New Yorker’s ‘Social Media Is Killing Kids’ Article Waits 71 Paragraphs To Admit Evidence Doesn’t Support The Premise
These days, there’s a formula for articles pushing the unproven claims of harm from social media. Start with examples of kids harming themselves, insist (without evidence) that but for social media it wouldn’t have happened. Throw some shade at Section 230 (while misrepresenting it). Toss out some policy suggestions without grappling with what those policy suggestions would actually mean in practice, and never once deal with the actual underlying issues regarding mental health.
It’s become so easy. And so wrong. But it fits the narrative.
I enjoy Andrew Solomon’s writing and especially found his book, Far From the Tree, an exceptional read. So, when I saw that he had written a big story for the New Yorker on social media and teens, I had hoped that it would approach the subject in a manner that laid out the actual nuances, trade-offs, and challenges, rather than falling for the easy moral panic tropes.
Unfortunately, it fails woefully in that endeavor, and in the process gets a bunch of basic facts wrong. For all of the New Yorker’s reputation for its great fact-checking efforts, in the few stories where I’ve been close enough to know what’s going on, the fact-checking has been… terrible.
