[thanhhaimai]

I'm not sure that's sad. People should do the things they enjoy, including randomly browsing and chatting on an app.

People can spend time on gaming, TV, music, reading novel, sleep, rolling on the floor, watching K-Dramas... And that's fine. It's a misconception that humans need to optimize for productivity. Some people optimize for happiness instead (myself included), and there is nothing sad about that. In fact, I'm pretty happy :).

[Barrin92]

Social media use is not generally associated with higher degrees of happiness or satisfaction, but in fact in some demographics like adolescent girls with increased self-harm and loneliness.

The rise in loneliness (and its associated effects) over the last ten years that thas largely coincided with the advent of social media have been so extreme that some countries like the UK have created a distinct ministry and government strategies to deal with it.

[logimame]

But maybe can you think about the causation in an opposite way? Isn’t because in the guise of neoliberalism society has become increasingly hypercompetitive and alienating that people are flocking into those social media sites as a last resort, no matter how horrible do you think it is?

I’ve seen people suggesting to leave social media to find real opportunities for human relationships, but if you really have enough social capital for that you wouldn’t be vigorously surfing around on Reddit or Twitter in the first place. (In other words: how dare you have the sheer luxury to leave social media and say that it’s harmful to you!)