Are they consistent? As a North American, I find it difficult to take EU/European countries’ stances on addiction seriously when they seem to be decades behind on reducing the prevalence of smoking and drinking, which almost certainly cause more practical harm than TikTok ever could.

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KaiserPro 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> seem to be decades behind on reducing the prevalence of smoking and drinking,

the EU isn't a federal government. the UK, when it was in the EU did a full smoking inside ban, and tightened it after leaving.

It however had a massive problem with binge drinking and sorta didn't do much to stop that, apart from make it more expensive.

the netherlands has a smoking ban, but it was brought in later (I think). they had a different drinking culture so didn't have the same issues as the UK for drink.

That kind of issue is usually left to member states.

Packaging however is more the EU's purview

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ulbu 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

what is more damaging, a hammer, a sword, or poison?

i hope i don’t have to go out of my way to explain the analogy.

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7tflutter7 2 hours ago | parent [-]

So social media is pure 'poison' with 0 positive impact but other addictive media like video games are tools with noble utility?

The World Health Organization has reached the exact opposite conclusion.

The ICD-11 doesn't include 'social media addiction.' It doesn’t exist clinically. What they did include is 'Gaming Disorder', classifying your 'sword' alongside substance abuse and gambling.

My point is governments could just as easily justify video game crack-downs with this same logic. Is that something we should be cheering on? Really?

	▲	fifilura 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It is not about that. There is surely lots of hypocrisy in particular around alcohol. In most parts of the world TBH. The discussion is whether companies are treated equally with regards to a particular law.

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pil0u 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism