"Can't Look Away": New Documentary Examines How Social Media Addiction Can Harm -- Even Kill -- Kids

[Uncle Joe]

"Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media" is a new documentary that exposes the real-life consequences of the algorithms of big tech companies and their impact on children and teens. In 2022, social media companies made an estimated $11 billion advertising to minors in the U.S., where 95% of teenagers use social media. One in three teens uses social media almost constantly. "These products, they're not designed to hook us, adults," says Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle who is featured in "Can't Look Away."

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[Wild blueberry]

1. Thank you

This looks like a must-see film. Have see Adolescence, and this is next.

[xocetaceans]

2. Jaron Lanier's relevant book from 2018 is also worth reading....

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
Jaron Lanier

Picador

In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Lanier, who participates in no social media, offers powerful and personal reasons for all of us to leave these dangerous online platforms.

Lanier’s reasons for freeing ourselves from social media’s poisonous grip include its tendency to bring out the worst in us, to make politics terrifying, to trick us with illusions of popularity and success, to twist our relationship with the truth, to disconnect us from other people even as we are more “connected” than ever, to rob us of our free will with relentless targeted ads. How can we remain autonomous in a world where we are under continual surveillance and are constantly being prodded by algorithms run by some of the richest corporations in history that have no way of making money other than being paid to manipulate our behavior? How could the benefits of social media possibly outweigh the catastrophic losses to our personal dignity, happiness, and freedom? Lanier remains a tech optimist, so while demonstrating the evil that rules social media business models today, he also envisions a humanistic setting for social networking that can direct us toward a richer and fuller way of living and connecting with our world.


https://academic.macmillan.com/academictrade/9781250239082/tenargumentsfordeletingyoursocialmediaaccountsrightnow/