HN debates op-ed arguing teen social media bans miss the point
An MIT Press Reader essay says bans on teen social media use address the wrong problem, sparking a sharp Hacker News argument over whether such bans are working at all.
What to know
- An MIT Press Reader essay argues teen social media bans misdiagnose the problem by casting teens as passive victims of technology.
- A cited state-sponsored survey found 7 in 10 teens still use social media under a ban, with academic research reporting even lower compliance; commenters dispute whether this means the ban failed or succeeded partially.
- The HN discussion splits between defending the ban's partial effectiveness, calling for structural regulation of platforms' ad-driven business models, and questioning whether social media harm is as severe as claimed.
The dispute Whether the survey finding that 7 in 10 teens still use social media under the ban proves the policy failed or represents meaningful (30%) progress worth building on. · positions read across 20 posts and comments
The 30% drop in teen usage under the ban is a partial success, and calling it a failure is a disingenuous framing.
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“Failure? Or 30% improvement.”
techblueberry · Hacker News ↗
Blanket bans miss the real issue; regulation should target the advertising- and engagement-driven business model and algorithms instead.
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“What I would like to see is changes to the tax code to disincentivize the social media business model and the advertising industry generally.”
EPWN3D · Hacker News ↗
Doubt that social media harm is uniquely severe or comparable to addiction; similar panics recurred with earlier technologies.
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“Are people seriously routinely experiencing serious harm from social media use, comparable with alcohol or gambling addiction?”
pona-a · Hacker News ↗
Platforms like Meta deliberately engineer engagement/addiction, so treating teens as affected rather than passive victims is accurate.
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“I am sorry, but how is this not true, when companies like Meta are in full control of their algorithms, tuning them to maximum addiction.”
sega_sai · Hacker News ↗
Meta social media platform cited in discussionMIT Press Reader publisher of the essay
How it unfolded 5 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlespostscomments
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A commenter calls the article's failure framing disingenuous
fyredge argues the remaining 70% usage reflects lack of platform enforcement rather than teens deliberately evading the law, and that the same reduction would be called a success if applied to cigarettes or alcohol.
“The 30% reduction of teen use is touted as a failure. If this was applied to cigarettes and alcohol, the solution would be stronger enforcement, but this is then labelled as doubling down.”
— fyredge -
What a surprise! Researchers who have a good grift going studying how young people use social media don't want it banned outright. Instead, they want some unspecified conversation in which they have a role deciding how technology can be "better shaped", which coincidentally allows their grift to keep going.> The companion narrative to…
2 more of the top 3 · 7 posts in this stretch
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I don't see anything wrong with a social media ban for teens in concept. In execution, it'll be difficult to do effectively though.What I would like to see is changes to the tax code to disincentivize the social media business model and the advertising industry generally. For example...1. Tax the crap out of advertising revenue on social media…
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Im barely in the back half of Gen X. My oldest kids are grown now, but grew up with iPhones in their hands.I am reminded of all the ridiculousness of the 1980s/1990s - "Its 10pm do you know where your kids are?" "I learned it by watching you dad!" Lawsuits around backwards message in music (Later PMRC), that Bevis and Butthead caused the child to…
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Others call for regulating platform business models instead of banning use
Multiple commenters argue the underlying problem is the advertising- and engagement-driven design of platforms, proposing tax and design changes rather than blanket teen bans.
“What I would like to see is changes to the tax code to disincentivize the social media business model and the advertising industry generally.”
— EPWN3D -
Are people seriously routinely experiencing serious harm from social media use, comparable with alcohol or gambling addiction? The discussion may have suffered from much unnecessarily hyperbole in comparing YouTube to heroin, in how a single use guarantees unavoidable long term consequences with little redeeming qualities.I'm a college age gen Z…
2 more of the top 3 · 6 posts in this stretch
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There is nothing wrong with social media; if anything, we need more social media.What we need less of are the attention-maximizing, eldritch-horror things that have stolen social media and now walk around wearing the skins of the entity that summoned it.Facebook is not social media — if you don't believe me, go on Facebook and count how many posts…
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I'd take this one step further and say this would be a major issue even without 'the algorithm' and other such 'engagement' maximization efforts. Way back before social media existed, things like BBS' and later on newsgroups were similarly extremely addictive. The only thing that changed with social media is that it all barriers to entry came…
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Some argue bans and enforcement debates are a binary trap
A commenter suggests the discourse falls into all-or-nothing thinking, where imperfect prevention is treated as equivalent to no prevention at all.
“Maybe it’s because tech people are prone to binary thinking, but there seems to be the idea that if you can’t prevent a bad thing entirely, then you shouldn’t try to prevent it at all.”
— jl6 -
"In scary headlines like these, technology is the subject, and teens are passive victims." -- I am sorry, but how is this not true, when companies like Meta are in full control of their algorithms, tuning them to maximum addiction.One can indeed argue what is the best way to deal with the problem of kids and social media, but I think the article…
2 more of the top 3 · 6 posts in this stretch
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> Teens will find creative ways to access these or even more unregulated spacesThe article is missing the point entirely. The conversation is not about “regulated spaces”, but removing them from spaces created entirely to drive advertisement, mindless engagement and consumption. If they find other spaces to join without that, perfect - it worked!
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For the record, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has fostered world-class research and development in fields such as A.I., X Windows (Athena Widgets, Kerberos security (adopted by Microsoft in SMB and Windows Server, etc. GNU (Richard M. Stallman))) Emacs and elisp, as well as glibc and gcc compiler tool suite.
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Commenters dispute whether the ban is a failure or a partial success
Several commenters push back on the article's framing that continued teen use proves the ban failed, arguing a 30% drop in use should count as progress rather than failure.
“Failure? Or 30% improvement.”
— techblueberry -
“ But less than a year in, it suggests the ban is failing: A state-sponsored survey of parents indicated that seven in 10 teens are still using social media, while academic research has reported even lower rates of compliance.”Failure? Or 30% improvement.“While social media can be weaponized for bullying or hate, over half of all teens turn to…
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Essay argues teen social media bans miss the point
MIT Press Reader publishes an essay contending that framing teens as passive victims of technology is wrong and that a state-sponsored survey found seven in ten teens still use social media under a ban, with academic research reporting even lower compliance.
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1 outlet first by HN Frontpage, 3d ago · read ↗
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What people are saying 9 voices from 1 site · best of 20 · verbatim
- Is continued teen usage due to weak platform enforcement or teens actively circumventing restrictions (e.g., VPNs)?
- Should policy target teen access directly, or the advertising/algorithmic business model that makes platforms addictive for all ages?
- Sep 21
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> there should be a focus on supporting positive online engagementI feel like this is the key for fighting all negative behaviors.Fill the time, burn the energy, with better stuff so that nobody has any left for the bad stuff.
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What is everyone so worked up about? All parents have to do to stop the harm Meta is inflicting on children is to have their “high school students get together to hash out a national AI policy for schools.”
- Sep 20
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TFA: "Teens will find creative ways to access these or even more unregulated spaces."The Study TFA references: "The most common reason children still had their social media accounts was that they had not yet been asked by the platform to verify their age."So, basically the first quote is an attempt to manipulate people by appealing to a cliche…
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A disingenuous article. The 30% reduction of teen use is touted as a failure. If this was applied to cigarettes and alcohol, the solution would be stronger enforcement, but this is then labelled as doubling down.It is not. The sources provided shows that the remaining 70% of teenagers that remain on the platforms are due to lack of enforcement…
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The big problem with these "social media child bans", is that the capitalistic extreme-addictive experience IS harming everyone. Not just children.What should have been was what Cory Doctorow has pushed - forced open API integration. From there you can make your own clients, only see friends, de-gamify, chronological algorithm, etc.But banning…
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If you read the rest of the piece they do argue for more regulation. They aren’t making a personal responsibility argument like other commenters are saying.The problem with bans is they claim the technology itself is purely bad and the only solution is to keep it from children. Which on its face is nonsensical. It’s ok for a 17 year old but not a…
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I grow up with ICQ where you can click a button to talk with a random stranger. Boomers were crying about Internet addiction.30 years later, I’m fine and the boomers are the ones getting addicted to fake stuff on the internet.
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Exactly, it's like talking about the symptoms and missing the point of the diagnostic.
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Yup. All this talk of personal responsibility in these types of situations is nothing but a perfidious form of victim blaming."The crack addict should've known better, it's not the dealer's fault they came back for more!"