California Senator Nancy Skinner Falls For Junk Science Moral Panic; Makes Blatantly False Claims In Support Of Social Media Addiction Bill

Overhype

from the legislative-nonsense dept

What you see below is part one of a two parter about a terrible bill in California. It started out as a single post, but there was so much nonsense, I decided to break it up into two parts. Stay tuned for part two.

You may recall last year that California, in addition to the obviously unconstitutional Age Appropriate Design Code, also tried to pass a “social media addiction” bill. Thankfully, at the last minute, that bill was killed. But, this year, a version of it is back and it has tremendous momentum, and is likely to pass. And it’s embarrassing. California legislators are addicted to believing utter nonsense, debunked moral panic stories, making themselves into complete laughingstocks.

The bill, SB 680, builds on other problematic legislation from California and basically makes a mess of, well, everything. The short explanation of the bill is as follows:

This bill would prohibit a social media platform, as defined, from using a design, algorithm, or feature that the platform knows, or by the exercise of reasonable care should have known, causes child users, as defined, to do any of certain things, including experience addiction to the social media platform.

What the bill will actually do is enable it so that social media companies can be fined if any kid that uses them gets an eating disorder, inflicts harm (on themselves or others), or spends too much time on social media. That’s basically the law.

Now, the framers of the law will say that’s not true, and that the law will only fine companies who “should have known” that their service “caused” a child to do one of those three things, but no one here was born yesterday. We’ve seen how these things are blamed on social media all the time, often by very angry parents who need to blame someone for things that (tragically) many kids have dealt with before social media ever existed.

Social media is the convenient scapegoat.

It’s a convenient scapegoat for parents. For teachers. For school administrators. For the media. And especially for grandstanding politicians who want headlines about how they’re saving the children, but don’t want to put in the hard work to understand what they’re actually doing.

Remember, multiple recent studies, including from the American Psychological Association and the (widely misrepresented) Surgeon General of the US, have said there is no causal evidence yet linking social media to harmful activity. What the reports have shown is that there is a small number of children who are dealing with serious issues that lead them to harmful behavior. For those children, it is possible that social media might exacerbate their issues, and everyone from medical professionals to teachers to parents, should be looking for ways to help that small number of children impacted.

That’s not what any of these laws do, however.

Instead, they assume that this small group of children, who are facing some very real problems (which, again, have not been shown to have been caused by social media in any study) represents all kids.

Instead, the actual research shows much more clearly that social media is beneficial to a much larger group of children, allowing them to communicate and socialize. Allowing them to have a “third space” where they can interact with their peers, where they can explore interests. The vast majority of teens find social media way more helpful than harmful. In some cases, it’s literally life-saving.

But, parents, teachers, principals, politicians and the media insist that someone must be to blame whenever a child has an eating disorder (which pre-existed social media) or dies by suicide (ditto). And social media must be the problem, because they refuse to explore their own failings or society’s larger failings.

Look no further than the absolutely ridiculous hearing the California Assembly recently held about the bill. It’s a hearing that should be cause for Californians to question who they have elected. A hearing where one Assemblymember literally claimed that we should follow China’s lead in regulating social media (we’ll get to that in part II).

The hearing kicked off with the Senate Sponsor, Nancy Skinner, making up nonsense about kids and social media that has no basis in fact:

I think many of you are aware that we are facing an unprecedented and urgent crisis amongst our kids where there’s high levels of social media addiction. The numbers of hours per day that many of our young people spend on average on social media is beyond, at least my comprehension, but the data is there. There’s high levels of teen suicides and those that increase in teen suicides, while some people think about the pandemic, have been steadily increasing over the past 10 to 12 years. And in effect, began with the onset, that increase with onset of much of the social media. We also have evidence of the very easy ability for anyone, which includes our youth, to purchase fentanyl and other illegal substances on via social media sites as well as illegal firearms. And in fact, on the illegal substances like fentanyl laced drugs, it is quicker to procure such a substance on social media than it is to use your app and get your Lyft or Uber driver.

So, look, someone needs to call bullshit on literally every single point there. Regarding suicide data, we highlighted that today’s suicide rates are still noticeably below the highs in the 1990s. Yes, they’ve gone up over the last few years, but they are still below the highs, and why isn’t anyone looking at what caused suicide rates to drop so low in the late 90s and early 2000s. Perhaps it was because we weren’t living in a constant hellscape in which grandstanding politicians are screaming every day about how horrible everything is?

But, really, I need to absolutely call bullshit on the idea that you can order fentanyl faster than you can get a Lyft or an Uber driver. Because that’s not true. There is no world in which that is true. There is no reasonable human being on this planet who believes that it’s quicker to get fentanyl online than to get an Uber. That’s just Senator Nancy Skinner making up things to scare people. Shameful.

It’s reminiscent of the similar bullshit scare tactics used by supporters of FOSTA, who claimed that you could order a sex trafficking victim online faster than you could order a pizza. That was made up whole cloth, but it was effective in getting the law passed. Apparently Skinner is using the same playbook.

Skinner continues to lie:

if we look at teenage girls in particular or adolescent girls, that researchers posing as teen girls on social media platforms were directed to content on eating disorders every 39 seconds, regardless of any request or content request by the teen. So in other words, just the algorithm, the feature or design of the platform directed that teen girl to eating disorder content every 39 seconds and to suicide-oriented content less frequently, but still with high frequency.

So, again, this isn’t true. It’s a moral panic misreading of an already questionable study. The study was done by the organization the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which is very effective at getting headlines, generating moral panics and getting quoted in the news (and at getting donations). What it’s not good at is competent research. You can read the “report” here, which is not “research,” as Senator Skinner implies. And even its highly questionable report does not even come close to saying what Skinner claims.

CCDH’s study was far from scientific to start with. They set up JUST EIGHT accounts on TikTok (not other sites) pretending to be 13-year-olds (two each in 4 different countries) and gave half of them usernames that includes the phrase “loseweight.” This is not scientific. The sample size is ridiculously small. There are no real controls unless you consider that half the accounts didn’t have “loseweight” in their name. There is no real explanation for why “loseweight” other than they claim it’s typical for those with eating disorders to make a statement regarding the disorder in their usernames.

Then, they had the researchers CLICK ON AND LIKE videos that the researchers themselves decided were “body image or mental health” related (which is not just eating disorder or suicide related content). In other words, THE RESEARCHERS TRAINED THE ALGORITHM THAT THEY LIKED THIS CONTENT. Then acted surprised when the accounts that clicked on and liked “body image” or “mental health” videos… got more “mental health” and “body image” videos.

As for the 39 second number, that is NOT (as Skinner claimed) how often kids see eating disorder content. Not even close. 39 seconds is how often users might come across content that CCDH themselves defined as “body image” or “mental health” related. NOT “suicide” or “eating disorder” content. In fact, the report says the fastest any of their test accounts saw (again, a self-classified) “eating disorder” content was only after eight minutes. They don’t say how long it took for the other accounts.

Not every 39 seconds.

Nancy Skinner is lying.

And, again, CCDH themselves decides how they classify the content here. While CCDH includes just a few screenshots of TikTok content that they classified as problematic (allowing them to cherry pick the worst). But even then, they seem to take a VERY broad definition of problematic content. Many of the screenshots seem like… general teen insecurities? I mean, this is one of the examples they show of “eating disorder” content:

Others just seem like typical teen angst and/or dark humor. These politicians are so disconnected from teens and how they communicate, it’s ridiculous. I’ve mentioned it before, though I don’t talk about it much or in detail, but a friend died by suicide when I was in high school. It was horrible and traumatic. But also, if any of us had actually known that he was suffering, we would have tried to get him help. Some of the TikTok videos in question may be calls for help, where people can actually help.

But this bill would tell kids they need to suffer in silence. Bringing up suicidal ideation. Or insecurities. Or just talking about mental health, would effectively be banned under this bill. It would literally do the exact opposite of what grandstanding, disconnected, lying politicians like Nancy Skinner claim it will do.

Back to the CCDH report. Incredibly, the report claims that PHOTOS OF GUM are eating disorder content, because gum “is used as a substitute for food by some with eating disorders.”

Have no fear, Senator Skinner: if this bill becomes law, you’ll have saved kids across the state from… seeing gum? Or adding a hashtag that says #mentalhealthmatters.

This is a joke.

Senator Skinner should issue a retraction of her statement. And pull the bill from consideration.

Of course, the context in which this is all presented by Senator Skinner is that social media companies are doing “nothing” about this. But, again, this study was only about TikTok, one social media company. And, the report that she misread and misquoted makes it pretty clear that TikTok is actively trying to moderate such content, and the kids are continually getting around those moderation efforts. In the report, it discusses how eating disorder hashtags often have “healthy” discussions (Skinner ignores this), and then says (falsely) that TikTok “does not appear to… moderate” this content.

But, literally two paragraphs later, the very same report says that kids are constantly evading moderation attempts to keep talking about eating disorders:

Users evade moderation by altering hashtags, for example by modifying #edtok to #edtøk. Another popular approach for avoiding content moderation is to co-opt singer Ed Sheeran’s name, for instance #EdSheeranDisorder.

So, if TikTok is not moderating this content… why are kids getting around this non-existent moderation?

Indeed, other reports actually showed that TikTok appeared to be dealing with eating disorder content better than earlier platforms, in that it was inserting healthy content into such discussions, about how to eat and exercise in a healthy way. Of course, under CCDH’s definition, this is all evil “body image” content, which Nancy Skinner would prefer be silenced across the internet. How dare kids teach each other how to be healthy. Again, let them suffer in silence.

Meanwhile, as we’ve discussed, actual research from actual experts, have said that forcing social media to hide ALL discussion of eating disorders actually puts children at much greater risk. Because those with eating disorders still have them, and they tend to go to deeper, darker parts of the web. Yet, when those discussions happened on mainstream social media, it also allowed for the promotion of content to help guide those with eating disorders to recovery, including content from those who had recovered and sought to help others. But, under this bill, such content HELPING those with eating disorders would effectively be barred from social media.

Going back to what I said above about my friend in high school, if only he had spoken up. If only he had told friends that he was suffering. Instead, we only found out when he was dead. This bill will lead to more of that.

Bill 680 takes none of that nuance into account. Bill 680 doesn’t understand how important it is for kids to be able to talk and connect.

All based on one Senator misreading what is already junk science.

Senator Skinner’s statement is almost entirely false. What little is accurate is presented in a misleading way. And the underlying setup of the bill completely misunderstands children, mental health, body image issues, and social media. All in one.

It’s horrifying.

Skinner’s star witness, incredibly, is Nancy Magee, the superintendent of San Mateo schools. If you recognize that name, it’s because we’ve written about her before. She’s the superintendent who filed the most ridiculous, laughable, embarrassing lawsuit against social media companies accusing them of RICO violations, because some kids had trouble getting back into regular school routines immediately after they came back from COVID lockdowns. RICO violations!

Of all the superintendents in all of California, can’t you at least pick the one who hasn’t filed a laughably ridiculous joke of a lawsuit against social media companies that similarly misread a long list of studies, to try to paper over her own districts failures to helps kids deal with the stress of the pandemic?

I guess if you’re going to misread and lie about the impact of social media, you might as well team up with someone who has a track record of doing the same. Magee’s statement, thankfully, isn’t as chock full of lies and fake stats, but is mostly just general fear mongering, noting that teenagers use social media a lot. I mean, duh. In my day, teens used the phone a lot. Kids communicate. Just like adults do.

There is, also, Anthony Liu, from the California Attorney General’s office. You’d hope that he would bring a sense of reality to the proceedings, but he did not. It was just more fear mongering, and nonsense pretending to be about protecting the children. Liu had a colleague with him, bouncing a child on her lap as a prop, where Skinner chimed in, literally saying that it was an example of “the child we are trying to protect,” leading an Assemblymember to say “how can we say no?” to (apparently?) whichever side brings in more cute kids.

And, that’s where we’re going to end part I. Things went totally off the rails after that, when two speakers spoke out against the bill, and a bunch of Assemblymembers on the Committee completely lost their minds attacking the speakers, social media, children, and more.

Still, we’ll close with this. If Senator Nancy Skinner had any integrity, she’d retract her statement, admit she’d been too hasty, admit that the evidence does not, in fact, support any of her claims, and suggest that this bill needs a lot more thought and a lot more input from experts, not grandstanding and moral panics.

I’m not holding my breath, because you might not be able to order fentanyl as quick as you can order an Uber, but you sure as hell can expect a California state elected official to cook you up a grandstanding, moral panic-driven monstrosity with about as much effort as it takes to order an Uber.

Filed Under: addiction, body image, california, content moderation, eating disorder, junk science, mental health, nancy magee, nancy skinner, sb 680, social media, suicide
Companies: ccdh, tiktok