Hacker News Reader

Comment by tenebrisalietum | Hacker News Reader

Overdramatic. Social media may be bad but it is not like heroin or ecstasy.

Engaging in moral panics, on the other hand, seems to provide a high to some individuals just like heroin or ecstasy. Let's regulate them instead.

View on HN

As a teenager in the late 90s in the UK, I remember the moral panic about ecstasy, where Leah Betts was the unwitting literal poster child for the war against drugs, in the form of her comatose intubated face in a hospital bed.

They told us that we couldn't rely on it being pure, because hers was pure and it killed her. They told us we couldn't be sure it would be safe for us if we'd already tried it before, because this was her second time and it killed her.

They never told us she'd actually died from drinking approximately 7 litres of water in 90 minutes. But they did fire someone for truthfully saying the drug itself was no more dangerous than riding a horse.

There's already evidence of the harm caused to teenagers' self esteem due to endless comparisons with peers over social media. This leads to many types of mental illness such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders etc. Considering that we're exposing almost the entire teenage population to these harmful effects, it's hardly overdramatic.

Heroin physically alters brain chemistry. It's worse.

Mental illnesses also physically alter brain chemistry and anorexia is arguably far more damaging than heroin. Someone can remain addicted to heroin/opiates for decades whilst still being part of society (it tends to be either impurities or inconsistent quality of heroin that causes deaths). It's unlikely that someone will continue suffering from anorexia for a decade.

A conclusion that could be drawn from your statements is this: it's more okay for teenagers to use heroin instead of social media because it's safer.

I think people and especially teenagers, even "chronically-online" depressed ones on social media, would laugh at this. They're wrong to do so, of course.

Comparative safety can be a surprising subject though. In general, heroin is a lot safer than alcohol, but most people wouldn't think so.

heroin isn't readily available to 10 year olds the way tiktok is.

brains rewired from youth by apps that have been unquestionably designed to demand engagement.

With moral panics, the kids would never agree that video games or D&D or whatever was causing them any problems, yet with social media use most kids will agree it’s a problem, so can’t be characterised as a moral panic.

Furthermore, most people panicking about dnd and raves have exactly zero experience with either. Almost everyone has experience with social media and a lot of the criticism of it comes from things people directly observe from their own personal experiences. It’s not like this is a completely uninformed mass hallucination like the satanic panic of the 90s.

Are there no valid moral panics? Are you a moral anti-realist?

Panic is uncontrolled activity done in response to a threat. If any productive action happens in a panic, it is by chance. Chance, therefore, moral panic is a poor way to actually solve a problem or improve ones life. Opportunistic entites may utilize moral panic toward political goals in the same way as boogeymen or scapegoats. One might think this validates moral panic, but I don't see it as translating to obeying the will of the people (or equivalent constituency) because things done out of panic are not a sign of consent.

You are being selectively pedantic; a hallmark of bad faith engagement.

You’re being dense. He directly answered your question.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com