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A former publication from Medium about politics, power, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

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Stop Blaming Social Media for Patriarchy’s Evils

8 min readOct 10, 2021

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“I believe that Facebook’s products harm children,” said whistleblower Frances Haugen, as she testified before a Senate panel earlier this week. She claims to have inside information proving that Facebook’s social media products, which also include Instagram and WhatsApp, are “generating self-harm and self-hate — especially for vulnerable groups, like teenage girls.” Unsurprisingly, folks latched onto this story quickly. We all love to hate social media, almost as much as we love a good damsel-in-distress fairy tale.

We all love to hate social media, almost as much as we love a good damsel-in-distress fairy tale.

Everyone knows that researchers have been looking at the relationship between digital media and teen well-being for decades. A few high profile, celebrity psychologists have repeatedly claimed — with little evidence — that smartphones are causing an adolescent mental health epidemic. Many parents buy into a form of technophobia that’s grounded in nostalgia for the good ol’ days. But most experts agree that the evidence we have so far remains…

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Published in GEN

A former publication from Medium about politics, power, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Jordan Shapiro
Jordan Shapiro

Written by Jordan Shapiro

I wrote some books - Father Figure: How to Be a Feminist Dad & The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World. I teach at Temple University.