I’ve been considering boycotting social media ever since a social media site prioritized free speech over my safety back in 2013. As we often do, I shrugged off the incident as an isolated event and personal failing, but since reading The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt I can no longer shake my misgivings about social media.
Thus, I’ll be boycotting all social media sites until any dedicates itself to the following…
- Increasing physical safety of users and non-users alike by taking increased action against the use of their site for organize crime and terrorism.
- Increasing mental health safety of users of their site by limiting their algorithm’s proliferation of content proven to increase anxiety, depression, and body-image distress.
- Increasing mental health safety of children by taking greater steps to ensure those under 16 do not have access to their site.