Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns
I have lost patience with articles about kids and teens and &quot;social media&quot; that make no attempt to define what social media is.  It is no wonder parents won&#x27;t seriously - particularly when the follow up advice is &quot;don&#x27;t give your kids phones&quot; as though it&#x27;s all or nothing.<p>Could we please get a list of social media kids are using and their relative levels of harm?  If it&#x27;s mostly Instagram then say Instagram and parents can uninstall that app.  Is it Facebook?  (I didn&#x27;t think kids were using Facebook)  Is it TikTok? (I&#x27;m not sure I&#x27;d classify TikTok as social media)   Twitter? Reddit?  Roblox?  Shared google docs?  Group texts?
Hacker news?<p>If we can figure this out then we can have a productive talk about kids and phones and pros and cons.  Do I have to point out that phones have more uses than social media?  Can kids call and text?  Can they access Wikipedia?  Can they play Minecraft?  Can they take photos?  Saying &quot;no phones&quot; is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.<p>It shouldn&#x27;t be hard to have intelligent, thoughtful discussions on kids and the internet.  For some reason, no one ever does.