4 ms·

There’s very little doubt that social media is hard to use in a positive way these days, and very little doubt that a race to the bottom on all our worst impuls

There’s very little doubt that social media is hard to use in a positive way these days, and very little doubt that a race to the bottom on all our worst impulses is a big part of that. But the causal arrow is trickier. The exact time period over which social media has become front and center in daily life is the same period of time in which we’ve watched financial crisis (massive net wealth transfer to the richest) move into loony ZIRP stuff / asset bubbles and attendant massive net wealth transfer to the richest, explode into a cultural war that seems pretty clearly about wealth inequality and social mobility underneath the tribalism paint job (the tribalism stuff is real but people living great don’t go in for populism in insane numbers) slide into a disastrously mishandled pandemic (during which we blew through all previous notional and discounted measures for what rich means), and now everyone is being told that inflation and unemployment are good (they’ve been cooking the CPI forever, that was going on in the 90s that I’ve seen, this made up stuff about abundant good jobs is new). So whether it’s teens or Gen Z or whatever the case: they have parents and older siblings and can guess about their prospects. Your parents going crazy from economic stress or your adult sibling moving back home has got to be at least up there with unhealthy kinds or amounts of screen time as a stressor. Now AI is looking like nothing but the biggest lever for hockeystick inequality in history and is overwhelmingly controlled by a few people who give many the creeps. Is an unhealthy retreat into screen time (and fentanyl) the cause of social collapse? Or are people embracing escapism, tribalism, and substances while eschewing social activities and even sex because the donor class is going for the jugular and they’re looking to pull it off? So yeah, I think you’re on to something looking a little further back, but it at a minimum very correlated with mortgage meltdown to the present.

williamcotton 3y ago
China, India, Poland, Australia and Brazil weathered the 2008 financial crisis relatively well. Poland and Australia avoided a recession entirely. Yet the rise in teen mental health is still in parallel in all of the above nations with those heavily affected by the crisis.
- naasking 3y ago
  Also retrospective studies of areas that adopted smartphones well after the financial crisis showed delayed effects that make it implausible to tie them to the crisis.
WalterBright 3y ago
> massive net wealth transfer to the richest Those rich people created the wealth. Wealth was not "transferred" to Bill Gates, for example. Gates created products. He then sold these products to people, who believed those products were worth the money they paid for them - i.e. it was an equal value trade. That is how Gates made money. It wasn't a transfer. Theft, taxes, donations, subsidies and welfare are examples of a transfer of wealth.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  > Gates created products. No he didn't. His employees did. The transfer of wealth was from the employees of Microsoft to Bill Gates by means of information asymmetry: Bill Gates knows what his employees are worth (i.e. the value they create, on average), but they don't. So he pays them what they'll accept and keeps the surplus. But if you're not convinced, consider the cartel behavior of major SV employers when it comes to "poaching"[1] and "noncompete" agreements[2]. These suppress salaries, with the goal of funnelling more money to the C-suite and shareholders instead. [1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-... [2] https://www.epi.org/publication/noncompete-agreements/ https://www.epi.org/publication/noncompete-agreements/
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > No he didn't. His employees did. Gates traded money for the work of his employees. It was a fair trade, as both parties freely agreed. (Pedantically, Gates wrote Microsoft's first product - BASIC.) > The transfer of wealth was from the employees of Microsoft to Bill Gates by means of information asymmetry: Bill Gates knows what his employees are worth (i.e. the value they create, on average), but they don't. You imply that they were stupid. They certainly were not. And at any time they could have demanded more money. And at any time they could have quit, started their own company, and received the full value of their work. (Many did so, the PNW is full of them.) Story time! I know of a very successful salesman at BigCorp. He generated vast quantities of sales for them, and was paid him well. He could walk into any company and be ushered in to see the CEO, and make a sale. He quit to join a startup and do the sales. He was unable to close a single deal. He couldn't even get an audience from the decision makers in other companies, let alone see the CEO. He returned to BigCorp, who was happy to get him back. The point is, it was BigCorp standing behind him that enabled his success. Without that, it just didn't work for him. > consider the cartel behavior of major SV employers I know about that. The cartel was a handful of employers. It did not cover the zillions of other tech companies, nor was it remotely effective in stopping startups that they could start.
boppo1 3y ago
>very little doubt that social media is hard to use in a positive way these days Horseshit. I use Facebook and Instagram and love both. When I see something I don't like, I click the 'Don't show me stuff like this' option. I have an endless feed of old european castles, guitars and a couple other obscure hobbies & interests. I have learned things about my hobbies I never would have otherwise and practice them at a higher level.
- hattmall 3y ago
  Even what you describe is an incredibly poor method of consuming information. There's no reasonable way to say you wouldn't have otherwise learned about something just because you learned about it in the way you did. I learned far more quality information about my hobbies when there were vast Internet forums of users dedicated to discussing them. Facebook groups and other social media has supplanted most of those forums but presents the information in a much more inferior fashion. However it creates far more engagement by exploiting the same principles as gambling addiction or animal training. Variable expectation of results and the level of work required, scrambling the feed, burying information, creating an inconsistent expectation of experience. That in and of itself wreaks havoc on brain chemistry and brings forth depression just like gambling addiction.

williamcotton 3y ago

China, India, Poland, Australia and Brazil weathered the 2008 financial crisis relatively well. Poland and Australia avoided a recession entirely. Yet the rise in teen mental health is still in parallel in all of the above nations with those heavily affected by the crisis.

naasking 3y ago
Also retrospective studies of areas that adopted smartphones well after the financial crisis showed delayed effects that make it implausible to tie them to the crisis.

WalterBright 3y ago

> massive net wealth transfer to the richest Those rich people created the wealth. Wealth was not "transferred" to Bill Gates, for example. Gates created products. He then sold these products to people, who believed those products were worth the money they paid for them - i.e. it was an equal value trade. That is how Gates made money. It wasn't a transfer. Theft, taxes, donations, subsidies and welfare are examples of a transfer of wealth.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
AlexandrB 3y ago
> Gates created products. No he didn't. His employees did. The transfer of wealth was from the employees of Microsoft to Bill Gates by means of information asymmetry: Bill Gates knows what his employees are worth (i.e. the value they create, on average), but they don't. So he pays them what they'll accept and keeps the surplus. But if you're not convinced, consider the cartel behavior of major SV employers when it comes to "poaching"[1] and "noncompete" agreements[2]. These suppress salaries, with the goal of funnelling more money to the C-suite and shareholders instead. [1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-... [2] https://www.epi.org/publication/noncompete-agreements/ https://www.epi.org/publication/noncompete-agreements/
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > No he didn't. His employees did. Gates traded money for the work of his employees. It was a fair trade, as both parties freely agreed. (Pedantically, Gates wrote Microsoft's first product - BASIC.) > The transfer of wealth was from the employees of Microsoft to Bill Gates by means of information asymmetry: Bill Gates knows what his employees are worth (i.e. the value they create, on average), but they don't. You imply that they were stupid. They certainly were not. And at any time they could have demanded more money. And at any time they could have quit, started their own company, and received the full value of their work. (Many did so, the PNW is full of them.) Story time! I know of a very successful salesman at BigCorp. He generated vast quantities of sales for them, and was paid him well. He could walk into any company and be ushered in to see the CEO, and make a sale. He quit to join a startup and do the sales. He was unable to close a single deal. He couldn't even get an audience from the decision makers in other companies, let alone see the CEO. He returned to BigCorp, who was happy to get him back. The point is, it was BigCorp standing behind him that enabled his success. Without that, it just didn't work for him. > consider the cartel behavior of major SV employers I know about that. The cartel was a handful of employers. It did not cover the zillions of other tech companies, nor was it remotely effective in stopping startups that they could start.

boppo1 3y ago

>very little doubt that social media is hard to use in a positive way these days Horseshit. I use Facebook and Instagram and love both. When I see something I don't like, I click the 'Don't show me stuff like this' option. I have an endless feed of old european castles, guitars and a couple other obscure hobbies & interests. I have learned things about my hobbies I never would have otherwise and practice them at a higher level.

hattmall 3y ago
Even what you describe is an incredibly poor method of consuming information. There's no reasonable way to say you wouldn't have otherwise learned about something just because you learned about it in the way you did. I learned far more quality information about my hobbies when there were vast Internet forums of users dedicated to discussing them. Facebook groups and other social media has supplanted most of those forums but presents the information in a much more inferior fashion. However it creates far more engagement by exploiting the same principles as gambling addiction or animal training. Variable expectation of results and the level of work required, scrambling the feed, burying information, creating an inconsistent expectation of experience. That in and of itself wreaks havoc on brain chemistry and brings forth depression just like gambling addiction.