Excellent writeup that more people should read

Ban for-profit social media for everyone. Why should just the kids benefit?

It’s not about ‘protecting kids’. They couldn’t care less about wellbeing of kids. If they did, they wouldn’t cut resources and benefits for them. It’s about control. They know kids get their news and views from social media and non mainstream news for obvious reasons. It’s about controlling the narrative. Also, it’s a parents job to pay attention what their kids view online and activate some parent controls

I think this is what bothers me the most.

These are vibe laws.

I get that people support them, but people are fucking stupid and fall for so much media propaganda and lies.

It’s bad for EVERYONE, no one in their right mind should use it, but it shouldn’t really be banned because the government doesn’t want to put limits on tech companies, that’s so fucking backwards. But then, what else is new.

Fuck it. Send it.

Off-topic comment. I read this article, but read it in a couple different sessions due to interruptions, and had apparently clicked on to other pages. I wanted to comment about how US culture is unreasonably hard on young people (in general), and for all the US talk of freedom, is often restrictive, especially so for minors. Unfortunately, finding this article page was rather difficult. A browser addon called “What we say” had 4 links from the article back to Lemmy discussion, but they were mostly to a federated instance called “Division by zero”. So I tried the button labeled “Find in my home instance”, but it refused to work, which could be due to my own browser’s configuration (it has worked on other articles and instances). So I came back to lemmy.world, and had to scroll manually through several pages, using browser search to find the article. It’d be nice if there was a more direct method of finding a Lemmy discussion from a non-Lemmy webpage.

Mild surprise at the suggestion that “evidence” or “science” has anything to do with it.

Screentime ITSELF in some studies has been proven to have both cognitive & mental-health consequences.

Here, however, is some rather solid research, which doesn’t support banning all online-socialization-for-youngsters, but DOES back the 2h-or-less/day limit:

( yes, I asked an LLM for this, because it actually helps.

ANY hallucinated-source, CALL IT OUT!!

but ignoring/denying actual-help is ludditeism, not effectiveness.

Automation does improve effectiveness, as aviation proved, a thousandfold, through commercial-aviation’s safety-record )

The consensus among global health organizations typically centers on a 2-hour daily limit for recreational screen time for school-aged children, while recent large-scale research has highlighted significant risks—sometimes described as a “cliff” in academic and cognitive performance—when usage exceeds 5 hours.

1. The 2-Hour Limit: Trustworthy Sources

The 2-hour guideline is the gold standard for “sedentary recreational” screen time (excluding schoolwork) and is supported by several major health authorities:

• World Health Organization (WHO): While the WHO primarily focuses on very young children (recommending no more than 1 hour for ages 2–4), its broader framework for physical activity and sedentary behavior in children ages 5–17 emphasizes minimizing sedentary time, often citing the 2-hour recreational limit as a protective threshold (Priftis & Panagiotakos, 2023).
• Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines: This is arguably the most specific source for school-aged kids. It recommends that children and youth (ages 5–17) limit sedentary recreational screen time to no more than 2 hours per day to optimize health outcomes (Hulick, n.d.).
• American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP): The AAP previously used a strict 2-hour limit but has shifted toward a more flexible “Family Media Use Plan.” However, it continues to emphasize that recreational screens should not displace the 8–12 hours of sleep and 1 hour of physical activity required daily (Aldhilan, 2026; Cowan, 2018).

2. The “5-Hour Cliff” and Performance Deterioration

The “2-sigma” (standard deviation) deterioration you mentioned is often linked to research by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge. Their work tracks a “dose-response” relationship where mental health and cognitive outcomes drop significantly once daily usage crosses the 4-to-5-hour mark.

• Dose-Response Effect: Meta-analyses show that while low levels of screen use (1–2 hours) may have negligible or even slightly positive “Goldilocks” effects, outcomes for adolescents who use screens for 5+ hours per day show a sharp decline. Haidt has noted that these effect sizes (r = .20) in large population studies are comparable to the negative impact of lead exposure on IQ (Krumsvik, 2023).
• Academic and Cognitive Impact: In recent longitudinal studies, excessive screen time (often defined as >4–5 hours) was associated with lower scores in information processing speed, working memory, and attention (Shalash, 2024). Specifically, a study on the “Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines” found that kids who exceeded the 2-hour limit and met none of the physical activity/sleep guidelines showed the most significant cognitive deficits (Hulick, n.d.).
• A “2-Sigma” Drop? In statistical terms, a 2-sigma (2 standard deviations) drop is massive (roughly equivalent to 30 IQ points). While common recreational use might not trigger a 2-sigma drop for every individual, the cumulative group effect on social-emotional wellbeing and “heavy user” status (7+ hours) is frequently cited by researchers like Haidt as a public health crisis comparable to significant historical pediatric risks (Krumsvik, 2023).

References

Aldhilan, D. (2026). Digital tools and screen time management in early childhood education: parents’ and educators’ perspectives. Frontiers in Education. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2026.1742813/full Cited by: 1

Cowan, J. (2018). Help Families Find a Screen Time Balance. The ASHA Leader. https://leader.pubs.asha.org/2018/02/26/help-families-find-a-screen-time-balance/ Cited by: 1

Hulick, K. (n.d.). Healthy screen time is one challenge of distance learning. Science News Explores. https://www.snexplores.org/article/healthy-screen-time-is-one-challenge-of-distance-learning Cited by: 6

Krumsvik, R. J. (2023). Screenagers, social media, screen time, and mental (ill) health. Scandinavian University Press. https://www.scup.com/doi/10.18261/njdl.18.2.1 Cited by: 9

Priftis, N., & Panagiotakos, D. (2023). Screen Time and Its Health Consequences in Children and Adolescents. Children, 10(10), 1665. https://doi.org/10.3390/children10101665 Cited by: 173

Shalash, R. J. (2024). Night Screen Time is Associated with Cognitive Function in Healthy Young Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study. Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare. https://doi.org/10.2147/JMDH.S459846 Cited by: 27

< that was the end of the LLM-provided stuff >

I’d do multiple things, that the governments absolutely are not doing:

1. I’d require that there be not-for-profit platforms for people who don’t want to be Meta’s carrion, & all kids.

2. I’d require that the platforms for kids be mental-age-segregated, to some extent, but overlapping ( mentally-7 would mean mentally-5-9, mentally 9 would mean mentally 7-11, etc. something like that, so that adjacent-age friends would be in, but it’d still be peer-group )

3. I’d require that there be actual brain-scanned-to-weed-out-pedophiles chaperones for those platforms’ kids-dimensions, to keep things safe & positive

4. I’d require that there be a 2h-hard-limit ( except for emergencies, like death-in-the-family, hospitalization, whatever ), & a 90-min recommended-limit.

5. I’d differentiate between that & a different dimension, where one was being trained/mentored by one’s own agent, in whatever subjects one was interested in learning ( positive ones, not sadisms or machiavellianisms )

etc.

It’s a systems-question, but it’s being dealt-with as an ideological-question, & that’s just obliterating opportunity, which is called “Solving The WRONG Problem™”.

_ /\ _