🥚

Ends on a transmascish note that isn't quite (at a character? authorial? level) able to disentangle sex and sexuality; but it's also like, yeah this dude has read a lot of pretty bad doujins.

They say that the tool works as a lens, making issues easier to see.

But it also, as I hope to illustrate, obscures some issues and differences entirely!

The authors acknowledge some of this explicitly, and, I don't think, would necessarily dismiss the others I've outlined.

In every instance, the goal is to restore 'nature' though such efforts are very narrowly construed ("more autonomous social interaction for adolescents," not "end capitalism") and assigned normative weight

They admit they can't do this later tbc! but if so, what is the utility of this work?

It can easily figure out how neuroticism might make one more susceptible to anxiety from public social media configurations, but can't really get to articulating how someone might use lower richness or asynchronicity to navigate sensory overload from in-person social dynamics.

That is, it easily theorizes a child who is unable to access in-person friends using online spaces to cope; but struggles to articulate a child for whom in-person ('natural') social circumstances are an agony in and of themselves.

tbc, the article does talk a little about individual differences and differential susceptibility here.

Rather, the evolutionary logic leads to somewhat undertheorizing both online and offline spaces and environments when it comes to making recommendations.

This is a longwinded way of saying that, if your thinking around childhood and mental health can't easily and naturally imagine the weird tumblr blogs, livejournals or forums that a kid at the margins might use to build themselves, then anything coming from it is very likely to harm that kid.

The problem is not just making a better model of a child. Evolutionary thinking, then serves less as a tool for insight and more a way of justifying a particular ideological construction that's more sophisticated in some ways than some; but still runs into the same problems very quickly.

This is, I think, the same fundamental problem of Haidt et al.'s work, as well as the rising censorious legislation we're seeing.

It's a way of thinking that relies on envisioning a (hegemonic) normative model of a child and approaching solutions through the lens of what would help that kid.

When, in practice, it was fairly easy as a teen (and today as well) to find places that did not rely on voice, where misogynists and racists, weren't actually welcome, or to find helpful homophily in very novel ways.

In-person, that would be largely out of a child's control.

Instead, we must work through a lens that centers difference, of people; spaces and needs.

Indeed, the paper starts by (rightly) critiquing the focus on specific channels and platforms over a communication-centered approach. But online spaces are treated as essentially homogenous here.

Gendered harassment is something I went online to, mostly, successfully escape as a trans teen who lacked the words to describe myself or my discomfort with my in-person environment.

Yes, *some places* rely on voice and *some of them* have a tremendous amount of bigotry enabled by that. But...

In practice, sexual harassment and racism are quite common, and *worse,* in person.

More, envisioning a pre-misogynistic past is less revisiting actually existed societies and more imagining a platonic pre-industrial utopia. At bare minimum it wouldn't change how interventions work now.

The two examples, then, deal with things in a very idealized sense.

For instance, the paper rightly notes that CMC environments have a lot of harassment, and that these are often racist and misogynistic. And yes, that's true, but it's not undifferentiated.

But...

That is, “natural” order has always had its left-behinds and a theory of the mixed effects of tech needs to be able to understand why they provide very unique affordances to e.g., queer or neurodivergent youth that simply cannot be addressed with the same resolutions.

Magic Knight Rayearth just has the mechs as mid-season upgrades.