Meta asks a judge to throw out an FTC antitrust case Yahoo Finance Australia
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Meta asks a judge to throw out an FTC antitrust case - Yahoo Finance Australia
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The rise of social media addiction and behavioral issues has also corresponded with the rise of smartphone usage, especially among adolescents. When talking about the behavioral issues caused by social media addiction, how much of this can also be attributed to a device that we have attached to our hip almost 24 hours a day? Keith chats with Professor Joseph Trunzo, a professor of psychology at Bryant University about how smartphones are affecting behaviors, as well as whether there will be long-term effects of social media addiction as this generation moves into the workforce.
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The link between smartphones and social media addiction - Computerworld
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Donald Trumps social media platform, Truth Social, went public on Tuesday March 26. Shares in parent company Trump Media & Technology Group surged 15% after its first day of trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange, adding US$1.1 billion (876 million) to the companys value.
Trump wrote I LOVE TRUTH SOCIAL on the platform, echoing the sentiment of I just like the stock from the GameStop share rally that occurred in January 2021. For those who do not remember the GameStop case, shares in the Texan computer games retail chain experienced an unprecedented surge in prices following the activity of retail investors on the social media platform, Reddit.
Millions of investors from Reddits WallStreetBets community pushed GameStop shares from US$20 to US$480 during the January short squeeze, in which they drove some hedge funds into heavy losses after forcing them to liquidate massive bets against the stock. The power of small, amateur investors to outplay Wall Street giants was celebrated all over the internet, and even inspired the 2023 film Dumb Money.
It appears that the Trump Media stock is yet another example of a so-called meme stock, whose popularity is driven by social media activities and memes posted on various platforms, such as Truth Social.
However, while similarities with GameStop are apparent, the Trump Media movement looks unlikely to be as successful. On Monday April 1, less than a week after it began trading, shares of Trump Media fell by more than 20%.
The social media hype around GameStop originated from within a community of retail investors that took a David v Goliath mentality. The firm behind Truth Social has tried to cultivate a similar sentiment of small guys resisting Big Tech censorship.
Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump Media, stated: As a public company, we will passionately pursue our vision to build a movement to reclaim the internet from big tech censors.
However, Trump Media stocks are directly linked to the exceptionally famous persona of Donald Trump, who owns 58% of the shares. Thus, parallels could be drawn with PR campaigns that have been launched for crypto assets, such as NFTs (non-fungible tokens), where celebrities are often used to attract investors to the projects.
Read more: From GameStop to crypto: how to protect yourself from meme stock mania
The Trump media stock is undoubtedly appealing to his loyal supporters, who appear to have fuelled the surge in price. But meme stocks may attract a broader range of investors due to the social media hype.
That is why it is important to understand that investing in any meme stock or meme coin is a risky endeavour. Surges in price that cannot be explained by any company fundamentals are called asset price bubbles. Speculative bubbles are quite common in financial and cryptocurrency markets and offer opportunities to generate abnormal returns in a short period of time.
However, they can be risky for investors as they have a tendency to burst. Participating in such speculative behaviour is typically considered irrational since it is extremely hard to justify the growth of the price.
More importantly, it is nearly impossible to predict exactly when the bubble will burst. Retail investors should be cautious and definitely should not make decisions based solely on social media announcements regarding public figures.
The share price of Trump Media has now dipped to almost pre-surge levels. For many retail investors, it is fair to assume that it is yet again too late to get abnormal returns on this surge. This is because the price of a meme stock tends to simply fluctuate after the initial surge.
Trump Media stock plummets within a week of going public
Only the long-term growth potential of an asset should be assessed to generate somewhat stable returns in the future. However, the long-term stock performance is rarely assessed when it comes to meme stocks, as investors in these stocks tend to have a very short investment horizon.
Following the cryptocurrency market crash in 2022, many retail investors lost their savings as the bubble burst. Many of the collapsed crypto assets were meme coins that had been promoted by celebrities. Dogecoin, for example, was promoted by Elon Musk.
Celebrities have immense power to influence the public. But when it comes to financial decisions, the ethical implications of those campaigns are often not considered.
At the time of writing, there is yet another bullish trend in cryptocurrency prices, particularly in Bitcoin. Yet there is still no clarity in regulation or consumer protection, and there has been no regulatory response to concerns about the environmental impacts of Bitcoin mining.
Some experts who invest in cryptocurrency and have direct financial benefit from surges in prices would, of course, argue that the rally is not a bubble and prices will keep growing. However, it might be unethical to expose consumers to unjustified risks.
According to some studies, awareness of the green critiques associated with cryptocurrency markets is growing. But recent research that I conducted with my colleagues shows that retail investors generally do not care. Understanding that crypto is unsustainable and somewhat unethical does not decrease the odds of investing in crypto assets among retail investors.
The movement in Trump Medias share price will have been backed by Trump supporters. But it will also have attracted some investors who simply wanted to partake in this share rally, even if they do not share Trumps political views. The desire to make money quickly is one of the main driving factors of meme stock investments, and social media campaigns are great fuel for this sentiment.
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Four of the largest school boards in Canada are suing the companies behind popular social media apps Instagram and Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok. According to the Ontario boards, students are experiencing an attention, learning and mental health crisis because of prolific and compulsive use of social media products.
The school boards are collectively seeking over $4 billion in damages. Boards say theyre facing financial strain due to providing increased mental health supports for students as well as diverting resources to monitor social media related to threats or harassment.
Some observers have suggested it should be the responsibility of parents and teachers to control childrens social media use. But the problem is that for too long we have been trying to individualize solutions to a collective problem.
How social media negatively impacts kids mental health has been meticulously outlined in a new book by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of New York University, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing and Epidemic of Mental Illness. In the book, Haidt discusses four ways social media is harming children:
Social deprivation, whereby the time children spend on social media has displaced opportunities to form more authentic personal connections;
Sleep deprivation, as social media use has been tied to reduced sleep duration and poorer sleep quality;
Attention fragmentation, as students are continually bombarded by messages and notifications, compromising their ability to focus.
Finally, addiction: tech companies are intentionally designing their social media apps in ways that exploit the vulnerabilities of children.
Haidt documents how internal documents revealed by former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen show an employee presentation about why teens and young adults choose Instagram (owned by Facebook):
Teens decisions and behaviour are mainly driven by emotion, the intrigue of novelty and reward. While these all seem positive, they make teens very vulnerable at the elevated levels they operate on. Especially in the absence of a mature frontal cortex to help impose limits on the indulgence of these.
In Haidts analysis, its no mystery why we are seeing such sharp declines in youth mental health.
Read more: Excessive social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated adolescent mental health challenges
According to the 2021 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, the proportion of students reporting poor or fair mental health and the proportion of students experiencing serious psychological distress have both more than doubled since 2013.
As claimed by the Canadian school boards, it has largely fallen on schools to address these issues. To their credit, schools have tried to provide students with access to psychologists, social workers, youth workers and mental health specialists, but there is only so much they can do given their resource constraints.
According to data from the Annual Ontario School Survey, 95 per cent of schools report needing additional resources to support the mental health and well-being of students.
Boards allege the conduct of social media companies has been negligent and they are unfairly bearing the brunt of the learning and mental health epidemic caused by their apps.
Phones and social media use are also clearly having a detrimental impact on student learning: The most recent results of the OECDs PISA study show that math, reading and science scores have been plummeting over the last decade in Canada and other developed countries, due in large part to technology used for leisure rather than instruction, such as mobile phones.
This corresponds with a 2023 study led by researchers from the University of Michigan that tracked the phone use of 200 children (ages 11 to 17) over the course of a week.
It found that during the school day, the devices were used for educational purposes less than two per cent of the time. Rather, the most common uses of phones during school hours were social media (32 per cent), YouTube (26 per cent) and gaming (17 per cent).
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has expressed surprise at the lawsuit, stating: We banned cellphones in the classroom, so I dont know what the kids are using.
However, the reality is that Ontarios ban has been mostly symbolic. The reason for this is twofold. First is the way the ban was constructed: it allowed an exception for when the phones were being used for educational purposes.
Second, many students are unable or unwilling to comply with restrictions on their use something hardly surprising since social media apps are designed to be as addictive as possible. That means it has been left up to individual teachers to enforce restrictions in their classrooms, and resistant students arent provided with clear and consistent expectations. Meanwhile, some parents say their children need their devices.
While some say its up to individual children to fight these temptations, individual parents to better monitor their kids and individual teachers to get control of their classrooms, we must remember that the companies behind popular social media platforms are among the wealthiest on the planet. They use their enormous resources to render attempts at individual willpower futile.
Read more: 'Never-ending pressure': Mothers need support managing kids' technology use
Change may come from the courts or through the court of public opinion. Apart from whether companies are legally held responsible, reversing the harms being inflicted on our children by social media is going to require collective action among educators, parents and policymakers.
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School board social media lawsuits: For too long we've sought individual solutions to a collective problem - The Conversation Indonesia
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Where Will Trump Media (Truth Social) Stock Be in 10 Years? The Motley Fool
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Where Will Trump Media (Truth Social) Stock Be in 10 Years? - The Motley Fool
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