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   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Apr-2026 06:31:50 JST Paul Cantrell

   Welcome to today’s edition of “Paul asks you to hold the follow thoughts simultaneously, despite their being in tension.”

   1. Social media in its popular form is socially toxic and psychologically dangerous — probably for everyone, certainly for children and adolescents. The evidence on this is compelling, and in my view is not just moral panic reified as research. It’s probably a bad idea for kids / teens to be using it. (And again…maybe all of us.)

   • GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     maya_b (maya_b@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Apr-2026 06:54:06 JST maya_b

     in reply to

     @inthehands

     It’s also, imo, absurd to think that a date on a calendar all of a sudden makes someone impervious to the dangers of social media.

     If you want to protect anyone, then protect everyone.

     And keep an eye on what social network giants are spending their lobbying money on - a lot goes to age-gating.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Apr-2026 07:07:13 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • maya_b

     @maya_b
     There are some solid enough cognitive development arguments to make about age-based guidance for a variety of things, but…yeah, there’s no magic line, and age-gating is certainly not a solution to my item 2, which I think is the real heart of so much of the problem.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Apr-2026 08:10:38 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     2. This danger / toxicity is not a necessary, intrinsic property of social media; it happened by •design•. Social interaction doesn’t suddenly become a new kind of psychologically toxic just because it happens on a screen. That happens when huge amounts of investment money pour into exploiting the human vulnerability of humans, weaponing our own psychology to turn our social needs into a money pump, sucking us dry for profit. It’s a business model in the same category as casinos and diet pills. “Screen time” is a misleading concept. Let’s talk about “billionaires manipulate your brain” time.

   • Embed this notice
     maya_b (maya_b@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Apr-2026 17:02:33 JST maya_b

     in reply to

     @inthehands

     absolutely.

   • Embed this notice
     ben (benjamineskola@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Apr-2026 18:09:59 JST ben

     in reply to

     @inthehands There was an article in the Guardian a few weeks back — an anonymous teenage girl talking about online misogyny and concluding that a social media ban would help. And what struck me was that yeah, it’s a real problem, but framing it as ‘about teenagers’ seems completely mistaken.

     (Are we expected to think that misogynistic content is okay as long as directed only at over-16s?)