I do, in fact, know it. For five 9s of human history we did not need a bunch of nerds in a classroom to tell us what to do. I have no idea how this happened, where everyone is suddenly terrified of being confident in their own observable reality and needs and endless stream of academic papers - often written, again, by people with zero functional experience in the domains they write about - to confirm their decision making for them. No, I can literally just collect my own data and make my own decisions. Here’s an example of the motivated reasoning in this essay, providing a clue about why the author is pretending you can’t make a decision without listening to “The Experts”:

> We also know that young people’s relationship with social media is complex, as it provides them essential spaces for civic engagement, identity exploration, and community building

Complete and total bullshit. This essays acts like no social activity occurred before we figured out how to send 1s and 0s along wires we hang on our houses.

Separately, I wish do address your tone. You are intentionally not engaging with the idea that normal people do not need a mountain of over credentialed experts to explain things to them, which is in itself interesting. Do you need a study that says you’re allowed to?

History is filled with examples of this going very wrong, because it turns out that everyone's "observable reality" is different, filled with bias they are blind to, and people in general are very bad at differentiating between "I saw some people doing something I don't like" and "This is a society wide issue that needs to be corrected immediately". Science, when done properly, is the antidote to that. Many things are counterintuitive and involve levels of nuance that just aren't accessible to a layman.

In spite of my comments like you I also don't believe I have to wait for experts to explain things to me or spoon-feed me opinions. I also realize that I don't have the ability to do large-scale studies and that my off-the-cuff opinions on issues really aren't worth much. I am certainly not trying to say that the way things are done today is the correct way. Like you I find that many "experts" with long lists of credentials give lackluster opinions and likely don't deserve their title. Financial interests have corrupted things etc... However, in my mind, going back to a "well its obvious to me so lets make some laws" society is a step backwards and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. When incentives are properly aligned and people act in good faith, studies and experts can certainly offer information far more accurate and better than anything I can do as an individual.