Can’t you put parental controls on children’s phones and not approve these apps? Also, why are parents on social media? I don’t use social media and my kids don’t use them either. Any app that goes on their phones needs to be approved by me. I’ve already told them they aren’t getting social media apps. It’s been drilled into them since they were 5 or so that these things are bad for multiple reasons, but primarily 1. Anything you say there lasts forever so you have to always watch what you say and 2. Creeps hang out there and want to do you harm.<p>Have the conversation and get off those apps. Unless adults do it the kids never will.
It's easy to blame those at the forefront for the damage they do, and rightly so.<p>Our system (free market, capitalism) runs on this sort of headlong-rush mentality. Some of the blame belongs with the no-rules deregulation of our society. It seemed like a good idea at the time (to some) but it means, some things are lost.<p>Like any sense of responsibility to the public. I.e. if everybody is doing it (unfettered access to social media for everybody) you just lose in the market if you don't play ball. You can be as socially-conscious as you like, but the market will crush you and leave you in the dustbin if you don't take every available customer opportunity. Leaving just the ruthless at the top.<p>It's inevitable, and so I believe 'blood on their hands' is probably true, but who's hands? Those who participate in the system as it is, or those who created the system?
They know/knew [1]. Whether or not their remorse is authentic...<i>shrug</i>.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J54k7WrbfMg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J54k7WrbfMg</a>
There was a time you could let a teenager use the internet unsupervised as long as they understood some basic safety. That time has passed. The only people to blame now are the parents.
The solution will be greater monitoring and more intrusive systems of content control.<p>The real solution is to change the direction of technology towards technologies that aren’t harmful to kids and societies (by definition, the <i>same</i>) but help them, but that’s less profitable for companies like Meta.<p>Adding more policing to platforms cannot and will not solve these problems, but it will perfect absolutely insanely good systems of control that will inevitably be used for other purposes and under “unintended” circumstances.<p>I wonder if this is the theater of pretext for deploying information control systems at scale, because if I designed a bulletproof publicly defendable justification for rolling them out it would look pretty much like this.<p>This isn’t conspiracy theory and should be dismissed. This action comes directly on the heels of disinformation being identified by the WEF as the leading threat in the world in 2024, and huge concerns about interference in the 2024 elections in the US.<p>If we assume that it’s never about what it’s about (aka mass communication principle #1: the cover story is rarely the real story) and there are no coincidences in national security, this <i>really</i> looks like the pretext is being put in place for greater monitoring and control.<p>- <a href="https://www.pymnts.com/news/security-and-risk/2024/attack-vectors-2024-misinformation-tops-global-risk-list-wef-says/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pymnts.com/news/security-and-risk/2024/attack-ve...</a><p>- <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/ai-democracy-election-year-2024-disinformation-misinformation/" rel="nofollow">https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/ai-democracy-election...</a><p>- <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/06/1137302" rel="nofollow">https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/06/1137302</a><p>Also, stuff like this has policymakers deeply concerned:<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/us/politics/ai-child-sex-abuse.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/us/politics/ai-child-sex-...</a><p>It helps to look at the policy documents that decision makers are reading to understand why these information tools are being put in place.<p>See key takeaways on Page 68:<p><a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/GlobalTrends_2040.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/GlobalT...</a>
Drug overdose deaths still killing 100K per year in the US, but congress has forgotten about it and is railing against social media for having "blood on their hands." It's perfectly clear that this is about power and the fact that social media is a threat to theirs. These people have no concern whatsoever for anything else.