Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns
It also can be a &#x27;profound life safer&#x27; to youth people which live has been saved by the internet warn.<p>It also helps a lot with democracy as it&#x27;s much harder for autocratic states (or governments aspiring to become such) to censor and mute the news about their bad deeds.<p>The main problem I&#x27;m seeing is not &quot;social media&quot; but how exactly it is implemented, often stuffed full of dark patterns designed to lead to addictive behavior and nearly always with no consequence to people which try to use it for scams (targeting young people) harassment and similar.<p>IMHO we need laws to ban &quot;dark patterns&quot; and &quot;engineered addiction&quot; as well as a system to handle and reduce harassment and other abuse. That alone might make enough difference to make any further steps unnecessary. But to be safe early (and reoccurring) education about social media, social media hygiene, and media manipulation would be excellent additions. Just not seeing most governments doing the later point, as it probably would mean them not getting elected again in the future.<p>Another &quot;problem&quot; is that the internet in general allow young people to relatively early see how messed up the world is and at the same time how the people in power often double down on it to gain more power then to fix it. This can lead to a feeling of helplessness and despair young people preferably should not be exposed to. At the same time denying them access to the truth doesn&#x27;t seem right either. In the end despair and helplessness are like poison, it is what drives people to suicide and it is also what often is a major factor for weather or not a &quot;bad situation&quot; becomes a trauma or not.