Ledger of Harms

Children who have been cyberbullied are 3x more likely to contemplate suicide compared to their peers. The experience of being bullied online is significantly more harrowing than "traditional bullying", potentially due to the victim’s awareness that this is taking place in front of a much larger public audience.

Preschoolers who use screen-based media for more than 1 hour each day have been shown to have significantly less development in core brain regions involved in language and literacy. Brain scans indicate that the more time spent on screens, the lower the child's language skills, and the less structural integrity in key brain areas responsible for language. This is one of the first studies to assess the structural neurobiological impacts of screen-based media use in preschoolers; it raises serious questions as to how screen use may affect the basic development of young children's brains.

In a longitudinal study tracking over 200 children from the age of 2 years to 5 years old, children with higher levels of screen time showed greater delays in development across a range of important measures, including language, problem-solving, and social interaction. Analyses indicated that the level of screen time was significantly linked to the specific level of developmental delay 12 -14 months later. This is a critical period in a child's life: as the researchers note, the current data indicates that exposure to excessive screen time during these early years can have serious effects "impinging on children's ability to develop optimally".

Children who experienced cyberbullying during their adolescence were significantly more likely to engage in risk-taking health behavior as adults. Boys who were cyberbully-victims were significantly more likely to smoke as young adults (p = 0.014) while teenage girls were significantly more likely to show a lifetime usage of drugs (p < 0.04).

The amount of time spent using social media is significantly correlated with later levels of alcohol use. Research on several thousand teens demonstrated that while time spent on other forms of electronic media (including TV or video games) has comparatively little impact, the amount of time spent on social media is significantly linked to alcohol use 4 years later. Data indicates that social media has this unique effect through "social norming": repeatedly exposing teens to multiple images of their peers and role models drinking alcohol makes such behavior seem normal and acceptable, encouraging imitation.

Children who see videos of child influencers holding unhealthy foods consume significantly more calories than those who see influencers holding other types of objects, as clearly shown by experiments using randomized control trials.

of videos from the 5 most popular kid-influencer YouTube channels feature food and drink, with 90% explicitly showing unhealthy food or drink products, sponsored by brands. The 179 food/ drink videos created by these child influencers have more than 1 billion views. Such advertising exploits the fact that children aged 8 and younger are highly susceptible to product placement, cannot distinguish advertising from real content, and spend on average 1 hour daily watching videos online.

Media multi-tasking is significantly linked to later levels of attentional difficulties. Tracking more than 800 adolescents across time demonstrated that the degree to which young teens (aged 11-13 years old) multi-tasked was a significant predictor of attentional problems 3 months later (p < 0.05), highlighting the potential impact of distracting digital environments on young teens' development.

The level of electronic media use before bedtime is significantly correlated with depression in adolescence. Measurements from several hundred teenagers indicate that this is primarily due to the impact on sleep: compared to video game players, teens with high levels of social media use experienced greater sleep difficulties, which in turn strongly correlated with higher levels of depression.

A longitudinal study of several thousand adolescents indicated that their level of social media usage was a significant predictor of their depression levels over the course of 4 years. For every increased hour spent using social media, teens show a 2% increase in depressive symptoms.

After nearly two decades in decline, high depressive symptoms for 13-18 year old teen girls rose by 65% between 2010-2017

is the increase in the risk of suicide-related outcomes among teen girls who spend more than 5 hours a day (vs. 1 hour a day) on social media.

A systematic review and meta-analysis (of 20 studies) showed strong, consistent evidence of an association between bedtime access to or use of electronic devices and reduced sleep quantity and quality, as well as increased daytime sleepiness

Fake news spreads six times faster than true news. According to researchers, this is because fake news grabs our attention more than authentic information: fake news items usually have a higher emotional content and contain unexpected information which inevitably means that they will be shared and reposted more often.

Anger is the emotion that travels fastest and farthest on social media, compared to all other emotions. As a result, those who post angry messages will inevitably have the greatest influence, and social media platforms will tend to be dominated by anger.

Each word of moral outrage added to a tweet increases the rate of retweets by 17%. It takes very little effort to tip the emotional balance within social media spaces, catalyzing and accelerating further polarization.

Reading a fake news item even once increases the chances of a reader judging that it is true when they next encounter it, even when the news item has been labeled as suspect by fact-checkers or is counter to the reader’s own political standpoint. The damage done by fake news items in the past continues to reverberate today. Psychological mechanisms such as these, twinned with the speed at which fake news travels, highlight our vulnerability demonstrating how we can easily be manipulated by anyone planting fakes news or using bots to spread their own viewpoints.

The primary driving force behind whether someone will share a piece of information is not its accuracy or even its content; the main reason we share a post is because it comes from a friend or a celebrity with whom we want to be associated. As humans, we’re often more concerned with status, popularity, and establishing a trusted “friends” circle, than with maintaining the truth. As a result, social media spaces will inevitably be spaces where the truth is easily downgraded.

of exposure to a conspiracy theory video reduces people’s pro-social attitudes (such as their willingness to help others), as well as reducing their belief in established scientific facts.

An Oxford research study of 22 million tweets showed that Twitter users had shared more “misinformation, polarizing, and conspiratorial content” than had shared actual news stories

Twitter now plays a key role in how journalists find news. According to a recent survey, many journalists see tweets as equally newsworthy compared to headlines from the Associated Press. As a result, the neutrality of the press can be easily undermined: on the one hand, professional journalists can be manipulated by bots and bad faith actors and on the other hand, the chance of radical content, conspiracies, and other types of disinformation occurring in professional news articles are extremely high.

The level of social media use on a given day is linked to a significant correlated increase in memory failure the next day. Assessing nearly 800 people aged 25-75, research showed similar effects irrespective of age and of the user's memory levels on previous days. These effects occur in one direction only: levels of social media use predict later memory failure, but levels of memory failure do not predict social media use on subsequent days.

The mere presence of your smartphone, even when it is turned off and face down, drains your attention. An experimental study of several hundred adults showed that both working memory and the ability to solve new problems were drastically reduced when their phones were turned off but present on their desks, as opposed to being in another room. Ironically, participants who said they were highly dependent on their phones showed the greatest increase in memory and fluid intelligence scores when their phones were moved to the other room. Researchers noted that smartphones act as "high-priority stimuli," unconsciously draining significant attentional resources even when we consciously ignore them.

months after starting to use a smartphone, users experience a significant decrease in their mental arithmetic scores (indicating a reduction in their attentional capacity) and a significant increase in social conformity, as shown by experiments with 25 year olds using randomized controlled trials. In addition, brain scans show that heavy users have significantly reduced neural activity in their right prefrontal cortex, a condition also seen in ADHD, and linked with serious behavioral abnormalities such as impulsivity and poor attention.

of screen content is viewed for less than 1 minute, according to a study that tracked computer multitasking across the course of 1 day. Results indicate that most people switched between different content every 19 seconds. Biological analysis demonstrated that participants experienced a neurological "high" whenever they switched — explaining why we feel driven to keep switching and underscoring how human biology makes us vulnerable to being manipulated by attention-extractive economies.

Our memory systems automatically prioritize superficial social text over more complex forms of text. For example, after reading news online, people are significantly better at remembering other readers' comments rather than sentences from the article itself or even its headline; this is in part due to the social (“gossipy”) nature of posted comments. Similarly, users remember Facebook posts significantly better than sentences from a book or even human faces, on the same scale as the memory difference between amnesics and non-amnesics.

A long-term study of several hundred Dutch teenagers shows that problematic social media use is significantly linked to the emergence of serious cognitive effects a year later, including reduced attention, increased impulsivity, and increased hyperactivity. Losing control over social media habits (such as lying to parents to gain access to social media) was significantly more likely to lead to new attentional problems a year later.

away from Facebook leads to a significant improvement in emotional well-being. In an experimental study of over 1,600 American adults (who normally used Facebook for up to an hour each day), deactivating Facebook accounts led to a significant increase in emotional well-being (including a reduction in loneliness and an increase in happiness), as well as a significant reduction in political polarization.

The greater your level of Facebook addiction, the lower your brain volume. MRI brain scans of Facebook users demonstrated a significant reduction in gray matter in the amygdala correlated with their level of addiction to Facebook. This pruning away of brain matter is similar to the type of cell death seen in cocaine addicts.

Young men exposed to social media show an increased tendency to physically objectify themselves. A study of 300 men aged 17-25 indicated that their frequency of visiting celebrity, fashion, or personal grooming sites correlated significantly with an increase in social appearance anxiety and monitoring of their own body shape. In turn, this was linked with an increased idealization of lean, muscular body types but without any increase in activity to achieve these new ideals, creating a sense of powerless dissatisfaction with their existing bodies.

The number of "Likes" on a celebrity Instagram account can significantly change how you see yourself. An experimental study showed that when women were exposed to different celebrity Instagram images, their ratings of their own facial appearance dropped in direct proportion to the number of "likes" attached to each image they saw. Given that there are 1 billion active Instagram users, and some celebrities have more than 150 million followers, the scale of impact is vast.

Posting alcohol-related messages on Facebook can lead to an increase in alcoholic behavior and alcoholic identity in real life. Research analysis of several hundred college students revealed that the more they posted alcohol-related messages, the more their real life social groups tended to shift a few months later towards friends with higher alcohol use, which then in turn linked to an increase in their own levels of drinking a few months after that.

The more time you spend on Instagram, the more likely you are to suffer eating disorders such as orthorexia nervosa, (a clinical condition where sufferers obsess about ideal foods so much that they stop eating adequately, seriously endangering their health). According to research, no other social media platforms have this correlative effect. Scientists believe this is because images of food have more impact — and are remembered longer— than text, and because food images from "celebrity" Instagram users have a dramatically disproportionate influence on their followers' reactions to food. According to researchers, Instagram's algorithm recommendations allow orthorexia sufferers to become trapped in an echo chamber of images that only show a distorted reality of food images and how to react to food.

In just 3 years, there has been a quadrupling in the number of plastic surgeons with patients undergoing cosmetic surgery for the sake of looking good on social media (from 13% in 2016 to 55% in 2019). The greatest increase is in patients under the age of 30, particularly teenagers. Doctors point to the role of social media in creating an exaggerated idea of what is normal in beauty and as a result, distorting viewers' sense of their own appearance. According to clinicians, such Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) (aka “Snapchat Dysmorphia”) is rapidly on the increase.

A person’s social media usage level significantly predicts their level of neuroticism/ anxiety one year later, as shown by a long-term study of 11,000 people aged 20-97. In addition, levels of neuroticism/anxiety predicted later levels of social media use, leading researchers to suggest a possible negative downward spiral linking these two processes.

The mere presence of a mobile phone can disrupt the connection between two people, leading to reduced feelings of empathy, trust, and a sense of closeness. In a series of studies, researchers found that when pairs of strangers were asked to have meaningful conversations, their ability to connect emotionally was significantly reduced if a mobile phone was visible.

Parental use of mobile devices during playtime with their children can lead to significant levels of child distress. A study of 50 infant-mother pairs indicated that infants showed greater unhappiness, fewer positive emotions, and were significantly less likely to play with toys when their mothers looked at their devices for as little as 2 minutes.

of parents reported that mobile devices typically interrupted the time they spent with their children 3 or more times each day; only 11% reported that mobile devices did NOT interrupt their time with their children.

People who took photos to share on Facebook experienced less enjoyment and less engagement with the scene compared to those who took photos purely for their own pleasure. Closer analysis indicates that taking photos to share on social media increases a user's focus on their own self-identity and self-presentation, distracting them from connecting to the world around them.

When encountering someone with an opposing political viewpoint, people are more likely to judge them as warm and intelligent if they hear that person’s ideas spoken rather than written down. Unfortunately, many social media platforms are currently designed to focus on text, reducing the chances of genuine discussion and debate and increasing the possibility of polarization.

Social media’s perverse incentives for maximizing engagement may be driving political polarization. Content about political opponents is more likely to go viral on social media — in fact, each individual term referencing a political out-group increased the odds of a social media post being shared by 67%. Language about political opponents drives engagement 4.8 times more than negative affect language and 6.7 more than moral-emotional language.

Exposure to a fake political news story can rewire your memories: in a study, where over 3,000 voters were shown fake stories, many voters later not only “remembered” the fake stories as if they were real events but also "remembered" additional, rich details of how and when the events took place.

The order in which search engines present results has a powerful impact on users' political opinions. Experimental studies show that when undecided voters search for information about political candidates, more than 20% will change their opinion based on the ordering of their search results. Few people are aware of bias in search engine results or how their own choice of political candidate changed as a result.

Game theory analysis has shown how a few bots with extreme political views, carefully placed within a network of real people, can have a disproportionate effect within current social media systems. Studies demonstrate how an extremist minority political group can have undue influence using such bots—for example, reversing a 2:1 voter difference to win a majority of the votes.

Rigorous testing of industry AI algorithms, including Google search’s natural language processing, discovered significant stereotypical bias by gender, race, profession, and religion. For example, during "fill-in-the-blank" tests the AI's regularly associated the word "African" with words such as "poor". Researchers noted that GPT-2 showed less bias compared to the other A.I. language models, suggesting that this may be due to GPT-2 was trained on the type of real world datasets that are moderated to reduce bias (such as Reddit forums).

Twitter users were actively involved in Gamergate at its peak, with the hashtag #Gamergate being tweeted hundreds of thousands of times per month, mostly supporting the campaign of abuse and violent threats against specific female game designers and those who spoke up to support them. Gamergate played out primarily on Twitter, whose platform design and administration, according to researchers, make the platform particularly adaptable for online abuse— due to the highly public nature of tweets, the potential for mass targeting of individuals, and the fact that abusive responses can’t be removed.

For many years, 92% of the ads that appeared when searching for a black-identified name on Google mentioned the word "arrest", according to Harvard researchers, compared to only 80% of the ads prompted by searching for white-identified names, a statistically significant difference (p < 0.01). Even where a white-identified name (e.g. "Karen Lindquist") belonged to a person with an arrest record, a Google name search still only generated neutral ads that did not mention arrest. In contrast, black-identified names attracted "arrest ads", even when no-one with this name had an arrest record.