>This is Jonathan Haidt, and he's been writing against all social media for years now.

Yeah, it's not "moronic propaganda", it's someone who has, historically and famously so, been very focused on the broad issue of social media's impacts focusing in on various specific aspects of it, of which TikTok is a part.

OP seems, respectfully so, ignorant to who Haidt is and would perhaps do well to read up on more of his output (apologies to OP if this assumption is incorrect).

Haidt is equally as famous for skipping any research & data gathering, cherry picking unserious "research" from his allies & often himself to write the books/articles/propaganda. https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/07/why-academics-...

The damned site he writes under is called After Babel! His identity at its core is linked to not just convincing but aggravating agitating and hyping an image of the world made "anxious" and depressed by devices.

There's a lot of other causes for the world being as unsupportive as it is. As a society we are losing meaningful connection to work, by having such vast mega corps sucking up all the work, managing the world from the top down. The concentration of capital has had enormously brutal impacts on the human spirit. But you won't see Haidt acknowledge or concern himself with what else is unravelling the human fabric.

There's some directionally correct concerns Haidt has, but as someone whose made it his calling to drive a wedge into what society is & demand a conservatism against the new, stridently & loudly, with no bones about what comes very close to lying, I cannot help but detest him deeply.

> There's a lot of other causes for the world being as unsupportive as it is. As a society we are losing meaningful connection to work, by having such vast mega corps sucking up all the work, managing the world from the top down. The concentration of capital has had enormously brutal impacts on the human spirit.

The evidence for this is far weaker than social media causing harm, but let's assume that you're right. All these problems caused by capitalism seemed to manifest during the the rise of social media tech giants, so they would still be the most likely culprit. I'm usually the person who defends capitalism, but even I review content recommendation systems on social media as capitalist brainwashing machines. I don't think being too conservative with limiting access to children is a bad thing.

Haidt's history is exactly why nothing he writes can be taken seriously.

He's a noted grifter with many years of making stuff up.

I guess you could say that lazy thoughtpieces harming HN users on a cottage-industry scale, then.

Have you actually read anything written by Jonathan Haidt, or is this a drive-by dismissal?

You missed the sarcasm. HN articles all follow a formula, almost predictably so, where they’re lazy thought pieces by a self important blogger.