Latest news with #JonathanHaidt
Fox News
3 days ago
- General
- Fox News
The Anxious Generation
Martha revisits her conversation with social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt discussing his book, 'The Anxious Generation.' He explains the unique childhood experience for Gen Z growing up surrounded by electronic devices. Jonathan details how the prevalence of smartphones and social media platforms during such a transformative time for young folks has spurred a mental health epidemic and gives advice to parents on how to help their children weather the dangers of the internet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
Scoop
5 days ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Increasing Support For Social Media Ban
Press Release – Family First New Zealand Support for a social media ban has grown from 39% support to 56% support in just over 12 months. Opposition has dropped form 45% to 26%. In both polls, 16-18% are uncertain. Family First has long advocated for better regulation of social media … A new poll has found increasing support for a ban on social media for children under 16, and decreasing opposition. In a poll by Curia Market Research and commissioned by Family First NZ, 1,000 respondents were asked: Would you support or oppose a law that bans children from all social media until they reach 16 years of age? 56% of respondents support banning children under 16 from social media, and 26% are opposed. A similar poll with the same wording by the same research company in April 2024 found opposition at 45% and support at just 39%. Support for a social media ban has grown from 39% support to 56% support in just over 12 months. Opposition has dropped form 45% to 26%. In both polls, 16-18% are uncertain. Those with dependent children were more likely to support the ban (62%) than those without dependent children (53%). Interestingly, when comparing the two polls, net support for a ban has risen amongst National, Labour and Green voters. Family First has long advocated for better regulation of social media and support for parents so as to protect young people. 'First and foremost, there needs to be a community response where parents unite to ensure their young children are not exposed to social media, but there is also room for government support to empower parents,' says Mr McCoskrie. Dr Jonathan Haidt – author of ' The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness ' – notes in his acclaimed research that there is a clear correlation between the introduction of smart phones and a significant decline in young people's mental health. (Dr Haidt was a guest at last year's Forum on the Family and he called on New Zealand and other countries to do more to protect young people from the harms online.) 'This is an important discussion which should not be delayed any further.' The nationwide poll was carried out between 19 May and 21 May and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1%.
Scoop
5 days ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Increasing Support For Social Media Ban
A new poll has found increasing support for a ban on social media for children under 16, and decreasing opposition. In a poll by Curia Market Research and commissioned by Family First NZ, 1,000 respondents were asked: Would you support or oppose a law that bans children from all social media until they reach 16 years of age? 56% of respondents support banning children under 16 from social media, and 26% are opposed. A similar poll with the same wording by the same research company in April 2024 found opposition at 45% and support at just 39%. Support for a social media ban has grown from 39% support to 56% support in just over 12 months. Opposition has dropped form 45% to 26%. In both polls, 16-18% are uncertain. Those with dependent children were more likely to support the ban (62%) than those without dependent children (53%). Interestingly, when comparing the two polls, net support for a ban has risen amongst National, Labour and Green voters. Family First has long advocated for better regulation of social media and support for parents so as to protect young people. 'First and foremost, there needs to be a community response where parents unite to ensure their young children are not exposed to social media, but there is also room for government support to empower parents,' says Mr McCoskrie. Dr Jonathan Haidt - author of ' The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness ' - notes in his acclaimed research that there is a clear correlation between the introduction of smart phones and a significant decline in young people's mental health. (Dr Haidt was a guest at last year's Forum on the Family and he called on New Zealand and other countries to do more to protect young people from the harms online.) 'This is an important discussion which should not be delayed any further.' The nationwide poll was carried out between 19 May and 21 May and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1%.
Daily Tribune
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Tribune
Hugh Grant calls for tech ban in schools
Bang Showbiz | Los Angeles Hugh Grant has blasted 'pathetic' schools and called for a ban on laptops and tablets in the classroom. The father-of-five joined the campaign group Close Screens, Open Minds at an event at a school in west London, where he aired his frustrations alongside social psychologist Dr Jonathan Haidt and actress Sophie Winkleman. According to The Telegraph newspaper, Grant described himself as 'another angry parent fighting the eternal, exhausting and depressive battle with children who only want to be on a screen'. He went on: 'The final straw was when the school started saying, with some smugness, we give every child a Chromebook, and they do a lot of lessons on their Chromebook, and they do all their homework on their Chromebook, and you just thought that is the last thing they need, and the last thing we need.'
News18
7 days ago
- Politics
- News18
Trending Now: Outrage As The Biggest Policy Driver
Last Updated: A government by Twitter trending topic is, essentially, government by whim and spectacle In today's attention-fractured society, policymaking is increasingly happening in the glare of trending hashtags and viral posts rather than in sober committee rooms. The global political arena has become a Twitter timeline and an Instagram feed, where the clamorous buzz of social media drowns out every sincere deliberation. Across the world, leaders now scramble to respond to whatever is 'trending" that morning. Indeed, 'the power of a viral post, tweet or video can shift public opinion, drive movements and even shape policies". This dynamic is warping priorities and turning governance into reactive performance theatre guided more by optics than substance. Nuanced debates or long-term strategies do not set the agenda; instead, policies are increasingly decided by the viral mood of the nation. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt observes that social media has morphed into an 'outrage machine," spreading anger and toxicity — a machine that policymakers feel compelled to ride. The result? A shallow, short-attention-span approach to governing that prizes retweets, reposts over reason, and clicks over consensus, eroding the foundations of democratic decision-making. Shifting it to a social media mob that moves from outrage to outrage. Trending Hashtags Set the Agenda In an era of Twitter storms and Google trends, what gets attention dictates what gets acted upon. Elected officials and bureaucrats monitor social media as closely as opinion polls, ever wary of becoming the next target of an online uproar. In many democracies, a single viral hashtag can catapult an issue from obscurity to urgency overnight. A case in point: when the #MeToo movement swept across the U.S., India, and beyond, it didn't just raise awareness — it forced tangible responses. Bollywood moguls, politicians, and corporate leaders faced consequences as allegations surfaced in India's #MeToo wave, leading to resignations and even new workplace policies. A hashtag can indeed spark action. Yet, policies don't always change just because a hashtag went viral. Without real-world follow-through, online outrage risks becoming mere 'slacktivism" — feel-good clicking without impact. Tech critic Evgeny Morozov famously warned that 'slacktivism is… dedicated activists' energy wasted on approaches less effective than the alternatives". In other words, viral moments can be a catalyst, but they are no substitute for the grind of actual policymaking. Nonetheless, governments can hardly ignore the sway of social media fury. A Twitter-driven movement distorted public policy in India during the 2020-21 farmers' protests. When foreign influencers pushed the farmers' grievances, with hashtags like #FarmersProtest trending worldwide, distorting the voices on the ground. A small set of farmers supported by Canadian and American lobbyists used live updates on Facebook and Instagram to go viral on social media platforms and were helped by global celebrity activists like Rihanna and Greta Thunberg, who pushed the agenda of global lobbyists. A social media mob pressured the government to repeal the farm laws, a stunning example of sustained global activism bringing down a reform process. Policymaking as Theatrical Performance Policy debates these days feel less like deliberations and more like theatre on a social media stage. In many countries, leaders have effectively become social media influencers, measuring success in likes, shares, and trend metrics. They craft pronouncements for maximum viral impact, tailoring soundbites to fit a 280-character tweet or a 15-second video. Governance is becoming a performance art. No one epitomised this public policy via social media better than former reality TV star and now U.S. President Donald Trump, who has his own social media platform, Truth Social, where he has converted the Oval Office into a video studio. Where the signing of every Executive Order is televised, and he even uses video to castigate and cow down foreign heads of state, as was seen in his interaction with Ukraine's President Zelenskyy and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The Death of Nuance in Digital Debate Perhaps the most tragic casualty of social media's policy dominance is nuance. Complex societal challenges — climate change, immigration, economic hollowing out — do not lend themselves to simplistic solutions, yet online platforms force simplification. Twitter's character limit and Instagram's blink-and-you-miss-it videos reward brevity and bombast, not depth. As a result, policy discourse gets dumbed down into slogans and soundbites, stripped of context and complexity. Researchers note that the very 'format of these platforms, characterised by brevity and visual punch, encourages bite-sized pieces of information, which are often oversimplified or sensationalized". In short, social media 'distort[s] complex… issues, reducing them to digestible narratives that may not capture the nuance of real-world politics." We see this play out daily. Online, a climate bill might get tagged as #GreenNewSteal or #ClimateHoax, labels that spread widely but shed little light. A nuanced policy proposal – a mixed approach to energy transition – is a tough sell when your opponent posts a viral 10-word rebuttal that frames it as an apocalypse or a utopia. Grey areas turn black-and-white on social media. There is little incentive to acknowledge trade-offs or uncertainties in a tweet when doing so will only dilute your message and cost you precious engagement. Consequently, policy arguments become simplistic morality plays: good vs evil, patriots vs traitors, nationalists vs anti-nationals, with no room for the painstaking work of consensus-building or the admission of shades of grey. This erosion of nuance is compounded by the rise of rapid-response punditry on apps like Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp. In the past, a significant policy idea would be analysed by experts over time; now it is instant fodder for thousands of amateur commentators within minutes. The moment a new policy idea or court case hits the news, an army of self-appointed experts on social media begins opining – often without reading beyond the headline. Accuracy sometimes takes a backseat in the race to get information out quickly. The first casualty is truth: misinformation and half-truths proliferate long before any fact-check can be issued. Studies show that initial false claims consistently outperform later corrections in reach and longevity on social platforms. By the time cooler heads attempt to clarify, the false narrative has hardened into received wisdom for a large swath of the public. The WhatsApp 'University" effect exemplifies this problem. In India, WhatsApp group chats have become wildfire channels for propaganda, rumour, and lore — a parallel information universe where everyone is a professor and facts are often optional. Justice K.V. Viswanathan famously cautioned citizens, warning, 'We should not get carried away by such messages. A lot of truth decay is happening." When a nation's highest jurist laments 'truth decay," it underscores how badly nuanced, factual discourse has eroded. The judge's phrase is chillingly apt: truth itself is rotting away in our policy debates, as social media rewards whoever shouts the loudest, regardless of accuracy. Jonathan Haidt observed that Americans 'are cut off from one another and the past… unable to recognise the same truth" in this fractured digital landscape. In such a climate, forging nuanced policy—or even agreeing on basic facts—becomes nearly impossible. From Outrage to Action — and Back Again Around the world, the loop between social media outrage and policymaker reaction has become almost instantaneous – and perilous. Public officials now feel they must respond to viral sentiment immediately, lest they appear out of touch or unresponsive. This often leads to policy knee-jerks: hurried bans, sudden U-turns, or symbolic gestures drafted on the fly to placate the online masses. When a horrifying video of police brutality trends in America, city councils rush to propose police reform bills – some thoughtful, others performative – within days. When outraged tweets accused a Brazilian official of corruption, investigations were announced by that afternoon, guilt or innocence aside. The timeline of deliberation has collapsed to match the Twitter news cycle. The problem is that governing by viral outrage is not governance at all – it's crisis management as a permanent state of affairs. It prizes immediacy over effectiveness and urgency over importance. Consider the cycle: a shocking incident occurs, social media explodes with anger and demands, officials scramble to appease the anger, a hastily crafted policy patch is thrown over the problem, and the online crowd moves on to the next outrage. Little attention is given to follow-through or long-term consequences; what mattered was projecting the appearance of decisive action in the moment. The tail wags the dog: policy becomes a popularity contest, with leaders pandering to their most vocal online constituencies and demonizing the rest. This dynamic is corrosive to democracy. Tristan Harris, a former Silicon Valley insider turned critic, has warned that today's attention economy profits from stoking division and knee-jerk reactions. 'Tech companies are distracting, dividing, and outraging citizens to the point where there is little basis for common ground. This is a direct threat to democracy," Harris says bluntly. When every policy debate gets reduced to a flame war between tribes in their respective echo chambers, the space for compromise or evidence-based discussion disappears. The political centre erodes, while extremes thrive on the algorithmic amplifiers that reward emotional, divisive content. Harris's point about loss of common ground is key: effective policymaking requires shared reality and mutual trust in institutions or facts. Social media, however, often delivers the opposite: a Babel of clashing narratives where each faction lives in its own 'truth." While two-thirds of Americans believe social media has generally been bad for democracy, they still return to it for information and news. Meanwhile, those tasked with making policy face an unenviable dilemma. Do they engage in the social media fray, trying to correct falsehoods and inject nuance, at risk of being drowned out or dragged into endless online spats? Or do they ignore the social media universe and risk seeming aloof and unresponsive to public sentiment? Increasingly, officials choose to engage, but on social media's terms, simplifying their messages and hardening their rhetoric to fit the medium. It's a devil's bargain: to be heard, they must play the outrage game, further degrading the quality of discourse. Academic research terms this phenomenon 'discursive governance," where leadership is exercised through controlling narratives and symbols in media space rather than through institutional processes. In practice, it often means governing by tweets and trends, instead of by research, discussion, and consensus. The consequence is a policymaking sphere that is loud but hollow. We see flurries of proclamations, ideological posturing, and viral campaigns, yet far less substantive progress on the underlying issues. Big problems like climate change or inequality require sustained, detailed effort — slow, coalition-building work that doesn't 'go viral." But in our current climate, patience is in short supply. As soon as the trending hashtag shifts, political attention shifts with it. Social media activism 'suffers from short-lived attention spans… Outrage lasts only as long as the issue is trending," one analysis observed, noting how many Indian online campaigns (#JusticeForX victim, etc.) flared brightly and then fizzled out, leaving little real change. Outrage is fleeting; real reform is plodding. The two operate on incompatible timelines. The New (Anti)Social Contract if we want sound policies, we must restore some filter of reason and reality to our public discourse. Likewise, Jonathan Haidt has argued that we need to reform social platforms to dampen their most destructive features – slowing virality, discouraging anonymous trolling, promoting context – to give society a chance to think before it reacts. Without such changes, Haidt suggests, our key institutions will continue to get 'structurally stupid." When dissenting voices are drowned out and everyone plays to their tribe, 'the institution gets structurally stupid. It cannot do smart things," he warns. This is as true of a legislature or a news organization as it is of a university or a company. A democracy constantly reacting to Twitter meltdowns cannot govern wisely or well. At the same time, citizens must shoulder responsibility for breaking the cycle of performative outrage. The temptation to treat politics as just another form of entertainment – a high-stakes reality show on our feeds – is powerful. It's easy to join the pile-on of the day, harder to do the homework on policy details, or hold leaders accountable beyond the hashtag lifespan. But if voters reward only the politicians who produce social media fireworks, then fireworks are all we'll get. The informed, nuanced engagement that democracy needs can't be crowdsourced to meme-makers and Insta-influencers. It requires real participation: reading, listening, questioning – and yes, sometimes logging off to reflect rather than react. Ultimately, the distortion of policymaking by social media frenzy is a self-inflicted wound that we have to heal as a society through policy for social media. This does not mean jettisoning social media entirely from the public sphere; these platforms have democratizing potential, giving voice to the voiceless and spotlighting issues that old gatekeepers often ignored. But as currently optimized, the system tilts dangerously toward spectacle over solution, heat over light. Policymaking cannot survive as a perpetual popularity contest in the court of public opinion without losing its rigor and legitimacy. In the long run, societies will have to renegotiate the balance between the immediate demands of the crowd and the long-term needs of governance. The noisy digital town square is now a fixture of our democracies – but it must not become their master. Suppose we fail to restore deliberation, expertise, and nuance to their rightful place. In that case, we risk a future in which policies sway like a weathervane with every viral gust, and serious problems go unaddressed beneath the din. top videos View all A government by Twitter trending topic is, essentially, government by whim and spectacle. That may generate plenty of clicks and headlines, but it is no way to run a country. One observer poignantly noted that 'outrage lasts only as long as it's trending"— but the consequences of hollow policymaking will last forever. Our task now is to rebuild a political culture that values facts over flash, and substance over stunt, before the foundations of democratic governance crumble in the cacophony. K Yatish Rajawat is a public policy researcher and works at the Gurgaon-based think and do tank Centre for Innovation in Public Policy (CIPP). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views. Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: May 26, 2025, 19:10 IST News opinion Opinion | Trending Now: Outrage As The Biggest Policy Driver
