Banning Stupidity

The Australian government is in the process of "banning" social media for children, though the details haven't yet been formalized. And while I am not a big fan of government intervention into the lives of people to socially engineer outcomes, I am also not a fan of poor parenting that has so little control over what their children consume. This covers more than their digital diet though, for as I have said before, I think that a lot are also physically failing their children in what they feed them.

My daughter made the red one in the middle first, and then the black, reversing the colors. After which, she made the others in a range of colors. All of them are different, all of them have a slightly changed block configuration, yet, as you look at them, they are all close enough to the same, aren't they?

She calls them tomatoes.

But, that image of them together reminds me of what social media is doing to us, and even more heavily to our children, as while the younger generation believe they are increasingly unique because they keep labelling themselves new things, they are actually becoming more homogenous, more similar, less unique.

This is because of what they eat, where for instance physically, we know that our diets are varied, but we are eating far too many calories than we are able to burn, so the average person is increasing in weight. Similarly, while there are many sources of information online, there is also an average that is spread through the platforms that the majority of people are consuming from, so while everyone is eating a tailored breakfast of unique content made just for them, they are actually being painted with a broad brush, being fed with a large spoon a similar diet to a massive group of people, similar to themselves.

The more we eat, the more we resemble what we eat.

While social media might have some upsides to it, the overall impact is likely negative, and is probably even more negative the younger it starts. So many of our executive functions develop in the first few years, yet kids are now being raised on screens, in non-realities. These functions continue to develop through adolescence, and we have been continuing the digital conditioning all the way through to adulthood, when the prefrontal cortex has matured.

Key Executive functions

Impulse Control: Regulating immediate reactions and behaviors to achieve long-term goals.
Emotional Control: Managing emotions to avoid impulsive decisions and maintain focus.
Flexible Thinking: Adjusting mental sets and adapting to changing situations.
Working Memory: Holding and manipulating information in short-term memory for cognitive tasks.
Self-Monitoring: Tracking one’s own performance and adjusting behavior accordingly.
Planning and Prioritizing: Setting goals, allocating time and resources, and making decisions about task sequence.
Task Initiation: Starting and initiating tasks, overcoming procrastination and inertia.
Organization: Structuring and coordinating tasks, information, and resources to achieve goals.

Any have issues?

Even adults who have not grown up on screens, have been affected in these areas by the shift into digital existence over the last two decades, which indicates just how influential it is. But, apply this from childhood so that these factors don't develop much at all to begin with, and we are going to see a lot of variability in personal conditions, but how much of it is positive? Now, this variation is being framed as "uniqueness" but I believe it comes down more to homogeneity, just like the trend toward higher fat percentages across populations.

I found this part interesting from the wiki linked above:

The major change that occurs in the brain in adulthood is the constant myelination of neurons in the prefrontal cortex. At age 20–29, executive functioning skills are at their peak, which allows people of this age to participate in some of the most challenging mental tasks.

Consider that statement for a moment and then consider that these days, the average under thirty has barely worked, may not have a career path, not be in a committed relationship, not have children. Yet, this is the age we are the most mentally capable, where we really could have what is now an overused and poorly applied term, a growth mindset. Instead of growing though, many of the young are postponing growing up, and maintaining their childhood, where entertainment is the most important aspect of life, and boredom the worst.

And this desire to be entertained plays into the hands of consumerism and corporate wealth, which makes sense, because it is those corporations that have driven the conditioning. For my entire life I have been told how influential advertising is over people's behaviors, yet we have created an informational environment that is essentially all advertising. Everything we consume has some kind of agenda to sell us something, and the more time on site we spend, the less space we have devoid of the corporate nudges for products, services and ideas.

As you can see, I am not a fan of the way society is currently operating, nor am I a fan of government intervention. However, what is going to be interesting with "banning social media" is that in order to do so, they are going to have to define what social media is, aren't they? Sure, we can see Facebook, TikTok and X and Instagram and the like in that group, but what about the news services that encourage conversations under their articles that are designed to evoke emotional reactions?

Impulse Control: Regulating immediate reactions and behaviors to achieve long-term goals.
Emotional Control: Managing emotions to avoid impulsive decisions and maintain focus.

They are leveraging the same social and technological mechanisms that a social platform will use, from clickbait titles, to embedded adverts, and emotive language to illicit emotional response. Most of the games out there are also leveraging social network dynamics in order to build peer validation and stickiness into the experience, all to keep people playing and paying.

Where is the line?

And I think that this is where the governments are going to fail, because regardless of their legislation, the industries are incentivized to keep changing in order to maximize shareholder wealth. It doesn't matter whether what they are doing is good for society or speeding the journey to ultimate obliteration, it is all about the short gain, the calendar year, the next quarter.

For me at least, I am not going to rely on a government to raise my child and ensure that she has the right food in her body or mind, because they can only ever work on the averages, and the averages are pretty unhealthy. I want my daughter to be far better than average, not so that she can be better than others, but because I see the average degrading in just about every way that matters to humanity. If I want the best for my daughter, I can't have her eat averagely. The content she consumes has to be for improved growth, not just for mitigating decline.

The governments are likely seeing what many of us who have been paying attention have known for a long time; that the society that we have built and the businesses that profit from the economy of it, are harmful to our long-term success as a species. Not even long-term, but our success with the current population we have. They realize that their schemes that used to keep the game going will collapse, because the pool of resources can no longer bring adequate value into the system.

They are too late.

But, there will be some small percentage of children out there today, who have parents that have created information environments that will give them not only an advantage over the average, but also the skills to perhaps make a positive difference to help the average, to save the average in the future. But if everyone thinks the same and supports what the average thinks, not enough is going to change. So, the world-changers are going to have to work far outside the average, and find ways to get support to make their creativity, a reality. Even if it is in their best interest to support, the average won't support, because that is not how the conditioning has designed them to respond.

Perhaps if there was a ban on stupidity.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]