Taylor Lorenz on the moral panic around kids and phones, and how she logs 17 hours of screen time

0:10Ben Smith:Welcome back to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. I'm Ben Smith, the Editor-in-Chief of Semaphore, joined here by Max Tani, our Media Editor. Our guest this week is Taylor Lorenz, an independent journalist covering technology who I think many listeners to a media podcast know well and have strong opinions about. She worked variously at The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, had her share of internet firestorms. But I wanted to have her on this week because she's been writing a lot about a big change on the internet that I think maybe has not been getting enough attention, which is the shift toward identifying yourself with your driver's license, with your face, with your real identity in digital spaces.

0:47Ben Smith:So we'll talk to her about that. Also about her anti-anti-AI stand, which has won her a lot of new friends in the tech industry. and also how she thinks about these internet controversies that she's constantly finding herself in the center of.

1:09Ben Smith:Taylor, thank you so much for joining us.

1:11Taylor Lorenz:Thanks for having me.

1:12Ben Smith:And I wanted to have you on because you've been articulating this like big theory of the internet that I think brings together a bunch of things that a lot of us see happening into this very kind of sinister picture of things that most people think are quite innocuous. You've been talking about, you know, keeping teens off social media, keeping phones out of schools, keeping kids off pornography, maybe keeping them off AI. You tie all that together and see something totally different happening. And I guess I just wondered to begin with if you could kind of tell us a little bit about it.

1:41Taylor Lorenz:Yeah. Yeah. So I started reporting on this political movement back in 2017. I was living in D.C. covering a lot of far-right stuff. This is like the beginning of QAnon, right, when it was like the children are all being sex trafficked on the internet and it's very dangerous. You know, in the ensuing decade, as I've reported on tech and as I've continued to report on especially the user side of the internet, so a lot of online speech stuff, This political movement has gained more and more power. It has become bipartisan. I would say the far right sort of Christian fundamentalist origins of it have bled out where now it's just Democrats love this stuff too.

2:20Taylor Lorenz:And I think it's really dangerous and it is resulting in mass surveillance and censorship laws on a scale that we've never seen before.

2:31Ben Smith:But hold on. Draw the line here. Like I don't – you know, most parents probably don't want their kids looking at all sorts of hardcore stuff on the internet. Don't want them trafficked, obviously. But like put aside whatever you think about QAnon. Like don't want their kids on Instagram and want to be able to prevent them from getting on Instagram. Of course. And a lot of these laws are not coming from some fringy place, like the very mainstream impulse to not want your kids on this stuff. And so can you just explain in a little more detail like why don't you think that's a good idea?

3:00Taylor Lorenz:Yeah. Well, first of all, I think it's a great idea to protect children, obviously. I think it's actually a great idea to protect all users. You know, like the harm doesn't stop, you know, when somebody turns 18. Like, you know, as we were talking about sort of before we began, like a lot of elderly people are actually more vulnerable to the sort of perverse incentives on these platforms. And I have covered these platforms incredibly critically over the years. These platforms are also not good actors. I would love to see them regulated as much as, you know, broad swaths of the public. But I would push back on the idea that it's not a sort of reactionary movement.

3:31Taylor Lorenz:I think that actually these sort of reactionary forces have been able to launder their ideology to the public. And you give the example of safety for children. Let me just explain. We all want safety for children. That's great. This is something that nobody would argue against. You would be like, maybe unless you're Mark Zuckerberg. But it's where do we, how do we regulate that? And where does the policy come from? Is the policy a policy that restricts speech and mimics laws in more authoritarian countries where it's like, hey, we actually aren't allowing any content that is, quote unquote, harmful for children.

4:09Taylor Lorenz:And the state attorney generals are going to make this designation. You know, Ken Paxton or whoever is going to decide what's harmful for children. Or are we going to change the balance of power in our tech ecosystem? Are we going to regulate the business model of big tech, pass privacy laws, force the platforms to federate, pursue antitrust litigation if that's an option, but certainly like radically transform the tech ecosystem to make it a lot more safe and fair and equitable for everybody and give users a lot more choice, give parents a lot more options, and I think build a much more free and open ecosystem.

4:40Ben Smith:But just to sort of make it a little more concrete, you're talking about essentially that I might have to log on to websites or to show my driver's license or something like that, right? Is that kind of the core of the thing you're worried about?

4:53Taylor Lorenz:So the core of this political movement that has really been around since the 90s but has gained immense traction in the past decade with the rise of the tech clash where suddenly these Democrats got on board with these Christian fundamentalists who have always sought to enact quite severe speech restrictions online by declaring broad swaths of the internet pornographic, dangerous. This is how we ended up with the communications agency act in the 90s. There's no such thing. Yeah, I know. Porn on the internet? No way. But, you know, but there's always been these sort of conservatives, right? And then there's been the more, like, libertarian folks.

5:28Taylor Lorenz:And this has always been a battle of the internet. But when we originally regulated the internet, we had a more open model, right? It was—we sort of contrasted ourselves with countries like China or Russia that had this more sort of top-down regulation of online speech. And in the past decade, we've seen that backslide. So, yes, it is total and complete removal of anonymity through age verification, quote unquote, which is really ID verification. It's censorship of specific words and ideas. It's the mass removal of LGBTQ content, reproductive justice content, et cetera, and journalistic content.

6:01Taylor Lorenz:I started caring about this a lot in the late 2010s because I reported on Tumblr's sort of the effect of Tumblr banning porn and also having my own content taken down. I've had multiple Instagram accounts taken action against and stuff. And so it's just something that I realized is also affecting journalists. How would you describe what your beliefs are about what the internet should look like? Because I think we were discussing before the show, you know, we were trying to whittle down to a very basic summary, like what you think that the internet should look like. And I'm kind of curious, like, how would you describe your beliefs?

6:38What I hear a little bit of like, essentially like libertarianism when it comes to, you know, identity and privacy and whatnot. But how would you describe it?

6:46Taylor Lorenz:Yeah, I'm very much a civil libertarian. I very much believe, I mean, I'm a journalist, so I care deeply about free speech and free expression. And especially as somebody that has reported extensively on the new media landscape and the lack of protections and just the forces at play that shape our sort of content moderation ecosystems, algorithm sort of stuff, like that stuff concerns me a lot. So I would love a more transparent internet. I would love, in terms of just transparency into algorithms, more choice. I'm a huge supporter of the federated model of social media. I think that we could have this world where you take your followers with you, where you can view your content on different platforms, much the way that RSS functions today.

7:32Taylor Lorenz:Yeah, I believe in privacy laws, and I believe in free expression. And I would love a less profit-driven internet that gives users more control and that allows for total free expression in some instances, but also allows for a lot of safe places as well for people to have conversations if they're marginalized and they don't have to be sort of abused by terrible people. So yeah, but I believe in user control and I believe in tech regulation that fosters innovation. I'm not like degrowth. I support innovation and startups and all of that stuff. I'm not like anti-tech. I believe in a better world through technology, but I think we should put that technology in the hands of the people.

8:16Taylor Lorenz:This is also why if you, I mean, we haven't talked about AI policy, but I'm a huge supporter in open weight models, open source software generally. I report a lot on the Linux developer community. And so, yeah, it's a version of the internet that is a lot less driven by corporate power and a lot more decentralized.

8:33Ben Smith:You're new friends in the sort of corporate power business, however. I think like really have specifically appreciated that you are – I wouldn't say you're necessarily like an AI evangelist, but you're at least like anti-anti-AI. I think that's fair. And have been like very critical of a lot of criticism of AI. And I'm curious what you make right now of this moment where it's AI, again, like bipartisan. Everybody hates AI, apparently, for a really wide range of reasons. What's going on? I know.

9:04Taylor Lorenz:Part of it is like I have whatever personality characteristic it is where I like to be that. If everybody is saying one thing, I'm like, well, what if it's the opposite? Whatever. I think that's what makes me a good show. The co-host of this show also has that.

9:19Ben Smith:Yeah, I have this personality flaw also, which may be why we've clashed occasionally in our lives. I love the drama. But no, but I don't mean about you. I just mean like broadly. Like what do you think is going on here with the national obsession with backlash to AI?

9:32Taylor Lorenz:I think so much of the backlash to AI is backlash to big tech, right? It's people that are angry about the influence that tech has over their lives and they feel powerless against these big tech conglomerates. And that's what's coming out. you know, it's that anger is manifesting all over the board and a lot of state policies and these lawsuits and the anger that you feel, you know, around AI. My feeling about AI is, I think it's transformative technology that first of all, was not invented yesterday. It was not invented in 2022. Although obviously like LLMs have been in, you know, sort of an incredible advancement, but I believe in a tech forward future.

10:11Taylor Lorenz:And this is my big disagreement with the left is like, I think that a lot of people on the left do not believe in a tech forward future. They believe in this, they sort of just want to go back. And they're very similar, you know, Molly Taft, who is phenomenal reporter at Wired. She has been covering the data center backlash, I think more longer than anyone and better than anyone. But she wrote this great piece about sort of like the humans first guy, the Steve Bannon guy and about sort of like this far left and far right alliance of like just wanting to go back, wanting to use brick phones, believing the internet was a mistake.

10:44Taylor Lorenz:Like it is very sort of trad in a way. I think of, and this is so like, you know, I'm not an abundance person, but I think of like the opening to abundance. Do you guys read the Ezra Klein book or the Derek Thompson book? Okay. I'm not like, I don't know about housing policy. I don't know about all that. But like what I appreciate about that movement is like, okay, they present this version of like a tech forward future and people will accuse them of just being like tech shells or whatever, whatever. But I do think that the left broadly doesn't have a tech forward vision of AI. And my feeling is like, hey, we can use AI in really great ways.

11:19Taylor Lorenz:I like to use it to develop websites and apps or things like that. I don't know. You know, look at China. I'm not a China glazer. I actually am very critical of China, which has also put me in opposition with the left. But like, they have a very, you know, they have a landscape built on open models, right? A lot of their data centers are powered by clean energy. Let's get to that. From what I hear from a lot of the left is like, okay, bomb the data centers, ban the data centers, but moratorium. And it's like, and then what? And then what? What? We end all technological progress? Like, and then what?

11:52Taylor Lorenz:And so, you know, I've gotten on board with maybe the New York moratorium in the sense that like, I think, okay, it's good to sort of like give the state a chance to like come in and help these towns. Cause like a lot of these people that run these towns are just like some part-time soccer coach that's like also the mayor or whatever, you know, so it's like, I get I, I, I'm not opposed to the concept even of a moratorium. It's more just like what, what net, what then? But I'm kind of curious, you know, you were talking there about, you know, your differences with, with the left list. I was listening to your show.

12:21And it seems like you oftentimes these days are explaining to your audience, you know, that you know that they might disagree with you about kind of certain things. Does your audience feel in some ways, like you've like switched sides on them? And how much of your audience feels that way?

12:39Taylor Lorenz:Yeah, you know, the question of how much my audience, like how much of my audience feels that way is something I'm trying to get a handle of. The thing that I've had a hard time navigating more recently, especially as I've like tried to de-radicalize my own audience and just be like, hey, let's learn about tech policy. Let's learn about this stuff. Because I think like a lot of my audience has good instincts and we align on a lot of things in terms of like human rights, broadly a progressive worldview. But I think when I went independent, the advice that I got from so many people was like, just collaborate with as many other YouTubers as possible, go on other people's streams, like talk about, like put yourself fully in the influencer world and just like get out of mainstream media.

13:23Taylor Lorenz:Cause otherwise you're always going to sort of be trapped in this mainstream media thing, whatever. So I did do a lot of collaborations with a lot of progressive influencers. And some of them are my friends. I love them. But these are not people that have nuanced conversations around tech policy. And I think a lot of my audience, I have still today strong overlap with people that follow the more far further left influencers. And I think that they're realizing like, number one, I'm not actually as far left as I think the main like Fox News likes to paint me. And also as maybe some of these influencers that I've collaborated with are, you know?

13:57Taylor Lorenz:And so I think that there is some tension there. And I think there's just a lot of reflexive anger. And there are so many people online that will just tell them what they want to hear. Like, they just want to hear that. You know, even just today, I was having a conversation because I was talking about the amount of money, which is true, that the AI safety organizations are flooding into the content creator ecosystem. This is not even my reporting. It's Natasha Tiku's reporting that like, and I had Natasha on to talk about this. I've talked about this at length. But, you know, of course, some leftist account like immediately screenshots me and says, oh, you know, she's pro AI or whatever.

14:31And I think this is unproductive.

14:33Taylor Lorenz:I also think it's unproductive to boycott AI. This is not a... AI companies, especially the Frontier Labs, don't rely on a consumer business model. Boycotting them is not going to do anything. They have huge corporate contracts. And I think actually we should use this technology and understand it. Because if you don't understand how to navigate new technology, you cannot navigate the information ecosystem of our time. Taylor, you've been talking about moral panics around social media, which is actually something I think that Ben agrees with you on. We had Dr. Vivek Murthy on the show a few months back, the former Surgeon General of the US, and he was talking about the dangers of social media and how it contributes to loneliness.

15:11And this is the thing that he has been talking about in his time since leaving as Surgeon General. This is the cause, the health cause. It's very profitable.

15:20Ben Smith:Yeah, it might be. We didn't really ask him about that, but it definitely was interesting. And Ben pushed him a little bit on that as well. But like, I guess what I'm curious about is where do you draw the line? What is a moral panic when it comes to social media? And what do you think is something that we should genuinely be freaked out about? Because there are things that obviously upset you a lot on the internet when it comes to things like censorship and whatnot. But it's censorship of news and information. But at the same time, you know, some of the restrictions that people and platforms want to put and states want to put in place when it comes to, you know, children and, you know, some of these other kind of things you've said is kind of a moral panic.

16:01So where's the line for you?

16:02Taylor Lorenz:Well, you know, what I would say is like it's not me saying it's moral panic. It is every single expert. I mean, this is something that actually there is broad consensus on among people that actually study this topic. We're not talking about who's pontificating about it online. We're talking about experts like Alice Marwick, Candace Ogers. I mean, Candace has done, I think, the best job really dismantling this idea that like the internet or social media is causing some sort of like mental health crisis. It is simply not supported by the data. And in fact, I think of this big report that some of the, almost all the best researchers minus Candace came together in 2024 and put together this big 84-page document.

16:44Taylor Lorenz:it was Alice Marwick and a bunch of other sort of top researchers and said, listen, they actually use the word moral panic, which if you know for researchers is like very rare. And they said, like, we know the causes, like we actually know a lot of the causes of the youth mental health crisis. A lot of it is related to actually the adult parents' mental health and broader socioeconomic issues, et cetera. Young people, desperate people turning to social media is a symptom of the larger problem. But we worry that we're in the midst of this moral panic. And And so when I hear researchers, academics that have dedicated decades of their lives to studying this specific topic say not only are a lot of these claims completely unsubstantiated, but, you know, they're being weaponized as part of a moral panic.

17:26Taylor Lorenz:Like, that is something I think we should pay attention to. And I think, unfortunately, Candace Auders specifically, who is far and away, I would say, the top academic studying this and has dedicated her life to studying this specific question, you know, she doesn't have Michelle Obama's PR people, right, as someone else does. You know, like she doesn't have millions and millions of dollars from, you know, the Koch Network or the not probably not the Kochs, but maybe the Heritage Foundation or who knows, you know, these other right wing groups that sort of play in this space and do put a lot of money into or, you know, sort of funding this really the moral panic that these censorship laws are predicated on.

18:04Taylor Lorenz:And this is not new. This is the same thing that happened in the 90s with which is what resulted in the Communications Decency Act. So, yeah, that does not mean, I have to reiterate, that you should give your children unmitigated access to the Internet. That does not mean that these platforms are inherently safe for children. That means that you should take an active role in parenting your child and you should leverage, you know, the enterprise-level mass surveillance technology that you as a consumer now have access to to monitor your children's content or whatever. But overall, I think you should develop a healthy and trusting relationship with your child so that when your child inevitably does encounter something harmful online, which they will, maybe it's before they turn 18, maybe it's when they turn 19, that they'll come to you and talk to you and be able to process that and recognize it.