• Kinda Brief
  • Posts
  • Parental Advisory Warning: Social Media & Fandom Content

Parental Advisory Warning: Social Media & Fandom Content

Labeling social media for teens and nerds fighting about superheroes and space wizards

Author

Cameron Huppertz
June 21, 2024

Is social the new smoking? 

This week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy suggested that social media sites need a warning label to educate users about the harms they pose for teen mental health. I’m not a mental health or parenting expert. I’m just a very online person with a love/hate relationship to social media after over a decade working in digital marketing. So please do not take anything I have to say on this subject as definitive. Instead, I just want to lay out some of what’s top of mind for me as I try to evaluate ideas like this. 

Would a label work? 

If you are old enough to remember buying physical media to access music, you might recognize this guy. 

The black and white “Parental Advisory Explicit Content” warning image that was added to the cover of CDs with swear words and sexy lyrics

I can tell you as a kid, you definitely wanted the CDs with the parental advisor warning on them more because of it. If there is gonna be some kind of “warning here be brainrot” label for social media, there will need to be thought put into what and how it’s rolled out to make sure it doesn’t have the opposite of it’s intended effect. Anti-smoking warnings in places like Australia show the graphic visual impact tobacco products can have on the human body, and have been effective. That’s gonna be harder to do with a potential negative mental health impact. Which brings us to…

Is there consensus on how social media impacts mental health yet?

Again, I am not a medical professional or public health expert. I do however try to pay attention to those people when forming my opinions, and unlike with the human impact on climate change, the scientific community doesn’t seem to have reached a conclusive position here. 

This week The Washington Post ran a piece this week that opens with, “there is no clear scientific evidence that social media is causing mental health issues among young people.” The Post goes on to point out that while teens are dealing with more mental health issues, studies on social media’s specific impact have reached conflicting results. Some results even show a positive impact, especially for LGBTQ youth who are able to access a digital sense of community that might not be available to them IRL. 

Going just off gut feeling, I would not be surprised to learn that for some teens certain types of social media use are a significant contributing factor for negative mental health outcomes. I think that statement is probably true for adults too. I’m sympathetic to people who would rather err on the side of caution and find ways to limit how teens use these platforms. Not to get too galaxy brain on you all, but I also think we’re overdue to have a much larger conversation about what we all want the social web to be and the role it should play in all of our lives. In some ways the “won’t somebody think of the children” stance here just feels like an indirect way of getting into that dialog about our own social media use. 

Platform Updates

Instagram & Threads

The Rest of Meta 

TikTok

YouTube

Apple

Amazon

Reddit

Adobe

LinkedIn 

Pinterest (disclosure: I’m currently working as a contractor with Pinterest) 

Snap 

Twitter, Sorry X

The Product 

The Dumpster Fire

Culture Movers 

Film & TV

Gaming 

AI 

The Boys & Alan Moore 

The Boys is a hugely popular show on Amazon Prime that just started its fourth season. It’s a dark, ultra-violent satire of the superhero genre based on a comic book. It’s also getting review bombed by weird far-right nerds right now. The show clearly (and correctly IMO) views the tiki torch rally storm the capital crowd and the people who encourage them as the bad guys of the world. So you can see why some people might not like that. 

I don’t have much to say about this specific instance of right wing nerds thrashing about because the culture is moving past them. Like the Star Wars “fans” who are mad at Acolyte for having a black woman as a main character changing the birthdate of an alien space wizard, I think these folks are a small but vocal minority and media companies are getting better at tuning out their attempts at manipulating the conversation in fandom. 

Just as food for thought I do want to leave folks with a quote from a real world wizard, literary icon, and creator of some all time great comics like Watchmen, Alan Moore. 

❝

I said round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queueing up to see Batman movies. Because that kind of infantilisation – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism.

Schedule Update

I really liked the post after my May hiatus that took a more narrative approach to recapping a few weeks of stories, vs my typical roundup of links. Two problems: first, there isn’t always enough new stuff each week to make that synthesis meaningful. Second, it just takes me longer to write (and this is a side project so I gotta keep my focus on that job that pays me money). So I’m gonna try something out for the next few weeks and see how it goes. 

The news roundup issues are going to switch to being every other week. Mini essays will move to their own standalone issues and come out as I bank a few. With funny posts and general media recommendations sprinkled into both formats. 

A gif showing my weekly every friday schedule turning into every other Friday plus a few extra posts scattered throughout a month of publishing.

We’ll see how I, and you all, like the format change. Expect the next news roundup issue on July 5th. And as always, feel free to drop a comment to let me know what you think.

PS

Here is your must read piece of the week: I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again 

*I’m very dyslexic, and this is a largely free project/hobby. I do not set aside the same time for proofreading that I do for other professional work. If you spot a typo that would cause a communication error, please reach out to gently let me know.