"Brainwashing" ...

[quintessentone]

I thought the saying was "you catch more bees with petrol than you do honey"?

Where did you hear that saying? Weird saying.

I don't know whether or not this article verges on 'brainwashing' but if young people are so vulnernable then I am all for social media/online restrictions/laws being enforced.

Scientists point to social media as the potential force driving this mental health crisis. In particular, online exposure to idealized body imagery and language can trigger negative self-comparisons, especially for young social media users whose identities and self-worth are still forming.

“The social dynamic is perhaps the most harmful force on social media,” Kristina Lerman, study lead author and Principal Scientist at ISI, said. “The friends you make online can actually make your mental health worse.”

The researchers next looked at how these communities interacted with each other. Chu described the result as “astonishing.” Clusters, or echo chambers, appeared where tens of thousands of users in the same community responded to and retweeted each other, yet they had little interaction with outside groups.
 
“They’re being radicalized by very harmful content without even knowing it,” Chu said. 

Lerman and team that the propensity for radicalization across such disparate topics hints at unmet universal human needs that drive the behavior, such as the need to belong.

https://neurosciencenews.com/eating-diso...dia-25920/

The issue seems to be in online echo chambers without any opposition from within or from outside groups - could fall into Maxmars' 'cloisterism' phenomenon, which may include the strong drive to belong to a group which may outweigh one's own well being.