This is of course a trend in many western countries. With some, like the UK and Australia, leading the way.

At this point I do not think it is reasonable to deny the harm that certain modes of social interactions over the internet have caused. At the same time these bans should not be considered reasonable options. They exist to cover for the decade of inaction of politicians in addressing youth dissatisfaction and dysfunction.

A reasonable approach should not assume that the root cause of this dysfunction is youth interacting with social media, but should consider what lead to this in the first place. Apparently most adults seem to be capable of dealing with this situation, if they are not why would this ban, or at least some regulation, not extend to social media for adults.

In general I believe that dysfunction in the youth has multiple causes and that overuse of social media is just on part of the puzzle and that unhealthy use of social media is often caused by other problem and used as a coping mechanism.

These bans will not be effective and they will be assaults on the free internet, as the bureaucrats establishing the laws are also seeking to control the internet for themselves and will use this as a backdoor.

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quotemstr 11 hours ago | parent [-]

> At this point I do not think it is reasonable to deny the harm that certain modes of social interactions over the internet have caused

Yes, it is reasonable to doubt the purported harms are real, because

1) I've yet to see evidence that the medium is the problem,

2) people keep telling me that they don't need evidence because the harms are obvious, and

3) I have an strong prior, as an American, that anyone preventing people sharing ideas with each other is a villain of history.

The furor over youth social media has all the hallmarks of a moral panic, including over-reliance of weak evidence, personal attacks against skeptics, and socially disruptive remedies of dubious efficiency, the collateral damage of which people justify by pointing to harms to children they say, falsely, are obvious and ongoing.

I'm not convinced that these social media bans are solving a real problem. The more people breathlessly tell me I'm a bad person for asking for evidence of the alleged harms, the more I think it's a public mania, not a civilizational problem.

It really doesn't help that it'd be suspiciously convenient for the worst actors in power if sharing ideas on the internet required ID.

	▲	constantcrying 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For the reasons outlined in my post I believe that it is hard to show specific causal claims which relate overuse of mobile devices and especially social media to specific problems. Although I think for some specific cases this could still be reasonably inferred. Just to be clear, the evidence seems overwhelming. This is not some novel research field, but this questions has been researched for long enough to have been pretty conclusively answered. >1) I've yet to see evidence that the medium is the problem, This is not relevant to the claim. The claim is that the specific usage pattern of young adults is harmful to their development. >I'm not convinced that these social media bans are solving a real problem. I largely agree.