[pokstad]

Social media is like tobacco. We went after tobacco for targeting kids, we should do the same to social media. Highly engineered addictive content is not unlike what was done to cigarettes.

[fuzzfactor]

Yes, go after Facebook and their kind only, avoid collateral damage to the remaining regular old internet.

[Gormo]

No, it isn't. Tobacco is a physical substance that alters users' biochemistry and creates a physical dependence. Social media is information conveyed via a computing device. You can criticize social media for what it is in its own right, without having to engage in these kinds of disingenuous equivocations.

[ozim]

Sounds like you need to read up on dopamine and addictions a bit more.

Gambling isn’t introducing substance into user system it is making use of existing brain chemicals.

Social media companies engineered every piece of addictive mechanisms from gambling to alter brain chemistry or reactions of users.

[pokstad]

You’re right, it’s actually worse than tobacco. Tobacco simply makes your body sick, but social media attacks the most vital part of us. Even the CDC has studied this: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a3.htm

[bdangubic]

Comparing Tobacco to Social Media is like comparing me to LeBron James. I'd rather have my kid smoke a pack of day than have social media accounts

[fsflover]

Yes, it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498

[csmcg]

the mechanisms by which that information is being conveyed have been shown to be addictive as well, no?