In a huge revelation this week, a federal court unsealed a brief filed by plaintiffs in a major lawsuit against social media companies, most prominently Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
There is a key variable in these conversations (moral panic) which are rarely, if ever discussed.
They have to do with consent - parental consent. The only one consenting for a child to indulge in material which may make them sad / deranged / promiscuous / belligerent / anti-social etc. is the parent.
The only one with a responsibility to control it is the parent.
I remember a big issue in the 90’s was hyperbolically characterized as children watching TV from wake-up to sleep, which naturally affected every aspect of their life, particularly the rather paradoxical increase in aggression and obesity, and the usual bugaboos of promiscuity, drug use and you-name-it.
The American Academy of Pediatrics [which today recommends sterilization for masculine adolescent behavior in girls and feminine adolescent behavior in boys - super rational group] really got it together in an extremely serious report.
[my favorite irony is that parents used to be in a panic about children having sex; now it’s about teens not having sex as far as I can tell]
What is in common?
Only parents can consent for kids to pursue these activities. Kids can get around dullish-parents. Parents blame anything except themselves. To parents this always leads to a type of panic.
So, which of the following behaviors is Facebook (the internet/rock music/video games, YouTube, TV, Ticktock) actually responsible for:
pregnancy/abstinence, addiction/anhedonia, obesity/anorexia, violence/passivity, achievement obsession/poor academics, hypersexualization/withdrawal, risky/risk-phobic, narcissism/hiding, over and under connected (at the same time of course), activism/helplessness, high emotionality/numbness, Puritanism/hedonism, mature too early/never mature, asceticism/hyper-materialism, you can add so many more.
TL;DR
I don’t buy this panic.
I don’t buy any parental panic for the last 80 years.
It appears to be a form of addiction just like any other. FB banned me for reasons I was never told or was able to discover. Now, I spend less than an hour per day on this platform. It is better for me as I am giving information I can read and or verify for myself.
Deplorable. I have no words
There is a key variable in these conversations (moral panic) which are rarely, if ever discussed.
They have to do with consent - parental consent. The only one consenting for a child to indulge in material which may make them sad / deranged / promiscuous / belligerent / anti-social etc. is the parent.
The only one with a responsibility to control it is the parent.
I remember a big issue in the 90’s was hyperbolically characterized as children watching TV from wake-up to sleep, which naturally affected every aspect of their life, particularly the rather paradoxical increase in aggression and obesity, and the usual bugaboos of promiscuity, drug use and you-name-it.
The American Academy of Pediatrics [which today recommends sterilization for masculine adolescent behavior in girls and feminine adolescent behavior in boys - super rational group] really got it together in an extremely serious report.
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/96/4/786/60287/Children-Adolescents-and-Television
They were 30 years behind actually.
A rough timeline:
1950s – Comic books
1950s – Rock ’n’ roll
1960s – Television
1960s – Counterculture / psychedelic music
1970s – Dungeons & Dragons
1970s – Video arcades
1970s – Heavy metal
1980s – Satanic Panic
1980s – Slasher films / VHS
1980s – Home video games (Nintendo/Sega)
1990s – Rap & hip-hop
1990s – The Internet
1990s – Violent video games (Doom, Mortal Kombat)
2000s – MySpace / early social media
2000s – Cell phones & texting
2000s – Emo/goth/scene culture
2010s – Smartphones
2010s – YouTube / influencers
2010s – TikTok
2020s – AI algorithms
2020s – Discord / online gaming communities
2020s – VR / metaverse
[my favorite irony is that parents used to be in a panic about children having sex; now it’s about teens not having sex as far as I can tell]
What is in common?
Only parents can consent for kids to pursue these activities. Kids can get around dullish-parents. Parents blame anything except themselves. To parents this always leads to a type of panic.
So, which of the following behaviors is Facebook (the internet/rock music/video games, YouTube, TV, Ticktock) actually responsible for:
pregnancy/abstinence, addiction/anhedonia, obesity/anorexia, violence/passivity, achievement obsession/poor academics, hypersexualization/withdrawal, risky/risk-phobic, narcissism/hiding, over and under connected (at the same time of course), activism/helplessness, high emotionality/numbness, Puritanism/hedonism, mature too early/never mature, asceticism/hyper-materialism, you can add so many more.
TL;DR
I don’t buy this panic.
I don’t buy any parental panic for the last 80 years.
They are all effortlessly disprovable.
It appears to be a form of addiction just like any other. FB banned me for reasons I was never told or was able to discover. Now, I spend less than an hour per day on this platform. It is better for me as I am giving information I can read and or verify for myself.