This week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in a high-stakes trial accusing his company and YouTube of harming children's mental health. Are social media platforms addictive? I talked to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt:

@JonHaidt Spoiler alert 🚨 They are and Zuck & co have known about it for years.

@JonHaidt No doubt! If adults are addictive to it, there's no doubt children are :(

@JonHaidt https: - 350+ peer-reviewed research studies documenting harms resulting from the use of online platforms.

@JonHaidt Social media is addictive for adults now imagine the children. On has to purpose to not be online most times

@JonHaidt They’re addictive and were created to maximize engagement and dopamine “feeding”. Master manipulation at the expense of mostly kids. Truly criminal at this point.

@JonHaidt That is what companies do: They try to get consumers to use their products as much as possible. It´s no crime. I understand the concerns but then this has to be addressed by regulation. We don´t blame the producer of alcohol for the adiction because of good flavour or promotion

@JonHaidt

@JonHaidt #DeleteX #DeleteMeta #JoinSocyy

@JonHaidt This is getting fucking weird....

@JonHaidt Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. But one thing for sure, not too long ago, you definitely didn’t have a boatload of experts lining up to appear on either mainstream or social medial to talk about this … win some lose some …

@JonHaidt I find this interesting maybe it explains why he going after Mark Zuckerberg because Mark helping track down the people on the list

@JonHaidt I am a grandfather of 6 boys and One granddaughter. I worries me greatly that their generation spends less time in outdoor sports, quite reading books or other educational material. The time spent watching cell phones and internet leads to introvert, socially deficient individual

@JonHaidt not merely corelational...before listening to him i tht o brother sue candy makers vc tr kid has a toothache gmeab...but addictive nature knowledge seems whoa

@JonHaidt We don't know the details of Meta's experiment (they are not available on the website), and other experiments suggest that the causal effect is very small, explaining ~1% of the problem

@JonHaidt Have you experienced sitting on a dinner table where each one is inmerced in a cell? phone with little interactions among them?

@JonHaidt Ground yourself in the present moment, release what you cannot control. 🌿

@JonHaidt

@JonHaidt

@JonHaidt But is that Zuckerbergs fault? I'm pretty sure that was not his intent.

@JonHaidt What goes around comes around

@JonHaidt I’m an app parents can use to block apps on their kid’s phone. Coming to iOS soon.

@JonHaidt About time you started talking with non-lefties