Dear Carolyn: After getting out of a long marriage, I’ve been dating a guy for nine months, and I’m not sure what to think of his social media presence. His “likes” and “follows” are questionable, and it makes me upset to see who he is having social media interactions with.
Media
Date follows ‘scantily clad women’ on social media
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The last time I was single, social media wasn’t much of a thing or a worry. What are the rules or common practices for social media use when you are in a relationship? Am I being jealous, controlling or overbearing to feel like he shouldn’t be liking, following, tweeting or being “friends” with beautiful, scantily clad women?
I’m not a big social media person. I keep my life private and often cringe at the stuff people, especially women, put out there to get attention. What is and isn’t acceptable? Am I overreacting?
I’ve mentioned once to him that it hurts my feelings and makes me feel insufficient. I’d never like or follow a half-naked man because 1. That’s not me. 2. I’d never want him to feel insufficient or that I’d rather look at another guy.
— So Over Social Media
So Over Social Media: I loathe social media and its fallout as much as the next person, but what you describe is one of the few things it does right.
Thanks to social media you now know that, presented with the infinite intellectual bounty of the information age, your guy looks at [bits].
Now, nothing against the female form or anything. We are objectively fabulous. And there’s nothing wrong with people who appreciate the female form.
But to use the power of access to centuries of human thought and achievement to follow, [heart emoji] and tweet like a hormonal adolescent is one of those things that’s supposed to give you pause.
Which it kind of did, but that’s the other issue here:
When your judgment system alerted you to a problem, you just assumed the problem was with you, that you apparently weren’t hot enough personally to drive him to use his phone instead to learn a second language, read the Economist and binge dog videos.
If your first reaction to his judging a 24-7 online bikini contest is to feel insecure, then I urge you to put in the internal work toward understanding and appreciating your own worth and power. Otherwise, no matter who you date, you will unwittingly orient yourself toward being “good enough” to keep his attention, whether he’s good for you or not, of character or not, deserving or not. People who hit it off as is hold each other’s attention by being themselves.
This is slightly outside the scope of your social media issue but it will be at the very heart of your dating issues until you address it with some organic self-confidence.
As for the social media issue: Please recalibrate. There are no “rules.” And that’s a good thing. What people follow and post gives you another viewing angle on who they are, what they think, what they value. Use it.
Meaning, take whatever information his feeds are giving you about him — for example, that he ogles as a hobby — and use it to inform your own judgment. Is ogling a hobby you share? Respect? Find hilarious, appreciate at arm’s length, grudgingly accept? Then carry on. Keep enjoying his company and see where it takes you.
If it’s behavior you don’t share, respect, etc., then let that help you decide whether you want to keep dating him. (See: “1. That’s not me,” above.) If you think his hobby is sad, disrespectful or gross, then what would the point be of telling him he “shouldn’t” do it? For you? Even if he stops, he’s still the sad, disrespectful or gross person who wants to do that and will resume so at his first opportunity.
With apologies to Maya Angelou: When people tweet who they are, believe them the first time.
Dear Carolyn: I’m a millennial man about to turn 40. I see so many friends my age struggle to pay for and take care of their domestic responsibilities.
I’ve known since I was 30 that I want as little responsibility as possible. My plan is to never get married, have kids, purchase a home or own pets. I figure I have enough responsibilities: I have to work, pay rent, pay bills, etc. I do this well. My credit score is 800.
I’m often called a “man-child” and selfish because of my choices. I’m told to “settle down,” which to me feels like a prison cell of additional responsibilities. What do you think?
— Anonymous
Anonymous: I think anyone who does not want to marry, have kids, buy a home or own pets is doing the world a favor by opting out of these things transparently. Thank you.
I also think your critics need to ask themselves why it irks them so much to see someone on a path that’s just different from theirs.
Continue Reading
CNN
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One mother in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, said her 18-year-old daughter is so obsessed with TikTok, she’ll spend hours making elaborate videos for the Likes, and will post retouched photos of herself online to look skinnier.
Another mother in the same county told CNN her 16-year-old daughter’s ex-boyfriend shared partially nude images of the teen with another Instagram user abroad via direct messages. After a failed attempt at blackmailing the family, the user posted the pictures on Instagram, according to the mother, with some partial blurring of her daughter’s body to bypass Instagram’s algorithms that ban nudity.
“I worked so hard to get the photos taken down and had people I knew from all over the world reporting it to Instagram,” the mother said.
The two mothers, who spoke with CNN on condition of anonymity, highlight the struggles parents face with the unique risks posed by social media, including the potential for online platforms to lead teens down harmful rabbit holes, compound mental health issues and enable new forms of digital harassment and bullying. But on Friday, their hometown of Bucks County became what’s believed to be the first county in the United States to file a lawsuit against social media companies, alleging TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook have worsened anxiety and depression in young people, and that the platforms are designed to “exploit for profit” their vulnerabilities.
“Like virtually everywhere in the United States now … Bucks County’s youth suffer from a high degree of distraction, depression, suicidality, and other mental disorders, caused or worsened by the overconsumption of social media on a daily basis, which substantially interferes with the rights of health and safety common to the general public,” the lawsuit alleged.
The lawsuit, which was filed in California federal court, said “the need is great” to continue to fund mental health outpatient programs, mobile crisis units, family-based mental health services, and in-school mental health programming and training to address the mental health of young people. Bucks County is seeking unspecified monetary damages to help fund these initiatives.
Bucks County is joining a small but growing number of of school districts and families who have filed lawsuits against social media companies for their alleged impact on teen mental health. The unusual legal strategy comes amid broader concerns about a mental health crisis among teens and hints at the urgency parents and educators feel to force changes in how online platforms operate at a time when legislative remedies have been slow in coming.
Seattle’s public school system, which is the largest in the state of Washington with nearly 50,000 students, and San Mateo County in California have each filed lawsuits against several Big Tech companies, claiming the platforms are harming their students’ mental health. Some families have also filed wrongful death lawsuits against tech platforms, alleging their children’s social media addiction contributed to their suicides.
“I want to hold these companies accountable,” Bucks County district attorney Matthew Weintraub told CNN. “It is no different than opioid manufacturers and distributors causing havoc among young people in our communities.”
He believes he has an actionable cause to file a lawsuit “because the companies have misrepresented the value of their products.”
“They said their platforms are not addictive, and they are; they said they are helpful and not harmful, but they are harmful,” he said. “My hope is that there will be strength in numbers and other people from around the country will join me so there will be a tipping point. I just can’t sit around and let it happen.”
In response to the lawsuit, Antigone Davis, the global head of safety for Instagram and Facebook-parent Meta, said the company continues to pour resources into ensuring its young users are safe online. She added that the platforms have more than 30 tools to support teens and families, including supervision tools that let parents limit the amount of time their teens spend on Instagram, and age-verification technology that helps teens have age-appropriate experiences.
“We’ll continue to work closely with experts, policymakers and parents on these important issues,” she said.
Google spokesperson José Castañeda said it has also “invested heavily in creating safe experiences for children across our platforms and have introduced strong protections and dedicated features to prioritize their well being.” He pointed to products such as Family Link, which provides parents with the ability to set reminders, limit screen time and block specific types of content on supervised devices.
A Snap spokesperson said it is “constantly evaluating how we continue to make our platform safer, including through new education, features and protections.”
TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
The latest lawsuit comes nearly a year and a half after executives from several social media platforms faced tough questions from lawmakers during a series of congressional hearings over how their platforms may direct younger users — particularly teenage girls — to harmful content, damaging their mental health and body image. Since then, some lawmakers have called for legislation to protect kids online, but nothing has passed at the federal level.
Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, believes it will be “difficult” for counties and school districts to win lawsuits against social media companies.
“There will be the issues of showing that the social media content was the cause of the harm that befell the children,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t file these lawsuits.”
Tobias added that increased support for government regulation that would impose more restrictions on companies could impact the outcome of these lawsuits in their favor.
“For now, there will be different judges or juries with diverse views of this around the country,” he said. “They aren’t going to win all of the cases but they might win some of them, and that might help.”
Whatever the outcome, the mother of the 16-year-old whose intimate photos were shared on Instagram is applauding the district attorney’s office for sending a strong message to social media companies.
“Before the incident with my daughter, I would not have given a lawsuit filed by the county much thought,” she said. “But now that I know how hard it was to take content down and there’s only so much people can do; corporations need to do so much more to protect its users.”
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If we are serious about addressing the alarming worsening of teens’ mental health, we must reduce their social media use.
The connection is well-established. Abundant research has linked depression and self-harm to frequency of social media use. And a new study from the American Psychological Association shows that cutting back helps teens feel better. Companies are aware of this; Facebook executive-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed that the company’s own research found that use of their platforms was linked to anxiety, depression and body image issues in teens.
Federal health data highlight why this is so crucial. In 2021, 42 percent of high school students reported feeling so sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks that they stopped doing their usual activities. The crisis is particularly pronounced in girls; nearly 3 in 5 teen girls reported persistent feelings of sadness, an increase of over 60 percent since 2011.
Indeed, social media is creating a “perfect storm” for girls, Jelena Kecmanovic, a psychotherapist and adjunct psychology professor at Georgetown University, told me. “Their tendency to be perfectionist and hard on themselves during their tween and teen years gets magnified thousands of times in the online culture of comparison,” she said.
The trouble with online interactions is also what they are replacing. A 2022 survey found that average daily screen use increased further during the pandemic and is now more than 5½ hours among children ages 8 to 12 and a whopping 8 hours and 39 minutes for teens ages 13 to 18. That’s time that previously was spent engaging in-person relationships and on healthier activities such as playing outside, sports and sleep.
Pediatrician Michael Rich, who co-founded and directs the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital, explained to me that he treats teens who “struggle with physical, mental and social health issues” from excessive social media use. He has seen straight-A students’ grades plummet and young adults struggle to forge relationships after entering college.
Given the magnitude of the problem, solving it might seem daunting for parents. Nevertheless, here are four steps they can take:
Create spaces free from screens.
Kecmanovic suggests establishing guardrails, such as taking away screens during meals and before bedtime. Parents can also limit their kids’ social media use to the shared family space, “not behind locked doors, and definitely not until 2 a.m. in their bedroom” when they should be sleeping.
Given the ubiquity of technology and its use in school curriculums, it might be hard to enforce a screen time limit. Instead, Rich advises setting a minimum time without screens. “That becomes a more practical way to offer our kids a rich and diverse menu of experiences, which can include screens but shouldn’t be dominated by them or become the default behavior,” he said.
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The media scene in Mauritius is divided in two, with a highly politicised media, including the national broadcaster, and elsewhere media outlets which can be outspoken but sometimes veer towards sensationalism, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
US-based NGO Freedom House says that the media regulatory agency lacks independence and disproportionately targets opposition media.
Under 2018 changes to the law, journalists can face prison sentences for content that causes “inconvenience, distress, or anxiety”.
Television is the most popular medium. State-owned Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) radio and TV generally reflect government thinking. MBC is funded by advertising and a TV licence fee.
Two media groups – Le Mauricien Ltd and La Sentinelle Ltd – dominate the press scene.
BBC World Service is available via a mediumwave (AM) relay (1575 kHz). Radio France Internationale is relayed on FM.
There were 919,000 internet users by December 2021, comprising 72% of the population (Internetworldstats.com).
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