This post will not be popular with a vast segment of our population but the parents of the kids who appeared before a Congressional committee on January 31st are clearly on board. These parents held up pictures of their deceased children who died at their own hands after being bullied, criticized, belittled or in some other manner psychologically damaged by various social media platforms. As Lindsey Graham put it to their CEO’s “You have blood on your hands”. To show the depth of depravity a recent story recounted by a parent told of her 14 year old daughter who was sexually assaulted by 4 students at her high school. Two of the attackers participated in the assault and two filmed it using their phones. It was then uploaded to a social media platform. The girl–feeling total humiliation–killed herself two days later. Yes, this is an isolated case but it shows what harm the social media communication process has produced, can produce and will produce–unless stopped. The CEO’s did not seem to support any parental controls. The business model is very profitable and the tech process does not currently allow for cleaning content BEFORE it’s admitted to the world view. The Committee was helpless to suggest any meaningful remedy and seemed to try to bludgeon the platforms into coming up with an effective way to police themselves to prevent further indescribable damages. Kids can be very cruel and at the teenage years level so much is internalized with gut-wrenching impact. Unfortunately, those kids at that age are the primary users of those platforms. Over a year ago we called social media “the deadliest weapons of mass destruction”. We’re sorry that even that estimation falls short of its documented-to-date destruction. Either a delayed posting (like being used on a TV delay) be used to cleanse content be installed or the whole social media craze needs to be scrapped. If we can’t control the beast, we must destroy the beast.
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