(1) Social media addiction is an addiction but taking away the phone isn't a simple solution. For one thing, apps have dominated many markets such as dating a

(1) Social media addiction is an addiction but taking away the phone isn't a simple solution. For one thing, apps have dominated many markets such as dating and finding out about local events. A local board game club, for instance, meets weekly in the basement of a church but if you found one of their posters at a game shop you'd find only a headline and a QR code that points to a Facebook page -- and if you log into Facebook you find out when and where they meet. And so much is like that. Like it's not just you who have to quit social media, it is all your friends and potential friends. For all the ethical problems I have with Meta I am still on Facebook because my extended family is there and other people I interact with, like the musicians who I photograph at events, are there. Student groups are on Insta, etc. (2) There is so much bad about Facebook. I see scam ads every day, particularly ads that reproduce UI elements from Facebook suggesting that you have notifications and then send you to some bizzaro world that is certainly some kind of fraud. I report these ads and get a nice note back about how they took action on them and two days later... the same ads appear. These idiots got it in writing [1] that they'd rather not filter the 10% of ads that are scam ads so they can make money ' https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/ https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu... (3) I'm not a Christian, in fact I am something very different, but I'm tempted to say that Meta and other social media border on the satanic in terms of social influence. In particular I'd point to the way they draw a rift between men and women, for instance there are the endless thirst traps on Instagram and the come-ons for OnlyFans performers that never stop and on YouTube some of the easiest rabbit holes to get into are "Men suck", "Women suck", "Trans people suck", "Cis people suck", ... It makes some people rich at the expense of us all. (4) It sounds like a lot of money by ordinary standards, but it is nowhere near enough to change their behavior. [1] ... my conspirators in relatively innocent transgressions know better!