Comment on New Yorker’s ‘Social Media Is Killing Kids’ Article Waits 71 Paragraphs To Admit Evidence Doesn’t Support The Premise

EleventhHour@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I’m not sure social media is good for anyone, but I understand that “for the kids” is really the only way people feel confident in regulating anything. But it’s all very condescending when the real issue is that social media is causing society to become worse due to Skinner’s Box style human impulses – I do think, that gets me attention, so I’ll keep doing it regardless of if it’s right or wrong.

  We shouldn’t blame social media as a blanket villain, but simply request that all web services have transparent suggestion algorithms (preferably open source) and provide tax incentives for companies that help promote verified educational content over made up bullshit (as it’s the only way to get companies to do the right thing, unfortunately)

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  • EleventhHour@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I can’t really argue with anything you said. But I will say that in the grand scheme of things that are bad for society and bad for kids, social media is merely one in 1000 different things. You were right about that, too, but I just wanted to clarify my point earlier that I wasn’t just using the “for the kids“ argument. Social media is, indeed, very bad for everyone. Just, particularly, kids.

    Of course, I also believe that these things could be improved about social media. It’s just that the profit motive behind social media means that the sorts of improvements to the betterment of society will likely never be explored unless they are the most profitable option.

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    • OpenStars@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      medium.com/…/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-8…

      This is an excellent article. I was just barely beginning to think (still subconsciously, i.e. still intuitively rather than focused) about leaving Reddit anyway, b/c of all its toxic BS, even prior to the blackouts and Rexodus, when I read this. I could not put it down!!!

      But I had to, in order to go to work, and yet I picked it back up again ASAP and kept reading through lunch. And as a result, I gave up my mod position of two subs, left Reddit virtually entirely (though I partially stayed for a couple months to post about Kbin/Lemmy), and came here (the age of my current account does not match up b/c I was first on Kbin).

      So yeah, it’s long, but like… it PERFECTLY describes what I was intuiting! That Reddit was trying to turn me into a pedantic, narcissistic asshole, by curbing my impulses whenever I wanted to be kind yet encouraging the opposite to let my dark side flow against someone in order to demolish their arguments. Long, detailed answers to someone with specific questions and pleading for answers were penalized, yet short quips like “u suk” got heavily up-voted.

      But it’s not merely Reddit ofc, it’s also Twitter, now X, and FaceBook, and any for-profit social media that prioritizes “engagement”, e.g. talking rather than listening. e.g. why is Reddit’s search function virtually nonfunctional, and why can each sub only have a maximum of two pinned posts? (I almost started looking into what it would take to write a bot that would allow for a megathread of megathreads, which the native Reddit refuses to provide for, except I could see the writing on the wall that bots were going to be obliterated, so I didn’t bother.) Every single time such limitations line up with making new posts, their profits always magically seem to be increased - bc recall that ads are between posts, not between comments, so more posts = moar ads! Even if people stopped responding to people’s questions… although usually someone somewhere would at least try, so it increased “engagement” of the type that furthered profits, while decreasing it overall. Hence these items were never going to be fixed.

      Hence Reddit was enshittified. e.g. in r/Android people would constantly ignore the begging, pleading, demanding, and threatening from mods to put requests for new phone recommendations into the weekly megathread… and some huge fraction of posts to it were always like “what phone should I buy?”, “what Android phone should I purchase?”, “Which model phone should I get?” (until they could get removed) - often with no other details given, somehow extremely often back to back, as if nobody else in the whole entire world existed with the same identical damn question, these childish minds (of whatever age) just continually blurted out their requests for attention, spamming the entire world and preventing serious discussions about Android, which basically had to move elsewhere - i.e. the kids got so noisy that the adults had to flee the room looking for a more contemplative quiet.

      Which is why we all find ourselves here:-). But even here, the addictive nature of even not-for-profit social media still has its dangers, as too does eating too much food etc., it’s not the thing itself (once the profit incentive has been removed) but the amount that can be deleterious.

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      • EleventhHour@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        My goodness, I really hope you feel better. That was quite the blood letting!

        Of course, I feel the same way.

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