> But I feel the exact same about cheeseburgers.

The problem with analogies to things like cheeseburgers, gambling, drugs, cigarettes, etc., is:

1. Availability -- you have to go somewhere to acquire/participate in these things*

2. Cost -- you have to have money to spend. That is, it's not something you can consume/participate in for free -- you have to have money to spend.

* Gambling is theoretically freely available via gambling apps. But still comes at a cost.

With social media, anybody can do it for unlimited amounts of time, and for free. All you need is a phone/laptop/desktop with internet access -- which nearly every person on the planet has.

Addiction + Free + Widely available = Destruction

To add, McDonalds is required to list calories and nutritional information. There are various agencies and regulations guarding us from them selling us rat meat instead of cow. Education on “junk food” is widespread and has (had…) widespread government education programs.

There is a great deal of information given to parents on what is in McDonalds.

I would say that most parents, not those on a tech site, have no idea how tiktok works, what studies have shown about it or its dangers.

I think the line is the same as vapes/cigarettes. It's less about the product itself and more how its advertised and marketed. Internal memos from Meta are pretty damning in that they know they're actively harming kids and not adjusting their product for harm reduction. I imagine TikTok has the same problem, prompting them to settle out early.

You're getting some mild heat in sibling comments here. Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation goes into a lot of detail on this exact point about parental responsibility.

There are others that touch on personal vs. societal responsibility too and the difficulties with parental/personal moderation and change (Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke off the top of my head).

There is an enormous amount of nuance that goes into answering your questions and addressing your assumptions that HN is probably not a great medium for, if you're serious about understanding the answers.

> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

If McDonald’s is handing them out for free at the playground, yes.

The evidence doesn’t seem to support your claim that cheeseburgers are as addicting as social media.

Maybe if you had picked gambling or alcohol…

China imposes strong restrictions on the Chinese version of TikTok, see here:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069527/china-ti...

Excerpts: Douyin [Chinese version of TikTok] introduced in-app parental controls, banned underage users from appearing in livestreams, and released a “teenager mode” that only shows whitelisted content, much like YouTube Kids. In 2019, Douyin limited users in teenager mode to 40 minutes per day, accessible only between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Then, in 2021, it made the use of teenager mode mandatory for users under 14.

My personal vice is junk food. I wish they banned junk food. I'm not sure how the law would work but it would be objectively better for me as a human if they did.

(This is completely disregarding how practical such a ban would be)

Food and nutritional science is something many of us know (to a degree) and has been taught often in high schools. That is partly why you know that cheeseburgers aren't great for you, because you know they're highly processed, high in salt and high in fat and that's written on the label.

But the knowledge of the harmful impacts of social media aren't as abundant, nor are they identified or classified.

McDonalds are required to list the nutritional information of what you're consuming. TV shows and movies have content ratings to know what you're going to be consuming. Social media like Tiktok does not have any form of rating to know what you're consuming or going to consume.

There is a lot of less rigour on short from content like Tiktok, in comparison with McDonalds.

>Should I be able to sue McDonald's if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

If RJ Reynolds was handing out free cigarettes to children, even though the parent either consented to this or simply didn't know about it, would you consider RJ Reynolds' responsible for the adverse effects of children smoking?

The difference between social media and cheeseburgers here is that I don't NEED to physically go to McDonald's to find out if a business is closed or learn more about their work. (The number of businesses that only post operational updates, specials or samples of their work on Instagram is staggering. Google Maps isn't trustworthy; websites DEFINITELY aren't trustworthy either.)

> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

There are other options for addressing social problems besides lawsuits. Other rich places in this world are not nearly as fat as us. I suspect environments also matter for social media addiction. We should investigate why!

Yes, you should be able to recover damages from McDonald's if they made their food addictive on purpose.

> I just don't really know where the line

It is developed to be as addictive like a drug, but it’s not even fun. Just stupid mind numbing content.gambling does the same thing, and many jurisdictions have outlawed it for minors.

> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

Should you be able to sue a liquor store if they sell your kid a fifth of vodka?

it was sold so israel could have more control over the narratives visible. nothing to do with any real safety concerns

The thing I really liked about Tiktok originally was the departure from the perfectionism of Instagram, and people being ok with participating in the dance moves and trends. It was pretty positive. The thing is once you have an engaged audience sometimes you might want to keep them captivated (and their attention farmed to resell ads to).

With that being said, I don't know if McDonalds is not a really usable comparison.

McDonalds is not an endless conveyor belt of food arriving in your hands 24/7 and beeping and buzzing you when it's not to learning how and what to put in front of you to keep eating endlessly until you can't eat anymore.

There's more useful studies that doomscrolling and shorts literally decrease brain size, increase depression, and lead to dopamine exhaustion.

Short Video players are digital slot machines. They seem to be designed to let people keep using it who might not be aware on how to build up defences, or of defences are needed. In a casino many of the things the games machines can and can't do are legislated by law. It might be surprising to learn how many of those things out right, similar to it, or unique to it can happen on a phone without circumstance. Casinos will also remind you to gamble responsibly, and be able to ban yourself if needed.

The line is really simple for kids - screens loaded with bright colors that are constantly changing with many layers of sounds from ages 1-5 pretty harmful at overriding their senses. Then, there's other content traps from there. The recent moves to schools that go screen free (or greatly reduce passive consumption) is critical. Putting a chromebook in front of a kid for 8 hours isn't always progress.

The US has executed people in international waters over the claim of fentanyl being trafficked into the country. Is Insta and TikTok as addictive as fentanyl? If so, does it warrant a similar response? I think a cheeseburger is not an equivalent analogy. Singapore also executes drug traffickers, for what it’s worth.

https://www.techpolicy.press/is-tiktok-digital-fentanyl/

https://www.foxnews.com/media/tiktok-is-chinas-digital-fenta...

> Certainly, some regard social media generally as addictive, and reckon TikTok is a particularly potent format. Anna Lembke, Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, and author of the book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance In The Age of Abundance, referred to Tiktok as a "potent and addictive digital drug":

> I can’t speak to the surveillance piece mentioned in the article, but I can attest to the addictive nature of TikTok and other similar digital media. The human brain is wired to pay attention to novelty. One of the ways our brain gets us to pay attention to novel stimuli is by releasing dopamine, a reward neurotransmitter, in a part of the brain called the reward pathway. What TikTok does is combine a moving image, already highly reinforcing to the human brain, with the novelty of a very short video clip, to create a potent and addictive digital drug.

I'm trying to read this with the best of intentions, but you're saying you really can not tell the difference social media and a cheeseburger in terms of access, addiction, and damage?

Cheeseburgers did not come about with the intent to poison. Social media is deliberately weaponized.

> Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?

Should you be able to sue McDonald's if they delivered you unlimited cheeseburgers for free, said nothing of the dangers, and even encouraged you to eat more, and then you became obese/sick from it? Sure, it may have been your choice to accept/eat them, but you did so uninformed, and based on false premises, and the risks were hidden from you, or even explicitly downplayed.

That's what social media is. It's free delivery of unlimited cheeseburgers, but for your brain.

In the above example, you were tempted with something that seemed good, but that carried great risks, to generate business for another who knew of the risks, but either didn't tell you, or even lied to you. When the risks backfire on you -- the risks they knew about from the very start -- or even have already been backfiring on you for a while, I think it's absolutely fair to blame that business for knowingly tempting you into it, and that it's also absolutely fair to seek damages. Proving those damages is another matter, but I think it's absolutely fair to try.

Tech companies know exactly what they are doing. They deliberately sell crack to kids- some of the people who make money from it are here on HN so good luck with getting any honest discussion.

"Again, I get the danger here..."

Haha, wtf. You don't.