I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.

Reports that I read on conventional media sites often summarize government reports, but they do so incorrectly. And when I go and read the government reports, they present a much more balanced picture than the summaries would suggest. In particular, for marginalized teens, social media represents a unique avenue to connect with teens in similar situations, which provides a significant support network.

I know it's popular now to say that social media is the root of all evil, but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16. Just a few years ago, this was a concern presented as 'screen time', but I had similar problems there. There's no real evidence to suggest that looking at a screen is the problem...the much more difficult and interesting problem is what you're doing when you're looking at the screen. There's a similar dynamic in play with social media, I think.

For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?

> In particular, for marginalized teens, social media represents a unique avenue to connect with teens in similar situations, which provides a significant support network.

Thank you for bringing this up. I was one of those 'marginalised' kids who didn't relate to my real life surroundings so much. The internet was like an escape for me, where I was able to meet many close friends with similar interests on social medias like Twitter and Discord. Not to mention, free internet access in general taught so much about the world, developed my passions and helped determine what I'm now studying and planning to pursue as a career.

If social media was banned when I was younger, it would have made me worse off for sure. And if there were internet/device restrictions more broadly, like I'm often seeing suggested, it would have been absolutely devastating for me. My life would have turned out completely different, in a bad way.

On a site like HN, I would have expected there to be much more people who also had the same experience as younger me with the internet and social media. But for some reason, most of the dominant sentiment here seems to consider social media as a cancer, with no nuance. I'm not sure why they do, but I wish that these people would consider the experiences of people like me.

It seems plausible that social media is part-cause, part-symptom of a larger shift away from "real" socialisation. I don't have any scientific evidence for it, so feel free to debate. In general in doesn't seem like a controversial opinion to notice that how we are, socially, has changed over time, probably not for the better. It might be that it's hard to pin down one major cause, because the whole system is moving in tandem.

> I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.

The author mentioned by GP is currently working on a similar questions collecting, reviewing and categorizing known literature in these open access documents [1][2]. I suggest you take a look if you are interested in the topic.

> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?

Well, I would say no. But to have a meaningful discussion we need to first agree on what is meant here with "social media". Clearly, this law has been passed with the intent to affect Meta / ByteDance / Reddit and similar companies with a business model that hinges on capturing as much attention of their users as possible, which is very different from HackerNews. Most accusations to social media begin bad are towards of the former type.

> but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16.

From [1], it seems to me that there is a non-negligible amount of literature that has been accumulating, that could be used to justify the ban. Though, Australia is not a technocracy (I hope), so I would say that there is also a certain degree of "purely social" reasons why they might want to curb the access of social media companies to their youth.

[1]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-...

[2] : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vVAtMCQnz8WVxtSNQev_e1cG...

> I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.

> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use

Try spending an hour a day on tiktok (average tiktok user screen time) and 30 min a day on instagram (average ig user screen time) for a year and report back. This shit is crack cocaine for kids

> I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.

Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show (wsj.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28523688

Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health (tau.ac.il)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32938622

Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall (house.gov)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498