Techno Moral Panics Are Making Senators Desperately Ridiculous
Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut wrote an NY Times op-ed piece a few weeks ago (there's so much nonsense all the time that it takes a little while to find the time to respond to all of it), claiming that Algorithms are Making Kids Desperately Unhappy." He wrote this in support of his The Protecting Kids on Social Media Act" (a ridiculous unconstitutional monstrosity we discussed earlier this year).
The bill is already bad enough, but the op-ed in support of it is even more ridiculous. It pulls on a bunch of typical techno moral panic tropes, none of which is supported by the evidence. Let's start at the beginning:
Kids are even more in the bag of social media companies than we think. So many of them have ceded their online autonomy so fully to their phones that they even balk at the idea of searching the internet - for them, the only acceptable online environment is one customized by big tech algorithms, which feed them customized content.
This is the classic techno moral panic trope that the technology is some sort of brain eating mind control system, creating zombies who have no free will of their own.
Is there any actual evidence to support this? Nope. This mind control trope is quite popular in moral panics of the past, though. We've seen it in panics about television and movies. The satanic panic" was basically this on steroids. Panics about things like dungeons and dragons" fit the same bill as well. Common among this trope is the warning" from some wise politician who seems positive that everyone else (especially children) are somehow powerless against the power of the new tech to take over their minds.
It's an inherently obnoxious and elitist position, basically claiming the populace it too fucking stupid, and too easily led to think for themselves," so clearly they'll outsource their thinking to the dreaded algorithms.
That there's literally zero evidence supporting this doesn't matter to someone like Senator Murphy. It sounds plausible, and so the narrative wins the day.
The truth, of course, is that as social media has become more popular the actual data suggests it has mostly helped kids, not hurt them. But facts like that are too inconvenient for the narrative.
And, what you lack for in statistical evidence, you can always replace with random anecdote, as Murphy does. He uses some kids he met with at a high school as a prop to suggest... well... you have to read it for yourself:
This spring, I visited with a group of high school students in suburban Connecticut to have a conversation about the role that social media plays in their daily lives and in their mental health. More children today report feeling depressed, lonely and disconnected than ever before. More teens, especially teen girls and L.G.B.T.Q. teens, are seriously considering suicide. I wanted to speak candidly about how social media helps and hurts mental health. By the end of the 90-minute dialogue, I was more worried than ever about the well-being of our kids - and of the society they will inherit.
There are numerous problems with children and adolescents using social media, from mental health deterioration to dangerous and age-inappropriate content and the lackluster efforts tech companies employ to enforce their own age verification rules. But the high schoolers with whom I met alerted me to an even more insidious result of minors' growing addiction to social media: the death of exploration, trial and error and discovery. Algorithmic recommendations now do the work of discovering and pursuing interests, finding community and learning about the world. Kids today are, simply put, not learning how to be curious, critical adults - and they don't seem to know what they've lost.
This again picks up on a mind control trope. I remember fears when I was in high school that letting kids use calculators would stop them from being able to truly understand math. The idea that social media leads to the death of exploration, trial and error and discovery" is laughable.
The internet is the greatest tool for exploration, trial and error, and discovery ever invented. Teens discover all sorts of things by going through the internet. And, to the extent that algorithms play any role at all, it's often to help them find more of what it is they want to explore. I know kids who have explored" and discovered" all sorts of things from learning about history, to how to solve Rubik's cubes, to how to improve swimming techniques, to basically every topic under the sun.
It is simply bizarre and wholly unsupported. Indeed, studies have suggested that internet access for kids has tends to make kids smarter and more knowledgeable. Yes, there are risks, but the research keeps suggesting that the way to deal with that is not to ban algorithms or ban kids from social media, but to involve parents and educators to teach kids how to properly and safely use the internet, and what to do when they come across problematic content (rather than trying to hide the existence of problematic content from them entirely).
Murphy, however, paints a picture of the internet that basically does not exist:
Their dependence on technology sounds familiar to most of us. So many of us can barely remember when we didn't have Amazon to fall back on when we needed a last-minute gift or when we waited by the radio for our favorite songs to play. Today, information, entertainment and connection are delivered to us on a conveyor belt, with less effort and exploration required of us than ever before.
What? I mean, if I'm using Amazon for a last minute gift, I still have to search and type in a bunch of stuff to figure out what it is I want to buy. I don't just purchase the first thing that comes up on Amazon's front page. And, as for music, I actually spend a fair bit of time searching through playlists and whatnot to find interesting music.
Besides, Murphy's pining for history when... you had to wait for our favorite song to play" on the radio... is, um, even worse than what he describes today. If his concern is that with today's algorithms, you have no influence, and, say, make no effort in discovery," then having to rely on DJs on one of the three stations you can hear from your house is way worse. Today, we can explore, and experiment, and listen to different genres and styles, and if we hear something we like, we can ask for more like that, or look at other similar artists. In other words, in today's world, thanks to algorithms, we actually have an even greater ability to discover and to explore and to engage in trial and error.
The world Murphy describes is literally the opposite of today. And yet, he immediately follows up this pining for the world in which you had to wait for the DJ to play a song you liked with:
A retreat from the rituals of discovery comes with a cost. We all know instinctively that the journeys in life matter just as much as the destinations. It's in the wandering that we learn what we like and what we don't like. The sweat to get the outcome makes the outcome more fulfilling and satisfying.
Dude, what? Again, when you had to wait for the radio to play songs you liked, you got to engage in no real discovery. The algorithm" then was what the DJ wanted to play (or, if in more recent years, what the giant radio conglomerate wanted to play). With modern music systems on the internet, we can actually engage in real discovery. It's bizarre and clearly nonsense that Murphy thinks the old way involved more discovery.
Why should students put in the effort to find a song or a poem they like when an algorithm will do it for them?
Again, people always search out what they like. The internet makes it possible for them to do so. I could just as easily point out that that in the past, kids wouldn't be able to find a song" they liked because they were reliant on a DJ choosing what would play on the radio. The world is much more open to discovery and experimentation today.
Why take the risk to explore something new when their phones will just send them never-ending content related to the things that already interest them?
Um, mainly because lots of people like to explore new things, and it's much easier and lower risk to do so today than in the past. Murphy and I are similar in age, and my childhood exploration of finding music sucked. I would spend hours in record stores and have to spend $15 to $20 on random albums that I had no idea if I would actually like. It was not a fun process. It sucked. I wasted a ton of money, and didn't feel like I was discovering" much. Today is so amazing for music discovery.
Sure, music services recommend stuff to me, but I spend a ton of time exploring playlists, and different bands, and can try out all sorts of things. None of that was possible when I was a kid.
There's a lot more in the article, but it's just more of the same moral panic nonsense. Murphy has become the old man yelling at the clouds about the kids today and their calculators. It's not based on reality. It's based on fear and nonsense.