Legal bribery has won. Whatever the issue, Roberts' Supreme Court has ruined rationality and reform. Until "Citizen's United" is repealed we are stuck in money hell.
All the way to the top - ABC’s $16M “settlement” in a case they’d never lose is nothing less than a bribe, buying (they hope) favorable treatment by the incoming administration.
Lewis, exactly on topic. This "administration" (corrupt, money driven, without ethics or norms) can and will buy, bribe or blackmail anyone or anything. ABC for example.
Your legal analysis is not correct. ABC was never going to win the case because of how NY law defines "rape". That was very well explained in the Judge's ruling which would have been read to a jury and thus hung ABC/Disney out to dry. So $15M was a cheap way to settle and not have to accept responsibility.
The corruption is in every branch of government now. There is no legal mechanism for positive change now because the corrupt and the bribed are everywhere. We basically have to start over, reboot the country from scratch. Not possible without a revolution that will never come cause Americans are too lazy. If there even is a country worth fighting for left after 4 more years of Trump hell. Who knows, maybe we will get lucky and the military will coup his ass and throw him in prison where he belongs.
LOL...49.9% is close enough. Many places gave him a super majority. Either way we all get to enjoy the will of the minority, as you point out. But more to the point is the number of people who can't be bothered to vote. That qualifies in my book as apathy and many of them are not happy, usually deservedly so. If the citizens demand nothing, they get nothing. And there is no easy fix to this condition.
Why do so many people think the entire country should be destroyed in order to save it? Did that work in Viet Nam? Is that what you think when you think of Rome? Excise the tumor, be surgical with the scalpel. No more collateral damage, no carpet bombing, no friendly fire. Stop with the dystopian thoughts of destruction. Plant a garden, learn a useful skill, listen to your children. Be a shepherd, not a sword.
But is it even an abandonment of concern for minors, or more of a convenient extension of a long game (now coming to delightful fruition) of creating an population of voters who who are historically ignorant, civically illiterate, and easy to control?
"And among the casualties of this corruption, it seems, will be the mental health of thousands of children."
You misspelled "millions".
It's the high-tech adjunct of the dumbing down of our educational system. Create a generation of non-critical-thinking zombie minds who cannot separate fact from fiction, who know nothing about history, civics, philosophy, etc., and can therefore be easily manipulated.
We should expend a lot more effort (and, of course, money) on education, yes. But critical thinking skills have been lacking in the population for centuries and are probably not more rare now than before. What’s different now is that Republicans cater to willfully ignorant non-thinkers, people who have zero interest in critical thinking but do have a strong interest in depriving people they don’t like (namely black Americans and other marginalized groups) of fair treatment by the government. Republicans deliver what the willfully ignorant want while also delivering additional wealth to the wealthy, which is the top priority of Republican leaders. The votes of the willfully ignorant deliver power to Republicans, and they exploit it to the hilt. It’s not a dearth of good education. It’s a lack of interest in education by a majority of the population, a circumstance that suits both the willfully ignorant and the obscenely wealthy just fine.
🫨 It is even worse than you posit - we have moved beyond even "Google everything" you don't know, as one of my Subtacks (Webworm) has addressed the phenomenon that many (most?) younger people don't even KNOW to "Google" or search via DuckDuckGo, or Bing, or Reddit or whatever to research something like "what was happening in the world when Pres Jimmy Carter came into office?" or anything else that might be relevant to the news of the day, or anything really. Teachers confirm this - their students expect to have things delivered without them having to seek it out, & for whatever reason (time poor, never heard of doing your own research!) they don't go to the internet because they are curious & want to know more 🤷 they go for someone else to TELL THEM what that person or organisation chooses to tell them 👀
This sounds about right, and it’s even worse in the post-school population. Yet, I don’t think that’s the crux of the problem. I remember very few K12 classmates who had any intellectual curiosity or any interest in schooling, and I suspect it’s still the same. What I think is different now is that Republicans learned from George Wallace how to exploit willful ignorance to win elections. Now, the willfully ignorant have to be catered to. Rethug leadership doesn’t really like that but has to go along to maintain the power they need to pursue their main interest, which is moving whatever wealth the middle-income and poor population has to the top 1% (or, really, the top 0.1%). As bad as smokefilled rooms were, their occupants never realized how much abuse the hoi polloi would put up with until George Wallace showed Nixon/Atwater how well racist policies solidify white support.
Agree with you that the election was not about populism, but it certainly was about Trumpism, which I define as saying whatever it takes to get elected in order to monetize the Government once you get in power. What Trump learned from Putin, and why they are soulmates, is that owning a business (even real estate) is for chumps; the real money is in running a Government. Think about it - no money down and then you get to parcel it out in chunks to your loyalists and future business partners, all without any real risk. It's the ultimate business enterprise - you not only get to make tons of money and invest in your future, but they also give you an Army to protect your assets! Nice work if you can get it.
That’s called dictatorship and has been going on in the rest of the world for hundreds of years (if not thousands if we include Greek and Roman imperial history), mainly in third world countries during the 20th century. Sadly enough, it also happened to the US with Trump. And Jan 6 was just a tiny simulation of how it should be done (with military forces) as it is the norm for a coup d’etat. That’s why Putin laughed at it and rightfully declared that was not a real attempt to impose a dictatorship. He knew very well what he was talking about.
Section 230 allows social media to avoid the legal requirements of news organisations by stating they’re platforms not publishers
But why can’t that be tweaked to say that if a social media company promotes a piece, I.e. uses the algorithm to put the post in your timeline then it is being ‘published’ and thus faces the exact same legal obligations that a magazine or newspaper proprietor faces when publishing a piece
No it wouldn’t kill Substack, it wouldn’t kill any of them, if you follow someone and their post arrives in your timeline in the order it was posted then you’re a neutral platform providing a place for people to share their work, as section 230 was originally understood
If you promote a piece, then you’re publishing it, you can even will promote pieces, just employ some actual humans like every other publisher had too, to make sure you’re not publishing anything defamatory
1. An age-based license to use a ‘platform’ will not end the existence of a platform.
2. It is possible and achingly preferable to make any ‘platform’ of ideas and information subject to its own set of regulations separate from news but based on *standards* of age-use, libel implementation, and other aspects of healthy discourse such as no distorted/mutated images without immediate removal of the account.
Additionally, a user being found to provide lies when more than 0.5 % of facts that the ‘poster’ presents (as evidence for opinions etc) can and should get them on probation from the sight and banned if it reaches 1.5% for example.
Regulations matter. Truth matters. It does not need to destroy the medium.
Dear Prof Krugman, many thanks for this comment and best wishes for a wonderful 2025!
I remember I read on the news paper some time ago that even Silicon Valley “gurus” have many problems trying to deal with their kids’ use of social networks.
How can we call a system in which even the inventors try to do their best limiting their kids’ use of their invention?
Somebody famously said that 60-70 years ago we did have great expectations for the future and all that we got were 140-characters messages.
For sure we all, as humans, can do much better.
Enhancing critical thinking in our kids would be a good start.
Yes. Although not a "guru", nor residing in silicon valley, I am a software engineer with two children. The struggle is real. I've engaged their school on policy; no phones use during school hours and seminars on social medias' effects on adolescents.
Even with the above and reasonably strict guidelines at home, "the algorithms" still wreak havoc on occasion. Parents, even ones in affluent households such as mine, are facing an uphill battle. The internet and the devices that connect to it, are designed to exploit the adolescent mind. Pair that with a teenage predisposition to assert Independence in an always online social environment and the whole scenario becomes so stressful and fraught with conflict.
I agree 100%, and I support both your actions and Prof Krugman’s approach, although I also am afraid that both Wall Street and China “priorities” will be very different from ours.
Keep up the good work with your kids. They won't thank you now as teenagers, but they will later. We had a one hour screen time limit all the time they were young. They didn't get cell phones till they were teenagers. Nor were they allowed to disappear into their own worlds. It didn't keep all evil at bay, but it helped.
I've noticed their friends who are doing well, had similar restrictions.
I agree absolutely and find it frightening that so many social media sites have taken such a heavy toll on mental health — and people like Zuckerberg are all in. He’s not rich enough for god’s sake?! I was addicted to Facebook, spent way too many hours on it, sucked down too many rabbit holes. It was destructive to my sense of well-being, I found myself becoming more and more angry and depressed. Just like giving up cigarettes, it took me several attempts before I was finally able to quit. This may sound comical to some, but it was not. And children? I am so saddened by what it is doing to children, who are so much more vulnerable than I was. We are indeed a sick society who cannot protect our children.
As far as the ethics of the federal government stepping in to control social media … I’m all in. The health and well being of society outweighs republicans ever-glorified “freedoms”. Motorcyclists in most states, if not all, must wear helmets. It helps protect them as well as society. They no longer have the “freedom” to feel the wind in their hair as they ride, but it may save their brain in a crash, it may save society from paying for exorbitant medical care, and it may keep a productive member of society alive.
A great part of the heavy tall on social media users, specially minors does not come exclusively from the "algorithm", but from content producers. In platforms the main responsibility of not harming people belongs to the person producing the content. And it is not a mere Free Speech issue:
Existing online for hours day and night is poisonous not to thousands but to millions, yet ignorant or absent parents put screens in the hands of literal babies. It is exactly like giving them an airplane WHISKEY bottle filled with an additive poison to keep them quiet, and stupidly thinking ‘it’s ok’ and has no psychosomatic consequences, when in hard fact it is exactly a poisoning of the nervous system the brain cells and *the ability to focus on life* which is precious, vital, and acquired through repeated practice and observation of adult interactions — which requires concentration and the use of the senses to subconsciously and consciously perceive reality until its understood in a way that allows cultural and species norms to be internalized by the youth. This is disrupted and adulterated or worse by *the excessive sensory removal of the human child and baby from the human experience*. And it initiates an addictive process that makes it harder and harder to be able to pay attention. To life. To work. To surroundings. To *long and complex* scenes in documentary films. To long and complex descriptions in BOOKS. To dialogue that reveals precious evolution of fictional or historical characters in meaningful films. To the subtleties of stories of spiritual texts in poetry or prose. To a CONVERSATION. Conversation requires a depth of concentration and focus and a wealth of experience in order to participate with meaning and authenticity. If the only or primary experience is short, fast, propagandistic, clickable, cynical, consumeristic, fickle-fixing, cynical, visual entertainment … there grows no personal evolution of the understanding of author content versus pop and paid consumerism. There grows no personal nor cohort recognition of lasting themes of progress in resisting oppression or discovering eternal values. There grows no ability in the brain and body to participate in life in ways that allow the development of useful skills because the brain and body are overtaken by the false belief that they ‘are’ consuming something normal and necessary in *ways* that are ‘normal and necessary’ (screen bits). When the opposite is true and they have been and are being literally programmed at the brain level to *ignore, reject, or politely tolerate and tune out normal and necessary information* in the minds of elders (like classroom teachers thoughtful grandparents, parents, small business owners in the community, apprenticeship leaders, camp counselors, group therapy counselors, documentary film directors and *authors*: ancient historical and contemporary).
The Australian social media ban is horrendous, there is no solid definition for what counts as social media, it is declared by the minister, so it can apply to virtually every website on the internet, from YouTube, to video games, to emails, to Substack. Kids will have their lives upended, their online life gone, virtually every social interaction outside of real life will be banned. And everyone including adults will be forced to age verify.
Ebv044, I'd be interested to learn more about this contrarian viewpoint. (For example: What did the minister (which minister) actually say that suggests all online access was subject to age restriction?) Your link yields 116 documents, far too many to read through, but in three I picked out one was against the new regulation, another neutral, and a third supportive. (I looked at #1, #7, and #116.) Obviously, it is not true that no one is for this other than Murdoch media.
Moreover, when you say things such as claiming that "every civil group including . . . academics are against it" you undermine your argument, because academics are neither a "civil group" nor conceivably of one mind. I don't mean that your point may not be valid, but you undermine it by obvious exaggeration.
I'll check back in to see whether you're willing to provide a better framed argument, because your basic point does seem important and may point to unintended consequences that we need to bring into focus. However, I have to agree with Helikitty (who just posted): "virtually every social interaction outside of real life will be banned" does not seem undesirable for kids. (It also begs the question of what we mean by "social interaction," since anonymized communication--as the increasing invasion of algorithms and other bots illustrates--is not what anyone would have considered "social" two generations ago.)
Like Prohibition in the US, banning social media will probably be ineffective if not worsen the situation as people delight in getting around the restrictions.
HOWEVER, like Prohibition it may make adults think about what kind of social media use they want their kids to engage in. Before Prohibition people were drinking distilled alcohol the way the drank fermented booze. After Prohibition there was a recognition that heavy hard alcohol use was a serious health risk.
The social media ban could start a conversation on what they want is a positive use of social media.
Does anyone have any idea on how the gaming ban is going in China?
Deborah Caplan, here's a YouTube link to Feist on Sesame Street. Adorable and the sound quality is excellent. There is a place for YouTube, though completely agree with PK about need to regulate.
Spot on as usual. But what's missing is, the addictive nature of Social Media serves as an ideal conduit for advertising. And that advertising uses the same emotional connection to prompt consumers to make poor decisions. Profits flow to plutocrats who in turn capture legislators. Rinse repeat. It's all part of the business model. Oh, and despite what Herb Simon says, rational choice is really how people make decisions.
Millions of children Professor. Societies are always dominated by elites or it's anarchy. There are roughly three elite groups: cultural stuff like religion, Nerds (as in Enlightenment & Tech) or money. Since Reagan we have been run by money. And the money has systematically gone after public education. At first to maintain school segregation. Secondly, because illiterate and desperate people are the easiest to convince that the meaning of life is being a worker drone for a top dog merchant...until you drop dead.
"Secondly, because illiterate and desperate people are the easiest to convince that the meaning of life is being a worker drone for a top dog merchant...until you drop dead." This is not in the long term interests of the plutocrats. Better to eat a fat chicken than one that is skin and bones. They walk a fine line between a docile people with no talent and one that will question their existence.
While you are right that social media is a problem, KOSA is a terrible bill. The free speech issues are not boilerplate, they're real, and it is unlikely that anything like KOSA would survive first amendment challenges.
More to the point, trying to put age limits on social networks is a dumb idea because it's unworkable. Australia passed a similar Murdoch-backed bill with a one year delay to figure out how to do age verification, which nobody has a clue how to do. It's not like age limits for booze: liquor stores have people looking at IDs and selling physical products; if you fool one you get a fifth of Captain Morgan. Online systems have software looking at IDs that kids borrow from their parents' wallets which get them permanent access to Facebook. The excellent Techdirt blog has a lot of well informed comment, e.g. https://www.techdirt.com/2024/09/17/kosa-rises-from-the-ashes-house-committee-announces-markup/
On the other hand, I think that time and place limits for physical phones are long overdue. It is nuts that schools allow kids to carry phones into class. They should put them in lockers when they arrive at school, retrieve them when they go home, and if a kid is caught with a phone in class, the school keeps it for a week before returning it. You and I went all the way though school without electronic devices in our pockets and kids now can too.
Yes, one could say, I am addicted. With age, the things I used to do have become impossible. They were; hiking High Sierra Camps in Yosemite and other places like the High Line Trail in Glacier NP, building small boats, camping with the family, racing my sailboat and riding my horse and the list goes on.
I grew up with computers in my working life. I started with pencil and paper, libraries and slide rules. I learned programming languages. Now the tech has advanced far beyond my capabilities.
All that said, social media has giving me easy access to friends and family. I am no longer bound to get my news from the major newspapers and the major networks. Now I have a wide circle of fiends via the blogs I follow .
Great post. You note that alcohol poses the risk of addition and impacts health. Alcohol is in fact carcinogenic, and in particular increases the risk for colorectal, liver, stomach, breast, head, neck, and throat cancers. Here’s a fact sheet from the National Cancer Institute https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet .
Legal bribery has won. Whatever the issue, Roberts' Supreme Court has ruined rationality and reform. Until "Citizen's United" is repealed we are stuck in money hell.
All the way to the top - ABC’s $16M “settlement” in a case they’d never lose is nothing less than a bribe, buying (they hope) favorable treatment by the incoming administration.
Lewis, exactly on topic. This "administration" (corrupt, money driven, without ethics or norms) can and will buy, bribe or blackmail anyone or anything. ABC for example.
apples and oranges
Your legal analysis is not correct. ABC was never going to win the case because of how NY law defines "rape". That was very well explained in the Judge's ruling which would have been read to a jury and thus hung ABC/Disney out to dry. So $15M was a cheap way to settle and not have to accept responsibility.
off topic
Oligarchy.
Never heard this term before. Did you go to Harvard?
The corruption is in every branch of government now. There is no legal mechanism for positive change now because the corrupt and the bribed are everywhere. We basically have to start over, reboot the country from scratch. Not possible without a revolution that will never come cause Americans are too lazy. If there even is a country worth fighting for left after 4 more years of Trump hell. Who knows, maybe we will get lucky and the military will coup his ass and throw him in prison where he belongs.
Angry apathy is the primary motivation of Americans.
Trump did not get 50% of the popular vote. Stop the doom and gloom.
LOL...49.9% is close enough. Many places gave him a super majority. Either way we all get to enjoy the will of the minority, as you point out. But more to the point is the number of people who can't be bothered to vote. That qualifies in my book as apathy and many of them are not happy, usually deservedly so. If the citizens demand nothing, they get nothing. And there is no easy fix to this condition.
90 million people didn't even vote. Let's start there.
off topic
Why do so many people think the entire country should be destroyed in order to save it? Did that work in Viet Nam? Is that what you think when you think of Rome? Excise the tumor, be surgical with the scalpel. No more collateral damage, no carpet bombing, no friendly fire. Stop with the dystopian thoughts of destruction. Plant a garden, learn a useful skill, listen to your children. Be a shepherd, not a sword.
But is it even an abandonment of concern for minors, or more of a convenient extension of a long game (now coming to delightful fruition) of creating an population of voters who who are historically ignorant, civically illiterate, and easy to control?
Also, glad to see you writing on Substack.
"And among the casualties of this corruption, it seems, will be the mental health of thousands of children."
You misspelled "millions".
It's the high-tech adjunct of the dumbing down of our educational system. Create a generation of non-critical-thinking zombie minds who cannot separate fact from fiction, who know nothing about history, civics, philosophy, etc., and can therefore be easily manipulated.
We should expend a lot more effort (and, of course, money) on education, yes. But critical thinking skills have been lacking in the population for centuries and are probably not more rare now than before. What’s different now is that Republicans cater to willfully ignorant non-thinkers, people who have zero interest in critical thinking but do have a strong interest in depriving people they don’t like (namely black Americans and other marginalized groups) of fair treatment by the government. Republicans deliver what the willfully ignorant want while also delivering additional wealth to the wealthy, which is the top priority of Republican leaders. The votes of the willfully ignorant deliver power to Republicans, and they exploit it to the hilt. It’s not a dearth of good education. It’s a lack of interest in education by a majority of the population, a circumstance that suits both the willfully ignorant and the obscenely wealthy just fine.
🫨 It is even worse than you posit - we have moved beyond even "Google everything" you don't know, as one of my Subtacks (Webworm) has addressed the phenomenon that many (most?) younger people don't even KNOW to "Google" or search via DuckDuckGo, or Bing, or Reddit or whatever to research something like "what was happening in the world when Pres Jimmy Carter came into office?" or anything else that might be relevant to the news of the day, or anything really. Teachers confirm this - their students expect to have things delivered without them having to seek it out, & for whatever reason (time poor, never heard of doing your own research!) they don't go to the internet because they are curious & want to know more 🤷 they go for someone else to TELL THEM what that person or organisation chooses to tell them 👀
This sounds about right, and it’s even worse in the post-school population. Yet, I don’t think that’s the crux of the problem. I remember very few K12 classmates who had any intellectual curiosity or any interest in schooling, and I suspect it’s still the same. What I think is different now is that Republicans learned from George Wallace how to exploit willful ignorance to win elections. Now, the willfully ignorant have to be catered to. Rethug leadership doesn’t really like that but has to go along to maintain the power they need to pursue their main interest, which is moving whatever wealth the middle-income and poor population has to the top 1% (or, really, the top 0.1%). As bad as smokefilled rooms were, their occupants never realized how much abuse the hoi polloi would put up with until George Wallace showed Nixon/Atwater how well racist policies solidify white support.
Agree with you that the election was not about populism, but it certainly was about Trumpism, which I define as saying whatever it takes to get elected in order to monetize the Government once you get in power. What Trump learned from Putin, and why they are soulmates, is that owning a business (even real estate) is for chumps; the real money is in running a Government. Think about it - no money down and then you get to parcel it out in chunks to your loyalists and future business partners, all without any real risk. It's the ultimate business enterprise - you not only get to make tons of money and invest in your future, but they also give you an Army to protect your assets! Nice work if you can get it.
That’s called dictatorship and has been going on in the rest of the world for hundreds of years (if not thousands if we include Greek and Roman imperial history), mainly in third world countries during the 20th century. Sadly enough, it also happened to the US with Trump. And Jan 6 was just a tiny simulation of how it should be done (with military forces) as it is the norm for a coup d’etat. That’s why Putin laughed at it and rightfully declared that was not a real attempt to impose a dictatorship. He knew very well what he was talking about.
Section 230 allows social media to avoid the legal requirements of news organisations by stating they’re platforms not publishers
But why can’t that be tweaked to say that if a social media company promotes a piece, I.e. uses the algorithm to put the post in your timeline then it is being ‘published’ and thus faces the exact same legal obligations that a magazine or newspaper proprietor faces when publishing a piece
Substack Self-Publishers have the obligations:
https://federicosotodelalba.substack.com/p/i-think-paywalled-substackers-need?r=4up0lp
That's extreme considering that the content creators are not employees of the social media site. You do realise such a law would kill substack right?
No it wouldn’t kill Substack, it wouldn’t kill any of them, if you follow someone and their post arrives in your timeline in the order it was posted then you’re a neutral platform providing a place for people to share their work, as section 230 was originally understood
If you promote a piece, then you’re publishing it, you can even will promote pieces, just employ some actual humans like every other publisher had too, to make sure you’re not publishing anything defamatory
1. An age-based license to use a ‘platform’ will not end the existence of a platform.
2. It is possible and achingly preferable to make any ‘platform’ of ideas and information subject to its own set of regulations separate from news but based on *standards* of age-use, libel implementation, and other aspects of healthy discourse such as no distorted/mutated images without immediate removal of the account.
Additionally, a user being found to provide lies when more than 0.5 % of facts that the ‘poster’ presents (as evidence for opinions etc) can and should get them on probation from the sight and banned if it reaches 1.5% for example.
Regulations matter. Truth matters. It does not need to destroy the medium.
Does Substack have alogrithms to promote certain writers or views? They don't hound me the way Insta or Facebook do.
Dear Prof Krugman, many thanks for this comment and best wishes for a wonderful 2025!
I remember I read on the news paper some time ago that even Silicon Valley “gurus” have many problems trying to deal with their kids’ use of social networks.
How can we call a system in which even the inventors try to do their best limiting their kids’ use of their invention?
Somebody famously said that 60-70 years ago we did have great expectations for the future and all that we got were 140-characters messages.
For sure we all, as humans, can do much better.
Enhancing critical thinking in our kids would be a good start.
Yes. Although not a "guru", nor residing in silicon valley, I am a software engineer with two children. The struggle is real. I've engaged their school on policy; no phones use during school hours and seminars on social medias' effects on adolescents.
Even with the above and reasonably strict guidelines at home, "the algorithms" still wreak havoc on occasion. Parents, even ones in affluent households such as mine, are facing an uphill battle. The internet and the devices that connect to it, are designed to exploit the adolescent mind. Pair that with a teenage predisposition to assert Independence in an always online social environment and the whole scenario becomes so stressful and fraught with conflict.
Thank you. Same issues here in Italy!
I agree 100%, and I support both your actions and Prof Krugman’s approach, although I also am afraid that both Wall Street and China “priorities” will be very different from ours.
Keep up the good work with your kids. They won't thank you now as teenagers, but they will later. We had a one hour screen time limit all the time they were young. They didn't get cell phones till they were teenagers. Nor were they allowed to disappear into their own worlds. It didn't keep all evil at bay, but it helped.
I've noticed their friends who are doing well, had similar restrictions.
I agree absolutely and find it frightening that so many social media sites have taken such a heavy toll on mental health — and people like Zuckerberg are all in. He’s not rich enough for god’s sake?! I was addicted to Facebook, spent way too many hours on it, sucked down too many rabbit holes. It was destructive to my sense of well-being, I found myself becoming more and more angry and depressed. Just like giving up cigarettes, it took me several attempts before I was finally able to quit. This may sound comical to some, but it was not. And children? I am so saddened by what it is doing to children, who are so much more vulnerable than I was. We are indeed a sick society who cannot protect our children.
As far as the ethics of the federal government stepping in to control social media … I’m all in. The health and well being of society outweighs republicans ever-glorified “freedoms”. Motorcyclists in most states, if not all, must wear helmets. It helps protect them as well as society. They no longer have the “freedom” to feel the wind in their hair as they ride, but it may save their brain in a crash, it may save society from paying for exorbitant medical care, and it may keep a productive member of society alive.
A great part of the heavy tall on social media users, specially minors does not come exclusively from the "algorithm", but from content producers. In platforms the main responsibility of not harming people belongs to the person producing the content. And it is not a mere Free Speech issue:
https://federicosotodelalba.substack.com/p/i-think-paywalled-substackers-need?r=4up0lp
Existing online for hours day and night is poisonous not to thousands but to millions, yet ignorant or absent parents put screens in the hands of literal babies. It is exactly like giving them an airplane WHISKEY bottle filled with an additive poison to keep them quiet, and stupidly thinking ‘it’s ok’ and has no psychosomatic consequences, when in hard fact it is exactly a poisoning of the nervous system the brain cells and *the ability to focus on life* which is precious, vital, and acquired through repeated practice and observation of adult interactions — which requires concentration and the use of the senses to subconsciously and consciously perceive reality until its understood in a way that allows cultural and species norms to be internalized by the youth. This is disrupted and adulterated or worse by *the excessive sensory removal of the human child and baby from the human experience*. And it initiates an addictive process that makes it harder and harder to be able to pay attention. To life. To work. To surroundings. To *long and complex* scenes in documentary films. To long and complex descriptions in BOOKS. To dialogue that reveals precious evolution of fictional or historical characters in meaningful films. To the subtleties of stories of spiritual texts in poetry or prose. To a CONVERSATION. Conversation requires a depth of concentration and focus and a wealth of experience in order to participate with meaning and authenticity. If the only or primary experience is short, fast, propagandistic, clickable, cynical, consumeristic, fickle-fixing, cynical, visual entertainment … there grows no personal evolution of the understanding of author content versus pop and paid consumerism. There grows no personal nor cohort recognition of lasting themes of progress in resisting oppression or discovering eternal values. There grows no ability in the brain and body to participate in life in ways that allow the development of useful skills because the brain and body are overtaken by the false belief that they ‘are’ consuming something normal and necessary in *ways* that are ‘normal and necessary’ (screen bits). When the opposite is true and they have been and are being literally programmed at the brain level to *ignore, reject, or politely tolerate and tune out normal and necessary information* in the minds of elders (like classroom teachers thoughtful grandparents, parents, small business owners in the community, apprenticeship leaders, camp counselors, group therapy counselors, documentary film directors and *authors*: ancient historical and contemporary).
The Australian social media ban is horrendous, there is no solid definition for what counts as social media, it is declared by the minister, so it can apply to virtually every website on the internet, from YouTube, to video games, to emails, to Substack. Kids will have their lives upended, their online life gone, virtually every social interaction outside of real life will be banned. And everyone including adults will be forced to age verify.
And every civil group including suicide prevention, mental health services and academics are against it: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/SocialMediaMinimumAge/Submissions
No one is for it except the Murdoch media who pushed for it so they can dominate over social media, and the 2 major parties.
Ebv044, I'd be interested to learn more about this contrarian viewpoint. (For example: What did the minister (which minister) actually say that suggests all online access was subject to age restriction?) Your link yields 116 documents, far too many to read through, but in three I picked out one was against the new regulation, another neutral, and a third supportive. (I looked at #1, #7, and #116.) Obviously, it is not true that no one is for this other than Murdoch media.
Moreover, when you say things such as claiming that "every civil group including . . . academics are against it" you undermine your argument, because academics are neither a "civil group" nor conceivably of one mind. I don't mean that your point may not be valid, but you undermine it by obvious exaggeration.
I'll check back in to see whether you're willing to provide a better framed argument, because your basic point does seem important and may point to unintended consequences that we need to bring into focus. However, I have to agree with Helikitty (who just posted): "virtually every social interaction outside of real life will be banned" does not seem undesirable for kids. (It also begs the question of what we mean by "social interaction," since anonymized communication--as the increasing invasion of algorithms and other bots illustrates--is not what anyone would have considered "social" two generations ago.)
Like Prohibition in the US, banning social media will probably be ineffective if not worsen the situation as people delight in getting around the restrictions.
HOWEVER, like Prohibition it may make adults think about what kind of social media use they want their kids to engage in. Before Prohibition people were drinking distilled alcohol the way the drank fermented booze. After Prohibition there was a recognition that heavy hard alcohol use was a serious health risk.
The social media ban could start a conversation on what they want is a positive use of social media.
Does anyone have any idea on how the gaming ban is going in China?
That sounds good. No good comes from the internet
I share the general sentiment, but then why are you and I online? (Maybe the categorical mode isn't optimal here.)
I'm just glad nothing has stopped you from listening to music. An addiction? Who cares, your codas are a joy.
Check out- Feist & Sesame Street singing about the # 4 -- same music Steve Jobs used to sell the new I phone or air pod. She has such a great voice.
I read Dr. Krugmans letter every day -- and pass it to others -- I learn so much! Thank you
Deborah Caplan, here's a YouTube link to Feist on Sesame Street. Adorable and the sound quality is excellent. There is a place for YouTube, though completely agree with PK about need to regulate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ9WiuJPnNA
Spot on as usual. But what's missing is, the addictive nature of Social Media serves as an ideal conduit for advertising. And that advertising uses the same emotional connection to prompt consumers to make poor decisions. Profits flow to plutocrats who in turn capture legislators. Rinse repeat. It's all part of the business model. Oh, and despite what Herb Simon says, rational choice is really how people make decisions.
Millions of children Professor. Societies are always dominated by elites or it's anarchy. There are roughly three elite groups: cultural stuff like religion, Nerds (as in Enlightenment & Tech) or money. Since Reagan we have been run by money. And the money has systematically gone after public education. At first to maintain school segregation. Secondly, because illiterate and desperate people are the easiest to convince that the meaning of life is being a worker drone for a top dog merchant...until you drop dead.
"Secondly, because illiterate and desperate people are the easiest to convince that the meaning of life is being a worker drone for a top dog merchant...until you drop dead." This is not in the long term interests of the plutocrats. Better to eat a fat chicken than one that is skin and bones. They walk a fine line between a docile people with no talent and one that will question their existence.
While you are right that social media is a problem, KOSA is a terrible bill. The free speech issues are not boilerplate, they're real, and it is unlikely that anything like KOSA would survive first amendment challenges.
More to the point, trying to put age limits on social networks is a dumb idea because it's unworkable. Australia passed a similar Murdoch-backed bill with a one year delay to figure out how to do age verification, which nobody has a clue how to do. It's not like age limits for booze: liquor stores have people looking at IDs and selling physical products; if you fool one you get a fifth of Captain Morgan. Online systems have software looking at IDs that kids borrow from their parents' wallets which get them permanent access to Facebook. The excellent Techdirt blog has a lot of well informed comment, e.g. https://www.techdirt.com/2024/09/17/kosa-rises-from-the-ashes-house-committee-announces-markup/
On the other hand, I think that time and place limits for physical phones are long overdue. It is nuts that schools allow kids to carry phones into class. They should put them in lockers when they arrive at school, retrieve them when they go home, and if a kid is caught with a phone in class, the school keeps it for a week before returning it. You and I went all the way though school without electronic devices in our pockets and kids now can too.
Yes, one could say, I am addicted. With age, the things I used to do have become impossible. They were; hiking High Sierra Camps in Yosemite and other places like the High Line Trail in Glacier NP, building small boats, camping with the family, racing my sailboat and riding my horse and the list goes on.
I grew up with computers in my working life. I started with pencil and paper, libraries and slide rules. I learned programming languages. Now the tech has advanced far beyond my capabilities.
All that said, social media has giving me easy access to friends and family. I am no longer bound to get my news from the major newspapers and the major networks. Now I have a wide circle of fiends via the blogs I follow .
Maybe you're like me and very picky about what social media you'll engage with.
Great post. You note that alcohol poses the risk of addition and impacts health. Alcohol is in fact carcinogenic, and in particular increases the risk for colorectal, liver, stomach, breast, head, neck, and throat cancers. Here’s a fact sheet from the National Cancer Institute https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet .
Does the FDA consider ethanol a carcinogen to be banned?.
The sun is carcinogenic, sex is carcinogenic. Animal fat is carcinogenic.
Paints, solvents, X-Rays, etc., are carcinogenic.
That seems a red herring to me...