. The state should not be doing the job of parents, and the judicial branch should not being doing the job of the legislative branch.

That seems like circular logic.

You're saying parental responsibility should govern because TikTok is legal, while cigarettes require state intervention because they're illegal. But they are only illegal because we made them illegal (for minors). And isn't that exactly what is being discussed here?

For the sake of consistency, do you think cigarettes should be legal for minors if they have parental consent? If not, what is the distinction between TikTok and cigarettes that causes you to think the government should be involved in one but not the other?

What I am saying is that if you want to regulate social media companies, pass a law, don't punish companies for breaking a law that isn't on the books.

The harm from cigarette use is direct, and there is no level of cigarette use that can be considered safe and healthy. Additionally, it would be very difficult for parents to prevent their children from buying them if they could walk into any convenience store and buy them. On the other side, social media use can be harmful, but it is possible to use social media in a healthy way.

I'm curious where it ends when you start banning kids from things that are only potentially addictive or harmful. Should parents be able to let their children watch TV, play video games, or have a phone or tablet?

What's the distinction between those things and social media for you?

The difference between social media and cheeseburgers here is that I don't NEED to physically go to McDonald's to find out if a business is closed or learn more about their work. (The number of businesses that only post operational updates, specials or samples of their work on Instagram is staggering. Google Maps isn't trustworthy; websites DEFINITELY aren't trustworthy either.)

> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

There are other options for addressing social problems besides lawsuits. Other rich places in this world are not nearly as fat as us. I suspect environments also matter for social media addiction. We should investigate why!

It's actually because they have more lawsuits and more severe lawsuits, leading companies to be afraid of breaking the law so they don't, and then lawsuits decrease.

Lawsuits are the one official mechanism for righting wrongs. They're the only mechanism that the perpetrator of a wrong can't just choose to ignore.

I would like to prevent wrongs as well as right them.

Suing companies early and often prevents other companies from doing the same things because they don't want to get sued.

> I just don't really know where the line

It is developed to be as addictive like a drug, but it’s not even fun. Just stupid mind numbing content.gambling does the same thing, and many jurisdictions have outlawed it for minors.

The thing I really liked about Tiktok originally was the departure from the perfectionism of Instagram, and people being ok with participating in the dance moves and trends. It was pretty positive. The thing is once you have an engaged audience sometimes you might want to keep them captivated (and their attention farmed to resell ads to).

With that being said, I don't know if McDonalds is not a really usable comparison.

McDonalds is not an endless conveyor belt of food arriving in your hands 24/7 and beeping and buzzing you when it's not to learning how and what to put in front of you to keep eating endlessly until you can't eat anymore.

There's more useful studies that doomscrolling and shorts literally decrease brain size, increase depression, and lead to dopamine exhaustion.

Short Video players are digital slot machines. They seem to be designed to let people keep using it who might not be aware on how to build up defences, or of defences are needed. In a casino many of the things the games machines can and can't do are legislated by law. It might be surprising to learn how many of those things out right, similar to it, or unique to it can happen on a phone without circumstance. Casinos will also remind you to gamble responsibly, and be able to ban yourself if needed.

The line is really simple for kids - screens loaded with bright colors that are constantly changing with many layers of sounds from ages 1-5 pretty harmful at overriding their senses. Then, there's other content traps from there. The recent moves to schools that go screen free (or greatly reduce passive consumption) is critical. Putting a chromebook in front of a kid for 8 hours isn't always progress.

Casino laws protect the player, at least in reputable casinos, whereas short video players on your phone just pull you in with no safeguards, placing all the responsibility on the user

it was sold so israel could have more control over the narratives visible. nothing to do with any real safety concerns

> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

Should you be able to sue a liquor store if they sell your kid a fifth of vodka?

The US has executed people in international waters over the claim of fentanyl being trafficked into the country. Is Insta and TikTok as addictive as fentanyl? If so, does it warrant a similar response? I think a cheeseburger is not an equivalent analogy. Singapore also executes drug traffickers, for what it’s worth.

https://www.techpolicy.press/is-tiktok-digital-fentanyl/

https://www.foxnews.com/media/tiktok-is-chinas-digital-fenta...

> Certainly, some regard social media generally as addictive, and reckon TikTok is a particularly potent format. Anna Lembke, Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, and author of the book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance In The Age of Abundance, referred to Tiktok as a "potent and addictive digital drug":

> I can’t speak to the surveillance piece mentioned in the article, but I can attest to the addictive nature of TikTok and other similar digital media. The human brain is wired to pay attention to novelty. One of the ways our brain gets us to pay attention to novel stimuli is by releasing dopamine, a reward neurotransmitter, in a part of the brain called the reward pathway. What TikTok does is combine a moving image, already highly reinforcing to the human brain, with the novelty of a very short video clip, to create a potent and addictive digital drug.

I'm trying to read this with the best of intentions, but you're saying you really can not tell the difference social media and a cheeseburger in terms of access, addiction, and damage?

Cheeseburgers are everywhere, are addictive to some, and eventually eating enough will kill you.

Put another way: If McDonalds sees I eat 5 cheeseburgers a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me for my own health? Do they need to step in at all?

If Facebook knows I'm scrolling 6 hours a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me?

Cheeseburgers are not everywhere. I'm sitting at my desk, social media is here but cheeseburgers are not. Social media is always with me other than in the shower. Cheeseburgers are not.

I can get a cheeseburger delivered, or there's a dozen places within a 15 minute walk to get one. I can hardly leave the house without seeing an ad for one or some other fast food item on the side of a bus. I can't avoid being hungry, but I can leave my phone at home.

Sure it's a matter of degrees but I don't see a bright line between McDonald's and tiktok. Both want me hooked on their product. Both have harmful aspects. Both have customers they know are over-indulging. Why would only tiktok be liable for that?

If I had to walk for 15 minutes or pay a hefty delivery fee to access social media, my usage would be massively lower. If there was a cheeseburger in my hand all day every day I would be a lot fatter.

If people never felt full from food, food was always instantly available in your pocket, and food costed no money to obtain, I believe McDonalds and TikTok would be very equivalent. Likely McDonalds would even be far worse since people would probably be dying to it daily.

That's the bright line. The lack of any barrier to entry.

> Put another way: If McDonalds sees I eat 5 cheeseburgers a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me for my own health? Do they need to step in at all?

Is McDonald's adjusting the flavour and ingredients of each cheeseburger it serves you with the express purpose of encouraging you to order the next one as soon as possible?

They are constantly evolving the menu and it's entirely data-driven, so yes? It's not down to the person level like tiktok but if they could, it would be.

So compared to TikTok and algorithms the answer is no then? If they could I agree they would, but they can't target food on the same level that TikTok does.

How is the cheeseburger that you receive differently tailored to your own addiction than the cheeseburger that the following customer will receive is to theirs?

A bar has a legal responsibility to stop serving people at some point, so this obligation is not unheard of.

Yes, of course I understand the addictive difference. The point I'm making is: does parental decision making have any bearing on this, or can they knowingly allow their child to do something harmful and then sue because it turned out poorly.

How would you feel if some weird random strangers set up a free cookie hut outside the elementary school? Any kid can get as much free candy and cookies as they want as long as they go inside and don’t tell any adults.

I would say if the companies providing the service do so knowing it is harmful and cover that up then yes they can sue.

> can they knowingly allow their child to do something harmful and then sue because it turned out poorly

That likely depends on how that "something" was publicly marketed to both parents and children based on the company's available information. Our laws historically regulate substances (and their delivery mechanisms) which may lead to addition or are very easy to misuse in a way which leads to permanent harm (see: virtually all mind-altering substances); even nicotine gum is age-restricted like tobacco products. Because nicotine is generally considered an addictive substance, it's regulated, but few reasonable people would argue that parents should be allowed to buy their children nicotine gum so their kids calm down.

Consider how, decades ago, the tobacco companies were implicated in suppressing research demonstrating that tobacco products are harmful to human health. The key here will be if ByteDance has done the same thing.

Also, to play off your point on cheeseburgers: remember the nutritional quality of one cheeseburger versus another will vary. If made with top-quality ingredients (minimally-processed ingredients, organic vegetables, grass-fed beef, etc.), a cheeseburger is actually quite nutritious. However, in a hypothetical situation where a fast-food chain was making false public claims about the composition of their cheeseburgers (e.g., lying about gluten-free buns or organic ingredient status), and someone is harmed as a consequence, the victim might have standing to sue the fast food chain.

I think we would all agree that parents bear a lot of responsibility here. Also, if I think if we look at how we treat kids in other parts of society it's very clear it's a good thing when highly addictive things are kept away from them. It's a good thing cigarette companies can't advertise to children. It's a good thing serving children alcohol or allowing them to buy weed is illegal. And now that we have this new poison, the law hasn't quite caught up yet, but this is a poison, and it's being fed to children with a ferocity and sophistication that only modern technology can provide. A kid can't make a hamburger in their bedroom. They can sneak a phone in and use it. I think it's both. I shout from the roof tops to every parent who will listen to not buy their kid a smart phone. I also think we should hold companies accountable when the knowingly get children addicted to poison.

Tech companies know exactly what they are doing. They deliberately sell crack to kids- some of the people who make money from it are here on HN so good luck with getting any honest discussion.

"Again, I get the danger here..."

Haha, wtf. You don't.

China imposes strong restrictions on the Chinese version of TikTok, see here:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069527/china-ti...

Excerpts: Douyin [Chinese version of TikTok] introduced in-app parental controls, banned underage users from appearing in livestreams, and released a “teenager mode” that only shows whitelisted content, much like YouTube Kids. In 2019, Douyin limited users in teenager mode to 40 minutes per day, accessible only between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Then, in 2021, it made the use of teenager mode mandatory for users under 14.

> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

Should you be able to sue McDonald's if they delivered you unlimited cheeseburgers for free, said nothing of the dangers, and even encouraged you to eat more, and then you became obese/sick from it? Sure, it may have been your choice to accept/eat them, but you did so uninformed, and based on false premises, and the risks were hidden from you, or even explicitly downplayed.

That's what social media is. It's free delivery of unlimited cheeseburgers, but for your brain.

In the above example, you were tempted with something that seemed good, but that carried great risks, to generate business for another who knew of the risks, but either didn't tell you, or even lied to you. When the risks backfire on you -- the risks they knew about from the very start -- or even have already been backfiring on you for a while, I think it's absolutely fair to blame that business for knowingly tempting you into it, and that it's also absolutely fair to seek damages. Proving those damages is another matter, but I think it's absolutely fair to try.

Worse, people have a limit to how many cheeseburgers they can eat at once. You can spend all day on your phone.

Cheeseburgers did not come about with the intent to poison. Social media is deliberately weaponized.

What if while you were eating a cheeseburger, McDonald’s was magically replenishing that burger so that no matter how much you kept eating there was still some left. Moreover you had little control over the ratios of fat and sugar used to replenish it and they earned more the longer you spent eating it. Would you consider them harming you if they were prioritising stuffing it with ingredients that maximised the amount you ate and ignored sensible limits on sugar and fat?

A drug is a drug is a drug is a drug.

America has never been able to successfully thwart drug proliferation. Porn, Video Games, Social Media, all substance-less drugs. It's up to you to keep your kid off Heroin and it's also up to you to keep them off those other things at addictive levels.

The thing is, keeping your kid away from things like Heroin takes a village (especially if Heroin is pervasive in the environment). The same is true for those other things. Adults have to enter the room at some point.

We've been needing a trillion-dollar class action lawsuit against social media companies. Long overdue.