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Comment by reidjs | Hacker News Reader

I hope this might push towards more regulation in social media. There needs to be a way to turn on a chronological feed, hide likes/retweets/scores/comments, and hide all content made by people I don’t follow.

Doesn’t have to be default, but should be configurable. It’s harder and harder to participate in society without major social media tools so don’t just tell me to stop using these platforms.

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Tell that to young children who’s brains are still developing and who don’t understand the consequences. Not every child can have a parent to teach them the rights and wrongs of the world. Sometimes policy enforcement helps situations like this. It keeps large corporations from taking advantage of our society.

Treat kids like they're irresponsible and they'll never become responsible. Adulting takes practice. You have to let them fuck up and do unhealthy things if they are to learn not to do those things. Delaying it until the stakes are high is counterproductive.

I'm not saying let your kid shoot up heroin but I'd much rather deal with social media usage problems in a 14yo than a 17yo

I'll leave it to the parents to handle parenting their kids.

Yeah, screw kids with bad parents. They should have been smart enough to have been born to better people who didn't have to work so many hours.

How could I have forgotten - won't somebody think of the children!

You're basically saying "put the drink down" to an alcoholic or "put the cigarette out" to a smoker.

This issue really is more complicated than you make it to be.

You'll be amazed at how little people understand the true nature of addiction. Even ex-smokers who manage to quit so quickly forget how hard it was.

This topic seems to be set into areas of black and white, just like every other political position. It seems like so few people appreciate the grey areas anymore.

Then courts can start committing people against their will for partaking in what the vast majority of responsible people have no problem with.

If you think social media is anything like chemical addictions to smoking or alcohol you really don’t have a clue.

I would suggest your comment belies the fact you know anything about addiction.

Am addict. Social media is not addictive. It's... Really fun, but addiction is far too strong of a word.

Addiction isn't just a word, it's actually something that's well defined, specifically compulsively engaging in behaviour despite the negative consequences. The thing is, be it behavioural or chemical, the root of addiction is the over expression of the ΔFosB gene in response to a reward pathway. Good for you that you can use social media without being addicted (like most people). It doesn't mean everyone can.

Going to reference some 90s stoner movie, I forget which one. Stoner is at an NA meeting "Weed!? You ever suck dick for weed?"

No one is going to rob their parents, break into a business at night, or suck dick to check their Facebook feed.

You might miss it, but that's not an addiction.

Yeah, except that kids are communicating with each other through those mechanisms, and increasingly seem to be required to for schoolwork.

So you have the companies providing the communication mechanisms intentionally manipulating the communication to encourage specific behaviour.

A very simple “you cannot reorder or promote content for people less than X” rule would do a lot to reduce the problem for kids. Once you’re an adult you can be just as free to get addicted to Facebook as you are beer.

Before then Social media companies should be subject to similar rules that we have for alcohol. SM at least have the advantage that they can just completely remove the intentionally addictive reordering algorithms, whereas alcohol companies can’t make a meaningfully similar simulacrum when then extract the alcohol.

> Doesn’t have to be default, but should be configurable. It’s harder and harder to participate in society without major social media tools so don’t just tell me to stop using these platforms.

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