We're basically unleashing the most powerful predictive persuasive algorithms in the history of the world on brains that aren't fully developed yet. Yeah, there's been these like exponential rises in anxiety, depression. Um, you know, young women and girls have fallen off a cliff almost with the rise of social media.
The story that we're repeatedly told as parents and policymakers and people that are invested, that social media is universally harmful, that it is damaging brains, that is leading to an epidemic of mental health problems, that simply isn't supported by the data.
Which means that puberty is the worst possible time for a human being to be on social media. For our ultra-social species, that rewiring should be guided by huge amounts of social interaction in the real world, not by TikTok's algorithm.
1mo ago
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