Facebook used to have a team dedicated to analyzing their apps’ risks to children’s and teenagers’ health. The team concluded that there are indeed many serious health risks for both children and teenagers, especially teenage girls. Shortly after, it got disbanded, and all its recommendations completely ignored.
When the news about that came out, around a decade ago now, I deleted my Facebook profile and tried to tell all my friends/family using FB that … this is pure fucking evil and they should also get off FB.
They all gaslit me, pretended that news wasn’t real, and acted like I was a paranoid delusional maniac.
Nowadays we have basically the same kind of conclusions regarding TikTok and other platforms that focus on short form video content… well, actually even worse conclusions… and they come from actual peer reviewed scientific journals…
But you’ll still get people saying ‘brainrot isn’t real’… when uh, yes thats a clumsy term, but it is basically confirmed at this point that TikTok is as addictive as a drug, ruins your motivation and attention span, fills your with mis and disinformatiin, ruins and warps your self image and self esteem, promotes wildly irresponsible and often illegal financial mindsets/strategies… etc etc…
and the ones that are their kids they can prevent from accessing their platform to a better degree than most broke technically illiterate parents could dream of doing.
Facebook used to have a team dedicated to analyzing their apps’ risks to children’s and teenagers’ health. The team concluded that there are indeed many serious health risks for both children and teenagers, especially teenage girls. Shortly after, it got disbanded, and all its recommendations completely ignored.
When the news about that came out, around a decade ago now, I deleted my Facebook profile and tried to tell all my friends/family using FB that … this is pure fucking evil and they should also get off FB.
They all gaslit me, pretended that news wasn’t real, and acted like I was a paranoid delusional maniac.
Nowadays we have basically the same kind of conclusions regarding TikTok and other platforms that focus on short form video content… well, actually even worse conclusions… and they come from actual peer reviewed scientific journals…
But you’ll still get people saying ‘brainrot isn’t real’… when uh, yes thats a clumsy term, but it is basically confirmed at this point that TikTok is as addictive as a drug, ruins your motivation and attention span, fills your with mis and disinformatiin, ruins and warps your self image and self esteem, promotes wildly irresponsible and often illegal financial mindsets/strategies… etc etc…
They took all that data and used it to exploit the kids.
But really, who wouldn’t? They’re not our kids! Well, nearly 100% of them aren’t. Little Johnny will forgive papa for it one day right?
and the ones that are their kids they can prevent from accessing their platform to a better degree than most broke technically illiterate parents could dream of doing.
True!!
OK now they can try climate change (dangit indoor skiing etc. nvm but still that’s not as fun so they take the L)
Not ignored. They weaponized that info internally. And had a road map of potential liabilities and damages that may be involved.
so it served its purpose well
Ignored? Yeah I suppose so, but they sure as shit used the data for their own gain. That team really was the road of good intentions