[moocow01]

I've recently been thinking that the current version of social media is our generation's version of smoking. I think it's going to take another 25 years but eventually I think it will be seen as something detrimental to everyone's (mental) health that people have to work to remove themselves from.

[wutbrodo]

I tend to be pretty disdainful of HN's hysteria towards social media, mainly because it's fairly easy to use each platform in healthy ways.

But I fully agree with this analogy. The average person isn't hyper-analytical about the choices they make, from media consumption to diet to the amount and quality of their online time, and the default usage path of social media is fraught with I'll effects for both the user and society. And that's to say nothing of generation being raised on these services, who have far less of an ability to resist specific usage patterns when they start (similar to teen smoking).