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100% agree. Social media is as addictive as drugs but even more damaging with life long effects on that person. A big part of going through teenage years is th
by dustedcodes 4y ago
100% agree. Social media is as addictive as drugs but even more damaging with life long effects on that person.
A big part of going through teenage years is the development of one's own personality and finding YOUR OWN identity. Figuring out who you are and who you want to be, building real relationships with real people to learn about social contracts, trust, bonds, friendships, mistakes, and most importantly it is a key part of building a healthy amount of confidence and self-love which are important character traits that everyone should establish to some level in order to weather through tough times in life later on.
Social media makes all of the above impossible. Even worse, it makes this important development phase very toxic. It teaches teenagers and children the opposite of friendships, the algorithm is constantly looking to outrage children and to rattle their feelings in order to drive engagement. The algorithm is tuned to feed into young people's insecurities in order to drive clicks on ads and increase their ad revenue. This is why so many kids suffer from mental health issues, are immensely under confident, unhappy, feel alone and worthless.
It's shameful that policy makers are not acting fast enough. There is already a huge generation of damaged children who just turned or are turning into adults now and we already see the effects of that.
- thfuran 4y ago>but even more damaging with life long effects on that person. I suspect heroin has led to considerably more felony convictions and fatal overdoses than any social media platform.
- nervousvarun 4y agoheroin would definitely lead social media in the "fatal overdoses" department...unless you categorize suicide as "fatal overdose".
- thfuran 4y agoAbout twice as many people die from drug overdoses as from suicide in the US. Not all of those ODs are heroin, but surely not all suicides are caused by social media.
- foobarian 4y ago> I suspect heroin has led Well, what else are you gonna do when all your "friends" are more beautiful than you, than shoot up and forget about life for a while?