It's pretty simple to me. It started out as a way to remove the barrier to creating a personal website. Why would someone want a personal website? So you don

It's pretty simple to me. It started out as a way to remove the barrier to creating a personal website. Why would someone want a personal website? So you don't have to explain everything about yourself to every new person you meet. They can see what your interests are, what kind of ideas or projects you promote, and learn more about your quirks. This helps filter out those who would clash with you, as well as giving potential friends or colleagues a much smoother on-ramp to future interactions. That was in the MySpace days. At some point, Facebook took over because it was a more standardized interface with more bells & whistles, and eliminated the issue of really ugly page designs made by amateurs with auto-playing audio of music you might hate. For a little while, FB was a superior product. Then, they started messing with The Feed so it was more likely to do things that benefited the company. There was some uproar, but it was ignored and those voices turned out to be an inconsequential minority. Other platforms followed suit. This was the turning point which soured the whole experiment. I still think it can be quite useful when you're hyper-focused on using it to enhance offline interactions and/or certain collaborative efforts. But if you're just idly bouncing around, The Feed will hijack your brain and start pushing you toward things the company thinks will make it more money. The problem is that social media became an end unto itself, rather than a tool to facilitate other things. Apparently there were hundreds of millions of people with a bunch of idle time who didn't want to do anything challenging with that time other than occasionally be enticed to spend money in an attempt to make themselves feel better about their lives. Their eyeballs were ripe for the harvest. And now we have to reckon with all the unforseen ways this has changed our culture, including the whole 'influencer' plague. It takes a lot of discipline to avoid the siren's call of FOMO, and most people are not sufficiently equipped to do it. It's inextricably intertwined with our failures to adequately address the mental health needs of the wider population as well. All those of us who are better off can do is lead by example.