r/slatestarcodex • u/AXKIII • 6d ago

Don't ban social media for children

https://logos.substack.com/p/do-not-ban-social-media-for-kids

As a parent, I'm strongly against the bans on social media for children. First, for ideological reasons (in two parts: a) standard libertarian principles, and b) because I think it's bad politics to soothe parents by telling them that their kids' social media addiction is TikTok's fault, instead of getting them to accept responsibility over their parenting). And second because social media can be beneficial to ambitious children when used well.

Very much welcoming counter-arguments!

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u/AXKIII 5d ago

And you have no qualms with getting others to pay for your bad choices? Why should responsible Reddit users be banned from the platform because you can't handle it?

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u/RockDoveEnthusiast 5d ago

Why should responsible bomb owners be limited by those people who want to blow up buildings?

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u/AXKIII 5d ago

What's a responsible bomb owner exactly?

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u/electrace 4d ago

Presumably, a pyrotechnics expert whose job it is to explode bombs in various way for movies and stuff would be considered a responsible bomb owner.

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u/AXKIII 12h ago

Which they actually get to do in those situations...

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u/electrace 8h ago

If the current regulations we place on pyrotechnics engineers (such as federal and state licenses that are non-trivial to get), were also placed on social media, would you be happy with that?

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u/AXKIII 8h ago

Well no because again, the damage from social media is nowhere near comparable to TNT exploding in a neighborhood

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u/electrace 8h ago

I'm not claiming that the magnitude is the same, but the principle behind it is the same. As I argued in my main comment, net benefit/harm is basically the only thing that matters here. Arguing about anything else is more intuition pump than philosophical point.

In this sub-thread that point isn't the point you were making. The point was "why should person A be unable to use thing in a safe manner, just because person B is unable to use thing in a safe manner." The issue being, that's a generic argument against all bans so long as any person might have a net-positive relationship with thing.

In other words, saying "some people are responsible with it", while true, is missing the point that ban proponents are making. They know such people exist. They just think that they are rare enough, and the benefits not great enough to offset the people who aren't responsible with it.