Reboot in Forbes

A new EU law tightens content moderation requirements on major social media platforms. Large-scale social media platforms will be required to develop concrete plans to remove illegal content from their platforms. Platforms will also have to publicize details about the algorithms that recommend content to users, as well as giving them the option to opt out of these recommendation systems entirely. All of these ideas are steps in the right direction to lessening the addictive nature of social media and its harmful impacts on our mental health. 

The mischaracterization of nuanced problems as black-and-white issues is one of the many tragedies of our highly polarized society. Knowing how to think through trade-offs when decision making is a skill everyone should master.

Misinformation and disinformation distort public discourse, disrupt the democratic process, and contribute to violence. But we now know better how to address these campaigns – and in knowing better we have the potential to do better.

We are seeing two protests in one: The first, a true grassroots protest organized by a small group of anti-vax Canadian truckers, while a more more global protest is pushed by far-right social media agitators.

Cognitive biases are a significant factor in how people go through life and interpret information. Because these biases, which can operate simultaneously, are currently playing such a large role today in everything from Covid vaccine hesitancy to shifting political landscapes, now is the time to pay special attention to ways that they can be managed.

Whether it be doom-scrolling on Twitter, listening to podcast after podcast, or checking in on every last CNN.com alert, what researchers call “information overload” has become a widespread problem, especially for young people whose habits have developed in the smartphone era.