THE world is waking up to the fact that social media is the tobacco of our time.
All-pervasive. Addictive. Toxic. And this stuff can kill you.
The world is waking up to the fact that social media is toxic and damaging – especially for young people Credit: Getty
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has agreed to pay up to £13billion to settle claims brought by 29 US states Credit: Reuters
In a landmark legal case in the US, Meta — the owner of Instagram and Facebook — has agreed to pay up to £13billion to settle claims brought by 29 US states that its platforms harmed children.
While denying all wrongdoing, Meta promised to make major safety changes.
Instagram and Facebook will impose daily usage limits, restrict the night-time access of children and enhance measures to stop kids viewing harmful content — while calling on rivals TikTok and YouTube to implement similar measures.
“We want to get this right for parents and teens,” said a Meta spokesman.
Making social media safer for our children is a noble goal.
But how safe can it ever really be?
It feels like big tech just had its big tobacco moment.
In 1950, an article published in the British Medical Journal linked smoking to heart disease and lung cancer for the first time.
Nearly 50 years later, in 1998, the four largest US tobacco companies reached a massive £150billion settlement with 46 US states for tobacco-related healthcare costs.
In 1998, my father had been dead from smoking-related lung cancer for 11 years and my mum was dying from it.
My parents grew up in an age when smoking was considered sophisticated, cool — even healthy. In the middle of the last century, the tobacco giants actually had men in white coats lying that their product was positively good for you.
“Give your throat a vacation,” sighed one Camel campaign. “Smoke a FRESH cigarette.”
My father and mother both gave up smoking years before they died. But it still killed them — and many of their generation.
Now there is a new poison on the market.
What nobody yet knows is what social media is doing to the mental health of the youths who are growing up with it.
The US states who brought legal action against Meta — whose CEO is Mark Zuckerberg — claimed it used its platforms to “entice, engage and ultimately ensnare youth and teens” while ignoring the damage it did to “the mental and physical wellbeing of America’s youth”.
In Australia, they have gone further than anywhere else in restricting the use of social media among children.
Australia’s social media ban for under-16s came into effect in December last year, with tech giants facing fines of up to £26million for failing to block children’s accounts.
Instagram and Facebook will impose daily usage limits to restrict the night-time access of children in the US Credit: Getty
Australia has banned access to social media for all under-16s, but the policy is tough to enforce Credit: Getty
But despite the ban, social media use is on the RISE among Aussie under-16s.
It has become the equivalent of a sneaky fag behind the bike shed — something the cool kids do.
There is a mental health crisis among our young but the final bill for the generations growing up with social media will not be known for decades.
The recent spate of “joyriding” — such a wretched misnomer — is enabled, encouraged and urged on by social media platforms. “Joyriding” clips would simply not be happening if cretins were not chasing the fleeting fame of clicks.
Lives are being lost, or ruined forever, because some pathetic little bastard in a balaclava (“no face, no case”) is chasing likes on TikTok.
“You rag a car, annoy the cops and get loads of people watching on TikTok,” one thicko told this newspaper. “I’ve got 700 followers.”
All this human misery — for 700 followers on TikTok!
The toothless Online Safety Act ostensibly exists to require tech companies and social media platforms to protect their users from harmful content.
It is simply not working. After The Jattvibe’s investigation into joyriding, TikTok removed content glorifying dangerous driving.
It hardly needs to be said that these social media platforms should not need policing by newspapers.
They PROFIT from harmful content. It should not have to be taken down — because it should not be on there in the first place.
As we learn from Australia, getting our kids to kick the habit will be no easier than it was to get my dad to quit his Old Holborn roll-ups, or for my mum to ditch her Silk Cut.
And as we just learned from the courts of America, social media companies must eventually face the same legal — and moral — reckoning that the cigarette giants finally faced.
Their product can destroy lives.
So when these mega-rich corporations profit from harmful content, we must hit them in the only place they will ever care about — the bottom line.
Because ultimately, they feel the same way about your children as the tobacco companies felt about my parents.
They don’t give a damn.
KEEP KILLERS CAGED
A petition to prevent the early release of two of PC Andrew Harper’s killers has now passed one million signatures Credit: PA
Labour plans to tweak their widely despised Early Release Scheme legislation to keep Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole locked up Credit: PA
A PETITION to prevent the early release of two of PC Andrew Harper’s killers has now passed one million signatures.
No government can ever ignore that kind of public outcry.
Police chiefs have reportedly been told that Labour plans to tweak their widely despised Early Release Scheme legislation to keep Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole locked up.
This pair of smirking toerags have displayed not a shred of remorse.
They were sentenced to 13 years for manslaughter.
And under Labour’s Early Release Scheme, they are STILL due to be released after just six-and-a-half years.
May I respectfully suggest that Justice Secretary Alex Norris pull his finger out?
Keeping these cretins caged for the full length of their sentence feels like the very least our Government can do.
You could lock them up for a lifetime, and they would still be getting off lightly for taking the life of PC Harper.
The Shards co-stars Homer Gere and Kaia Gerber were spotted watching Roger Federer play in New York Credit: Splash
ALL eyes are on the young co-stars of glossy thriller, The Shards.Homer Gere and Kaia Gerber looked gorgeous on the cover of Vogue.
They looked lovely watching Roger Federer play in New York.
And I have no doubt at all that they look fabulous in The Shards.But why does the world care?
Because Homer’s dad is Richard Gere and Kaia’s mum is Cindy Crawford, and their parents were once a hot item.
And because nepotism increasingly makes the modern world go round.
SYD’S STAR FALLEN
There was something not quite right with Sydney Sweeney’s Wonder Woman costume Credit: instagram/sydneysweeney
SYDNEY SWEENEY squeezes into a Wonder Woman costume – yet something feels not quite right.
The obvious difference between Sydney as the Seventies superhero and Linda Carter’s original Wonder Woman is, of course, that Sweeney is a blonde and Carter was a brunette.
But it is more than that.
Wonder Woman lasso? Check.
Wonder Woman tiara with red star? Check.
Then what about that weird midriff area – the gold cosmic cummer-bund linking the top half of the outfit to the bottom half?
But no – Linda Carter wore exactly the same thing, although her gold was of a much brighter and shinier hue.
Linda Carter was the original Wonder Woman – and had far more stars on her pants Credit: Alamy
Then it clicked – it is Sydney’s Wonder Woman pants that are so jarring.Or rather, the stars on Sydney’s pants.
There are not nearly enough of them.
Wonder Woman’s pants were emblazoned with stars beyond counting – an entire Milky Way of stars.
And Sydney Sweeney has only a handful of white stars on her blue Wonder Woman knickers.
But then I finally realised what was REALLY troubling me.
Fifty years after the Seventies, I can still vividly recall exactly what Wonder Woman was wearing.
THE King and Queen announce they are going on an autumn tour of the Caribbean on the very same day that a private jet flies Harry and Meghan back to the UK.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are back!
And Charles and Camilla are off!
I am sure it is just a coincidence.
DOLLY CHANGED THE WORLD WITH KINDNESS
Dolly Parton was a wonderful woman as well as an incredible songwriter and performer Credit: Camera Press
DOLLY Parton was a one-woman Lennon and McCartney.
The country music legend, who has died at the age of 80, was also a film star, a consummate performer, a literacy advocate and a pretty good stand-up comedian.
“I have small feet,” Dolly liked to quip, smiling above her globally famous decolletage. “Because nothing grows in the shade.”
But above all, this fabulous woman was a songwriter.
Legend has it she wrote I Will Always Love You – a strong contender for the greatest love song ever written – on the SAME DAY she wrote Jolene, probably the best song ever written about sexual jealousy.
Dolly demurred at the legend, because both classic songs were written during the same creative burst in 1973.
And she had no need to big herself up.
Her mentor in Nashville was country legend Porter Wagoner, who inspired I Will Always Love You. Made famous by Whitney Houston and embraced by millions as the ultimate hymn to romantic heartbreak, the song was actually about Dolly’s professional split from Porter.
She may have been as sweet as molasses, but she had plenty of Smoky Mountain grit in her.
Married to her late husband Carl Dean for 59 years, she never had children of her own.
“My songs are like my children,” she said. “I expect them to support me when I am old.”
And nobody did more to change the lives of millions of children.
Dolly grew up in grinding rural poverty up in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee – one of 12 children with a father who could neither read nor write.
In memory of her beloved dad, Dolly set up her Imagination Library, mailing more than 300million books to some 150m children.
Dolly Parton changed the world. And she did it all with that 50million-dollar smile.
