The fact that you are given the option to disagree with a statement does not make this statement any less biased.

I note your optimism about the value-awareness of the researchers filling out this survey. Nonetheless the point stands that the two statements they are asked to evaluate have been phrased in a loaded way and no one has called this out this framing as in any way biased.

I suppose there is a theoretical possibility that they realise they are making inductive risk judgments but there is clearly no awareness that children’s own perspective on this matters too and that they are in a position of power towards the people on whom they advocate interventions

Good analogy to nudges! Here I am not pushing the libertarian line. Rather it’s the asymmetric treatment of adults and children that’s worrying me. It’s so so tempting to control those who can’t speak back or who when object it is easy to dismiss as irrational and immature.

That sounds right Mark. In Statement 1 I was put off by the aggregation framing. We may have good evidence about attention span but to translate it into long term overall wellbeing takes an unspoken value judgment

Agreed, this is the point of this by @orbenamy.bsky.social and Nathan Matias. But if we are making a decision on the basis of risk aversion (say to prevent SM-driven suicides), then we should be honest about these grounds. Whereas this survey makes it look like it's a matter of evidence only

Tagging @markfabian.bsky.social who also filled out the survey to see if he shares my concerns about its bias. Also @orbenamy.bsky.social who is familiar with this genre of debates on children and phones

This article aged remarkably well!

This group does not have special expertise on how risk averse or risk seeking communities ought to be when regulating phones and SM. Yet this is what the issue comes down to. They think they are answering factual questions when in fact they’re judging the right level of inductive risk. Agree?

I appreciate hearing this. I am not even necessarily opposed to some interventions, the issues are properly hard. It's just embarassing to see these proposals being justified by wellbeing science. That's genuine misuse of our expertise

I don't, but this was not the question we were asked. All I am saying is that this way of framing the issue picks on children and young people selectively and I wish my fellow wellbeing researchers were more sensitive to this.

The idea that the effects of phones and social media on children is so dramatically different than on adults so as to justify interfering with children's freedom to use them but not with adults... I just can't get on board with this. It's the urge to control masquerading as science.

I was the lone dissenter on both claims. I found the statements as formulated extraordinarily biased and I am disappointed that my fellow 'wellbeing experts' don't seem to notice all the value judgments in these statements and the evidence supposedly supporting them.