Someone sent me this Hansard record of the MP moral panic about Space invaders from 1981 “the increasingly harmful effects on young people of addiction to "space invader" machines. Since then, I have seen reports from all over the country of young people becoming so addicted to these machines that they resort to theft, blackmail and vice to obtain money to satisfy their addiction.” https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1981-05-20/debates/f983574e-4775-427c-a6de-7448e56f49ad/ControlOfSpaceInvadersAndOtherElectronicGames #gaming #onlinesafety #addiction
Charlie Stross
boosted
Someone sent me this Hansard record of the MP moral panic about Space invaders from 1981 “the increasingly harmful effects on young people of addiction to "space invader" machines. Since then, I have seen reports from all over the country of young people becoming so addicted to these machines that they resort to theft, blackmail and vice to obtain money to satisfy their addiction.” https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1981-05-20/debates/f983574e-4775-427c-a6de-7448e56f49ad/ControlOfSpaceInvadersAndOtherElectronicGames #gaming #onlinesafety #addiction
The documents provide smoking-gun evidence that Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok all purposefully designed their social media products to addict children and teens with no regard for known harms to their wellbeing, and how that mass youth addiction was core to the companies’ business models. The documents contain internal discussions among company employees, presentations from internal meetings, expert testimony, and evidence of Big Tech coordination with tech-funded groups, including the National Parent Teachers Association (PTA) and Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), in attempts to control the narrative in response to concerned parents.https://techoversight.org/2026/01/25/top-report-mdl-jan-25/
“These unsealed documents prove Big Tech has been gaslighting and lying to the public for years
#BigTech #GAFAM #Google #Meta #TikTok #Snap #teens #mentalhealth #privacy #surveillance #addiction #drugs