Every time Haidt comes up, I do go through the post and do another literature search on social media effects.
The most notable thing about this post is the MHQ figures. However, you might note that the difference in age of smartphone use moves a person by at most one bucket. Given that he is suggesting a ban on smartphones and/or social media, I would expect some more catastrophic effect.
In terms of the literature review, this time I read through [0]. It also finds small but significant effects on anxiety and depression, but finds no significant effects on overall measures of well-being. This is because social media also seems to have some positive effects on some other measures of well-being. This meta analysis also finds that age does not seem to change the effects of social media. On longitudinal studies, it seems like social well-being does decrease social media use, but anxiety and depression to not increase social media use. Also, social media use doesn't seem to cause anxiety and depression here, so there is probably some third factor causing anxiety, depression, and social media use which causes this correlation.
Also interesting is that internationally the effects are neutral, and in the US, the effects are neutral, but in Europe they are negative, while in Asia they are positive. IDK why, but it doesn't really support his hypothesis that social media has some sort of catastrophic impact worth banning.
Haidt has a whole career built around demonizing letting children use the internet.
We just had a discussion on persistent vs obstinate[1]. It's this man's mission to be one of the two on this topic. To keep bringing up his bailiwick. This topic is going to keep coming up, almost every time by people like Haidt committed to the negative, committed to obstructing what they can only regard as a dangerous possibility. I do not particularly enjoy topics where we get blown in only one direction like this, it's rarely a useful dialog, it rarely adapts or changes to the world about it.
(One use I do see for AI is being able to go search & synopsize who it is we are receiving broadcasts from. Right now it takes research to go find out who the transmitter is. We are easily cast to places with little context. (This is in part why the appeal of the darker web is so effective, because we are liable to drift in
un-aware)).
I would like to note that he has created/supported a variety of political causes in the past. His current cause does seem to be pointing to restricting kids internet access, but I can't really figure out what he wants.
One of these is his "moral foundations" theory, which claims that people have different underlying reasons for having various moral opinions. He claimed to have identified some but left the exact reasons open ended and changeable. He claimed that everyone realizing this would decrease political polarization. Neuroscientists pointed out that the "modules" he described can't map to actual brain structures, and he claimed that it didn't matter. I'm kind of unsure of if I would even call this science, as I don't really see how to make a predictable hypothesis out of it. However, it could be valuable as political speech if people do indeed lack awareness that other people value different things than them. (I always assumed everyone knew that, but maybe they don't?)
He also argued for "anti-fragility". The concept that kids these days are kept from experiencing failure and other unpleasant things, and that this will lead them to become worse off during adulthood. This seems more testable, but almost seems to be in direct contradiction to his current anti-smartphone/anti-social media cause. Perhaps this does come from a general "Kids these days are online too much" sort of sentiment, but anti-fragility by itself doesn't really directly suggest we should deny kids internet access.
I really don't know what to think of the man's political leanings, but I don't trust his scholarship much either way. Any time I try to fact-check him, I come up with rather inconclusive or small effects.
"Haidt has a whole career built around demonizing letting children use the internet."
Social media is not "the internet".
Looking at the total volume of Haidt's publications over his academic career, most have nothing to do with the internet, social media or even computers.
Further, only a minority of his books are about the computers or the internet.
As such, this statement does not appear to be supported by facts.
The style and quality on this research seems extremely similar to past research on teenage porn viewing, except that with social media usage it is teenage girls and with porn usage it is teenage boys. Correlation with negative traits are always minor and generally with the negative traits leading towards more viewing rather than the reverse.
Since politicians seems to like drafting laws and in other ways have a strong opinion here, it seems like those areas should get some more funding in order to really establish if there is a harmful effect and if so, how strong it is.
"IDK why, but it doesn't really support his hypothesis that social media has some sort of catastrophic impact worth banning."
Does the term "hypothesis" in this sentence mean something like "a general supposition" or does it have the meaning as used in scientific research.
The former definition does not require evidence or proof. The later definition of course requires that the hypothesis be a statement that is falsifiable.
The phrase "worth banning" is a personal value judgment. "Catastrophic" is also a subjective measure. Neither is falsifiable.
Perhaps this is why the blog suggests using a legal standard such as preponderance of the evidence rather than a scientific one.
As everyone living in the real world knows, parental decisions, school decisions nor even state or federal laws are 100% based on scientific evidence, generally.
People make arguments. Evidence of varying quality is presented. People draw on their own experiences. Money, e.g., marketing and lobbying, plays a significant role. It is not a scientific process.
Comments
Every time Haidt comes up, I do go through the post and do another literature search on social media effects.
The most notable thing about this post is the MHQ figures. However, you might note that the difference in age of smartphone use moves a person by at most one bucket. Given that he is suggesting a ban on smartphones and/or social media, I would expect some more catastrophic effect.
In terms of the literature review, this time I read through [0]. It also finds small but significant effects on anxiety and depression, but finds no significant effects on overall measures of well-being. This is because social media also seems to have some positive effects on some other measures of well-being. This meta analysis also finds that age does not seem to change the effects of social media. On longitudinal studies, it seems like social well-being does decrease social media use, but anxiety and depression to not increase social media use. Also, social media use doesn't seem to cause anxiety and depression here, so there is probably some third factor causing anxiety, depression, and social media use which causes this correlation.
Also interesting is that internationally the effects are neutral, and in the US, the effects are neutral, but in Europe they are negative, while in Asia they are positive. IDK why, but it doesn't really support his hypothesis that social media has some sort of catastrophic impact worth banning.
[0]: https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/technology/2022-hancock.pdf
Haidt has a whole career built around demonizing letting children use the internet.
We just had a discussion on persistent vs obstinate[1]. It's this man's mission to be one of the two on this topic. To keep bringing up his bailiwick. This topic is going to keep coming up, almost every time by people like Haidt committed to the negative, committed to obstructing what they can only regard as a dangerous possibility. I do not particularly enjoy topics where we get blown in only one direction like this, it's rarely a useful dialog, it rarely adapts or changes to the world about it.
(One use I do see for AI is being able to go search & synopsize who it is we are receiving broadcasts from. Right now it takes research to go find out who the transmitter is. We are easily cast to places with little context. (This is in part why the appeal of the darker web is so effective, because we are liable to drift in un-aware)).
I would like to note that he has created/supported a variety of political causes in the past. His current cause does seem to be pointing to restricting kids internet access, but I can't really figure out what he wants.
One of these is his "moral foundations" theory, which claims that people have different underlying reasons for having various moral opinions. He claimed to have identified some but left the exact reasons open ended and changeable. He claimed that everyone realizing this would decrease political polarization. Neuroscientists pointed out that the "modules" he described can't map to actual brain structures, and he claimed that it didn't matter. I'm kind of unsure of if I would even call this science, as I don't really see how to make a predictable hypothesis out of it. However, it could be valuable as political speech if people do indeed lack awareness that other people value different things than them. (I always assumed everyone knew that, but maybe they don't?)
He also argued for "anti-fragility". The concept that kids these days are kept from experiencing failure and other unpleasant things, and that this will lead them to become worse off during adulthood. This seems more testable, but almost seems to be in direct contradiction to his current anti-smartphone/anti-social media cause. Perhaps this does come from a general "Kids these days are online too much" sort of sentiment, but anti-fragility by itself doesn't really directly suggest we should deny kids internet access.
I really don't know what to think of the man's political leanings, but I don't trust his scholarship much either way. Any time I try to fact-check him, I come up with rather inconclusive or small effects.
If he had something that would hold up to scrutiny, he wouldn't put it on substack but in a proper journal.
"Haidt has a whole career built around demonizing letting children use the internet."
Social media is not "the internet".
Looking at the total volume of Haidt's publications over his academic career, most have nothing to do with the internet, social media or even computers.
Further, only a minority of his books are about the computers or the internet.
As such, this statement does not appear to be supported by facts.
Computing with friends, then. Anything social is too dangerous, seemingly.
The style and quality on this research seems extremely similar to past research on teenage porn viewing, except that with social media usage it is teenage girls and with porn usage it is teenage boys. Correlation with negative traits are always minor and generally with the negative traits leading towards more viewing rather than the reverse.
Since politicians seems to like drafting laws and in other ways have a strong opinion here, it seems like those areas should get some more funding in order to really establish if there is a harmful effect and if so, how strong it is.
"IDK why, but it doesn't really support his hypothesis that social media has some sort of catastrophic impact worth banning."
Does the term "hypothesis" in this sentence mean something like "a general supposition" or does it have the meaning as used in scientific research.
The former definition does not require evidence or proof. The later definition of course requires that the hypothesis be a statement that is falsifiable.
The phrase "worth banning" is a personal value judgment. "Catastrophic" is also a subjective measure. Neither is falsifiable.
Perhaps this is why the blog suggests using a legal standard such as preponderance of the evidence rather than a scientific one.
As everyone living in the real world knows, parental decisions, school decisions nor even state or federal laws are 100% based on scientific evidence, generally.
People make arguments. Evidence of varying quality is presented. People draw on their own experiences. Money, e.g., marketing and lobbying, plays a significant role. It is not a scientific process.