Gen Z Is Trapped In A Virtual Cage

Authorized by Timothy S. Goeglein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

On Jan. 31, a groundbreaking proceeding was held on Capitol Hill as the CEO of 5 major social media platforms were called to investigating (three only after having to be forced by subpoena) about the alleged harm—sometimes fatal—they have inflated on America’s youth.

In this photograph illustration, a teenager uses her mobile telephone to access social media in fresh York on Jan. 31, 2024. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

For more than 4 hours, with household members in the audience who had lost children to suicide, these tech gurus tried to deflect any talk about or accept work for the alleged negative influence of their platforms.

In his fresh book, “The Anxious Generation,” social scientist and author Jonathan Haidt writes: “At the turn of the millennium, technology companies created a set of world-changing products that transformed life not just for adults but for children, too. ... Yet, the companies that developed them had done small or no investigation on the intellectual wellness effects. erstwhile faced with increasing evidence that their products were harming young people, they mostly engaged in denial, publication, and public relations campaigns.”

The consequence has placed our children in a virtual cage that has been isolated from them physically, socially, and emotionally—with small hope of escape.

Trapped in this virtual camera, girls propose massive depression as they face force to conform to certain body images, become targeted by predators, and are mocked by their peers if they choose not to participate in an online game of one-upmanship based on looks.

Mr. Haidt states: “The more time a girl spends on social media, the more likely she is to be depressed or anxious. Girls who say they spend 5 or more hours each week on social media are 3 times as likely to be depressed as those who study no social media time.”

Meanwhile, boys are sucked into a virtual planet of video games and pornography, which traps them into a planet of perpetual adolescence, with no thought of how to communicate with and treat the opposition sex in a gentlemanly manner, while besides keeping them from maturing into responsive men.

Thus, given all this, is it any wonder why the suicide and self-harm rates for adolescents (partially girls) have dramatically increased from 2010 to 2021, fundamentally from the start of the smartphone/social media platforms era to today?

Mr. Haidt Concludes: “The overwhelming feeling I get from the families of both boys and girls is that they are trapped and powerful in the face of the biggest intellectual wellness crisis in past for their children. What should they—what should we-To?“

To free our children from the virtual cage that has entered them, he suggests 4 types of response: (1) no smartphones before 14 years of age; (2) no access to social media before the age of 16; (3) banning smartphones from schools; and (4) let more unsupervised play and childrenhood independence.

But while all of these recommendations are good, they proceed to put all of the onus on parents who find themselfves standing alone against a tsunami of even more technological partners, in partial, AI, coming their way.

Smartphones are here to stay, there is no going back, so what we must do is illustration a fresh course going forward. And while we can curse the darkness of the virtual cage our children are trapped in, things will likely not change until large Tech and social media platforms are forced to change.

That is why it is critical that lawmakers act and improvement the present roadblocks that large Tech and social media platforms usage to avoid work for any harm they may have caused. Until that happens, they will proceed to give faux apologies and issue nice-sounding press releases while more children get trapped in their virtual cage.

Only then will parents be allowed with the tools to free their children from the technologically tyranny that may have lost an entry generation—and will scar more to come—unless action is taken now.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.