"Then there are experiments, with random assignment, that show that if you get off social media for at least a week depression gets less."
#JonathanHaidt, 2026
Curious to know how "social media" is being defined here. People are clearly being negatively impacted by *something*. But it is being online, having a pocket PC, or using apps? Or is it being manipulated by algorithms, and force fed ads that engage by being irritating?
Perhaps we need to accept that the phrase "social media" is widely understood to refer to abusive corporate platforms, and what we're proposing as a replacement is a "social web" Specifically an "open social web". So the fediverse and other such open networks are not "decentralised social media", but rather decentralised *replacements* for social media.
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Maybe rather than opposing laws clamping down on "social media", we need to campaign for ways of scoping them that don't scoop up social web services as bycatch when the target is abusive corporate platforms.
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"You've got to separate the internet from social media.
Social media is a part of the internet, it's one of the worst parts, it's the one that's hurting kids the most. But we're all old enough to remember the 90s when we first got a look at the internet ... if you're LGBTQ in rural areas, suddenly you can find information, you can find people, it was amazing the way it brought people together. So I would never take that away."
#JonathanHaidt, 2026
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I would never say 'kids shouldn't be on the internet'.
So, do they also need platforms that use algorithms to force feed them whatever content was most upvoted by people, based on the extremity of its emotions or expressions? Does your nephew benefit from having Instagram pick what he sees, as opposed to having *him* type in what he's looking for? If you take away social media from kids, I don't see any loss."
#JonathanHaidt, 2026
This confirms my suspicion.
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"... when I go to high schools now and meet high school students, they tell me 'we are talking with AI companions now' ... and I have this fear ... that you will succeed in getting social media banned for under-16s all over the world, and then ... we will pine for the days when teens were using social media ... at least they were communicating with other people ..."
@Casey, 2026
Are they though? Aren't "AI" bots kind of the same thing with a different interface?
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In both kinds of platforms - recommendation engines and "AI" chatbots - you've got a machine that dices up other people's speech and serves it up to you. The only difference is that the chatbot pretends the speech is coming from one virtual person, instead of attributing it to the original speaker.
This becomes very obvious when you look at the "AI" summary on a web search, then check out the web pages linked in the first page of results.
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