The Plot to Poison Children’s Minds

Social media should be treated like alcohol. But money got in the way.

This is going to be a post about social media, why it’s often harmful, and the disgusting failure of Congress to do anything to mitigate the harm. It’s part of what I envision as a series on “limbic capitalism.” But first, let’s talk about drinking.

Alcohol can be a source of pleasure, especially in a social context. I respect friends who’ve sworn off the stuff, but I would miss the occasional beer with my burger, the glass of red with my Bolognese, the shared bottle of Prosecco on social occasions.

Alcohol is also a potentially addictive drug that is bad for your health — in fact, it’s a major killer. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that excessive alcohol use kills 178,000 Americans each year, roughly seven times the death toll from homicides and more than twice the toll from opioids.

So what’s a society to do when many people engage in an activity that is often self-destructive? Saying that it’s just a matter of individual choice is naïve; the assumption that people can be trusted to make their own decisions has a lot going for it in many situations, but it really breaks down when it comes to addictive behavior like heavy drinking and gambling — and no, the fact that gambling isn’t a drug in the traditional sense doesn’t make any difference.

On the other hand, heavy-handed paternalism is both an infringement on individual freedom and unworkable in practice. Most Americans heaved a sigh of relief when Prohibition ended in 1933.

Yet the end of Prohibition didn’t mean a return to the free-for-all that prevailed before 1919. Although Americans in effect decided that mature adults should be free to drink, even given the risks, we also as a nation realized that young people shouldn’t be trusted to make that decision. Most states established a minimum legal drinking age of 21. In the 1970s a number of states tried reducing that age to 18, but those reductions led to a clear increase in the number of car crashes. By 1988, partly thanks to federal pressure, the minimum drinking age of 21 became national, and has stayed there ever since.

Which brings me to social media.

Like alcohol, social media, consumed in moderation, can be a source of enjoyment; as readers of this newsletter can tell, I really, really like watching live musical performances on YouTube. Also history documentaries. Social media can even be a source of enlightenment. Before Elon Musk turned Twitter into a Nazi-infested wasteland (and that’s not hyperbole), I used my feed to keep a finger on the pulse of both events and economic debate; at this point I use Bluesky, which from my point of view has reached critical mass, for the same purpose.

But social media can very easily damage your mental health. I’ve more or less tamed the YouTube algorithm by rigorously following a simple rule: never, ever click on anything involving (a) politics or (b) cute animals. But it’s really easy even for adults to get sucked into black holes of misinformation and otherwise damaging content.

In fact, that’s apparently part of the story behind recent bizarre events in South Korea — President Yoon Suk Yeol’s sudden declaration of martial law for no apparent reason. Toxic politics YouTube is a bigger force in America than many realize, but it’s apparently even bigger in Korea — and Yoon reportedly was among its victims. Reuters reports:

A columnist for the conservative-leaning JoongAng Ilbo newspaper on Friday said Yoon's "YouTube addiction" had ruined his regime.

"If you are addicted to YouTube, you fall into a world of delusion dominated by conspiracy theories... President Yoon watched too much YouTube," the column said.

If social media can be bad for adults — it is, all too often, a force for bringing out the worst in its consumers — it can be really bad for minors. Both the Surgeon General and the American Psychological Association have issued advisories warning that heavy social media use by minors can cause serious mental health problems ranging from anxiety over cyberbullying to body image problems to eating disorders. As with gambling, the distinction between mental and physical effects is a false dichotomy; for teenagers in particular, excessive social media use can in effect rewire the brain.

So there’s a very good case for a social media equivalent to the minimum drinking age. In fact, that’s what Australia has just done, banning access to social media for children under 16.

We don’t know how or if the ban will work in practice; it won’t go into effect for a year. But the rationale was clear. And at the beginning of 2024 America seemed on track to enact much weaker but still significant legislation to protect minors from some of the worst consequences of social media. The Kids Online Safety Act wouldn’t have banned minors from using social media, but it would have created a “duty of care” for social media platforms minors are likely to use, obliging these platforms to try to limit content that could promote bullying, eating disorders, suicide and so on.

This wasn’t about ideology or politics; social media platforms would remain free to spread political mis- and disinformation to adults. In particular, this wasn’t an attempt to crack down on the conspiracy theories that have come to play such a large role in our politics, mainly but not entirely on the right. Adults would have remained free to use social media to proclaim that Jews are planning to replace white people, Covid vaccines contain microchips, lizard people rule the world, whatever. This legislation was narrowly focused on protecting the mental health of children, which is why a version of the bill passed the Senate by a 91-3 margin in July.

But then Mark Zuckerberg and Meta got to work. After all, while most of us see social media addiction as a health crisis, for Meta it’s a business model.

As far as I can tell, Meta and NetChoice, which effectively acted as its front organization, barely even tried to make a serious argument against KOSA; they just repeated boilerplate about free speech and parental choice that Senate Republicans had already dismissed in that 91-3 vote. But what they did do was throw lots of money at House Republicans. And they basically succeeded in killing the bill.

The apparent abandonment of children’s welfare here should, I’d argue, be seen in the context of a couple of policy reversals by Donald Trump himself.

First was Trump’s sudden reversal on TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. In 2020 he called for banning the app; in 2024 he suddenly called for reversal of a law requiring the app to shut down unless ByteDance sold it. Why? It’s widely believed that Trump was strongly influenced by Jeff Yass, a megadonor who owns a stake in ByteDance.

Second was Trump’s stunning decision to betray his MAGA base and side with Elon Musk over H-1B visas, which I wrote about Sunday.

What all three of these reversals suggest to me is that the 2024 election wasn’t a victory for populism or actually any kind of “ism.” What it did, instead, was deliver the levers of power into the hands of people who can be bought.

And among the casualties of this corruption, it seems, will be the mental health of thousands of children.

MUSICAL CODA

Actually about a failed marriage, not interaction on social media, but whatever