studies show that anonymity causes people to act with fewer social graces.

you think maybe that’s just a cultural thing, maybe even mostly a US thing, not so much a global human thing…

the potential for enhanced human performance is incredible with developing tech…

the “internet” is easy access to resources…so many resources…

current greatest internet thing ever:
easy access to find current street dealer locations in gta online, oh yeah 420 bonus week on street dealer payouts…

I still think the internet can be a safe, healthy place for a kid. I know I learned a ton from the early/mid aughts version, and it helped me develop interests and hobbies I maintain to this day. There should be a way to harness the fact that we have easier access to entertainment and information than anyone in human history for good!

First of all, if you ended up here, you may wish to rethink this.

More seriously, the internet is fundamentally different in the way people are inundated with directed content. Back in the day, the user was largely in control of their journey through the net and could find niche corners like KB. Today, that isn’t true.

The internet is heavily centered around a few large corporate sites that push you perpetually towards the content they want you to see, whether that’s the moneyed interests or what tends to be the most controversial content because that’s what creates the most engagement — hate it or love it. Small community blogs like KB have largely disappeared from search algorithms. Instead you find yourself on reddit, tiktok, or some other platform with directed content and will take you on long detours away from the content you’re actively looking for.

Moreover, because the platforms make drawing a large crowd easier, a niche blog like KB would likely get overrun with Knicks fans and impose their own non-niche views. I have nothing against fans who frequented P&T or The Knicks Wall, but there’s a reason I read every thread on this blog, only the posts on P&T, and avoided The Knicks Wall entirely. In effect, there’s less variety in opinion with the tyranny of the majority overrunning the space with whatever their views are.

And these large sites also make it difficult to build community because the large numbers breed anonymity, and studies show that anonymity causes people to act with fewer social graces.

Well said!! My eldest is in 4th grade; uses her iPad twice a week with heavy parental controls; and I feel like I’m wading into murky waters.

I still think the internet can be a safe, healthy place for a kid. I know I learned a ton from the early/mid aughts version, and it helped me develop interests and hobbies I maintain to this day. There should be a way to harness the fact that we have easier access to entertainment and information than anyone in human history for good!

It just requires way more oversight than we thought and at a societal level we’re way behind when it comes to adapting to the “innovations” made by social media and social media adjacent companies.

There are some promising trends at the state level though, and what’s encouraging is this seems to be one of few issues that doesn’t (yet) have some kind of partisan valence. Both Democrats and Republicans seem to be slowly waking up to the idea that social media is awful for kids’ development.

Here, the Important Problem (TM) is “toxic masculinity” (TM)

I think this is a misreading, or at least an oversimplification. This wasn’t the urgent message the show was trying to send, IMO. Obviously toxic masculinity, broadly defined, played a major role in the specific story being told, but I didn’t get the sense the shows creators wanted a critique of it to be the primary takeaway.

I think the idea they wanted to convey is that we’re living in an age in which people consume reams of content directed to them by algorithms that don’t even make a pretense of having their best interests in mind, and this is an especially terrifying phenomenon when it comes to children, who are biologically more impressionable, have fewer fully formed ideas about the world, and, well, simply have more time on their hands.

So sure, in this specific case the algorithms decided the “Manosphere,” incel ideology, or whatever you want to call it is what would be served up to a kid, and profoundly damaged him. But the terrifying takeaway from the show is that there are infinite possibilities in this regard, and it’s not a problem we seem to be taking all that seriously.