As long as I’m allowed to keep mailing lists and group chat apps, I’m good — I mostly use social media for these two functions just with easier picture sharing. |
Good to abolish it that is |
I hate social media and I hate how society has ironically become anti social despite constant “access” to people this way.
Everything has declined since the proliferation of smart phones. Driving, communication, community, language, education, you name it. You can’t even talk to a person at most major companies anymore. I’d love to have a glimpse 200 years into the future and see how things de/evolve very long term and what the consensus becomes regarding the current early days of this technology. |
Curious what date you see the apex of humanity as? I’m assuming you don’t want to go back to 1924 but you seem pretty down on 2024 and the future too. I hate social media but I’m not sure I think everything has gotten worse in the last 20 years. |
DP. I agree that everything PP cited—driving, communication, community, language, education—has gotten worse since smartphones/social media became ubiquitous. |
I hate social media for children and I hate social media as a vehicle for narcissists to brag and promote fake portrayals of themselves. OTOH, it's good in some ways for adults to keep in touch with each other, talk about common interests, and find interesting people you would not otherwise ever know. |
It is horribly toxic and people don’t even realize it.
We would be better off without social media. |
aside from doing my financial business, social media/internet is nothing but lies and convincing kids to do sinful things.
We as parents need to watch out for the kids. They have no idea how deadly the internet really is. WEB OF LIES I ain't just a crime show. |
41 states are suing Instagram/ Meta over how harmful and addictive Social really is:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2023/10/24/meta-states-lawsuit-facebook-instagram-children/71300954007/ 41 out of 50 states. |
Social media exploits the aspects of human behavior, and human impulses, in order to get users and engagement. You are not going to change the way people fundamentally are. Example: the "like" function on social media was created specifically to exploit the way people get a little dopamine hit when they receive some form of personal validation. Social media companies figured this out early on and realized it would be a good way to get people to engage on their platforms more, stay for longer, and connect to more people. All of which serves the interest of social media companies, which is to gather as much data about users as possible. You are NEVER going to somehow master this impulse in humans. It's innate. It's stronger in some people than in others, and there are individuals who can train themselves not to see likes as a form of validation, or to recognize it as an empty form of validation, but that's pretty rare. So if this aspect of social media negative impacts people (and it does, look at the research on teenage girls and Instagram, in particular) then the only way to remove that negative impact is to remove that aspect of social media. The social media companies themselves know this, btw. Instagram actually played around with altering the like function specifically to try and address the negative impact it has on people, by making likes private (only the user could see both who liked a photo and how many people liked it) which would have a direct positive impact on teen girls and others who wind up measuring their social status and self-worth by comparing likes or looking to see who liked what. But this was around the time that Instagram lost it's independent leadership (it was owned by Meta already but for a time operated separately from Facebook) and these shifts were scrapped when Facebook took over, for what I think should be obvious reasons. It would honestly not be that hard to create social media platforms that promoted connectivity without exploiting human insecurities and tendencies in a way that harmed people. But it would be less profitable, at least using the current profit model. Like you could have social media that discouraged scrolling and spending long periods of time on it, or where cyberstalking was basically impossible or at least harder to do. It is not in the companies' interest, even though it would be in ours. |
Yes, and hence: - 41 out of 50 states have filed lawsuits against Meta to stop Meta’s intentionally-addictive, and known-harmful social media offered to adults and children. |
I'd abolish it in a heartbeat. I think it's the single worst thing that has happened to humankind. I'd consider abolishing the whole Internet. |
I would also abolish it. |
+100 The internet was awesome and free at first. The capture of the internet by the wealthy is clear evidence that the average person has no chance outside of luck to live without corporate manipulation. |
I’d get rid of the whole damn internet |