Can we put the genie back in the bottle? The toothpaste back in the tube?
That’s what New York Gov. Kathy Hochul — and the government of Australia — seem to be attempting.
Social media platforms with infinite scrolling, auto-play and algorithmic feeds will be required to display warning labels about their potential harm to young users’ mental health under a new law Hochul announced last week.
“Keeping New Yorkers safe has been my top priority since taking office, and that includes protecting our kids from the potential harms of social media features that encourage excessive use,” Hochul said.
It’s a problem. She got that right. But warning labels? Seriously?
Because they’ve worked so well on cigarettes, right?
Hochul’s news release on the new law says it will “require social media platforms to display labels warning of the dangerous impact certain features can have on young users’ mental health.”
“Keeping New Yorkers safe has been my top priority since taking office, and that includes protecting our kids from the potential harms of social media features that encourage excessive use,” Hochul said. “New Yorkers deserve transparency. With the amount of information that can be shared online, it is essential that we prioritize mental health and take the steps necessary to ensure that people are aware of any potential risks.”
There can be no serious argument over whether too much screen time is negatively affecting all of us, especially children, but does anyone think a warning label is going to help?
Hochul’s efforts face two tough obstacles.
The first is human nature. We like entertainment and we like convenience. Those things are seamlessly combined in the phones and tablets we hold in our hands as they deliver stimulus through our eyes and ears, and into our brains.
The second are the very smart people who created even smarter algorithms designed to keep us engaged. Even those of us who grew up without such devices, and remember what it was like not to have all that at our fingertips, sometimes find ourselves lost in a rabbit hole of information or entertainment designed to keep us engaged.
Young people who grew up with the internet as an ever-present force in their lives have little chance of escaping its power.
Adding to the problem are parents — also motivated by convenience — who use devices as electronic babysitters, much as parents of a generation earlier relied on television.
Hochul’s announcement stated that recent studies show adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression. “About half of adolescents claim that social media makes them feel worse about their bodies, and teenagers with the highest levels of social media use are nearly twice as likely to rate their overall mental health as poor or very poor,” the news release stated.
We already had a pretty good idea about that, didn’t we?
“To combat the mental health risks of using harmful features of social media platforms that prolong use, this legislation will require social media companies to display warning labels on their platforms when a young user initially uses the predatory feature and periodically thereafter, based on continued use. Users will not be able to bypass or click through the warnings,” the news release stated.
I’ll give the news release writer credit for one thing — “predatory feature” is exactly the right wording. Still, clicking through those warnings just as easily as lying about being old enough to access certain content is unlikely to slow young people down from devouring that content.
More boldly, Australia this month imposed a social media ban for children under 16. That, too, seems like tilting at windmills, but it sends a strong signal that the government there takes the issue seriously.
Both approaches bear watching, but I’m not expecting dramatic results.