I made a post about this about 2 weeks ago on a less popular thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26849275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=268

I made a post about this about 2 weeks ago on a less popular thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26849275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26849275 It is way worse than cigarettes, on so many levels. It is much more profound than one would initially assume. Social media and modern micro targeting advertising, which plays strongly into your individual hopes and fears (to maximize the likelihood of getting a response from you—which is abusive), creates a validation feedback loop commonly seen in Cluster B Personality Disorders. Young people (as in developing minds that have not mentally reached adulthood—occurs around age 25) have been primed and trained to make fake, empty, and unthoughtful posts needlessly (i.e. daily or several times per day) just to gain “likes” (also known as approval) from their peers. They also post to social media so that the algorithm treats them nicer, even if they are unaware of this on an explicit level. Psychologists have been warning about this: how an entire generation of currently developing minds is going to be a lot more narcissistic and a lot less empathetic than previous generations due to this invasive and traumatic long-term exposure. I am luckier than most: as an adult (with a print-related disability) I almost never have to go on websites that serve ads, as I have access to special libraries and news repositories (with breaking news sources) that legitimately keep me endlessly entertained (see this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26829865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26829865). I also use the paid audio apps Blinkist, Audm, and Curio to augment those databases. I probably have not used YouTube in 6 months, due to the above and I am no Luddite! The only social media account that I have is HN.