Trying to Put the Genie Back in the Bottle (#1,016)
The apposite expressions “Letting the genie out of the bottle” and “Putting the genie back into the bottle” come from One Thousand and One Nights,” a massive collection of medieval folktales composed in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age (c. 8th - 13th Century, C.E.). The main storyteller in these tales is Scheherazade, wife to the sultan, who saves her life by telling him a different story for one thousand and one nights. Many of the stories deal with genies who are either trapped in . . . or escaping from . . . a bottle. Over centuries, the parallel expressions about “letting the genie out of the bottle, and “putting the genie back in” have come to mean, respectively, doing something that cannot be undone and reverting a situation; putting things back as they were before something became a reality.
One of the most obvious examples of letting the genie out of the bottle would be August 6, 1945 . . . the dropping of an atomic bomb (nicknamed “Little Boy”) on Hiroshima, and 3 days later, the second atomic bomb (nicknamed “Fat Man”) on Nagasaki. In dropping these two bombs, the “genie” of nuclear destruction was let out of the “bottle” of human warfare; forever more, the nightmare of nuclear destruction engulfed all humanity. And despite the signing, sealing and delivering of various treaties over the past several decades, the genie has never been successfully returned to the bottle.
More recently, the genie of “Artificial Intelligence”(A.I.) has escaped from the bottle, thus unleashing incalculable problems, possibilities and challenges within the realms of academia, political campaigning and what used to be known as “the truth.” (See my January 29, 2023 piece entitled A Pandora’s Box of Existential Fears.) Because of such innovations as ChatGPT, it has become next to impossible to know who wrote what and/or whether there is any such thing as the “objectively verifiable.” For that generation now known as “Mind Children,” (as the Harvard roboticist Hans Moravec dubbed them more than 30 years ago) the source of knowledge is no longer to be searched out in the classroom or a cavernous library, but rather by turning attention to that which one can easily hold in the palm of one’s hand.
Which leads us to the fastest growing and most omnipresent genie of them all . . . SOCIAL MEDIA.
The first true social media networking site - SixDegrees.com - was launched in 1997, allowing users to create profiles, connect with friends, and share content. It marked the beginning of the social networking era, enabling users to see connections between friends and expand their social circles through a concept known as 'six degrees of separation.' 6 years later, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, co-founded My Space, the first social network to reach a global audience. (Although still active today, My Space has become a ghost of its past. With no new content added since early 2022 and a disabled media player, the site's functionality is severely limited. Nonetheless, it still occupies a spot in the “Social Networking Hall of Fame” [if indeed, there were any such thing.])
2 years after My Space (2004), Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg started up Facebook (originally called Thefacebook). Its initial purpose was to connect Harvard students with one another. Facebook's popularity exploded; by the end of 2004, it already had over 1 million users. And the rest, as they say, is history. At the end of 2024, Facebook, which is now owned by “Meta,” a publicly owned company (of which Mr. Zuckerberg owns approximately 13.5% of its 350 million outstanding shares [worth c. $120 billion to young Mr. Z.]) it has 3.27 billion daily active people (DAPs) who access Meta-owned products including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Additionally:
Facebook, as a stand-alone platform, gets 2.11 billion daily active users, which may have accounts on other family products
Last quarter’s investors’ report shows a 6.51% increase in daily active people year-over-year
80.15% of the monthly people will log in daily to one of these family-owned services
60.56% of the world’s active internet users access Meta-owned services daily.
India has more Facebook users (350 million) than any other country in the world; the USA comes in second with 194 million.
There are, of course, many, many highly successful social media platforms in today’s world. Interestingly, the younger one is, the greater the chance will be that he/she are signed up with - and make daily use of - a greater array of platforms than one’s elders. This is to say that Baby Boomers (whom I would imagine make up the majority of this blog’s readers) are familiar with - and make use of - Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and perhaps Linkedin, while members of younger generations make use of platforms that are largely unknown to those who are now pretirees (my term for those of retirement age who are still gainfully employed). Like you, I have vaguely heard of "Tik Tok,” "WhatsApp,” “Tumblr,” “Snapchat” and “Telegram.”
These, and other platforms are where a vast majority of young people get their news and views (whether it be true, false or sheer twaddle), “meet” new people and share thoughts, feelings and fears they might never share face-to-face with family, teachers, classmates or non-cyberspace inhabitants. You can see them all over the place using their iPhones, Androids or occasionally Tablets, in classrooms, malls, gyms, sporting events and restaurants (both fast and slow food); walking down the street, texting, chatting, listening to music, connecting with the rest of the planet. I have yet to get over seeing a table filled with teens at Dunkin Donuts, Wendy’s or some other public place, each one caught up in their own world despite the fact there may be 4, 5, 6 or more people sitting with them. To my way of thinking, overreliance on social media has become an addiction for many. Moreover, it represents a clear and present danger to mental health of those - especially teens - for whom it is a way of life.
Over the past decade, numerous peer-reviewed academic studies have found a strong link between heavy social media and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. Social media may promote negative experiences such as: Inadequacy about one’s life or appearance, as a skewed view of the world itself . . . which can lead to feelings of doom. In May of last year, United States Surgeon General (U.S.S.G.) Dr. Vivek Murthy released a new Surgeon General’s Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health - PDF. In it, Dr. Murthy and his research colleagues noted in the reports introductory paragraph: While social media may offer some benefits, there are ample indicators that social media can also pose a risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents. Social media use by young people is nearly universal, with up to 95% of young people ages 13-17 reporting using a social media platform and more than a third saying they use social media “almost constantly.”
Dr. Murthy and his colleagues further noted “Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis – one that we must urgently address.” In other words, the Genie has escaped from the bottle.
The question becomes: is there anything currently being done to put the Genie back in the bottle? Attempts to do so are in their early stages here in the United States. According to the Age Verification Providers Association website: As of June 2024, 10 states have passed laws requiring children’s access to social media be restricted or parental consent gained. 3 more are currently injuncted (e.g. restrained by a court order). Here in Florida, H.B. 3 goes into effect on July 1, 2025. The bill, the Online Protections for Minors Act, requires social media platforms to verify users’ ages, obtain parental consent for users under 18, protect minors’ personal data, and limit their exposure to harmful content.
Doing things on a state-by-state or city-by-city basis does not do away with the Genie; it merely creates a series of different sized bottles . . . most of which will be too small to hold a gigantic Genie. To date, one country (which happens to be a continent) has done something on a national basis: Australia.
Less than a week ago, Australia, the “Land Down Under,” imposed a sweeping ban on social media for children under 16. After sailing through Parliament’s lower house on Wednesday, November 27, the bill passed the Senate the very next day with bipartisan support. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that it puts Australia at the vanguard of efforts to protect the mental health and well-being of children from detrimental effects of social media, such as online hate or bullying. Not every “Down Under” agrees with the legislation: some claim it will stifle freedom of thought and expression; others are of the opinion that it does not go far enough. I find nothing surprising about this; after all, Australia is a robust democracy. The one good and hopeful thing to note is that at least one non-authoritarian country on the planet has decided that it may well be possible to put the Genie back in the bottle.
Could this ever work in the United States on a national level? I highly doubt it . . . and for several reasons. First and foremost, there’s the matter of the makeup of the new, incoming 119th Congress. Unless something drastically changes in the next 32 days, the first resolution that body will consider is Rep. Nancy Grace’s (R-SC) bill to ban transgender people from using bathrooms of their choice in the U.S. Capitol. (It just so happens that on January 3, 2025, the nation's first transgender lawmaker, U.S. Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, D-Del., is set to join Congress). In her obviously disingenuous remarks about the reason behind the resolution, Rep. Grace told the press; "The sanctity of protecting women and standing up against the Left’s systematic erasure of biological women starts here in the nation’s Capitol. We are standing up for women, protecting their spaces, and restoring a bit of sanity to Capitol Hill." She added, "The Left screams TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) politics, we call it putting women first." There likely won’t be enough serious-minded legislators on Capitol Hill to get beyond the “Attack on WOKE” legislation that holds their base in thrall.
Then too, when one considers that IT’s new BFF, Elon Musk, is not only the richest person on the planet, but also owns X, the planet’s largest money-losing social media platform. And to make matters worse, who just came by to kiss the ring at Mar-a-Lago? Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg, that’s who. Can you see him being in favor of losing money by putting legal strictures on his platform? I rather doubt it.
Having said the obvious, I still believe that for the sake of our children . . . and the generation of leaders they will someday become . . . we must follow in the footsteps of our Aussie cousins and doing whatever we can to put the Genie of Social Media (which is inherently anti-social) back in the bottle. Our future depends on it.
Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone