by cwwc on 4/17/25, 1:39 PM with 690 comments
by dang on 4/17/25, 6:35 PM
by setgree on 4/17/25, 2:49 PM
* Cancel culture is not compatible with democratic norms [1]
* Social media is making many people a little worse off and it makes some people a lot worse off
* having our phones on us all the time is bad for just about everything that requires sustained attention [2], including flirting and dating [3]
* Technology won't solve this problem. AI will make things worse [4]. If TikTok gets banned and some slightly more benevolent version takes it place, we're still headed in the wrong direction. What we need is culture change, which Haidt is trying his darndest at. Hats off to him.
[0] https://matthewbjane.github.io/blog-posts/blog-post-7.html
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/23/business/jonathan-haidt-s...
[2] https://thecritic.co.uk/its-the-phones-stupid/
[3] https://www.sexual-culture.com/p/its-obviously-the-phones
[4] https://www.npr.org/2019/06/04/726709657/sometimes-fascinati...
by callc on 4/17/25, 2:44 PM
Incredibly hilarious. Only leet hackers can pull this off though, same as pressing F12 in the browser to hack the mainframe!
by Duanemclemore on 4/17/25, 4:54 PM
When I was a kid living in a trailer in the midwest in the eighties I asked my parents to buy me a secondhand set of 1973 Encyclopedia Britannica from our local library - for $7. It fed the same curiosity and joy of discovering new things that you would want your kid to get from resources online.
When we went on trips we always drove. And even if I didn't already have a book or books from the library that I was reading at the time, my parents would suggest I take a volume of the Encyclopedia. And sure enough if I got bored I'd break it out. (Unless it was too dark to read at which point I'd just fall sleep.)
That's all to say there are alternatives that cut the gordian knot, which kids can really dig if you frame it right. My parents were both voracious readers themselves, and it didn't take long for their reading to my sibling and I to turn into reading on our own. So when we got something that provided the novelty and agency of navigating your own way through an encyclopedia, it was a huge hit.
Of course things are very different today. And I'm not a luddite or even someone who believes that old ways are intrinsically better. But there are ways to feed the many various and often contradictory needs kids have that aren't reliant on contemporary tech.
by onetimeusename on 4/17/25, 3:24 PM
by salynchnew on 4/17/25, 2:47 PM
by momojo on 4/17/25, 5:19 PM
> As the U.S. Surgeon General recently explained, children’s and parents’ attempts to resist social media is an unfair fight: “You have some of the best designers and product developers in the world who have designed these products to make sure people are maximizing the amount of time they spend on these platforms. And if we tell a child, use the force of your willpower to control how much time you’re spending, you’re pitting a child against the world’s greatest product designers."
This struck a chord. I struggle with addictive tendencies and I've been having to re-teach myself that stumbling is not always because "I didn't try hard enough" but because I live in a world thats optimizing for retention/subscriptions/etc...
by PeterCorless on 4/17/25, 3:01 PM
"But when the Kentucky AG’s office was preparing to post their brief against TikTok, whoever was in charge of doing the redaction simply covered the relevant text with black rectangles. Even though you can’t see the text while reading the PDF, you can just use your cursor to select each black section, copy it, and then paste it into another file to read the hidden text. It is great fun to do this — try it yourself! Or just read our version of the brief in which we have done this for you."
by neilv on 4/17/25, 5:50 PM
I recall hearing of related embarrassing internal reports from Facebook.
And, earlier, the internal reports from big tobacco and big oil, showing they knew the harms, but chose to publicly lie instead, for greater profit.
My question is... Why are employees, who presumably have plush jobs they want to keep, still writing reports that management doesn't want to hear?
* Do they not realize when management doesn't want to hear this?
* Does management actually want to hear it, but with overwhelming intent bias? (For example, hearing that it's "compulsive" is good, and the itemized effects of that are only interpreted as emphasizing how valuable a property they own?)
* Do they think the information will be acted upon constructively, non-evil?
* Are they simply trying to be honest researchers, knowing they might get fired or career stalled?
* Is it job security, to make themselves harder to fire?
* Are they setting up CYA paper trail for themselves, for if the scandal becomes public?
* Are they helping their immediate manager to set up CYA paper trails?
by nekochanwork on 4/17/25, 3:18 PM
Parents are fully capable of monitoring and regulating their children's internet usage without Daddy Government getting involved.
by _JoRo on 4/17/25, 3:33 PM
I will say though, if you are trying to watch videos more from an educational perspective then it can be useful. Although, I would advise getting an LLM summary of the video, and then speed reading the summary in order to determine if their is any useful content in there.
by like_any_other on 4/17/25, 4:49 PM
by simonw on 4/17/25, 3:43 PM
Ouch, Gen Z really hate Twitter.
by erelong on 4/17/25, 3:48 PM
protip: this isn't the reason people are trying to ban the app, and it shouldn't be banned. Currently I think you have to be 13+ to go on the app. If you think it's harming kids as the reason to ban it, you could advocate maybe for 18+ access instead. The fact this isn't the advocated change, to me suggests that's not the reason why people are trying to ban it (concern for children's well-being). If this were the case, you'd also have to ban probably the other U.S. social media. It's probably also important to note how much good social media does by freely sharing valuable information (while people focus on the negative info that's shared).
by Glyptodon on 4/17/25, 4:14 PM
by bix6 on 4/17/25, 2:26 PM
by smeeth on 4/17/25, 3:34 PM
But it's now clear that the activity is the harm. The issue isn’t that using TikTok might make you addicted; the issue is that you are using TikTok.
Just as there’s no such thing as responsibly huffing paint fumes, there’s no such thing as responsible social media use, only sub-diagnosable use.
by neallindsay on 4/17/25, 4:31 PM
1. show you more stuff automatically, and
2. optimize for engagement when choosing what to show you next
That optimization works, and they have little incentive to optimize for anything else (like minimizing harm to users). TikTok is not the only offender, but they are the best at it (read: worst for users).
It is an additional concern that they are ultimately controlled by a foreign country that is relatively hostile to us and has low transparency to our law enforcement apparatus and regulators. Facebook and YouTube have to at least be worried about breaking our existing laws or annoying our Congress. This reins them in at least a little bit. TikTok actually did annoy Congress enough to prompt bi-partisan action (a very high bar in today's climate), but successfully won a game of chicken, as the law they are violating is officially being ignored.
by whateveracct on 4/17/25, 2:28 PM
by JohnMakin on 4/17/25, 4:34 PM
> 1. Addictive, compulsive, and problematic use 2. Depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, self-harm, and suicide 3. Porn, violence, and drugs 4. Sextortion, CSAM, and sexual exploitation 5.TikTok knows about underage use and takes little action
Hell, it's even a matter of congressional record!
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/07/1211339737/meta-failed-to-add...
it doesn't make it right, but this current political climate's myopic focus on tiktok alone destroys any credibility on this.
by ThinkBeat on 4/17/25, 3:39 PM
What should be mentioned in an article ccondemming tiktok is that most other social media young people may try are horrible as well.
The amountr of sexual explitation that takes place on snapchat is quite staggering from what I have read.
I do not see how Tiktok would be any less of a threat and cause less harm if it is partially owned by a US company. There is no evidence that US social media doing a fanastic job avoiding harm for kids and teens.
I would go so far as to say modern social media is nearly founded on the idea of addiction, and endless attempe at behavioral manipulation to sell ever more ads.
by SamuelAdams on 4/17/25, 5:18 PM
I feel like there needs to be more education about redaction and obfuscation tools, namely this black box tool and blurring. It is usually possible to reverse blurring. Not redacting information properly is just embarrassing.
by bryanhogan on 4/17/25, 4:14 PM
by electrondood on 4/17/25, 3:34 PM
We have a collective psychological experiment in the form of social media, but short-form content combined with an endless scrolling feed is functionally identical to the experiment with the rat pressing the cocaine button.
It is not beneficial for the population to have an increasingly shrinking attention span. If you can't pay attention for 30 minutes to look up candidate position while voting, or you can't even be bothered to pay attention to that boring "politics stuff" in the first place, then we have a major problem.
by seydor on 4/17/25, 2:47 PM
by JimmaDaRustla on 4/22/25, 2:39 PM
by alganet on 4/17/25, 5:05 PM
Only the US can harm children in industrial scales. Any threat to its sovereigness will be dealt with by our child soldiers.
by margorczynski on 4/17/25, 2:40 PM
We have a plethora of evidence on how destructive social media has been for (especially young) people and still nothing is being done about it.
by cynicalpeace on 4/17/25, 4:10 PM
Well of course, numbnuts, or else no one would use this stuff.
There are benefits to caffeine, nicotine and other drugs that we still agree we shouldn't expose to children.
Because the harms outweigh the benefits!
Simply don't give your kids a screen. No iPad, no iPhone, no video games, no nothing until they reach a more appropriate age.
What that age is might vary from child to child, but it's certainly not 3 years old!
by LunicLynx on 4/17/25, 2:38 PM
by RKFADU_UOFCCLEL on 4/17/25, 3:45 PM
> As one internal report put it:
>> “Compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety,” in addition to “interfer[ing] with essential personal responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities, and connecting with loved ones.”1
This doesn't prove or imply anything. They can believe they are killing people (and probably do, especially with the "large amount of users = woah, i'm god" effect). It still won't be true unless they actually are (which I doubt, but I have never seen this supposedly ground breaking social media webpage before). There are companies causing actual harms on the internet and those are the ones censoring everything and spying on users (coincidentally, not to be a point against this thread) and making false narratives of why everyone needs to buy their spying product and put it on their web page and require using google chrome or mozilla firefox to view the website to be compatible with their spyware.
Edit:
I just scrolled through and only read the CSAM part because that's the only big enough bait to get me to read it and:
> PARA 112: these leaders knew about agencies that recruited minors to create Child Sexual Abuse Material and commercialized it using LIVE.
That sounds incredibly unlikely, when you interpret it at face value. So you're saying some good boy CS grad like everyone on HN - the most milquetoast people on the planet - just went from being afraid of even publishing easily rebukable misinformation, to knowingly assisting people in the most punishable crime on the planet?
> PARA 114: TikTok has long known that virtual gifting is used as a predatory grooming tactic on LIVE. TikTok has internally acknowledged that “perpetrators tend to use tactics such as gift giving, flattery, and gifting money to win the trust of minors.”
Are we supposed to conclude that "gifting" causes child sexual abuse? Okay, then what about the fact that being able to communicate at all does?
by throwaway1854 on 4/17/25, 3:55 PM
Parents are responsible for their children. If a parent doesn't feed their kid, they go to jail. If a parent harms or allows harm through negligence to children, the parent is the one who suffers the consequences and has the child taken away.
If a parent is giving a child a phone and allowing them to use a harmful product, the parent is at fault and should suffer the consequences. Not the rest of us. I don't know why I should have my access to anything restricted because of bad parents. Parents choose to be parents and have and/or keep children and that is their business. Bad parents should suffer consequences and one of those can be no longer being allowed to be a parent.
It's one thing if a provider is specifically trying to get children on its platform - and if a company advertises its services in public places, it's again on the parent to be in control there. Social media companies aren't holding a gun to children's heads trying to get them to join. Kids wanting to do stuff because other kids think it is cool has always existed and that happens when children are not supervised or disciplined. Kids not doing what they are supposed to be doing of their own choice is a parental failure.
Someone under 18 shouldn't be able to purchase a cell phone, and if a parent wants to get them a cell phone, then the parent should accept responsibility for everything on that phone.
The addiction argument is tired. Anything pleasurable can be addictive. If you want people addicted to less things, design society where everyday life is less boring (getting rid of 2 hour commutes and having more parks would be a good start).
by internet_rand0 on 4/17/25, 3:00 PM
those with children
those without
as a hacker without children because i got priced out of the market, why should i care about what tiktok does or ceases to do?
honest question, if tough to answer
or maybe i'm only trying to explain why I don't have a model of being in a formative state.... I mean, dogs don't use tiktok
by diamondfist25 on 4/17/25, 4:52 PM
If screen time data can be accessed, then we can actually know how much time we spend on these doomscrolling social media apps. Only allow X time and no more
by knowitnone on 4/17/25, 3:29 PM
by bhouston on 4/17/25, 3:51 PM
by jwmoz on 4/17/25, 3:43 PM
It's a shame because there are good sides to it too.
by Workaccount2 on 4/17/25, 2:51 PM
Conveniently, a small local college asian club wants to have a stop asian hate rally on the weekend of the 17th, at a local park which would be an ideal location. Tiktok gets word from Bytedance, who by Chinese law have party members on their board, that this rally needs to be heavily promoted organically to other Asians who live in the area. No ads, if someone talks about it in their tiktok, push it. Push it especially towards beloved Asian influencers with a large follwing.
The day comes and the turnout is a total blowout. A sea of Asians filling the park to support a noble cause.
80% of them are there because the CCP wanted them there to cover their operation, but when asked, every single one laughs at the idea that "Tiktok is a tool for propaganda". They say "I have never seen anything that promotes red flag communism or CCP ideals."
The scenario above is why the US government wants tiktok banned. The privacy stuff is second and the screen addiction stuff a far far third.
by tgtweak on 4/17/25, 4:20 PM
I honestly think the solution has to be external as these platforms cannot govern themselves and are incentivized to keep your eyes on them at every waking moment.
by puppymaster on 4/17/25, 3:14 PM
by Havoc on 4/17/25, 3:12 PM
by kypro on 4/17/25, 3:51 PM
It's honestly shocking what kids are watching on these apps. "Brain-rot" is obviously a funny euphemism that's come about for this content in recent years, but it's a pretty good description of reality. I watched a kid last weekend skipping YouTube every 30 seconds because he couldn't concentrate beyond a minute, and the content he was watching included a video featuring a dude who lives a house full of piss bottles. The kid in question is 7 for context.
The fact his mum just allows him to do this for hours on end I think is disgraceful. It's so obviously doing him harm and despite the vast majority of people being aware that these apps are harming children for some reason (I guess because it's legal) there is no moral outrage. It's vile parents are doing this to their children.
by arrosenberg on 4/17/25, 5:52 PM
by MPSFounder on 4/17/25, 4:17 PM
by g8oz on 4/17/25, 4:51 PM
by yapyap on 4/17/25, 3:02 PM
This is like the children of silicon valley CEOs growing up without phones and tablets and such but on a worldwide scale.
It’s frighteningly genius to be honest, douse the next generation of countries you are competing with with quick dopamine hits till they are basically just existing to swipe, scroll, etc and then rake in all the power for yourself / your own country.
by jmyeet on 4/17/25, 5:09 PM
Every criticism you can make of Tiktok applies to Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Reddit, Twitter or Snapchat. So why single out Tiktok?
Easy: because every other company is American-owned and operates in lockstep with American foreign policy. Social media is just an extension of mass media and both play a key role in manufacturing consent [1].
by andrepd on 4/17/25, 7:12 PM
by thewileyone on 4/24/25, 2:00 AM
by motes on 4/17/25, 5:25 PM
Throughout the past four years or so, as more of my friends (all range 22-35) in my wider social bubble have started consuming shortform content in general, I've noticed that I'm unable to hold a conversation without my friends making reference to some obscure shortform video they saw.
It's fine, I don't think thats the crux of the issue I'm griping about. Reverberating things recently-seen is common in all conversations--I'd be a hypocrite to say I don't do the same. The only shortform content I consume are things only sent to me by my friends who would think I would enjoy it--most of which I do, but I leave my consumption at that. Having my social sphere as a filter in which I consume that stuff is the best way to keep it at arms length, at the expense of knowing everyone around you scrolls endlessly and deeper into it.
What's really the issue is when your friends are unable to talk about anything without prefacing that what I've said reminds them of something they saw, or reciting an opinion of someone else without actually forming their own. I'm seeing my creative friends drop their hobbies because they feel like they have no time for it anymore when they don't realize how much time they waste scrolling. While I'm in between tech jobs amongst the chaos of the market right now and moving across the country, two of my closest friends that I'm happy to be working with as they referred me this nice warehouse job alongside them, do nothing but scroll youtube shorts in between our tasks at the office and it's mind numbing and just sad to see. When I met them nearly a decade ago, they were making music and learning new ways to make art and perform, now it's just tiktok slop and memes and bottom of the barrel stuff.
I'm just one of two friends out here spurring them to make art again in an environment that is robbing people of their creative thinking, they're having a hard time finding how to even get into that flow state of creativity again. I can't imaging what that's going to do to children who want to scroll and never play.
by openplatypus on 4/17/25, 3:35 PM
by troyvit on 4/17/25, 3:53 PM
In other words if I leave my kid alone in the house with a liquor cabinet, and the kid gets drunk every day, did the liquor do the harm or did I?
That's an imperfect analogy though, because -- at least in the U.S. -- our society has already aligned itself such that our institutions and our devices raise our kids, not our families. As long as we keep that norm, then in a nation that values free speech and capitalism as much as the U.S. does, we're certain to have this problem.
So as another commenter said, if we ban TikTok something slightly more benign will take its place, and that's because we aren't dealing with the real issue: we don't raise our kids anymore.
Personally I look at the commonality of nuclear families[1] as a big culprit here. Once you isolate kids from aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents you're left with just the parents to raise them. Those not rich enough to afford daycare have to either split the duty so they can afford a roof over their heads or leave the kids alone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family#Compared_with_e...
by hello_computer on 4/17/25, 3:10 PM
by nukizz on 4/17/25, 5:02 PM
by ycui1986 on 4/17/25, 2:40 PM
by ArinaS on 4/17/25, 3:02 PM
by rolodexter1 on 4/17/25, 2:37 PM
by urmish on 4/18/25, 5:04 AM
by oxqbldpxo on 4/17/25, 3:42 PM
by CommenterPerson on 4/17/25, 5:17 PM
by bmurphy1976 on 4/17/25, 2:46 PM
by hnpolicestate on 4/17/25, 3:48 PM
by internet_rand0 on 4/17/25, 2:57 PM
tiktok is geofenced
by lenerdenator on 4/17/25, 4:30 PM
... Oh wait.
by ferguess_k on 4/17/25, 2:36 PM
Technological advancement is not always good (for ordinary people).
by uuddlrlrbaba on 4/17/25, 3:35 PM
old_man_yells_at_cloud.jpg
by MaxHoppersGhost on 4/17/25, 2:31 PM
by Julesman on 4/17/25, 3:49 PM
If you have a kid, please be a parent.
by ilrwbwrkhv on 4/17/25, 2:29 PM
by ulfw on 4/17/25, 2:29 PM
by smnthermes on 4/17/25, 2:41 PM
by greenavocado on 4/17/25, 2:36 PM
by noworriesnate on 4/17/25, 2:45 PM
If your principles get in the way of making compromises that could help, you’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Something to think about.
by reverendsteveii on 4/17/25, 4:18 PM
Infinite, algorithmically-curated content is the problem. It's designed to be addictive and manipulative. There's data that shows that stuff like this basically exploits our ability to delay gratification by offering big pops of reward at random intervals. This develops pathways that encourage continued interaction because, essentially, you don't know when a reward is coming but you know that a reward is coming eventually so your brain keeps drip-feeding you from the memory of the last reward. It's similar to how people end up mindleslly bashing away at penny slots all day for years and years.