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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: April 30th, 2025

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  • I think the harms are real. They’re not exclusive to children.

    There are three categories of harm:

    • Radicalization, as the algorithm deliberately feeds you bad takes from your political opponents and good takes from your political allies, to keep you engaged.
    • Overstimulation, the YouTube Kids channel Cocomelon is way too addictive for kids. This isn’t exclusive to social media, and YouTube Kids apparently has an exemption.
    • Addiction, social media eats into hours upon hours in kid’s days. Time they could spend with their family/friends or processing their emotions, instead they’re being numbed out on their phone.

    I think we should ban algorithmic recommendations (or strictly limit them), ban the practices of Cocomelon, and … I’m not sure what we can do about the addiction thing (humans are super prone to addiction). I’d also ban smart-phones in schools, kids should only be allowed flip-phones/brick-phones.