The ban-teens-from-social-media movement has degenerated into rewarding violent real-life child abusers and officials who ignore predators.<\/h6>\n
The awkward Jungianism \u201cenantiodromia<\/a>\u201d describes the bizarre progression of ideological movements into their polar opposites just as their success is peaking.<\/p>\n Until recently, my argument that the global movement to \u201cprotect children\u201d by banning teenagers under age 16 (soon to be 18, then 21) from social media spearheaded by psychologists\u00a0Jonathan Haidt<\/a>,\u00a0Jean Twenge<\/a>, and allies actually endangers young people by distracting policy makers from real dangers while denying youths access to vital online connections, was largely over what scientific information shows.<\/p>\n For example, definitive\u00a0Centers for Disease Control surveys<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0analyses<\/a>\u00a0along with decades of research amply document that in the real world, parents\u2019 and adults\u2019 abuses and troubled behaviors are the biggest cause\u00a0by far\u00a0<\/em>of teens\u2019 poor mental health and risks. Nothing else, social media use included, even comes close.<\/p>\n Figure 1 illustrates these shocking points for a\u00a0population advocates claim is particularly vulnerable<\/a>: girls under age 16.<\/p>\n Figure 1. Parents\u2019 violent and emotional abuses and parents\u2019 drug\/alcohol problems are strongly linked to much higher rates of suicide and self-harm by girls. However, girls\u2019 social media use is linked to lower rates of self-harm but is not linked to suicide attempt rates.<\/strong><\/p>\n Of course<\/em>\u00a0authorities and interests analyzing the widely-cited CDC survey saw these unexpected life-and-death results just like I did \u2013 ones that call for reevaluation of the entire teenage \u201cmental health crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, all ignored them. Authorities from the far-Right Heritage Foundation to Haidt and colleagues to progressive Democrats tacitly agreed to pretend domestic abuse, violence, and dysfunction victimizing children and teens don\u2019t exist in order to launch a crusade blaming teens\u2019 use of social media.<\/p>\n Their escapism was bad enough. But I never expected this crusade would cross the line into directly endangering young people.<\/p>\n Now it has<\/strong><\/p>\n The ban-teens crusade has become so obsessed with blaming social media \u201calgorithms\u201d and \u201cmessages\u201d on\u00a0computer and smartphone screens<\/em>\u00a0that they now openly celebrate recent court verdicts awarding millions of dollars to officials\u00a0who ignore<\/em>\u00a0real-life predators<\/em>\u00a0and to grownups who\u00a0physically and psychologically abuse real-life children and teens<\/em>.<\/p>\n The New Mexico state court case: something has gone horribly wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n The\u00a0New Mexico Attorney General\u2019s 225-page civil case<\/a>\u00a0against media giant Meta deployed fake profiles of purported \u201c13-year-olds\u201d on social media sites that drew \u201cinappropriate\u201d solicitations from \u201cnumerous\u201d pedophiles.<\/p>\n So, did New Mexico\u2019s top law enforcement officer open investigations to identify these evident pedophiles to refer them for prosecution in their jurisdictions?<\/p>\n He did not. He did\u00a0nothing<\/em>\u00a0about\u00a0real<\/em>\u00a0predators his own filing branded a major menace to children.<\/p>\n Instead, his lawsuit blamed the online\u00a0platform<\/em>\u00a0for \u201caddicting\u201d children to\u00a0virtual<\/em>\u00a0media screens<\/em>\u00a0where they\u00a0might<\/em>\u00a0be contacted by pedophiles. He cited no cases of real child victims.<\/p>\n That a jury, even one constrained by narrow civil procedures, would award anything, let alone $375 million, to this political grandstander who displayed gross dereliction of duty to enforce laws to protect children is alarming.<\/p>\n Social media giants\u2019 anti-social conduct indeed deserves huge fines, penalties, and strict measures to regulate and break them up \u2013 not slopping millions to child-endangering opportunists like New Mexico\u2019s Attorney General.<\/p>\n The Los Angeles Superior Court verdict was even worse<\/strong><\/p>\n Its jury awarded\u00a0$6 million in \u201cdamages\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to a brutal body-shaming parent who for years violently and psychologically tortured her daughters (one committed suicide; the other suffered extreme mental and physical distresses), then abandoned her surviving daughter.<\/p>\n Why? Because the surviving daughter, now allied with mom for the court case, testified that \u201caddictive\u201d\u00a0online sites made her feel severely bad about herself<\/a>. She and her mother argued the media platform owed them damages.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not disputing that seeing Victoria\u2019s Secret\u2019s sleek pictures, instagrammers and snapchatters having fun, and slut-fat-ugly-kill-yourself posts and messages can be cruelly depressing, especially for vulnerable personalities. Just like fashion magazines, TV, movies, hallways, workplaces, harsh religions, sports cultures, corporate ads, and (especially) families, all of whom have cruelly body-shamed and bullied vulnerable individuals for decades \u2013 and still do, the Los Angeles trial proved.<\/p>\n But the utter insanity of a jury awarding millions of dollars to what\u00a0court records revealed as an abusive, violent parent<\/a>\u00a0who made her\u00a0daughters\u2019 lives hell<\/a>\u00a0for years, then suddenly reconciled when the prospect of big bucks appeared, evidences deep societal sickness.<\/p>\n The still worse aftermath<\/strong><\/p>\n Far from angrily denouncing these court travesties for grossly endangering children, ban-teens-from-social-media crusaders, political leaders, and media commentators celebrated the verdicts as\u00a0\u201cvictories\u201d for \u201cprotecting children.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Many lauded this mother whose abuses had a body count as a hero for \u201ctaking on Big Tech.\u201d<\/p>\n By the plaintiffs\u2019, jury\u2019s, and celebrators\u2019 logic, doesn\u2019t the daughters\u2019 father deserve a big court award as well? After all, his violence, abuse, and abandonment heavily contributed to his daughters\u2019 years of distress now used to win court victories. Surely, he\u2019s a hero, too.<\/p>\n Let us consider alternatives<\/strong><\/p>\n Am I wrong that a child or teenager whose physical bodies\u00a0are BEING beaten, molested, raped, berated, tortured, and abandoned in REAL LIFE<\/em>\u00a0suffers far more than a child or teen who\u00a0SEES<\/em>\u00a0a bad word, pornographic picture, mean text, and\/or distressing image on a detached\u00a0computer or smartphone SCREEN<\/em>?<\/p>\n I\u2019ve asked this question a hundred times in various forums and have never received an answer, let alone a coherent one. I have come to suspect that advocates like Haidt really do see virtual bad words and images on a screen as worse than physical violence and abuse, but I would love to be proven wrong on that.<\/p>\n One possible explanation is stupidity and incompetence. I don\u2019t buy that. The consensus that children\/teenagers being virtually distressed by social media is apocalyptically damaging alongside the silence on vastly more children\/teenagers being personally and physically abused in real life is too absolute, too universal across a broad spectrum of interests to just be a mob of pitchfork-waving dumbasses.<\/p>\n So, if not mass ignorance, we are left with a more troubling alternative: today\u2019s self-anointed \u201cprotect children!\u201d advocates who are fanatically triggered by rare, largely hypothetical online perils simply\u00a0do not care about real abuses<\/a>, violence, and rapes inflicted on children and youth by parents and favored institutions.<\/p>\n Sure, like the parent-victimized Los Angeles daughters in the civil trial, everyone is horrified by the 8 Louisiana children ages 3 to 11 brutally shot to death by a 31-year-old father as this is written (far more dead kids in one city in one day than all the dozens of civil lawsuits allege die from anything attributable to social media anywhere, ever) \u2014 incredibly sad tragedies.<\/p>\n But in practical fact, real abuses killing and victimizing real kids,\u00a0when inflicted by popular institutions like families\/parents, schools, churches, Scouting, sports, law enforcement, etc.<\/em>, however traumatic for localized sufferers, are of no sustained importance to broader interest groups and leaders. Nothing much will be done about them beyond lamenting.<\/p>\n Instead, these larger interests prioritize their own concerns and fears. \u201cPorn\u201d and \u201cpredators\u201d are codewords for the pretense that the crusade is about \u201cprotecting children.\u201d It is not.<\/p>\n It is about inflaming culture-war panics exploiting fears of new technology as justifications to\u00a0grab more profitable information about users<\/a>, and to shield elites from potentially dissident young people\u2019s independent, uncontrolled access to global networks.<\/p>\n What Big Tech and allied powers care about is\u00a0gaining more control<\/a>\u00a0over markets and individuals while quashing\u00a0young people\u2019s independent access to information and organizational networks<\/a>\u00a0not approved of by powerful entities \u2013 sources from which the young can learn challenging information on vital issues like climate change, the Middle East, social justice, and disturbing controversies.<\/p>\n Top-level researchers have learned go-along-to-get-along. Their studies, media reporters\u2019 fawning articles, commentators\u2019 substacks, op-eds, media interviews, and legislative testimony cascading every day clarion apocalyptic social media dangers while simply leaving out parental abuses, family troubles, and real-life concerns.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!ft2-!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F376e6b14-c890-407b-b364-8b64247e398b_1093x1177.png)
<\/picture>\nSource:\u00a0CDC, 2023<\/a>.<\/h5>\n