Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| February 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n The emotional, trivial-effect anti-teen\/social-media junk dominating legislative and popular media forums continues to be demolished by\u00a0exhaustive research<\/a>. The latest (December 2025) is a multi-year study of 25,600 teenagers by a University of Manchester team whose findings \u201cdo not support the widely held view that adolescent technology use [social media and gaming] is a major causal factor in their mental health difficulties.\u201d<\/p>\n No matter. More than a dozen articles fronting today\u2019s MSN news feed panic over teens and social media, what \u201cparents can do\u201d and what smartphone, under-16, and age-verification bans policy makers should legislate this week. None have the remotest connection to research reality.<\/p>\n For the moment, let us put aside the dismality and begin with the few hopeful developments.<\/p>\n University of Surrey criminologist Emily Setty\u2019s\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0documents several crucial realities<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0young people understand<\/a>\u00a0but aging just-ban-teens officialdom can\u2019t get through their deteriorating-memory, -learning, and -cognition cerebral cortexes mired in the past.<\/p>\n \u201cYoung people do not experience online and offline as separate worlds, but as a single, interconnected continuum,\u201d Setty reports. \u201cSocial media is not an external danger that young people occasionally visit. It is woven into their everyday social worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n For illustration, watch FX\u2019s \u201cSocial Studies<\/a>,\u201d supposedly presented to raise alarms about young \u201cdigital natives.\u201d In fact, it shows the opposite \u2013 how Los Angeles\u2019s most-online teens merge active social media and vibrant public lives.<\/p>\n \u201cBy cutting young people off from the spaces through which they meet real personal, interpersonal and social needs, a ban risks leaving them unmoored,\u201d Setty concludes. \u201cA recent\u00a0joint statement<\/a>\u00a0signed by more than 40 children\u2019s charities, digital safety experts and bereaved families warns of the danger that blanket prohibitions may isolate vulnerable young people from peer support networks and crisis resources.<\/p>\n \u201cYoung people are not passive victims of technology but can identify problems and articulate the kind of digital lives they want\u2026 Policy must start from how young people actually live, not from adult fears about technology.\u201d<\/p>\n Policy is going with the fears. In a transparent sham, UK officials are deputizing sycophant \u201cconsultants\u201d whose\u00a0bigotries against transgender students<\/a>\u00a0now will be directed to uphold the UK\u2019s destructive\u00a0anti-youth social media restrictions<\/a>.<\/p>\n From another angle\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Socialprofiler\u2019s new analysis<\/a>\u00a0of 756 million user profiles on Instagram, TikTok, and X, likewise \u201creveals that generational stereotypes often contradict observed data\u201d:<\/p>\n This ain\u2019t your (grand)mommy\u2019s and daddy\u2019s \u201cgeneration gap.\u201d It\u2019s\u00a0Margaret Mead<\/a>\u2019s and\u00a0Alvin Toffler<\/a>\u2019s 1970s warnings of a future whose elder elites sink into baseless visceral horror at social\/demographic\/technological change and become societal wrecking balls. More below.<\/p>\n Socialprofiler\u2019s\u00a0study concludes<\/a>: \u201cWhile Gen Z shows higher engagement with progressive social issues and left-leaning political content, older generations demonstrate stronger engagement with traditional partisan politics and party-affiliated content\u2026 The left-leaning party category covers a younger demographic generation,\u201d but \u201cthe Republican party category is much more represented across all platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n Why are the repressors toward Gen Z so widespread and adamant?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2026 that all Republicans and 95% of Democrats in power (yes, including liberals who benefit from young people\u2019s activism) spurred on by loud academics and Big-Tech profiteers are salivating to enact\u00a0a barrage of terrible censor-media and surveil-users bills<\/a>?<\/p>\n My first, simple explanation has been that ban-teens authorities \u2013 Republican and Democrat alike \u2013 are transparently furious at Gen Z\u2019s techno savvy and politics, led by young people\u2019s opposition to Israel\u2019s genocide and activism over climate change. The rising frenzy in Congress, states, and countries to ban teenagers from \u201cadult content\u201d on social media and ramp up mass surveillance of internet users has\u00a0nothing to do\u00a0<\/em>with anguished tears over teens\u2019 \u201cmental health.\u201d It\u2019s straight-up political oppression.<\/p>\n Analytical technomedia critics, led by\u00a0Taylor Lorenz<\/a>, warn that driving the \u201cprotect children!\u201d crusade is government\/Big Tech\u2019s greed to harvest ever-more information on users (including children) via \u201cage verification\u201d subterfuges to cement their mass media control and profit. Their repressions are aided by authoritarian right-wingers like the\u00a0Heritage Foundation<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cstupid, stupid liberals\u201d all too willing to succumb to the latest moral panic.<\/p>\n The resulting avalanche of national and state legislation to banish internet anonymity by requiring IDs, facial and biometric scans, and detailed personal information to access \u201cadult content\u201d (a codeword for narrowing accessible sites to those approved by government\/Big Tech) are \u201cterrifying\u201d to Americans\u2019 freedoms of expression and privacy, Lorenz declared in a highly enlightening\u00a01\/27 interview with Francesca Fiorentini<\/a>.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, that compelling case appears just the interim. Even more sinister goals underlie today\u2019s repress-youth\/censor-surveil juggernaut.<\/p>\n The explosion of nihilism<\/strong><\/p>\n Past moral panics over youth, including Democrat\/Republican anger at 1960s youthful pro-civil-rights, anti-Vietnam-War activism leading the \u201cgeneration gap\u201d over social and political issues, bitter as they seemed at the time, were nothing like today\u2019s nihilistic apocalysm.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s nihilism is not good-old Sixties \u201cburn-it-down-then-build-something-better\u201d revolutionary spirit. It is \u201cburn-it-all-down-and-let-\u2018em-die\u201d destruction.<\/p>\n Philosophical nihilists of the past variously called for a reawakening to lead us to nirvana. The huge following of the Doors\u2019 Jim Morrison, the \u201cAge of Aquarius,\u201d\u00a0Greening of America, The Making of A Counter-Culture<\/em>, etc., all brimmed with hope for a better world. Naive, simplistic, obnoxious, acidulated (in Morrison\u2019s case, drunken) as these might have been, they were at least hopeful.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s nihilists are nothing like that. They actively seek to abolish humanity\u2019s future wholesale \u2014 and say so outright. Diverse, multicultural America in a multi-polar world is their idea of global dystopia. They see nothing to rescue.<\/p>\n Emerging, powerful nihilists are assuming dominance over the West\u2019s discourse and future, openly advancing plans so destructive they stand ready to eliminate constitutional rights, traditions, education, and America itself:<\/p>\n One nihilism example of many amid these cheery scenarios: Trump\u2019s\u00a0energy policy<\/a>\u00a0is not about standard free-market maximization of capitalist production. It is harm maximization. Its dictatorial subsidize-coal\/sabotage-wind goals are to hasten global warming, vastly increase diseconomies and pollution, ignite wars and chaos, and ramp up environmental and societal destruction. It seeks to assure no future.<\/p>\n Heritage\u2019s\u00a0Project 2025<\/a>, the Trump administration\u2019s playbook, codifies concrete, sequenced steps to nihilistic armageddon. End democracy. Embrace fanatic religious adventism. Wreck the economy. Create chaos. Burn it all down. Harm and destroy people\u2019s lives to elevate Ayn Rand\u2019s Superman.<\/p>\n Established Democrats (and the UK\u2019s\u00a0Labour Party<\/a>) would seem the natural political counterweight to nihilism, yet their strategy and vision remain stuck in slower, disastrous corporate consensus. Corporate Democrats and Labour fear younger Democratic and Green Party challenges more than they fear Trump and have shown\u00a0they will forge common ground\u00a0<\/a>with far-Rightists to suppress them.<\/p>\nAllied government\/Big-Tech powers pushing censorship, mass surveillance, and repression target teenagers and online freedom. But those are just the beginning. Their larger goals are truly terrifying.<\/h6>\n
\u00b7 Gen Z [ages 19-25] \u201cfocuses on social justice issues like LGBTQ+ rights and climate change,\u201d BLM, and \u201cPalestine solidarity,\u201d while<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 \u201cOlder [ages 46-60] users are more likely to promote political polarization, and to embrace conspiracy theories about UFO, aliens, the Illuminati, the Earth being flat, \u2018alternative knowledge\u2019,\u201d and like \u201cright wing\u201d ludicrosities.<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 MAGA\/racist-Right nihilists: President Donald Trump\u2019s core \u201cGod is on our side<\/a>\u201d supporters earnestly believe liberal, immigrant, racial, and LGBTQ minorities who \u201care not like us\u201d aim to exterminate and \u201creplace\u201d them. Their vision: End-of-Times destruction of human civilization, a few \u201cChristian\u201d raptures, everyone else dies horrifically to spend eternity hell-burned.<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 Zionihilists: fanatic supporters of Israel, diagramming with MAGA \u201cChristian Zionists,\u201d who actively push to end the United States, UK, and Western democracies to eliminate all pro-Palestine activism. Something about Israel incites more destroy-everything frenzy than any previous cause. Their vision: Greater Israel; everyone else can die.<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 Environmental nihilism: climate change and related Green activism threaten the profits and dominance of major corporate interests and demand sacrifices of aging generations who would rather sabotage all of humanity\u2019s future than suffer any diminution in their opulence and convenience. Vision: living out their limited time in comfort; younger\/future generations, especially\u00a0Greta Thunberg<\/a>, can go die.<\/h5>\n
\u00b7 Botarchy nihilism: \u201cfreedom cities\u201d (isolated fortresses, like\u00a0Superman\u2019s Solitude<\/a>) ruled by a few AI-reconstructed billion\/trillionaire behemoths; we 99.99999% excess meat-bodies can die.<\/h5>\n
![Superman\u2019s Solitude<\/a>) ruled by a few AI-reconstructed billion\/trillionaire behemoths; we 99.99999% excess meat-bodies can die.<\/h5>\nOne nihilism example of many amid these cheery scenarios: Trump\u2019s\u00a0energy policy<\/a>\u00a0is not about standard free-market maximization of capitalist production. It is harm maximization. Its dictatorial subsidize-coal\/sabotage-wind goals are to hasten global warming, vastly increase diseconomies and pollution, ignite wars and chaos, and ramp up environmental and societal destruction. It seeks to assure no future.<\/p>\nHeritage\u2019s\u00a0Project 2025<\/a>, the Trump administration\u2019s playbook, codifies concrete, sequenced steps to nihilistic armageddon. End democracy. Embrace fanatic religious adventism. Wreck the economy. Create chaos. Burn it all down. Harm and destroy people\u2019s lives to elevate Ayn Rand\u2019s Superman.<\/p>\nEstablished Democrats (and the UK\u2019s\u00a0Labour Party<\/a>) would seem the natural political counterweight to nihilism, yet their strategy and vision remain stuck in slower, disastrous corporate consensus. Corporate Democrats and Labour fear younger Democratic and Green Party challenges more than they fear Trump and have shown\u00a0they will forge common ground\u00a0<\/a>with far-Rightists to suppress them.<\/p>\nThe Democrats\u2019 base of younger but increasingly broad ages (as\u00a0Martha Stewart\u2019s granddaughter showed<\/a>, the young can be persuasive with their elders) plus growing mostly-young MAGA defectors are the only real opposition to rising nihilism, which is why Heritage and corporate Democrats prioritize their silencing.<\/p>\nAm I overstating the rising forces of nihilism we see frankly, openly intoning their seemingly insane \u2013 it\u00a0sounds<\/em>\u00a0impossible \u2013 yet steadily advancing blueprints? Their hardwired no-future schemes \u2013 greased by the ID\/censor\/surveil state\/\u201cprotect children!\u201d edicts they push every day on CNN, CBS, Fox \u2013 can\u2019t really happen\u2026 can they?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Generation Z\u2019s real social media sin has nothing to do with \u201cmental health\u201d Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| February 2026 Allied government\/Big-Tech powers pushing censorship, mass surveillance, and repression target teenagers and online freedom. But those are just the beginning. Their larger goals are truly terrifying. The emotional, trivial-effect anti-teen\/social-media junk dominating legislative and popular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161271,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161270\/revisions\/161271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/www.bing.com\/images\/search?view=detailV2&ccid=rmSFxF29&id=A357DB90F36E5B52DF46670C0711380EB054CEB9&thid=OIP.rmSFxF298aEkopoXd9utBAHaFf&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.christopherreeve.co.uk%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2023%2f05%2f08W.jpg&cdnurl=https%3a%2f%2fth.bing.com%2fth%2fid%2fR.ae6485c45dbdf1a124a29a1777dbad04%3frik%3duc5UsA44EQcMZw%26pid%3dImgRaw%26r%3d0&exph=1200&expw=1616&q=superman+fortress+of+solitude&FORM=IRPRST&ck=3CCCA9E951D13979EFD2A4CACF7C4991&selectedIndex=0&itb=0&idpp=overlayview&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0\"){kind=link}