[pardoned_turkey]

People made the same arguments about violent video games (a major panic in the 1990s), about youth literature, about Dungeons and Dragons, and so on. All about depraving children and getting them hooked on smut for profit.

Social media is "adversarial" in the sense that yeah, most platforms want to maximize engagement, and maximized engagement might not be best for you. But that's also the relationship you have with companies selling you sugary food or expensive shoes. They're not your friends and they want you to spend money in ways that might not benefit you. We manage.

Ultimately, you have agency to shape your experience. You're not "addicted" to it any more than one gets "addicted" to chocolate or Louis Vuitton. Social media ended up replacing social life for many teens, and it's probably useful to ask why - this isn't Mark Zuckerberg's design.

At some point, adults in the developed world decided at some point that it's not OK for children to play unsupervised outdoors, walk to school on their own, and so on. It's probably a function of increasing standard of living and plummeting birth rates. Just 50-100 years ago, you had multiple children with the expectation that not all of them will make it to adulthood. Nowadays, most families will have one kid - their single most important "investment" - and they have the means to tightly monitor and control their physical environment. The internet is sort of the only place where you can meet with friends and have fun unsupervised. It's an escape hatch.

I don't see how banning or regulating TikTok or Facebook really solves this.

[lancesells]

> Social media ended up replacing social life for many teens, and it's probably useful to ask why - this isn't Mark Zuckerberg's design

The algorithmic feed and what is shown is absolutely by design. I don't use social media so I don't know how good / bad it is but there's clearly intent.

Comparing social media or Youtube to literature or D&D doesn't really work for me. This is more akin to a billion channel cable service where your remote only works some of the time. You use it to socialize with your friends, but you're also forcefed content that you didn't ask for, that may or may not be good for your mental health.

And yes, adults have agency but this article is about teens who have agency but are still growing and don't have the experience to make good decisions.

[Capricorn2481]

They aren't the same arguments at all. All of those things are about the occasional indulgence of a hobby vs the time sink of constantly sitting on your phone and spending time with companies that want ALL of your time. Companies that, themselves, have lots of internal reporting concluding their platforms increase division and cause mental health issues.

I don't see how you can compare it to Chocolate? It's in our pocket and it's infinite.

[SV_BubbleTime]

The sheer scope of this argument is ridiculous.

The number of people on social media even that can’t mentally withstand the negative effects absolutely dwarf the number of people who have ever placed violent video games.

Notice I’m not making a statement on games at all? The could be the absolute worst thing in the world for mental health, and by scale social media still is the larger issue.