nach­trag zu „denkt doch mal an die kin­der“

felix schwenzel in notiert

die­sen text von Da­nah Boyd von 2024 habe ich bei mi­cha­el tsai ge­fun­den und in „denkt doch mal an die kin­der“ nach­ge­tra­gen:

Sin­ce the “so­cial me­dia is bad for teens” myth will not die, I keep ha­ving in­ten­se con­ver­sa­ti­ons with col­le­agues, jour­na­lists, and fri­ends over what the re­se­arch says and what it doesn’t. (Ali­ce Mar­wick et. al put tog­e­ther a gre­at litt­le pri­mer in light of the le­gis­la­ti­ve mo­ves.)

[…]

Can so­cial me­dia be ris­ky for youth? Of cour­se. So can school. So can fri­end­ship. So can the kit­chen. So can na­vi­ga­ting par­ents. Can so­cial me­dia be de­si­gned bet­ter? Ab­so­lut­e­ly. So can school. So can the kit­chen. (So can par­ents?) Do we al­ways know the best de­sign in­ter­ven­ti­ons? No. Might tho­se de­sign in­ter­ven­ti­ons back­fi­re? Yes.

Does that mean that we should give up try­ing to im­pro­ve so­cial me­dia or other di­gi­tal en­vi­ron­ments? Ab­so­lut­e­ly not. But we must also re­co­gni­ze that try­ing to ce­ment de­sign into law might back­fi­re. And that, more ge­ne­ral­ly, tech­no­lo­gies’ risks can­not be ma­na­ged by de­sign alo­ne.

[…]

Do some peo­p­le ex­pe­ri­ence harms th­rough so­cial me­dia? Ab­so­lut­e­ly. But it’s im­portant to ack­now­ledge that most of the­se harms in­vol­ve peo­p­le using so­cial me­dia to harm others. It’s re­asonable that they should be held ac­coun­ta­ble. It’s not re­asonable to pre­su­me that you can de­sign a sys­tem that al­lows peo­p­le to in­ter­act in a man­ner whe­re harms will never hap­pen. As every school prin­ci­pal knows, you can’t sol­ve bul­ly­ing th­rough the de­sign of the phy­si­cal buil­ding.