Geek Stuff category archive

Speaking of “social” media, Dr. Michael Birnbaum, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, points out that more and more young people are turning to Dr. TikTok (emphasis added):

We recently polled hundreds of teenagers who presented to the psychiatric emergency room at Northwell Health and found that nearly 65% of them listed TikTok as their primary source for mental health information, even more so than Google. While this can sound frightening, it can also represent an exciting opportunity for mental health clinicians and researchers, like me.*

(snip)

Social media-based algorithms may impact and influence help-seeking in ways that were previously impossible and unimaginable (both for the better and for the worse). As a mental health professional working with young people, who are nearly constantly connected to the Internet, my job is often to help them navigate the wealth of information available online to determine what’s good and what’s bad. A critical question for me and many others in this field is how might a person’s social media feed change or evolve as a result of their online activity and if that change can influence important decisions, like the decision to seek mental health care.

Given that “social” media companies seem to act without considering the implications of their actions and that persons seem willing to believe anything they read on a screen (and the more dubious the source, the more credence they give it), I agree with him that more research is needed. And I think his article is well worth a read in the light of the current state of dis coarse discourse.

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*Methinks he might have found a more appropriate word than “exciting.” Maybe “compelling” or “urgent.”

Afterthought:

On the railroad, we used to refer to the city in question as “Lost Wages.”

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*Too borrow a phrase from Paul Krugman.

Rebecca Watson takes an in-depth look four recent studies of the effects of the Zuckerborg’s algorithms. She discusses not only what the researchers reported, but also what limits the Zuckerborg placed on their studies and how many grains of salt you need to digest the research.

Or you can read the transcript, which includes links to various citations in the video.

Have you been assimilated by the Zuckerborg? You might be due some ducats.

And, in more news of the not so much . . . .

At Psychology Today Blogs, Patrick L. Plaisance sounds a cautionary note about chatbots and other AI tools, urging us to not make the same mistake again. A snippet:

We may well be on our way to failing the moral test posed by chatbots by ignoring the lessons of our response to the burgeoning dominance of social media that began 20 years ago.

Notwithstanding all the benefits of social media connectedness, our failure to seriously address its harms, coupled with the conceited, unrestrained culture of Silicon Valley, has arguably left us diminished in many important ways. The dark side of our digital platforms has contributed to economic disparity (Heuer, 2015), political tribalism (Bail et al., 2018), eroded concentration levels (e.g., Zhao et al., 2021), data exploitation, cyber-bullying—the list goes on.

In the light of the strikes by the screenwriters guild and SAG-AFTRA, as well as suits for copyright infringement, this is a particularly timely piece and well worth the few minutes it will take to read it.