>and with the limit on my phone, I would be using it minimally, especially because I use a lot of my phone time daily to listen to music (like 5 [REDACTED], which I am listening to right now) and to text my friends, so I would only use it for 20 or so minutes a day, which is very low.
This is a recipe for frustrating yourself. Social media is very addictive. You're currently unhappy and you're _not_ allowed to use it, imagine how much more unhappy you'll be after having only 20 minutes. You'll only want to use it more and more once you're allowed to use it. You'll be thinking about those 20 minutes and what you'll do all day, you'll get mad when the 20 minutes is up etc.
>Another thing that the article mentioned is that people these days who do not have social media may feel excluded or left out,
That's a much easier problem to treat than social media addiction. The amount of harm you can experience on social media is unbounded, and also not readily anticipated. You don't really know how much it can harm you, and you are asking to allow it to harm you a little bit so that you can then later argue that amount didn't _significantly_ harm you so more access is fine.
>In case you hadn’t already noticed, I don’t really do that. I do find people pretty, but I don’t usually compare myself to them.
Have you considered other people "didn't do that" too, and that social media changed them? What if it changes you too? Do you _want_ to end up like them? "It won't happen to me" is a really common trope when dealing with addictive things.
>Also, studies have shown that when people don’t get to do something as a child/teenager isn’t allowed to do or have something in moderation, they are more likely to do or have it in excess as an adult.
Perhaps, but have you considered that adults shouldn't be using these platforms either? It's not as simple as "when you're old enough, you can now jump off a cliff", maybe... don't jump off the cliff? It's a silly metaphor but still, the default position shouldn't be to use these things.
>I believe that using social media could actually have greater benefits for me, such as being able to record Tiktok dances with my friends, or messaging people on Snapchat.
There's billions of silly dance videos on tik tok, your life isn't any worse for you not making number 9,999,234,255. Snapchat is for old people (zoomer-boomers) now, so you're also not missing much there anyways.
I'm with dad on this one, social media won't make you any happier and it's scientifically proven to make a lot of people less happy over time. If I could go back to a world where social media never happened I would choose that in a heart beat.