To the editor: Guest contributor Jessica L. Schleider makes a convincing argument that blaming social media for children’s problems is an oversimplification of the issue (“If social platforms are harmful, don’t just ban kids. Regulate the harms,” Feb. 25).
This isn’t the first time popular media has been illogically blamed. In 1954, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham published “Seduction of the Innocent,” a book claiming comic books led to juvenile delinquency. Part of his reasoning? He’d seen boys in reform school reading comic books, a classic example of putting the cart before the horse.
The psychiatric community was largely not impressed with such a simplistic explanation and regarded Wertham as a crank. Marvel Comics editor Stan Lee recounted that Wertham “said things that impressed the public, and it was like shouting fire in a theater, but there was little scientific validity to it. And yet because he had the name ‘doctor,’ people took what he said seriously, and it started a whole crusade against comics.”
Spencer Grant, Laguna Niguel
