ENGLISH AS A FIRST LANGUAGE EPISODE - #002 TAYLOR LORENZ

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Between May of 2025 and early January 2026, Elon Musk's AI Grok found increasing popularity with certain Twitter users for creating sexualized deep fakes of other users' photos as a way to troll and harass [music] them.

[00:00:13]Bloomberg reported that at one point over 6,700 image requests were being made per [music] hour, affecting both women and children. Though Grok has been updated to restrict its image creation capabilities, this was just another in a long line of incidents that have led to louder and louder calls on lawmakers to regulate social media platforms and to protect the kids who use them from potential abuse and harms to their mental health. The solutions drafted thus far have been met with skepticism and criticisms ranging from data privacy issues to Oh my god, enough with the panic about kids using smartphones.

[00:00:43]>> Taylor Lorenz is a tech journalist who has written multiple articles and made several videos about this proposed legislation, its effects and unintended consequences, as well as about the state of social media itself.

[00:00:53]>> In response to this media-driven outcry, this fear among older generations has reached a terrifying fever pitch.

[00:00:59]Recently, much of this panic has been driven by the mainstream media and one man, an author named Jonathan Haidt. But although many of Haidt's claims about the dangers of young people using social media feel true, especially to parents, boomers, and media pundits, >> the arguments she's put forward about social media restrictions warrant some dissection to see what they really mean and what you should take away from them.

[00:01:20]Like, subscribe, Patreon, merch. Now, let's get this TV rolling.

[00:01:43]Haidt's book is like catnip for white, suburban, upper-middle-class parents, media figures, and politicians who, rather than address the complex and systemic issues shaping most people's experience of the world, crave a quick fix. And smartphones and social media are really easy scapegoats. Social media is dominated by companies that have spent decade putting profit above the safety and well-being of their user base. They rely on fundamentally exploitative and irresponsible business models that no serious person would argue haven't led to some real-world harm. Now, what she has established is social media's dominance in culture also makes it an easy target. And social media's main problems are isolated to data privacy issues. The result is, by keeping the most directly relevant issues of social media outside the broad framework of digital privacy, she can present unrelated criticisms as a distraction.

[00:02:33]Those who actually study these topics professionally say that the science is not even remotely clear-cut and often shows the opposite of the narrative that Haidt is pushing. For instance, just last year, a massive study and review of research around kids and technology use concluded that social media is actually one of the least influential factors in predicting kids' mental health. Just recently, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released a report that found essentially no significant link between young people's social media use and mental health problems. Leading developmental psychologist Candice L. Odgers, who has studied smartphones and social media use in children since 2008, said that she and her colleagues have, quote, repeatedly failed to find compelling support for the claim that digital technology use is a major contributor to adolescent depression and other mental health symptoms. Hundreds of other research papers, articles, and reviews have reached the exact same conclusions.

[00:03:30]Now, this is important because it's an example of something not inherently bad until it's applied. There are a lot of studies done on the connection between social media and adolescent mental health. However, she does not present the way these studies came to this conclusion, instead choosing to quote from those conclusions. She also doesn't list her sources in the description of the video, but I also have an issue with doing that consistently, so I can't judge. But it is an issue. The result here is that it is an expectation that we should trust these sources for their conclusions rather than understanding why they came to these conclusions. As Reason magazine's Aaron Brown recently noted, many of the research papers that Haidt cites in The Anxious Generation contain coding errors, inappropriate statistics, he relies on irrelevant or outdated data, or data collected for totally different purposes analyzed in really flawed ways. Haidt cites 476 studies in his book that seem to represent this overwhelming case, but two-thirds of those studies were published before 2010, as in before the period that Haidt even focuses on in his book. So many of the studies that Haidt cites either have major methodological errors or don't actually say what he claims they do. Haidt also displays graphs throughout his book showing that digital technology use and young people's mental health problems are rising together. But this doesn't really show anything. You could also put graphs showing an increase in young people wearing baggy pants over the past few years. That doesn't mean that the two things are causally related. And many mental health conditions have always arisen during puberty, even before smartphones existed. But this false notion that phones are causing an unprecedented mental health crisis is an irresistible narrative to parents who are primed to believe that their children are in constant danger from nefarious outside forces. Now, here's where it gets interesting. There are several valid critiques of Haidt's analysis of teens and social media use.

[00:05:12]However, and this did take some investigation into the citations being used here, the Reason magazine article being referenced specifically goes into how studies on subjective topics like this can be very unreliable without insight into their methodology. For all intents, Lorenz is doing the same thing she's criticizing by not elaborating on the studies beyond their conclusions.

[00:05:32]The problem isn't just that the moral panic around smartphones and children is total BS, it's also incredibly dangerous because it mainstreams this really regressive worldview that is resulting in legislation that strips young people of civil liberties and ultimately causes immense harm to the most vulnerable kids, especially young women and LGBTQ youth. Researchers who actually study these issues have said time and time and time again that things like access to guns, tool abuse, discrimination, racism, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship, and just the general state of the world are all far more influential factors in affecting young people's mental health. But it doesn't matter because what Haidt is pushing feels true. It feels like the easiest explanation, especially to older people like those in the media and Congress.

[00:06:19]Haidt and this cadre of media pundits pushing this smartphone freakout say that there is this urgent need for government action to restrict young people's access to smartphones and social media. And that's leading to really scary laws that will restrict young people's access to information and take away their voices online. No more TikTok, it's back to CNN and mainstream media for the news, and don't you dare question. Now, we have an example of whataboutism. This is a moral panic and it's causing harms to kids because it sweeps up all the good ways they can use social media. But she also says that there are other issues that cause more harm to kids psychologically without specifying that the level of harm caused by social media, even if it's less, is also below a reasonable threshold. There is no justification for the reaction people are having to social media because other issues are worse except for wanting to control kids' access to information. I wish banning kids from social media and taking away their smartphones would solve all of their problems and give them a happy and carefree childhood. Unfortunately, I'm a millennial in my late 30s. Uh Really?

[00:07:24]And I'm old enough to actually remember what a cell phone and social media-free childhood was actually like. And let me tell you, it was not the perfect world that Haidt and the media would have you believe. Your entire world was restricted to your physical reality, and you had absolutely no voice in the political system or ability to connect with anyone outside your immediate geographic area. It was an especially brutal time for young women and kids from marginalized groups. The mainstream media dominated everyone's information diet, and there was no way for young people to organize, dissent, or be heard. This is why you see nearly every major civil liberties group, LGBTQ organization, and human rights groups vehemently fighting against these proposed federal and state-mandated social media restrictions on young people. For the most marginalized kids, social media is a lifeline. And even for non-marginalized kids, it provides a window and access to a broader world outside of a young person's physical reality. This is why far-right conservatives are so focused on cutting it off. They don't want kids to learn about the world around them through social media. They don't want them questioning mainstream media narratives and, for instance, becoming aware of things like the atrocities happening in Gaza or questioning the power of the 80-year-olds who run this country. Haidt and those pushing this social media phone panic ironically want to coddle children. They want to keep them off the internet and restrict their social connections, which ultimately leaves them less informed and naive to the possibility of a better world. People in power recognize this as the end result.

[00:08:45]This is why lawmakers have expressed support for the TikTok ban, falsely claiming the app is harming young people's mental health and, quote, poisoning their mind. This idea that the phone is a nefarious object that might brainwash your children into becoming mentally ill or gay is echoed by people like Haidt and those in Congress. Where the prior segment was whataboutism, now we get to motte and bailey, the use of a defensible position to shield one's more indefensible position. Here we have the motte, life before the internet and social media was more disconnected, that runs cover for the bailey, the government, both sides, not just Republicans, is running a coordinated effort to keep people ignorant and to keep kids from making the world better.

[00:09:23]What that tells you is that this isn't actually about potential to harm kids, this is about keeping people slaves to capitalism rather than individuals taking advantage of an already existing concern. Setting aside the fact that being gay or trans isn't some sort of contagious diagnosis, and young girls do not struggle with mental health issues for clout, Haidt's commentary is consistently used by the far right and liberals alike to push these backwards laws built off faulty logic. As Candice Odgers recently wrote in the Atlantic, two things can be true. First, the online spaces where young people spend so so time require massive reform. And second, social media is not re-wiring children's brains or causing an epidemic of mental illness. And focusing solely on social media as the problem means that the real causes of these mental disorders and distress among young people go unaddressed. We should not send the message to families or teenagers that social media use is inherently damaging, shameful, or harmful. It's simply not true. Ayers writes that what she and her fellow researchers have seen from studying young people and social media is that they mostly use these tools to do regular adolescent stuff. They connect with offline friends from school, listen to music, watch shows, play video games with friends, and they watch YouTube videos like this one. Young people use social media and smartphones to seek out information about health, gender identity, to get support. For many marginalized kids and those who don't have support in their family or school lives, the internet is a safe space.

[00:10:50]It's a refuge. It's a place to explore, connect, be creative, and learn. It's quite literally a lifeline.

[00:10:58]This is just a faulty assumption.

[00:11:00]Adolescents are using social media in constructive ways, assuming that information is being acquired correctly and understood correctly. From videos like this one, there's both-sidesism intending to put the blame on everyone rather than one side that's specifically more at fault. And there's the conflation of struggles with mental health and the performance of struggles with mental health that's done for attention on social media. The nondescript issues with social media are minor compared to the ones that are overblown by the media, and kids can and will be effectively educated by their parents on how to use the internet and social media when they aren't being observed. Some of the top academic studying kids and technology use said this, quote, we believe the current slate of concerns around youth and social media use meet the criteria for a moral panic. Being able to recognize the moral panic about smartphones and social media use that Height and much of the mainstream media is pushing is perhaps best accomplished by examining the moral panics of decades past. Each time technology and media evolve, pundits will argue that this new technology or media is fundamentally different. Many of the arguments against allowing young people to read novels are nearly word for word the arguments used today against social media and TikTok. Some people sought to institute age limits on reading the news lest young people learn too much about the world around them for their young age. It's notable that these moral panics are always pushed forward by academics, pundits, and concerned suburban white parents. Every single time the same group of academic pundits, parents groups, and the media work together to whip up a frenzy making the same exact arguments about TikTok as they did about novels, comic books, television, Walkmans, beepers, and more.

[00:12:39]This isn't a good analogy, even though in Lorenz's words, it feels right. This moral panic is equivalent to all prior moral panics and can therefore be dismissed. The issues with social media themselves are equivalent to the issues with prior media and communications advancements. So, despite your own conclusions being unresolved by this argument, you should dismiss them anyway without the knowledge to articulate why, because there are valid reasons for concern about social media compared to concerns about the phones themselves.

[00:13:06]Many young people today are too isolated. As the technology and media scholar Dana Boyd recently explained on my podcast Power User, kids today are not growing up in the same world that their parents or people like Jonathan Height did. Cities and suburbs today are far less walkable and bikeable than in decades past. Kids today also don't have nearly the amount of leisure time that they used to. They're inundated with hours and hours of homework and a growing list of extracurricular responsibilities, giving them less playtime than children had in just recent decades. Parents are also more likely to encourage their kids to stay home and stay indoors. Parents of color especially say that events like Trayvon Martin's death and the murder of countless other black and brown youths in recent years have made them nervous to send their children out to play unsupervised. And kids today are facing increasing economic anxiety due to the precarious nature of our economy, wealth disparity, unstable housing, stagnant wages, and the ongoing pandemic, which is still killing over a thousand Americans a week and leaving millions and millions of young people and their caregivers disabled and forced out of the workforce permanently. In fact, just two years into the pandemic, back in 2022, nearly 8 million children had already lost a parent or primary caregiver to COVID-related causes. Yet none of these other factors are ever discussed by the media or lawmakers.

[00:14:26]This current generation of kids was also raised in the aftermath of the 2008 recession. And while Height and other pundits love to claim that the resulting economic chaos isn't a factor since the unemployment rate has technically gone down, they ignore the broader economic instability that young people face under our current version of capitalism. And nearly one in six children in America lives below the poverty line. These are major structural issues with our society that taking away TikTok and banning kids from using cell phones won't fix. And I think it's worth noting that the same politicians on both sides of the aisle, along with those in the mainstream media, who are backing this campaign to cut kids off from smartphones, also consistently vote and rail against things like gun control measures, youth mental health services, money for parks and public recreation, subsidized meals and child care, all things that are actually proven to help kids mental and physical health.

[00:15:19]>> There are more significant issues to deal with in the world causing the mental health crisis, even though those issues are the ones most commonly discussed on social media. And the purpose and justification for trying to regulate social media are fabricated despite the obvious evidence otherwise, as well as the clear and obvious difference in records between the two main political parties. This is all a coordinated distraction so that the government can avoid dealing with real problems. No one is claiming that these social media companies can't do better.

[00:15:43]Using social media the wrong way, especially if you're already struggling mentally, can have negative consequences. Literally anyone who uses the internet these days is acutely aware of its downsides. Platforms should undeniably roll out more robust user controls, data privacy protections, and responsible algorithmic recommendation system. Parents also need to learn how to communicate with their children and build resilience and responsible technology and media consumption habits.

[00:16:11]As one robust recent research paper on the topic explains, social media is not like a toxin or nutrient for which each exposure dose has a defined link to a health-related outcome. Rather than comparing smartphones and social media to drugs, think of them as tools that can be used in a variety of ways. Human connection is good for us. We need it, especially vulnerable kids. But there are healthy ways to connect and engage with others, and then there are ways that are more indulgent. We need young people to have exposure to these technologies from a young age so that they can learn these lessons early and develop a healthy and productive relationship with the media and technology of their time. Understand that life is complicated. Respect young people enough to avoid the simple, glib, unfounded mass diagnosis and prescriptions that people like Jonathan Height and the media are shoveling out.

[00:16:59]Rather than feeding into these superficial narratives about young people and technology that are fundamentally unsupported by research, let's all work together to build a more progressive, inclusive, optimistic, and tech-enabled future for all of us.

[00:17:12]Now that all of that is out of the way, I'm going to give my personal opinion.

[00:17:15]This is based on my own observations. I have no sources to back this up, somewhat intentionally for the sake of driving home three points. One, online media does affect your state of mind because even with the meta admission I'm making right now, dating my perspective is going to imprint on you in a way that reveals itself when you form your own opinion. Two, social media's financial goals requiring audience retention will exacerbate whatever issues end up driving people to it because that need for escapism is what feeds social media's ability to be an escape. And three, even with my meta admission immediately prior to it, point number two still gave your mind something agreeable to your own opinion and was therefore likely easily accepted. All of which leads me to my actual perspective, which is this. Social media hijacks the skeptical part of your brain by providing positive reinforcing encouragement for whatever your beliefs already are, which entrenches those beliefs to earn the reward, and the result is straying into greater ideological extremes in order to continue receiving them. The same way you can find yourself unconsciously drifting towards a soda in a convenience store because you want the sugar. If you don't have that moment of awareness to stop and register your actions, odds are you'll make the purchase before you've realized you've done it. I don't know if you can satisfyingly call that addiction the same way it's defined for someone who has used actual drugs, but the framing here would imply that the use of social media for the benefit of vulnerable people is functionally different from the way described above that is harmful, which isn't to say that the people finding their own community online is harmful. It's that there's nothing policing your relationship with that online community to provide you with the awareness to recognize when you're doing something you might otherwise not want to, and that the community you've joined is encouraging it. I actually agree with Lorenz here that this legislation most likely won't solve the problem in the right way. But the neutral descriptor of tool Lorenz applies to social media still strips the application of that tool by the companies behind them well before it reaches the hands of any users. And believe it or not, my perspective is actually reinforced by some of Lorenz's own reporting. In an article she wrote about Zoran Momdani last year, she simultaneously says that social media did not drive his win at the same time she calls out how many content creators and celebrities supported him. Her position is that Momdani's own charisma and platform brought them in as opposed to an intentional strategy of cultivating social media presence. But it's a chicken and egg situation.

[00:19:31]Regardless of which came first, they each feed into the other. And Momdani himself might have undermined her argument by directly reaching out to content creators only a few months later, a strategy Lorenz reported about but still used to reinforce that initial premise, that it's not social media, it's Momdani himself. She presents social media and personal charisma as separate instead of synergistic. You need the media to get the message out and you need the message to cultivate the media. I think that additive requirement is what prevents social media from being a morally neutral tool.

[00:20:01]It only functions as a tool when one applies their perspective and that immediately shifts it away from any sense of neutrality, positive or negative. I don't think anything I've just said is all that far from what the majority of people understand social media to be already. But if you've got feelings on it similar to mine, rather than reinforcing them with my own agreement, I just want you to be able to better articulate your own, which is really what my whole channel is about.

[00:20:23]So like and subscribe.

[00:20:25]And then comment if you liked and subscribed without consciously realizing it.

[00:21:08]Please rewind this [music] cassette.