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by pacman1337 26 days ago
this is why science credibility is going down, what we call science is abused. This is like saying smoking has no evidence it causes harm.
1 comments

You are providing an accidental illustration of why science is under attack - because people don't like having their beliefs undermined by pesky evidence.
All evidence points out that social media has increased suicide rates in teens https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6791504/
You should learn the difference between correlation and causation, and maybe read the summary of the study you're posting:

    There is an independent association between problematic use of social media/internet and suicide attempts in young people. However, the direction of causality, if any, remains unclear. Further evaluation through longitudinal studies is needed.
Also your claim that "all evidence" points anything out is contradicted by the fact that "all evidence" is not contained within a single study, and the posted article points out that the evidence itself is in dispute.
Yeah, I'm sure surviving adolescence needs even more insecurities brought by comparing yourself to the ad-fueled fake happiness machinery that is social media, let's wait for the damage during a couple of decades so we can have conclusive data that satisfies you before we decide to do something, feels like not having enough people with terminal cancer to decide to do something about cigarettes.
That's an emotional statement, not a rational one, which kind of proves the point that what's going on here is a moral panic. As does a cursory glance at this thread. It's all heat and very little light.
The issue of having to prove things beyond any doubt before we do something is a systemic problem that science itself it's aware of about itself and have been discussed extensively in purely rational settings, how many lives would have been saved from lung cancer if academics had took more seriously the initial research about smoking?. So no I don't believe for a second you are discussing in good faith, instead it seems like you quite a clear agenda and wouldn't care much about any evidence against social media, maybe because you work at one of those corporations or just are ideologically attached to one, so in other words I believe you are the one here due an emotional response, specifically one against the backlash towards social media.
This exactly the issue. Anyone with common sense knows that social media have many negative effects, attention span, negative beliefs and ideas, addiction, etc. Just like inhaling smoke into your lungs can't be healthy right? But then comes so called scientist who say well since we thought the the universe was Euclidean but now we see it is non-Euclidean what is common sense is not common sense, there is no common sense. We need some sort of impossible proof to what was originally common sense.