Taylor Lorenz

You know, if we had a completely different economic system and nobody cared, you know, money wasn't.

like, you know, structured the same way?

Like, could people gamble all day and not have a lot of harm?

Yes.

But the harm, a lot of it comes from our economic system.

think we need to talk about the downsides right and and how realistic these downsides are because i think a lot of that stuff is overblown for instance there's this um you know a lot of very hyperbolic claims about social media and mental health that widespread social media usage is leading to some sort of mental health crisis among children that's just not borne out by data

Now, if you are, what we do know that is borne out by data is it's not so much that social media is affecting your mental health as the way that you engage with social media is shaped by your mental state.

So if you're very depressed and you listen to really sad songs for five hours or go on social media and engage in a healthy way, that can make you sadder.

Yes, you're right.

But

And that doesn't mean that you're to blame.

Right.

Like sometimes that content is that is given to you algorithmically.

But I was talking to a friend recently who's going through a divorce and her Spotify discover playlist has been like very depressing.

And she was like, I feel like it's like it knows that I'm going through a divorce and it's like feeding me this stuff.

And, you know, like we all feel the push and pull of these algorithms.

And I don't want to discount that.

What I would argue is that like.

The way to counter that is through data privacy legislation so that these platforms cannot hyper-target us with highly engaging content rather than censorship of all content that we consider harmful.

which is ironically like this argument was really kind of made most famously about novels.