NY Times Runs Defense For Social Media Bans, Buries Evidence They Don’t Work Until Paragraph 14

Overhype

from the feeding-the-moral-panic dept

Imagine you’re writing an article about a popular policy trend. The trend is expensive to implement, disruptive to normal operations, and—here’s the key part—there’s substantial research showing it doesn’t actually work and can cause other significant problems. How would you structure that article?

One approach: Lead with the evidence. “Despite growing enthusiasm for [policy proposal], studies consistently find it doesn’t accomplish its stated goals.” Put that in paragraph one, maybe paragraph two or three with some lead-up if you’re feeling generous.

Another approach: Spend 13 paragraphs hyping up the trend, listing every conceivable harm it’s meant to address, quoting lawmakers and administrators who support it, and then—only then—casually mention that the evidence shows it doesn’t work.

Guess which approach the NY Times chose for its piece on social media bans for kids?

Mobile phone bans in school and social media bans for kids are increasingly popular around the globe, driven largely by Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book—which remains a bestseller despite actual experts debunking basically everything in it. So when the paper of record wades into this debate, you’d think they might lead with what the evidence actually shows. You’d think wrong.

The article opens with the traditional moral panic opening, playing up all the fear:

Bullying. Sextortion. Body-shaming. Self-harm. Viral student-fight videos. Never-ending newsfeeds. Unhealthy relationships with A.I. chatbots. Teenagers who can’t seem to put down their phones.

Parents and teachers are understandably concerned about social media. For all of the community, creativity and just plain fun kids enjoy online, hazards remain all too frequent, some children’s advocates say.

It’s the greatest-hits compilation of every anxiety adults have projected onto kids and technology for decades (centuries, really). Might as well add “Dungeons & Dragons will make them worship Satan” for completeness.

The piece does eventually ask “can these bans actually help?” But not before spending several more paragraphs cataloging every conceivable harm that’s ever been tangentially associated with social media, strongly implying the tech itself is to blame rather than, you know, humanity. Then it dutifully reports that “lawmakers and schools” see bans as the answer.

Only then—14 paragraphs deep—does the Times get around to mentioning:

We have limited research on whether the bans work. After surveying more than 1,200 students in 30 schools across England, researchers at the University of Birmingham recently reported that cellphone bans did not improve students’ mental well-being.

“Limited research”?

No. We have plenty of research. There’s a comprehensive study in Australia that found no evidence bans helped kids. Multiple reports document actual harms from these bans—including privacy violations and safety issues when kids can’t reach parents during emergencies. It appears that the evidence is just inconvenient for the narrative.

But the Times isn’t done. The article includes a section on how bans “may have drawbacks”—and somehow the main drawback they identify is that bans don’t stop social media companies from doing bad things. Not that the bans don’t work. Not that they create new problems. Just that they don’t magically fix the platforms themselves:

Blanket tech bans can be crude instruments. They may make it harder for many young people to have social media accounts. But they often don’t change the underlying app features that many parents are worried about.

Many popular apps use powerful attention-hacking techniques that can hook young people, said Julia Powles, an Australian researcher who is the executive director of the U.C.L.A. Institute for Technology, Law and Policy. This keeps users online longer, she notes, and makes the companies more money from advertising.

This completely misses the point—which, as danah boyd has repeatedly explained, is that adults are confusing risks with harms. Many things are risky. Some can lead to harm. But we generally deal with risky things by teaching people how to manage those risks.

The response to potential harms from social media shouldn’t be to demand bans. It should be teaching kids how to navigate these spaces appropriately—how to recognize manipulation, how to minimize risks, what to do when something goes wrong. Instead, we hide it. We ban it. We shove it under the rug and pretend that if we just keep this scary thing away from kids, they’ll somehow be fine once the ban lifts.

And thus, we get the worst of everything. For every ban out there, kids will find their ways around them. Often, that will involve doing things surreptitiously, in places with fewer controls and less ability for parents and teachers to properly instruct kids how to use those tools appropriately. It actually puts kids in more danger by pretending that if we just “ban” places for them to communicate, that they’ll just become perfect little kids who never look elsewhere.

The Times had a chance here to actually inform the debate—to lead with what the evidence shows, to explain the tradeoffs, to challenge the reflexive push for bans. Instead, they wrote 13 paragraphs of pure moral panic before mentioning that these policies don’t work, then immediately pivoted back to fearmongering about “attention-hacking techniques.”

This all just feeds the moral panic. It gives politicians and administrators cover to implement bans that won’t help kids but will absolutely create new problems. And when those bans inevitably fail, the Times will probably write another breathless piece wondering why kids are still struggling—while once again burying the fact that we never actually tried teaching them how to navigate these spaces in the first place.

Filed Under: evidence, moral panic, phone bans, social media, social media bans
Companies: ny times