Penna Dexter
Here’s the story of a young woman who became acutely aware of the relationship between social media and teen mental illness and is doing something important about it.
The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets describe her as a digital-wellness advocate. 
Larissa May, age 29, is Founder and Executive Director of a nonprofit called Half the Story. The organization’s founding concept is: “Social media is only half the story. We only share one part of ourselves on the internet.” This can be destabilizing, and worse.
Social scientist Jonathan Haidt has the data to prove the connection between social media and the rise in teen anxiety and depression.
In his new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness,” he highlights the teen mental health epidemic’s sudden onset. It occurred in 2012, the year Facebook bought Instagram. Instagram was founded in 2010, the same year Apple released the I-phone 4, the first smartphone with a front-facing camera.
Teens worldwide were drawn in, with girls spending hours “trying to perfect their Instagram profiles while scrolling through even-more-perfect profiles of other teens.”
Larissa says, “When I was a sophomore in college, I hit the darkest period of my life.” She says she was spending 10-12 hours per day on social media, ”which is not as uncommon as you might think.” She became depressed, anxious, and even considered suicide. Instead, in her senior year, as a class project, she started Half the Story.
She now educates middle through high schoolers “about the emotional skills that you need to thrive in the digital media.” She tells them, “If you aren’t in touch with your emotions, you’re not going to be able to control your digital habits.”
Larissa has developed a curriculum for educators called Social Media U plus an 8-week course for students. She also advocates for policy changes to limit online dangers.
She’s not waiting for tech companies but is actively shaping the future of the internet.

Kerby Anderson
A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal began with these sentences. “Memo to companies: Go ahead and cancel your DEI programs. That’s more or less the message of a recent report commissioned by the UK government finding that diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” The report found little evidence that DEI had any positive effect on corporate culture.
In fact, it is difficult to say what DEI means. The terms are, according to the report, “ambiguous, rapidly evolving, and often conflated.” Although the current fad is to focus on diversity among racial, social, or other lines, “a visibly diverse organization is not necessarily meaningfully heterogenous.” The Wall Street Journal editors concluded that “viewpoint diversity may be more important for a thriving company.”
As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, cancelling DEI programs, and closing DEI departments can save money. US companies spend $8 billion a year on DEI training. The other savings is in the legal area. Even in the UK, there have been lawsuits against companies because their DEI policies have “violated British protections on freedom of belief by punishing employees who dissented from the DEI orthodoxy on race or transgenderism.”
Last month I talked about the fact that the University of Florida announced it was ending its experiment with DEI. The college closed the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer and eliminated DEI positions, thereby saving more than $5 million each year on the controversial program. The Florida legislature passed a law prohibiting state funding of DEI programs and University of Florida President Ben Sasse implemented it.
I suggest other companies and universities follow their example.

Kerby Anderson
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban TikTok in this country unless the company was sold to Americans. Chinese national security laws require Chinese-owned companies to assist the government in intelligence-gathering.
But Lathan Watts reminds us that our own government has also been engaging in censorship and surveillance of US citizens. That is why he wonders if putting TikTok under American ownership would merely be an example of “jumping out of the wok and into the fire.”
He cites two recent Supreme Court cases that illustrate his concerns. The first is Murthy v. Missouri. The Biden administration is accused of a coordinated campaign to force social media companies to censor what the government deemed as “misinformation.” During the oral arguments, one Supreme Court justice announced to the attorneys that her biggest concern “is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government.” But isn’t that why the First Amendment was written in the first place?
The other case is NRA v. Vullo that involved the state of New York using its power to force banks and insurance companies to deny services to the National Rifle Association. Perhaps you don’t have any problem with that action. Would you feel differently if another state encouraged financial institutions to deny services to the ACLU or Greenpeace?
One week prior to the Supreme Court hearings, a US House subcommittee documented how the Treasury Department colluded with America’s largest banks to monitor customer financial transactions. The suggested criteria include transactions with stores like Cabela’s and the purchase of “religious texts.”
All of this illustrates the authoritarian impulses we see today in America. That is why Lathan and I wonder if transferring TikTok ownership to Americans would merely be jumping from the wok into the fire.