Cigarettes were referred to as “coffin nails” as early as 1906. That’s what George Will writes at the Washington Post. Will adds that the U.S. Surgeon General didn’t designate smoking as a possible instigator of lung cancer until 1964.
It turns out Americans didn’t need blinding glimpses of the obvious from Surgeon Generals, or blanket government settlements with tobacco companies, to come to their own conclusions about cigarettes. On matters of health and wellbeing, government is less necessary and much later than a potted plant.
It’s something to think about as some rhapsodize over the recent Los Angeles jury verdict against technology innovators Meta and Google. They were held liable for allegedly “fueling social media addiction for a 20-year-old woman,” and were ordered to pay $6 million in total damages. According to people who couldn’t possibly know better, the ruling signals so-called “Big Tech’s” leap to “Big Tobacco” status, including an eventual settlement for the alleged harms of social media in local, state and federal courts. The perpetually alarmed and offended would be wise to curb their rather mindless enthusiasm.
For one, the health harm associated with smoking was longstanding. The people knew, which means parents knew. And that’s why smoking was something most parents prohibited well before governments, courts and activists made sport of finding deep-pocketed corporations to demagogue, and subsequently bleed of cash.
Contrast this with social media. As evidenced by its ubiquity among the parented, there’s nothing remotely “tobacco” about it. That’s because quite unlike what causes health harm, young people use social media with the evident blessing of parents who pay the smartphone bills. It's no insight to say they much prefer social media "addiction" to alcohol and drug use that have both declined substantially among young people in concert with the rise in the popularity of social media that doesn’t atomize America's youth as much as it connects them without traditional, and much more health dangerous social lubricants.
No doubt we have a few scolds like Jonathan Haidt winning praise from a “this time is different” cohort who, seemingly blind to history (“these kids today” is surely as old as history), think they’ve happened upon a malady that really, no really, will devastate young people this time. But seemingly lost on the always alarmed is that the same was said about television, and before that radios. While the Haidts of old claimed radios caused “nervousness,” supposedly television was going to sap the young of any imagination, only for the generations that grew up with it to eventually create the greatest, most sophisticated television shows the world has ever known.
Funny about the alleged horrors visited on American youths care of progress and mass distribution is that there was a time when comic books were viewed by the always up in arms as a threat to young people. The latter comes to us care of George Will too. Some reading this will add video games to the list of old threats to young people that, referencing Calvin Coolidge, soon enough ran into the proverbial ditch.
Back to the jury verdict, the $6 million ruling won’t even pay for court costs run up while actual predators who meant actual harm to kids roamed free. Which is good and bad.
The bad is that young people were made no safer by the court ruling, while the good is that the verdict was not remotely parallel to past court rulings about known negatives like tobacco. Just call it a monstrous bit of nothing feeding a grouchy, older, and surely anxious portion of the population always in need of empty sustenance.
