Can We Stop The Moral Panic Yet? New Study: Children’s Brains Are Not Harmed By Screen Time

Studies

from the the-research-is-becoming-overwhelming dept

Over the last few years, we’ve highlighted study after study after study showing that, contrary to the public narrative, claims by politicians, the media, and plaintiffs in many, many lawsuits, the actual evidence just does not show at all that social media/internet is doing damage to kids. In a recent post we highlighted just a few of the recent reports on this.

• Last fall, the widely respected Pew Research Center did a massive study on kids and the internet, and found that for a majority of teens, social media was way more helpful than harmful.
• This past May, the American Psychological Association (which has fallen for tech moral panics in the past, such as with video games) released a huge, incredibly detailed, and nuanced report going through all of the evidence, and finding no causal link between social media and harms to teens.
• Soon after that, the US Surgeon General (in the same White House where Wu worked for a while) came out with a report which was misrepresented widely in the press. Yet, the details of that report also showed that no causal link could be found between social media and harms to teens. It did still recommend that we act as if there were a link, which was weird and explains the media coverage, but the actual report highlights no causal link, while also pointing out how much benefit teens receive from social media).
• A few months later, an Oxford University study came out covering nearly a million people across 72 countries, noting that it could find no evidence of social media leading to psychological harm.
• The Journal of Pediatrics just published a new study again noting that after looking through decades of research, the mental health epidemic faced among young people appears largely due to the lack of open spaces where kids can be kids without parents hovering over them. That report notes that they explored the idea that social media was a part of the problem, but could find no data to support that claim.

Now, the folks at Oxford University, who did one of those studies above, have released another study, this time looking at almost 12,000 kids in the US to determine whether “screen time” had an impact on their brain function or well-being. This is a pretty massive study, and the results are pretty damn clear:

Screen time activities included ‘traditional’ screen pursuits such as watching TV shows or movies and using digital platforms such as YouTube to watch videos, as well as interactive pursuits like playing video games. In addition, they were asked about connecting with others through apps, calls, video calls and social media.  

Even with participants who had high rates of digital engagement, there was no evidence of impaired functioning in the brain development of the children.

The study appears pretty thorough:

Using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States, researchers from Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, University of Oregon, Tilburg University, and University of Cambridge analysed the cognitive function of 9-12 year old children alongside their self-reported screen time use.

[….]

  In the ABCD study, the participants’ neurodevelopment was assessed through monitoring functional brain connectivity, which refers to how regions of the brain work together and includes emotional and physiological activities. This was done through MRI scans. Further to this, physical and mental health assessments and information from the child’s caregiver was provided. 

When analysing the screen time use alongside the ABCD data, patterns of functional brain connectivity were related to patterns of screen engagement, but there was no meaningful association between screen time use and measures of cognitive and mental well-being, even when the evidential threshold was set very low.  

The researchers behind this study were pretty clear on what they feel has been learned (and I’ll note that Andrew, in particular, is always extremely careful not to overclaim what his studies say, as you can hear when we had him on the podcast recently):

Jack Miller, the first author who analysed the data as part of his thesis at the Oxford Internet Institute said: “If screen time had an impact on brain development and well-being, we expected to see a variety of cognitive and well-being outcomes that this comprehensive, representative, research did not show.” 

Professor Andrew Przybylski who supervised the work added: “We know that children’s brains are more susceptible to environmental influence than adults, as digital screen time is a relatively new phenomenon, it’s important to question its impact.” 

Professor Matti Vuorre from Tilburg University, a co-author observed: “One thing that makes this work stand out is our analysis plan was reviewed by experts before we saw the data; this adds rigour to our approach.” He added, “One also suggested we take a look at social media on its own because it’s a source of worry for many and we did not find anything special about this form of online engagement.” 

Professor Przybylski concludes: “Our findings should help guide the heated debates about technology away from hyperbole and towards high-quality science. If researchers don’t improve their approach to studying tech, we’ll never learn what leads some young people to flounder and others to flourish in the digital age.” 

All of this research is important, because clearly there does remain a mental health crisis going on, including among children. But we risk making things worse, not better when we immediately insist that it must be because of the internet, or video games, or screen time or whatever.

You can also read the full study yourself if you’d like to get at the details, since they published it as open access. And, because they put it under a creative commons attributions license, we can also post a copy here.

Filed Under: andrew przybylski, cognitive development, jack miller, kids, moral panic, screentime, social media

Yet Another ‘Social Media Trend’ That Only Went Viral Because Of The Media

Culture

from the it's-always-the-media dept

We’ve done this a few times now where people start talking about a social media trend that actually only went viral because of the media coverage of the supposed (but not really) social media trend. And each time there’s some outrage moral panic about how “social media” is destroying the children or whatever, when it’s more frequently just adults freaking out over an overblown story.

That seems to have happened again this week. Did you hear the story about how the kids on TikTok were suddenly agreeing with Osama bin Laden, and saying that 9/11 was justified, because they read his mostly batshit crazy “Letter to America?” It got so crazy that the Guardian pulled down their version of the letter that people were pointing to.

So, look, where there a few naïve kids on TikTok who read the letter and talked about it on TikTok? Yes. But did it really go viral? No. At least not until the media went crazy about it all. Thankfully, at least some in the media are calling out that the viral attention came after the panic. Drew Harwell and Victoria Bisset at the Washington Post have a good run down:

TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek said Thursday that the company was “proactively and aggressively” removing videos promoting the letter for violating the company’s rules on “supporting any form of terrorism” and said it was “investigating” how the videos got onto its platform.

Haurek said that the #lettertoamerica hashtag had been attached to 274 videos that had garnered 1.8 million views on Tuesday and Wednesday, before “the tweets and media coverage drove people to the hashtag.” Other hashtags, for comparison, dwarfed discussion of the letter on the platform: During a recent 24-hour period, #travel videos had 137 million views, #skincare videos had 252 million views and #anime videos had 611 million views, Haurek said.

TikTok, for its part, banned promoting the letter pretty quickly, but that combined with the media coverage of all of this Streisanded the thing into getting a ton more attention.

Scott Nover at Slate also has a good breakdown of what happened, noting that the media took a few naïve kids and turned it into a trend that just didn’t happen:

A small number of TikTok users found a letter written by bin Laden and published by the Guardian in 2002 and thought that—despite it being full of anti-Semitic garbage and Islamic-fundamentalist nuttery—the late terrorist and al-Qaida leader made some good points in critiquing American foreign policy.

Sure, the sentiment these videos expressed is nauseating. But so is a lot of stuff on the internet, and to call these particular pieces of content is to misunderstand TikTok and to grossly mischaracterize the chain of events that brought this phenomenon before a mass audience.

As Nover notes, a few videos on TikTok getting a bunch of views is not a “trend.” Due to the quick nature of TikTok tons of videos get a bunch of views, but to really be trending they need many, many millions of views. Nover calls out CNN and the NY Times for claiming that these videos were somehow newsworthy for how many views they got:

Less than 300 videos? 14 million views total? On TikTok, those are paltry numbers. The other day, I watched a video of a guy trying Indian food for the first time that—by itself—got 18.6 million views on TikTok. In May, I tweeted a video of a guy unclogging a sewer drain and that got 26 million views. At any moment online, things are going viral before TikTok’s massive audience. To call these pro-Osama videos viral, however, would be a stretch. TikTok’s algorithm is known for supersizing virality, often lifting seemingly random content to ungodly heights quicker than any other platform.

Reporter Ryan Broderick also highlighted how there is no evidence at all that this was trending in any way, and much of the outrage is from people misunderstanding TikTok’s scale and how it counts views. Any sliver of a video watched counts as a view, and people go through tons of videos, often swiping away after a split second, though it still counts as a view:

So, right now, the popular wisdom is that TikTok counts a single second as a single view. That said, a developer I work with named Morry Kolman has done some tests on this and it may be even less than a second. A view is very possibly just every unique open or autoplay of a video. Meanwhile, a view on YouTube is around 30 seconds and a view on Facebook is around three seconds. So if we were to take one of the most viral videos about Bin Laden’s letter, which had around two million views, and applied Facebook’s view metric, it would have around 660,000 views. And if it was a YouTube video, it would have around 65,000. Now, let’s ask ourselves. Would you, in 2023, give a shit if someone was saying something unhinged and offensive in a YouTube video with 65,000 views? If so, good news, I can send you millions of videos that match that exact description! Just go search “The Marvels” and have a blast.

Of course, what did go viral was old people in the media freaking out about this. Nover again:

One prominent Twitter figure’s outraged post about the videos, which included a supercut of them, racked up 32 million views on X. Flipping through TV channels on Thursday, I noticed the story on several different news broadcasts—every anchor and reporter was disgusted and wanted to say so. The Biden administration even responded Thursday. “No one should ever insult the 2,977 American families still mourning loved ones by associating themselves with the vile words of Osama bin Laden,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates wrote on X while sharing the CNN article.

Broderick did his best to track down what was actually happening, and again, it appears to have been a tiny group of mostly nobodies, and a few bots, and TikTok took it all down before it went particularly viral:

I spent all day yesterday looking for the “thousands” of videos. Of course, TikTok was already in the process of scrubbing them, but according to screenshots and cached Google data, I’m comfortable saying there were likely around 300-500 unique videos about the letter and, once again, around 25% of what I personally saw were bots or automated accounts or duets. And the largest comment section I’ve seen underneath one of these videos had around 5,000 comments. Now, let’s do this again. Would you, in 2023, give a shit if there were around 5,000 people being offensive on the internet? Well, if you would, I, once again, have some good news for you. Type “X.com” into your URL bar and make sure to follow the site’s CEO, he has a lot of interesting ideas about race and gender.

Look, if you want to find naïve people saying stupid shit, it’s not difficult to find online. There are a lot of naïve people (of any age), and they have many places to say stupid, ignorant shit. It’s not hard to find. The media doesn’t need to go crazy about all of them. The White House doesn’t need to put out a statement about all of them (though it did here).

Before assuming that this is somehow “trending” or something that’s catching on, learn to take a breath and look at what’s actually happening. This isn’t a story about a few naïve folks saying dumb shit. This is a story about the media, yet again, blowing a small sample size way out of proportion to make a misleading point about “the kids and social media these days.”

Filed Under: kids, moral panic, osama bin laden, streisand effect
Companies: tiktok

States All Gang Up To Sue Meta Based On Highly Questionable Theories Of ‘Harm’ To Children

Legal Issues

from the a-moral-panic-for-the-ages dept

I really wish we could fast forward a few decades to the point where we look back on the moral panic over kids and social media and laugh about it, the same way we now laugh about similar moral panics regarding television, Dungeons & Dragons, rock & roll music, comic books, pinball, chess, novels, and the waltz. But, at the moment, basically everyone is losing their minds over the still totally unproven claim that social media is bad for kids’ mental health.

This is despite multiple massive studies highlighting no evidence of any actual causal connection. Earlier this year, the American Psychological Association released a detailed study on the matter, that reviewed basically all of the research literature out there, and found no evidence of a causal link, stating that social media was not inherently beneficial or harmful to kids. And the APA has been known in the past to fall for bogus moral panics, so when even it is saying “there’s just no evidence,” perhaps there’s really no evidence.

Even the much publicized Surgeon General’s report on social media and kids admitted (in the fine print) that there appeared to be no evidence of harm, but said that we should act as if there was (which is a very odd recommendation).

And then there have been a few massive studies recently, including a giant study from the well respected Pew Research Center, who found that most teenagers found social media helpful. Just recently we pointed to another study, this time out of Oxford University, looking at over one million people across 72 countries, finding no evidence of social media increasing psychological harm.

But, still, the media (and especially politicians) keep insisting that it’s true.

And now it’s lead to this: a whole bunch of states have sued Meta for claimed harms to kids. The complaint there lists 33 states, though reports say that another 9 states are filing a separate lawsuit (I haven’t seen that one yet).

Much of the (heavily redacted) complaint seems to be based on the full-on belief in the moral panic about social media and harms to kids. It takes a bunch of things completely out of context — such as the fact that Meta, like any company, keeps trying to grow its business, as some sort of proof of nefarious intent. Unless these states are trying to argue that economic growth is illegal, many of these arguments seem pretty weak.

There are so many strange things in the complaint that present things with an interpretation that is not supported by reality. For example, it claims that the move away from chronological feeds to algorithmic feeds was somehow a nefarious attempt to “attract young users to the platform and keep them engaged on its Social Media Platforms for as long as possible.”

Meta had originally displayed content on a user’s “Feed” chronologically, i.e., in the order the content was posted by people the user elected to follow. Meta moved from chronological Feeds to engagement-based Feeds in 2009 (for Facebook) and 2016 (for Instagram).

The engagement-based Feed is different and alters the users’ experience. It algorithmically presents material to users based on several engagement components: posts with more “Likes,” comments, and other indicia of user engagement are displayed to users first.

This change was designed to prioritize material most likely to engage users for longer periods of time.

Are they… going to sue TV stations for putting popular shows in prime time next? I mean, of course Facebook is trying to increase engagement. What website isn’t?

Also, studies have shown, repeatedly, that users like the algorithmic feed, and most hate the chronological feed (yes, I know there are exceptions). Recent research found that when there are chronological feeds, users get a lot more misinformation and junk they don’t want to see.

Is it the states’ position that everyone should be forced to get more junk and misinformation in their feeds?

The complaint, at times, goes full on cinematic moral panic, straight out of the massively misleading misinformation movie “The Social Dilemma.”

By algorithmically serving content to young users according to variable reward schedules, Meta manipulates dopamine releases in its young users, inducing them to engage repeatedly with its Platforms—much like a gambler at a slot machine.

I know this is a popular claim, but it’s nonsense, not supported by any actual science.

I mean, the weird thing in all of this, which no one will admit, is that, yes, pointing people to more relevant information might make them use your product more. But, that’s because it’s providing more relevant information.

The complaint points a few times to Frances Haugen’s leaked documents, but again, those were massively misrepresented in the media. As we highlighted multiple times, the research showed that in 23 of 24 areas studied (all twelve for boys, and 11 of 12 for girls), more kids felt better about themselves on the topics of conversation, rather than worse. There was only one area, “body images,” where the number of girls who felt worse outweighed those who felt better. And Facebook’s researchers called out that fact in the research in order to point out that it was an issue they should look at dealing with.

I mean, one could easily argue that fashion magazines, teen magazines, not to mention television and movies, could readily be accused of making teen girls feel bad about their own “body image,” but did the states sue over that? Of course not. And I’ll bet that literally none of those had an internal research group studying the matter, and calling for the company to try to fix it.

The complaint also spends a lot of time arguing that Meta “promotes harmful content, such as content promoting eating disorders to youth.” But, again, as we’ve detailed, multiple studies found that when Instagram tried to block that content, teens quickly found ways around it by adjusting their language. And when Instagram went even further in trying to block it, the teens who wanted to engage with eating disorder content just moved elsewhere (to TikTok and to specialized eating disorder forums, which had even less control). Even worse, by moving those discussions off of Meta, many of those conversations lost the powerful responses from people who had recovered from eating disorders, who were participating in the discussions on Instagram and trying to guide people to more helpful resources.

In other words, this shit is complicated, and Instagram’s attempts to stop sharing eating disorder content almost certainly made eating disorder situations worse, not better, not because of any nefarious plan on the part of Meta, but because there’s a demand problem. A bunch of teens were looking for those conversations, and were going to have them with or without Meta’s assistance.

So, basically, the states are suing Meta for surfacing the larger societal problems regarding teenage eating disorders that the states themselves have failed to deal with.

Then there’s a large part (again heavily redacted) of the complaint alleging COPPA violations. When I saw that section, at first I thought it sounded like the more serious part of the complaint. At least there’s a clear law there, and violating it can get you into trouble.

But, reading through it, I’m again left confused. COPPA has some specific rules regarding how you handle collection of data on those under 13 for sites targeted at those under 13. Like many websites, Meta’s solution to this is to say no one under the age of 13 is allowed on the site. In practice, this just means that kids are taught by their parents to lie.

But, rather than realize that maybe that’s the problem, the states are blaming Meta for not magically figuring out that kids (often with their parents’ help) are lying. It makes a big deal over the fact that Instagram didn’t start even asking people their ages until 2019, but again, the law does not require that at all. It applies to sites that are deliberately targeting children under that age, not those that magically fail to keep all such kids out. But the state AGs act as if the law requires some sort of age verification scheme:

Eventually, in response to pressure from regulators and the public, Meta purported to implement an age gate as part Instagram’s account registration process—but the term “gate” was a misnomer because it did not prevent under-13 users from creating and using Instagram accounts

Indeed, the complaint seems to argue that age verification is required. Which is just flat out false:

Meta has access to, and chooses not to use, feasible alternative age verification methods that would significantly reduce or eliminate the number of underage users on Meta’s Social Media Platforms, for example, by requiring young users to submit student IDs upon registration.

There is, as noted, a lot in the complaint that is redacted. So perhaps there are some important nefarious details hidden under all that black ink. I wouldn’t put it past Meta to be lying about stuff. And maybe some of it rises to the level of an issue for which its reasonable to face a crackdown from the states.

But, from what’s public, this lawsuit seems like a joke, driven by grandstanding AGs who have bought into the current moral panic and need some headlines.

Of course, Meta being Meta, the company’s response to this lawsuit is… also less than convincing. The comments its released to the press were more or less “well, kids use YouTube and TikTok more than Facebook/Instagram, so why are the states picking on us?” Which is not the most compelling of responses.

Filed Under: arizona, kids, mental health, moral panic, privacy, social media
Companies: facebook, instagram, meta

California Looking To Pass Useful Bill To Teach More Media Literacy In Schools

Policy

from the can-they-actually-pass-good-legislation dept

As we’ve been covering over the last few years, there’s been an almost entirely unsubstantiated moral panic over “kids and social media.” This is despite the fact that multiple large scale studies have found that way more kids have benefitted from social media than have been harmed by it. As we’ve noted time and time again, there are definitely a few examples of extreme cases of some kids who have difficulty dealing with certain aspects of the internet, but as the American Psychological Association noted in its recent report, the appropriate action here is to focus on helping those kids, rather than taking away social media from all the other kids it helps. But one other thing that the APA (and others) have put a big emphasis on is better educating kids in media and social media literacy.

Given that all of the actual research suggests that there is just a small percentage of kids susceptible to falling down more dangerous rabbit holes on the internet, this seems like a wise move, and could hopefully help some at risk kids from falling for those traps. It could also have wider benefits in terms of kids recognizing if one of their classmates may be struggling as well, and helping to find help for them.

But, for some reason, most politicians have preferred to lean into the whole moral panic aspect of this all, pushing bills that include outright bans for kids on social media, or intrusive age verification or “age appropriate” design, which falsely pretend that all social media is bad for kids.

Considering that we’ve seen many of these kinds of bills in California, it’s notable that another bill has been moving through the California legislature with little fanfare… that actually seems like it would pretty good for kids on the issue of social media: AB 873 would have the curriculum committee that helps set California school curriculums consider adding more media literacy at every grade of school.

 (a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(1) California does not have an official media literacy curriculum framework to ensure the teaching of media literacy content to every pupil.

(2) The growing ubiquity of new forms of media necessitates the need for comprehensive media literacy education for all elementary and secondary pupils.

(3) The State of California has a strong interest in ensuring that its pupils are equipped to confront questions about the moral obligations and ethical standards regarding what appears on social media networks and digital platforms.

(4) The social implications of technological development are pervasive as over 90 percent of young adults use social media, and the reach and influence of digital media platforms will continue to expand.

(5) A Stanford University study showed that 82 percent of middle school pupils struggled to distinguish advertisements from news stories.

(6) The proliferation of online misinformation has posed risks to international peace, interfered with democratic decisionmaking, and threatened public health.

(7) The existing Model School Library Standards include the identification of the skills essential for pupils to be information literate, which includes media literacy content; however, these content standards are currently not included in any existing curriculum framework.

(8) Incorporating the Model Library Standards into the English language arts/English language development curriculum framework will ensure that all pupils receive more consistent instruction on these standards and that new instructional materials incorporate media literacy content.

(9) The inclusion of media literacy content within other existing curriculum frameworks will further integrate media literacy content into instruction that all pupils receive from kindergarten through grade 12.

(10) The frameworks will provide guidance in the instruction of media literacy, thereby building critical thinking skills and developing strategies to strengthen digital citizenship for every pupil.

(b) It is therefore the intent of the Legislature to ensure that all pupils in California are prepared with media literacy skills necessary to safely, responsibly, and critically consume and use social media and other forms of media.

I mean… this all seems perfectly reasonable? Having our schools actually educate our kids on media literacy and making them better digital citizens? Rather than treating them as helpless idiots who could never comprehend how to keep themselves safe online? It all seems… so reasonable.

The Assemblymember behind the bill, Marc Berman, also seems to recognize that this is more socially useful approach than some of those other bills:

Berman said as the spread of misinformation has become increasingly pervasive, it’s essential young people view information through a critical lens. They need to know how to do their own research to confirm or deny the media they’re exposed to, he said. He hopes by integrating media literacy into all subjects, it’ll help students put misinformation into context and lessens its personal effect.

Empowering kids to help themselves? What a concept!

Anyway, the bill has been moving through the California legislature and I have no idea how likely it is to get anywhere. But given how we’re often critical of bills about social media, I thought it was important to highlight smarter, better, more practical legislation, rather than the usual batch of nonsensical moral panic-induced legislation.

Filed Under: ab 873, caliofrnia, digital citizenship, kids, marc berman, media literacy, social media

NetChoice Challenges Yet Another Ridiculously Bad State Internet Law

Legal Issues

from the verify-this dept

NetChoice has been quite busy the last few years suing to stop a wide variety of terrible state laws designed to mess up parts of the internet. It took on Florida’s social media content moderation law and won (twice). It took on Texas’ social media content moderation law and won at the district court, and absolutely ridiculously lost at the 5th Circuit (something that we now need to hope the Supreme Court will fix next term). It sued California over its Age Appropriate Design Code.

And, now it’s sued Arkansas over its terrible, ridiculous, and extremely problematic social media age verification law. As we noted, Arkansas passed a bill to remove age verification for kids working in meat packing plants in the same session that it insisted kids needed age verification to use social media. Just incredible.

The NetChoice complaint lays out how we’ve been here before, with moral panic laws about “protecting the children” from this or that new media, and every time they’ve been struck down as unconstitutional infringements on people’s rights.

Arkansas Senate Bill 396 is the latest attempt in a long line of government efforts to restrict new forms of expression based on concerns that they harm minors. Books, movies, television, rock music, video games, and the Internet have all been accused in the past of exposing youth to content that has deleterious effects. But the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that, while the government undoubtedly possesses “legitimate power to protect children from harm,” “that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.” Brown v. Entm’t Merchants Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786, 794-95 (2011). “Speech that is neither obscene as to youths nor subject to some other legitimate proscription cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them.” Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 213-14 (1975).

Accordingly, government efforts to restrict minors from accessing such materials, including by requiring parental consent to do so, have reliably and repeatedly been struck down, especially when (as is often the case) they impede the First Amendment rights of adults too. See, e.g., Brown, 564 U.S. at 794-95 (invalidating law prohibiting distribution of violent video games to minors without parental consent); Ashcroft v. Am. Civil Liberties Union, 542 U.S. 656 (2004) (enjoining law restricting access to sexually explicit materials on the Internet); Reno v. Am. Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997) (invalidating earlier law enacted to protect minors from “indecent” and “patently offensive” communications on the Internet); United States v. Playboy Entm’t Grp., Inc., 529 U.S. 803 (2000) (invalidating law restricting sexual programing on television); Erznoznik, 422 U.S. at 213-14 (invalidating law prohibiting display of movies containing nudity at drive-in theaters); Interactive Digital Software Ass’n v. St. Louis Cnty., 329 F.3d 954 (8th Cir. 2003) (invalidating ordinance prohibiting distribution of violent video games to minors without parental consent); Video Software Dealers Ass’n v. Webster, 968 F.2d 684 (8th Cir. 1992) (invalidating law prohibiting distribution to minors of videos depicting certain types of violence).

And then it explains the many constitutional issues with this bill in particular:

S.B. 396 should meet the same fate. The Act purports to protect minors from alleged harmful effects of “social media” by requiring the companies that operate these services to verify that any person seeking to create an account is at least 18 years old or has parental consent to create an account. By restricting the access of minors—and adults (who now have to prove their age)—to these ubiquitous online services, Arkansas has “with one broad stroke” burdened access to what for many are the principal sources for speaking and listening, learning about current events, “and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge.” Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. 98, 107 (2017)

Worse still, the Act does so by drawing a slew of content-, speaker-, and viewpointbased distinctions—making clear that its purpose and effect is “to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed” and “protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them.” Brown, 564 U.S. at 794-95. S.B. 396 restricts access to a website that permits users to share videos of their newest dance moves or other acts of entertainment, but not to a website that provides career development opportunities. Minors may readily access websites that provide news, sports, entertainment, and online shopping, but not those that allow them to upload their favorite recipes or pictures of their latest travels or athletic exploits. Moreover, the Act does not even restrict access to supposedly harmful content in any sensible way: It arguably applies to Facebook and Twitter, but not Mastadon, Discord, BeReel, Gab, Truth Social, Imgur, Brainly, DeviantArt, or Twitch. The Act thus appears to restrict access to political expression on Twitter and photography on Instagram but places no restrictions on the exact same expression on Truth Social or DeviantArt. While the state might think that some of those distinctions are sensible, the Supreme Court has long recognized that it is not the role of the government to decide what expressive materials minors should be allowed to access. The First Amendment leaves “these judgments … for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree.” Playboy, 529 U.S. at 818. And compounding the problems, the Act’s definitions of “social media company” and “social media platform” are hopelessly vague, leaving companies to guess whether they are regulated by the Act. The Act is also preempted in part by the Child Online Privacy Protection Act and contravenes the Commerce Clause too.

I won’t go through the complaint beat by beat, but this paragraph stood out to me:

There has long been some speech that many adults would prefer minors not hear. Some are opposed to minors reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it contains racial epithets. Others object to minors playing Grand Theft Auto because it depicts violence and criminality. Even so, the government typically cannot require certain works to be kept in an “adults only” section of the mall just because it deems them controversial, or require minors to receive permission from their parents before buying works that carry messages that the government deems too sophisticated for them. See, e.g., Brown, 564 U.S. at 786. Even when it comes to efforts to protect minors, the First Amendment commands that “esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature” and other forms of speech and expression “are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree.”

Your moral panic is no excuse for the government to decide what is right for kids to read and when. It’s an issue for parents directly in some cases, and in other areas, it needs to be recognized that kids have rights themselves. Laws like these insert the government instead, and that’s a problem.

One hopes that the Supreme Court will eventually put a stop to all of these crazy state internet laws (which come from both red and blue states). In the meantime, though, state legislators seem to be pushing each other aside to see who can destroy the rights of kids (and adults) faster and more ridiculously.

Filed Under: age verification, arkansas, coppa, kids, protect the children, sb 396
Companies: netchoice

Social Media Was Useful For Me, As An Ill, Nerdy Teenager

Culture

from the don't-cut-it-off-for-others dept

Lately, concerns about allowing minors to use social media have been front and center in the public discourse, but ways in which they use it productively have been absent from the conversation. My own anecdotal experience does not constitute comprehensive data, but it’s important to understand how social media can be extremely useful for teens who are sick and who have unique interests. Current proposals and laws range from restricting minors on social media to outright bans. Many of these laws would have prevented me from finding medical answers, friends, and career options.

My autoimmune disease count is up to eight, and always growing. Last year it was a solid seven, and six the year prior. Autoimmune diseases tend to come in groups and can mimic each other, making diagnosis difficult. Ever seen the Simpsons episode with Mr. Burns’ doctor explaining how his many diseases work together by pushing a bunch of fuzzy toys through a door? (See: Three Stooges Syndrome.) My first diagnosis was at the age of 13: Crohn’s Disease. It’s only the beginning of the story.

Current laws and proposals would endanger minors’ access to health information

A key piece of how I found my answers both as a teenager and an adult was social media. As I tell my story, it’s important to keep in mind that support forums for people with various medical conditions would be covered by many new social media laws and proposals intended to protect kids online. Multiple proposals completely ban minors below various ages from accessing social media. Even for the laws and proposals that don’t ban minors from using platforms but instead require parental consent, that minor will then have their and their guardian’s personally identifiable information tied to a forum about their condition forever.

The most effective age verification tools currently in use require very personal information, from government IDs to face scans. This is troubling for many reasons, a key one being that platforms regularly suffer from data breaches and hacking. While I am open about most of my health struggles, many people understandably want to keep their medical information private. Not only would tying one’s identity to sensitive medical information discourage speech, it would also discourage support networks and medical information sharing.

My diagnosis process before social media, and then with social media

It took well over a year, eight gastroenterologists, five gynecologists, two colonoscopies, endless cat scans, blood tests and more to get my endometriosis diagnosis. My father had suggested that exact diagnosis early on after some research, but multiple doctors dismissed the possibility. Being very sick as a female teenager led to more rolled eyes than genuine concern. Seven gastroenterologists, two gynecologists, one school psychologist, and various other medical professionals completely dismissed me. Sure, they would find an inflamed colon or an ovarian cyst or fluid in my pelvis, but that wasn’t enough to overcome the fact that I was too “young” to have any condition. This period of my life was hell. I was very sick, I didn’t know why, and with enough doctors calling me “crazy” or telling me I should “stop lying” or “go to the mall,” I questioned my own sanity.

The last gastroenterologist was very helpful and agreed I had Crohn’s Disease—a diagnosis I received from my fourth gastroenterologist after a colonoscopy—but believed my most severe issues may be caused by something else, and it was beyond his expertise. After a visit with a third gynecologist, a fourth confirmed his suspected diagnosis: Endometriosis.

Until recent years, this disease was often written off by doctors as “in your head” even when internal bleeding and other clear signs were visible. Later, I learned it took some women as much as 20 years to get a diagnosis. My endometriosis was successfully removed during a laparoscopic surgery when I was 14 years old. The surgeon noted the severity of my endometriosis. No wonder I was prescribed Vicodin by a pain management specialist, and the pain was still pretty bad.

During the next few years, the medical tests slowed, but did not stop. I still had unresolved symptoms and wanted to figure out what was causing them. And by now, I was understandably skeptical of medical professionals and began more research of my own. After years of my primary care doctors writing off endless colds and infections as “a bad season,” I searched something like “endometriosis” and “getting sick all the time.” I ended up on a message board—a form of social media—where someone described the same problem and that they had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. After finding rheumatologists in my area and their reviews, I settled on someone a bit far from me because he was so highly rated. He instantly recognized my symptoms as that of fibromyalgia. Since he prescribed me Cymbalta, I spend a tiny fraction of my time sick as I did before and my seasonal allergies no longer induce asthma.

These days, my favorite doctor who has helped me identify and treat several smaller diseases will actually conduct internet research in front of me. But in addition to this, most successful supplements and diagnosis recommendations for me began on various forms of social media. A random follower of mine on Twitter recommended a supplement that I began taking after checking its interactions with my other medications and supplements, and it has greatly increased my energy and overall well being.

Another person on Twitter discovered the source of one of my strangest symptoms that I’ve been trying to figure out for years, and it works a lot like Erythromelalgia. I’ll be talking to my doctor about it soon. Without the use of social media as a teenager, I would not have my fibromyalgia diagnosis and I would not have been able to learn how to use social media to find answers to my many medical problems. And although I am very open about my experiences now, it wasn’t always that way. Plus, age verification as a barrier to accessing these forums may have given me pause in asking for help and researching my medical problems.

Social media gave me a career and a hobby

And as one can imagine, with severe pain, nausea, and exhaustion comes a lot of time on the couch. When I was at my worst at ages 13 and 14, I watched a lot of news, and it grew my passion for politics. I decided at the time that I wanted to be a U.S. senator (hence “Senator Shoshana”). My father found the local Young Republicans club, and I became fast friends with many people in their 20s and 30s who treated me like a younger sister. Over the following years during high school, I would keep in touch with these new friends on social media. My friends from school didn’t care much about politics, and it was a good outlet for me to talk with likeminded people. Under several current legislative proposals, this would not have been possible.

Local elected officials and government staffers would often add me as a friend on Facebook. It was an incredible way for me to network and acquire opportunities to intern as a teenager, in addition to the in-person events. Unfortunately, many laws and legislative proposals limiting the use of social media by teenagers specifically prohibit people who are not already friends with the minor from finding them in search results or messaging them. If this was law during my teen years, it would have prevented me from growing my career by talking to elected officials online, even with parental consent.

This list isn’t exhaustive. I made friends on social media with a talk radio host whose ideas resonated with me—we’re still friends today. I have been sewing since I was eight years old, and loved Project Runway. I added my favorite designer from the show and his model on MySpace, and was able to converse with and learn from the model. I also made friends with a model from a vintage clothing store who was very supportive of my sewing and taught me about vintage clothing. All of this and more showed me how big and how small the world was, and all the opportunities at my keyboard that I could use to grow as a person and as a professional. My thinking regarding laws about social media isn’t so much about protecting what I had, but more about not closing the door to all this opportunity behind me for future generations.

Outright government bans are the wrong strategy

Not all minors will use social media safely and productively. Parents have an important role to play by talking to their children, using filters, or maybe banning their children from social media where appropriate. But outright government bans undermine parental and child choice. And legally-mandated age verification creates tethers to one’s online information where anonymity would be preferable, in addition to security concerns for children and adults alike.

As is the case with all government action, well-intended proposals can have negative consequences and stifle people’s opportunity. If these proposed social media restrictions had existed when I was younger, it’s possible I’d have missed out on formative pieces of my career, not to mention hobbies. And who knows, I may have never gotten the health diagnoses that drastically improved my quality of life. I implore policymakers to think before they take these social media ban leaps and unintentionally hold back generations to come.

Shoshana Weissmann is the digital director and a policy fellow at the R Street Institute. 

Filed Under: age verification, diagnosis, forums, kids, medial info, moral panic, social media

A Deeper Look At The Surgeon General’s Report On Kids & Social Media: It’s Not What You Heard

Studies

from the we-have-no-evidence,-so-let's-freak-out dept

We had just recently written about the American Psychological Association’s very thorough and detailed report going through much of the research about the impact of social media on the mental health of kids. That report was careful, and nuanced, and basically said that there is little evidence that social media is inherently bad for kids. It noted that studies suggested social media actually seems to be beneficial for many kids, and in the cases where it’s harmful, there are often other, extenuating circumstances. It had many recommendations, focused mainly on better educating children about how to use social media appropriately, rather than any sort of moral panic about it (of course, as we noted, the media still misrepresented the study and claimed it “warned of social media’s potential harm to kids.”)

A few months ago, we also wrote about the giant Pew study on teens and social media, which further found that most teens get real value out of social media, and only a really small percentage of them struggled with social media.

It was nice to see these reports and their thorough, detailed findings, as they pushed back on the growing moral panic that is enveloping much of the media and the political world regarding social media and kids.

So I was curious earlier this week when Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, released his Social Media and Youth Mental Health report. Nearly all the reporting I saw on it suggested that it was like the opposite of the APA release, and that it talked up how social media was absolutely putting kids at risk and something needed to be done.

But… that’s not exactly what the report says.

Indeed, somewhat bizarrely, it reads kinda like the off-brand version of the APA report, with fewer details, less nuance, and a less clear plan. It cites some of the same studies.

Like the APA report, it also says the evidence of a causal impact is lacking, and (like the APA report) it says that it appears social media is good for some and not good for others. Like the APA report, it clearly lays out the benefits of social media for kids:

Social media can provide benefits for some youth by providing positive community and connection with others who share identities, abilities, and interests. It can provide access to important information and create a space for self-expression. The ability to form and maintain friendships online and develop social connections are among the positive effects of social media use for youth. , These relationships can afford opportunities to have positive interactions with more diverse peer groups than are available to them offline and can provide important social support to youth. The buffering effects against stress that online social support from peers may provide can be especially important for youth who are often marginalized, including racial, ethnic, and sexual and gender minorities. , For example, studies have shown that social media may support the mental health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other youths by enabling peer connection, identity development and management, and social support. Seven out of ten adolescent girls of color report encountering positive or identity-affirming content related to race across social media platforms. A majority of adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), like they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%). In addition, research suggests that social media-based and other digitally-based mental health interventions may also be helpful for some children and adolescents by promoting help-seeking behaviors and serving as a gateway to initiating mental health care.

Then it also notes that for some, it might be negative. The same thing Pew and the APA report said. But even there, the report notes that there isn’t necessarily any evidence of a causal link, just “reasons for concern about the potential negative impact.”

And, even there, it looks like Murthy is doing some cherry-picking in how the data is presented. It quotes the Pew study (which again, focused on how only a small percentage of teens had negative experiences with social media, and a larger percentage found it helpful), but just to say that more than a third of those aged 13 to 17 use social media “almost constantly.” This “almost constantly” is trotted out frequently (including in school district lawsuits) without putting it into context. First, social media covers lots of tools. Kids use Discord to communicate with each other (and to track predator teachers), which is way different than just staring at images and videos all day. And again, there are lots of things that kids do “almost constantly” — such as attending school — that we don’t consider to be problematic.

The question is whether this usage is a problem or not, and all of these reports are saying that for most kids, the answer is no. For a very small percentage, however, there are real risks. And efforts should be focused on those individuals, rather than taking away all of the benefits that these reports describe social media as providing kids.

And the report then notes that there are many areas where we just don’t have enough information to say one way or another what’s a good approach and what’s bad. That’s also useful, as hopefully it will lead to even more research on this stuff.

Unfortunately, though, after this opening, the report basically says “well, even though we don’t really have enough evidence that social media is bad for kids, and a bunch of evidence of how it’s good, we should stop kids from using it just in case it turns out to be bad.” Which is… a really weird takeaway, unless, you are writing to a foregone conclusion that the details of your report don’t actually support:

Our children and adolescents don’t have the luxury of waiting years until we know the full extent of social media’s impact. Their childhoods and development are happening now. While social media use can have positive impacts for some children, the evidence noted throughout this Surgeon General’s Advisory necessitates significant concern with the way it is currently designed, deployed, and utilized. Child and adolescent use of platforms designed for adults places them at high risk of “unsupervised, developmentally inappropriate, and potentially harmful” use according to the National Scientific Council on Adolescence. At a moment when we are experiencing a national youth mental health crisis, now is the time to act swiftly and decisively to protect children and adolescents from risk of harm.

It is difficult to see how you get to this paragraph and think it makes any sense given all of the other statements. It’s like saying: “Cars are beneficial to people because they help people traverse long distances which has many benefits. Cars are also dangerous because they can crash and kill people. So, while there are benefits and negatives, we have to ban all cars to stop the negatives.”

Life is about tradeoffs. This report highlights all the tradeoffs… and then throws them in the garbage to say “but we can’t worry about the benefits, we just need to focus on stopping the negatives.”

The actual recommendations in the report are a little better, but it includes very dangerous suggestions like age verification (which is a privacy nightmare). It does (like the APA report) talk about how parents have to take on responsibility for educating their kids on the proper use of social media, and how more tools should be provided to them. Those are perfectly good suggestions.

But, of course, with the framing of “we must protect the children” the media had a fucking field say with the report, highlighting only the claims of the harms to children, and totally ignoring how much of the report actually talks about the benefits.

So, uh, yeah. The report says that there are clear benefits, that there may be some risks, but that the research isn’t really there to prove it, and then has a little moral panic saying we need to overprotect before we know what’s happening for sure, and every news org runs with the scare tactic headline.

If it bleeds, it leads, I guess.

Of course, as a separate NY Times article highlights, these Surgeon General advisories have happened a bunch of times over the past few decades, some for good causes, and some have marked real turning points, such as around smoking and drunk driving. However, it also details some pretty embarrassing ones that were total jokes, such as the attempts by Surgeon Generals to insist that TV and video games were damaging to children, both of which were later debunked as moral panics.

What’s almost hilarious is that the 1972 report on the negative effects of TV has many similarities to this new report. It kicks off saying this:

But then immediately says “nevertheless” and immediately just starts listing out studies that claim that watching TV leads to aggression.

So, just like this latest study, there are nods towards the more nuanced position, but then that just gets bowled over by the “but moral panic and fear” part.

Maybe the next Surgeon General can issue an advisory on the impact of moral panics.

Filed Under: kids, kids and social media, moral panic, research, social media, surgeon general, teens, vivek murthy

APA Report Says That Media & Politicians Are Simply Wrong About Kids & Social Media; Media Then Lies About Report

Studies

from the parents-need-to-parent,-news-at-11 dept

What if the media and the politicians threw a moral panic about kids and social media… and the actual experts didn’t come along? The American Psychological Association has put out a thoughtful, nuanced study, about kids and social media, that suggests that the hyperventilating we’ve heard about is misplaced, and that there are some simple common sense approaches that parents can and should take to make sure their kids are having a healthy experience with social media.

But it seems that the media is so bought into the moral panic narrative, that they’re completely misrepresenting the study, claiming it supports the moral panic.

The core findings, similar to what we’ve been saying all along, and which is supported by multiple other studies, is that social media is not inherently bad for kids. For the vast majority, it’s neutral or positive. There is a small percentage who seem to have issues with it, and we should focus our attention on dealing with those cases, rather than pushing for things like outright bans. From the findings of the APA report:

Using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people. Adolescents’ lives online both reflect and impact their offline lives. In most cases, the effects of social media are dependent on adolescents’ own personal and psychological characteristics and social circumstances—intersecting with the specific content, features, or functions that are afforded within many social media platforms. In other words, the effects of social media likely depend on what teens can do and see online, teens’ preexisting strengths or vulnerabilities, and the contexts in which they grow up.

Adolescents’ experiences online are affected by both 1) how they shape their own social media experiences (e.g., they choose whom to like and follow); and 2) both visible and unknown features built into social media platforms.

Not all findings apply equally to all youth. Scientific findings offer one piece of information that can be used along with knowledge of specific youths’ strengths, weaknesses, and context to make decisions that are tailored for each teen, family, and community.

Of course, If you’ve been paying attention lately, we’ve been talking a lot about the ongoing moral panic regarding kids and social media. We’re hearing over and over again that social media is dangerous for all kids. Full stop. We’ve pointed out repeatedly that the data and research on the issues do not support literally any of the claims that politicians (and the media) are making about the impact of social media on kids.

But neither the media nor politicians seem to much care about the facts here. Claiming that social media is bad for kids and “something must be done” appeases voters who have been sold this line of bullshit. And, of course, if you scratch the surface a little, it’s not difficult to find the legacy entertainment industry pulling strings behind the scenes. After all, they’ve always hated the internet, and they own the major TV news providers as well, so it’s somehow easy for them to present nonsense as fact and have everyone buy it.

For example, around the same time this report came out, saying that social media is not inherently harmful to kids, I received a press release from a group, announcing a new “PSA” from famed Hollywood actress Laura Linney which really plays up the nonsense claims, stating that within 15 seconds of a child getting on social media, the services are trying to deliberately feed that child dangerous information.

“Within 15 seconds of logging on to social media, the algorithm has your daughter in its crosshairs.

“It sends her a steady flow of messages telling her she isn’t thin enough, pretty enough. They invade her brain, causing body dysmorphia, anxiety, depression – leading to the worst rates of eating disorders, self harm and suicide we have ever known. All while she is sitting right next to you, on her phone.

“Congress knows but it refuses to act. Don’t let her suffer the secret pain alone. Use your voice. Demand a plan.”

This bit of pure manipulative disinformation comes from a Hollywood group, the “Entertainment Industry Foundation” and a moral panic outrage operation called The Center for Countering Digital Hate, which seems to believe that flat out lying to people is a reasonable approach to attacking social media.

But, again, none of this is new. The Pew study we talked about in the fall, found that the vast, vast, vast majority of teenagers either found social media beneficial or neutral. Only a small percentage found it harmful. Lots of people like to (misleadingly) cite the documents that Frances Haugen leaked to the Wall Street Journal, but as we’ve detailed over and over and over again, what the main study found was that in 23 out of 24 categories they studied, a large majority of teens felt better or neutral about themselves, and there was only one single area (teen girls regarding body image) where just slightly more girls felt worse about themselves than better (and it was still just in the range of 1 out of 3. And, the whole reason this slide existed with this headline was because Meta found that single bad result to be a problem and so they were talking about how to deal with it.

None of this presents a world in which these companies don’t care, or are deliberately “invading her brain” with negative messages about herself.

And, on top of that, all of these moral panics seem to assume the only answer is to ban kids completely or block all discussions of certain types of speech even though we have years and years of detailed studies showing that that does not work. At all. COPPA is supposed to keep kids under 13 from using internet services, but parents recognize that many of those services are useful for their kids, so they teach their kids to lie in order to use them.

And for complex topics, like eating disorders, multiple studies have also shown that banning those topics actually made things worse. The kids still found a way to talk about those things, but in ways that were more difficult for adults to monitor, and where it was more difficult for people to go into those conversations and provide help to those who needed it to help them try to deal with their eating disorders.

In other words, the moral panic is not only wrong, it’s dangerous.

The APA’s recommendations are careful, thoughtful, and nuanced. They suggest kids (with the help of their parents) learn to use social media in a productive, healthy manner.

Youth using social media should be encouraged to use functions that create opportunities for social support, online companionship, and emotional intimacy that can promote healthy socialization

Data suggest that youths’ psychological development may benefit from this type of online social interaction, particularly during periods of social isolation, when experiencing stress, when seeking connection to peers with similar developmental and/or health conditions, and perhaps especially for youth who experience adversity or isolation in offline environments.

The APA specifically notes that social media may be particularly helpful to marginalized teenagers or those facing mental health challenges:

Social media may be psychologically beneficial particularly among those experiencing mental health crises, or members of marginalized groups that have been disproportionately harmed in online contexts. For instance, access to peers that allows LGBTQIA+ and questioning adolescents to provide support to and share accurate health information with one another is beneficial to psychological development, and can protect youth from negative psychological outcomes when experiencing stress. This may be especially important for topics that adolescents feel reluctant to or are unable to discuss with a parent or caregiver.

They also suggest that when kids are younger, it’s appropriate for parents to help kids with social media, to teach them how to use it appropriately and safely, but as they get older, it’s important to let them discover things for themselves:

In early adolescence (i.e., typically 10–14 years), adult monitoring (i.e., ongoing review, discussion, and coaching around social media content) is advised for most youths’ social media use; autonomy may increase gradually as kids age and if they gain digital literacy skills. However, monitoring should be balanced with youths’ appropriate needs for privacy.

Brain regions associated with a desire for attention, feedback, and reinforcement from peers become increasingly sensitive beginning in early adolescence, and regions associated with mature self-control are not fully developed until adulthood. Parental monitoring (i.e., coaching and discussion) and developmentally appropriate limit-setting thus is critical, especially in early adolescence.

Adults’ own use of social media in youths’ presence should also be carefully considered. Science demonstrates that adults’ (e.g., caregivers’) orientation and attitudes toward social media (e.g., using during interactions with their children, being distracted from in-person interactions by social media use) may affect adolescents’ own use of social media.

Preliminary research suggests that a combination of 1) social media limits and boundaries, and 2) adult–child discussion and coaching around social media use, leads to the best outcomes for youth.

The report does suggest helping kids avoid content that advocates for harmful or illegal behavior, and recommends that social media sites prioritize de-prioritizing such content but the report also recommends that the best way to handle much of this is to train children to learn how to recognize problematic content such as online racism and how to properly deal with it:

Adolescents should be trained to recognize online structural racism and critique racist messages. Research shows that young people who are able to critique racism experience less psychological distress when they witness race-related traumatic events online. As noted above, adults’ monitoring and active discussion of online content can also reduce the effects of exposure to cyberhate on adolescents’ psychological adjustment.

There are a few other recommendations in there, but on the whole, the report repeats what we’ve been saying all along. Most kids get value out of online services, and the best way to handle things is to better educate them and prepare them for what they may see online. Teach them how to deal with the real world, don’t hide it from them and then dump it all at them when they hit a certain birthday.

So, given this thoughtful balanced approach that goes against the media narrative, how do you think the media covered this report? NPR Morning Edition did a whole segment focusing the attention on the exact opposite of what the report actually said: “Major psychologists’ group warns of social media’s potential harm to kids” blares the title.

Honestly, I don’t see how you could read this report and have that be your takeaway, because most of the report is literally saying the opposite. Michaeleen Doucleff’s full report is even worse, because it flat out pats itself on the back for claiming it predicted there was “mounting evidence” of harm caused to kids… which against IS NOT WHAT THE REPORT SAYS.

And, as NPR has reported, there’s mounting evidence that social media can exacerbate and even cause these problems.

It’s like Doucleff decided what she wanted the report to say and just pretended it said that. Hilariously, there’s really only one paragraph saying that the report has 10 recommendations, and notes that the recommendations are “primarily for parents” and then IMMEDIATELY quotes some random therapist who disagrees with the report to say it’s wrong.

NPR is usually pretty good about reporting things, but this is just laughably bad.

Thankfully, much of the other reporting on this report is more accurate, with the focus being on the APA’s recommendations to better train kids in how to use social media appropriately. But still, the report has received almost no coverage at all from the mainstream media outside of NPR, and certainly none that I can see from Hollywood-owned news properties which have been promoting the FUD about social media and kids for over a year now.

Of course, none of this will stop politicians from pushing forward their bills that go exactly against the recommendations here. And we’ll still continue to hear people insist that it’s “proven” that social media is damaging and making kids kill themselves or get eating disorders. The reality is a lot more nuanced and complex, and it would be nice if some of the institutions we’re supposed to trust — media and politicians — actually paid attention to the data.

Filed Under: digital literacy, health, kids, moral panic, parenting, social media, teenagers
Companies: apa

Epic To Pay $520 Million Over Deceptive Practices To Trick Kids

Privacy

from the before-we-pass-new-laws... dept

Maybe, just maybe, before we rush to pass questionable new laws about “protecting children online,” we should look to make use of the old ones? The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has been in place for years, and it has problems, but so many companies ignore it. I’ve mentioned in the past how I once walked around a part of CES that had a bunch of startups focused on offering services to kids, and a DC lawyer I was with made sure to ask each one what their COPPA compliance strategy was… and we just got blank stares.

On Monday, video game giant Epic agreed to pay $520 million in two separate fines to the FTC for violating COPPA with some pretty deceptive behavior targeted at kids. First up were your garden variety privacy violations in collecting data on kids under 13 without obtaining parental consent:

• Violated COPPA by Failing to Notify Parents, Obtain Consent: The FTC alleged that Epic was aware that many children were playing Fortnite—as shown through surveys of Fortnite users, the licensing and marketing of Fortnite toys and merchandise, player support and other company communications—and collected personal data from children without first obtaining parents’ verifiable consent. The company also required parents who requested that their children’s personal information be deleted to jump through unreasonable hoops, and sometimes failed to honor such requests.
• Default settings harm children and teens: Epic’s settings enable live on-by-default text and voice communications for users. The FTC alleges that these default settings, along with Epic’s role in matching children and teens with strangers to play Fortnite together, harmed children and teens. Children and teens have been bullied, threatened, harassed, and exposed to dangerous and psychologically traumatizing issues such as suicide while on Fortnite.

As the FTC notes, Epic employees knew this was a problem, but the company didn’t fix things. In fact, when it finally did create an option to turn the voice chat off, “Epic made it difficult for users to find.”

Perhaps more concerning were the deceptive practices.

• Used dark patterns to trick users into making purchases: The company has deployed a variety of dark patterns aimed at getting consumers of all ages to make unintended in-game purchases. Fortnite’s counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players to incur unwanted charges based on the press of a single button. For example, players could be charged while attempting to wake the game from sleep mode, while the game was in a loading screen, or by pressing an adjacent button while attempting simply to preview an item. These tactics led to hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized charges for consumers.
• Charged account holders without authorization: Children and other users who play Fortnite can purchase in-game content such as cosmetics and battle passes using Fortnite’s V-Bucks. Up until 2018, Epic allowed children to purchase V-Bucks by simply pressing buttons without requiring any parental or card holder action or consent. Some parents complained that their children had racked up hundreds of dollars in charges before they realized Epic had charged their credit card without their consent. The FTC has brought similar claims against companies such as Amazon, Apple, and Google for billing consumers millions of dollars for in-app purchases made by children while playing mobile app games without obtaining their parents’ consent.
• Blocked access to purchased content: The FTC alleged that Epic locked the accounts of customers who disputed unauthorized charges with their credit card companies. Consumers whose accounts have been locked lose access to all the content they have purchased, which can total thousands of dollars. Even when Epic agreed to unlock an account, consumers were warned that they could be banned for life if they disputed any future charges.

I generally dislike the term “dark patterns,” as it’s frequently used to basically just mean “making a service useful in a way that someone else dislikes.” But, uh, yeah, making it way too easy for kids to rack up huge bills on their parents’ credit cards? That seems super sketchy.

For this behavior, Epic will pay $245 million, which the government will use to provide rebates for Fortnite players.

This all seems like the kind of thing that the FTC should be doing, rather than some of the other sillier things it’s been focused on of late. And, also, again, suggests that maybe we don’t need these new, badly drafted laws, but instead should just make sure the FTC is able to better enforce existing laws.

Filed Under: children, coppa, dark patterns, fees, fortnite, ftc, kids, parents, privacy
Companies: epic games

The Internet Is Not Disneyland; People Should Stop Demanding It Become Disneyland

Culture

from the bad-ideas dept

Disneyland can be a fun experience for kids (and potentially a frustrating one for parents), but it’s a very controlled environment in which everything is set up to bend over backwards to be welcoming to children. And that’s great for what it is, but the world would kinda suck if everything was Disneyland. I mean, some countries have tried that, and it’s… not great, especially if you believe in basic freedoms.

Here’s the thing: Disneyland’s limits are great for a place to visit occasionally. As a vacation. But it’s not the real world. And we shouldn’t be seeking to remake the real world into Disneyland. And I think it’s especially true that most parents wouldn’t want to raise their kids in Disneyland and then send them out into the real world upon turning 18, and assuming they’ll be fully equipped to deal with the real world.

Yet that’s exactly what some busybody politicians (with support of the media) have been trying to do. They want to pass new laws that effectively demand that the internet act like Disneyland. Everything must be safe for kids. That means much greater surveillance and much less freedom… but “safe for kids.”

Except it’s not. Disneyland is fantasyland. It’s not real life. And we don’t train kids how to be thoughtful participants in society if we raise them in Disneyland.

I had a discussion recently about these bills — things like California’s Age Appropriate Design Code or Congress’s Kids Online Safety Act — where there are legitimate concerns about kids being safe online, but it seems like we ought to think about the digital world the same way we think about the real world. Parents have a role not just in limiting where kids can go when they’re young, but also giving kids the tools, as they grow, to handle various situations.

Sometimes when I talk about this people think I’m suggesting that parents should hover like a helicopter over their children when they’re online, or spy on everything they do online, but that’s not the answer either. That’s normalizing surveillance, and teaching kids that you don’t trust them. Instead, parents (and school teachers) can help kids learn how to use the internet appropriately at their age. That’s giving them guidance on where is safe, but also teaching them how they might sometimes come across unsafe areas online, with content that is not meant for them, and teaching them how to deal with it appropriately.

We do this already in the outside world, in which we try to teach children how to handle various situations. When you should be careful around strangers; when you should seek help from trustworthy adults. And, of course, when it’s appropriate and when it’s not appropriate for kids to be somewhere with or without supervision. That’s called being a parent.

What we don’t do is insist that we need to turn every shopping center into Disneyland. We rely on parents to teach kids how to deal with the real world at an age when they, the parents, decide what’s appropriate.

We can (and should) do this with the internet as well. Let kids know that not everything online is appropriate for them, and teach them how to alert parents or other trusted adults if things are clearly not right.

Nothing is perfect, obviously, and everyone can point to this or that horror story, but on the whole this system has worked well in the outside world, and it can and should work well on the internet. We don’t need to turn the internet into Disneyland. We can and should teach our kids how to appropriately use the internet, including how to deal with it when they come across questionable situations. That’s actually training kids how to become proper adults and how to deal with things, rather than raising them in Disneyland and expecting that it teaches them enough to handle the outside world on their own.

Filed Under: disneyland, for the children, internet, kids, kosa