Created Equal: Can tech regulation solve mental health issues?
Congress members in February collected enough signatures in the U.S. Senate to pass a bipartisan bill that would regulate social media use for kids.
It is already difficult to track what kids are doing online these days, but now, Congress is in the process of trying to regulate it.
Congress members in February collected enough signatures in the U.S. Senate to pass a bipartisan bill that would regulate social media use for kids. They argue the platforms could be bad for teen’s mental health.
According to a longitudinal survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a growing percentage of teenage students are feeling hopeless. Danah Boyd, a Microsoft researcher and visiting professor at Georgetown, believes technology is not the real problem and that regulating social media could do more harm than good.
Boyd joined Stephen Henderson on Created Equal Monday to explore how society has responded throughout history to new technologies and discuss why Boyd believes the real problem isn’t our phone screens.
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Guest:
Danah Boyd is a technology researcher at Microsoft Research. She says we often paint the internet with a broad brush, when in reality its benefits and risks are much more nuanced.
“One of the things we end up doing with the internet is we put it into a polarity, right, ‘it’s all good, it’s all bad.’ That’s not true. It’s messy, it’s mixed,” she said.
Listen to Created Equal with host Stephen Henderson weekdays from 9-10 a.m. ET on 101.9 WDET and streaming on-demand.
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