No, a phone is not social media. Nor is a standard messaging app. Social media is, in my opinion, any platform or service that connects you with an unknown numb

No, a phone is not social media. Nor is a standard messaging app. Social media is, in my opinion, any platform or service that connects you with an unknown number of users, a feed, and has some form of "likes" or "upvoting" involved. So simply messaging friends and family via your phone wouldn't qualify. But Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Reddit all would. And I agree with the author, social media (according to my definition), comes with an enormous number of negative consequences and we are all probably better off without it, on the whole (and yes, I realize that I am saying this on HackerNews, which also counts as social media according to that definition).