401–410 of 1001 posts
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I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I for one deleted all of those platforms and my life is definitely better (I'm way less distracted for once, but the list is longer). What do I care what others do?
> What do I care what others do Because we live in a society? Would you care if everyone around you was smoking crack, sociopathic or seriously mentally ill?
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I, Millennial, am seeing a huge decline in social media usage among my peers. It's reached the point where I didn't even bother to install any of the apps when I got a new phone last year, other than Facebook Messenger which we still use for planning activities. The vast majority of my friends and "friends" on social media haven't posted anything for years. I think my last contribution was back in 2017. I thought soc…
Just to clarify, is the scope of social media being referred to here particular, typical apps (eg: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), or any app/service that has interactive social and media elements (eg: Discord, Reddit)?
The former is not focused on you as a person and you are judged by the discussion that you participate in, while the latter is focused on you as a person and you are judged by how interesting you are or can appear to be.
My peers are disappearing from the latter category (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, ...)
I don't think I know the user name of any of my friends on Reddit even, or who are active there, which is exactly the point - nobody cares about the connection to the real life person.
The author had it right in the first paragraph. In the 90s version of this hysteria, Congress passed a law that would have prevented access to education medical information, dirty curse words, and other filth from being published on the internet to protect the children. The federal government fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce it. If they had won that case, the internet would look very differen…
When we was teenagers we had unrestricted broadband access to the internet but what was missing was the constant comparison hellhole like Instagram that is causing mental illness. WaReZ, KaZaA, Ogrish, CD-Keys, drugs, weapon making tutorials, Mail-order-drugs. This was the wild west days of the internet. You could literally put up anything you could sell anything and everything. Classmates were downloading roms, porn…
> the constant comparison hellhole like Instagram that is causing mental illness. Anecdotally, Instagram ranks much lower than Reddit for causing problems among the young kids I’ve worked with. Reddit is an absolutely cesspool of misinformation, fake stories, propaganda, and rampant doomerism. Scrolling Instagram can’t hold a candle to the militant doomerism that seethes from sites like Reddit. I think it’s an uncomf…
I grew up in Sweden, where strong alcohol is only sold in a state owned company and the same for gambling, so this probably make me have another view of this than people from other countries. I do believe that there has to be some sort of laws around how social media, or really "endless scrolling of content" is done. It's seriously addictive, I feel it myself, and just letting people "be free and choose what to do" r…
> I grew up in Sweden, where strong alcohol is only sold in a state owned company It worked so well, that alcoholism rates in Sweden are higher than in some countries where the sales of strong alcohol are not a state monopoly. A closer look shows that even the neighboring Scandinavian countries are doing better.. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholis...
a country with no problems with alcohol consumption won't have any need to create strong regulations.
the implication that deregulating alcohol in sweden would decrease consumption seems bizarre.
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And then there are also those companies/institutions/orgs/news/shops that make you left behind from otherwise useful information or services by not being on social media platforms.
It really annoys me how many services - even sometimes public services like our local police - are Facebook first, with all other mediums as an afterthought.
Luckily with Elon doing crazy things to X, NYC has divorced a bunch of public services from it.
But not enough
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Are Chinese people happier then Americans or Europeans?
We as a society need to stop associating happiness with good mental health. Sadly contentment doesn't sound as good, but is a better measure of emotional state.
This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…
Just shut down Meta and something like 75% of the problem goes away. One neat trick, etc.
I'm no saint when it comes to addiction and being on my phone for more than I should be, but I have a sister who is in her mid 20s right now, and for the last couple of years she has slowly isolated herself from life and her family, she spends most of her time in her room on the phone and does weird things like get cosmetic surgeries, ordering cosmetics, etc. It's bizarre. She does this and all the while never leaves…
i explained to my sibling the other day that we cannot live our lives however we wanted because of our layers of responsibility: first to ourselves (as a human beings in this civilization), then to our family and friends (who expect to count on us at some point), to the society we inhabit (i am currently an immigrant), the human race, and lastly the environment. those are not easy responsibilities and they could crush anyone. but absconding isn’t a choice: we’re not here for selfish reasons.
i think you should intervene, at whatever cost to you. because no one else would, and depending on how persistent you are, she’d be grateful for the care and attention you showed. because that’s the sort of action that pure love motivates. good luck
This author is seriously suggesting that governments ban children's use of social media, and that can't really be done without completely destroying internet anonymity. Any policy that actually achieved this, without being trivial to circumvent, would basically need to replicate the great firewall of China. Doing this in a half-assed way is even worse than not doing anything at all. If you just require ID checks for…
Of course people think of solving this problem again by constraining the consumer, instead of the producer. What we should do is make rules for social media platforms to disallow them to develop algorithms that make people addicted. You might think how do you define that, but the companies have already made a whole science out of it so it's not that abstract anymore. It would sure be an elaborate task and will surely…
Regardless, dangerous content and services (just like dangerous substances) should be hard to make and very visibly marked, leaving no doubt about what it is and how it works. I love the EU’s notion of “algorithmic transparency” [0]. I would go a step further for systems attempting to increase engagement by exploiting behavioural sensitivities to be marked and even opt-in (think cigarette packaging).