I'm struck by how many readers want to make the relationship between your hypothesis and John Haidt's hypothesis an "AND" instead of an "OR" -- and I suspect the reason is that the readers themselves have personal and anecdotal experiences that reinforce how time online can make them feel BAD. I think to many readers it seems beyond reas…
I'm struck by how many readers want to make the relationship between your hypothesis and John Haidt's hypothesis an "AND" instead of an "OR" -- and I suspect the reason is that the readers themselves have personal and anecdotal experiences that reinforce how time online can make them feel BAD. I think to many readers it seems beyond reason that this thing that we all have experience with and that we KNOW makes us all feel bad could be completely unrelated to these negative effects.
I was 15-19 between 1990 and 1994, which as I understand it, was a time of greater teen suicide than today. School testing was not as intense back then, parents were pretty uninvolved, unstructured time was more available, but kids were still relatively pretty suicidal. I wrote about this in a look-back at the 1989 film Heathers. https://amyletter.substack.com/p/teenage-suicide-dont-do-it-heathers
I think it's important to not think necessarily in terms of yes this technology or no this administrative requirement, but in how the complex social contract adjusts itself to accommodate (or not) all the various unique and individual personalities that make up humanity. Maybe keeping kids safe at home all the time fitted nicely with the Web1.0 world, even if their school experiences were becoming less tolerable. Maybe freedom and no internet at all were even less tolerable in a world rife with peer pressure, date rape, homophobia, and binge drinking. Maybe Web2.0 made "safe at home" feel more like a cage and common core made school more like a sweatshop by virtue of turning the remaining avenue of escape/freedom (that online world) into a rat-maze with more traps than cheese.
Consider my way of reconciling Gray and Haidt. Contribution of social media is that it shows the world as it can be, which is then contrasted with sad reality. Freedom is universally good. In other words, Gray is right, and Haid is right only for the subset of oppressed population.
I suggest a mental experiment. Who would you be: (1) free kid at home with social media, or (2) kid closed at school with no Internet?
Social media is harmless in conditions of freedom.
Gray's reasoning is universal. Freedom is a precondition of mental health.
I'm struck by how many readers want to make the relationship between your hypothesis and John Haidt's hypothesis an "AND" instead of an "OR" -- and I suspect the reason is that the readers themselves have personal and anecdotal experiences that reinforce how time online can make them feel BAD. I think to many readers it seems beyond reason that this thing that we all have experience with and that we KNOW makes us all feel bad could be completely unrelated to these negative effects.
I was 15-19 between 1990 and 1994, which as I understand it, was a time of greater teen suicide than today. School testing was not as intense back then, parents were pretty uninvolved, unstructured time was more available, but kids were still relatively pretty suicidal. I wrote about this in a look-back at the 1989 film Heathers. https://amyletter.substack.com/p/teenage-suicide-dont-do-it-heathers
I think it's important to not think necessarily in terms of yes this technology or no this administrative requirement, but in how the complex social contract adjusts itself to accommodate (or not) all the various unique and individual personalities that make up humanity. Maybe keeping kids safe at home all the time fitted nicely with the Web1.0 world, even if their school experiences were becoming less tolerable. Maybe freedom and no internet at all were even less tolerable in a world rife with peer pressure, date rape, homophobia, and binge drinking. Maybe Web2.0 made "safe at home" feel more like a cage and common core made school more like a sweatshop by virtue of turning the remaining avenue of escape/freedom (that online world) into a rat-maze with more traps than cheese.
Consider my way of reconciling Gray and Haidt. Contribution of social media is that it shows the world as it can be, which is then contrasted with sad reality. Freedom is universally good. In other words, Gray is right, and Haid is right only for the subset of oppressed population.
I suggest a mental experiment. Who would you be: (1) free kid at home with social media, or (2) kid closed at school with no Internet?
Social media is harmless in conditions of freedom.
Gray's reasoning is universal. Freedom is a precondition of mental health.