4 ms·

There’s no likely avenue through which social media leads to death. It’s that simple. Tobacco products kill a lot of people. The problems you list are signific

There’s no likely avenue through which social media leads to death. It’s that simple. Tobacco products kill a lot of people. The problems you list are significant and bad, but many of them will improve as society as a whole learns to parent in an age of social media. Not just this, but as people grow to see how negatively social media affects you, the public attitudes toward it will change and adapt. At no point in this process is social media going to be killing people. I’m not saying that social media doesn’t cause the very negative things you outline. I’m just pointing out that it’s not as bad as smoking. That being said, I’m all for legislation that stops young people from using social media. I think it would be totally reasonable to make it illegal under a certain age.

wyre 4y ago
Social media and cyberbullying leads to suicide and has and does kill people. This is particularly bad when those alt-f4’ing their life are adolescents and not post-midlife when smoking will kill. It seems like it’s too early to tell how severe the second and third order effects of social media are on one’s own well-being and the well-being of society.
- comfypotato 4y ago
  My language allowed for the acknowledgement of few and far between cases of suicide. It’s not a fair comparison to smoking deaths. Social media suicides get a lot of attention because, like you said, adolescent suicide is particularly sad. The numbers, however, are completely different orders of magnitudes; deaths by social media are insignificant when compared to smoking.