[an_opabinia]

> ...Phones often are an all-in-one coping mechanism for other issues

While I agree in principle for healthy people, it's a waste of time, but for people for whom light entertainment is their medicine... would you rather they be drinking?

This comes up a lot re: video game addiction.

The jury's still out on the impact of social media and light entertainment (i.e. YouTube) on mental health. UK teens for example are doing far fewer drugs, getting pregnant from unsafe sex much less often, rising in school rankings, despite less sleep and higher levels of reported anxiety from watching more YouTube and Instagram.

"Everything in moderation" is kind of reductionist, of course we'd prefer that an asinine activity whose harm must be marginally declining the more people use it, not less, for the average person, substitute a harmful one like, I don't know, smoking meth. That's definitely happening for some people.

[jjulius]

>... but for people for whom light entertainment is their medicine... would you rather they be drinking?

While I don't find anything wrong with light entertainment being one's medicine, why make the assumption that drinking is the next viable 'medicine' in line? Are there not countless alternatives to drinking to remedy "boredom, stress, loneliness, etc."? Picking up hobbies? Sports? Anything else?

Edit: I want to clarify I'm not judging those who cope with alcohol - I'm 5 years sober, I've been there, I get it. I just don't know why we should assume OP wants people to become alcoholics.

[themacguffinman]

Isn't a similarly low-effort activity like drinking the more likely alternative for the kind of person who relies heavily on social media to fill their lives? Higher effort activities like hobbies and sports and such are obviously healthier alternatives, but anyone can already do them and they probably would if they had any inclination to do them in the first place.

[donw]

That's an unwarranted assumption.

Phones, games, apps, and social media are, quite literally, engineered to be addictive.

Addiction is powerful. There are plenty of cases of star athletes ending up as homeless junkies, and this isn't because they lacked the ability to engage in higher-effort, healthy hobbies.

Especially for the generation of kids raised on (and often by) smartphones and tablets. Breaking those addictions can open up a universe of new possibilities, and provide much more positive outlets for all of the energy previously invested in games or social media.

[themacguffinman]

> Addiction is powerful. There are plenty of cases of star athletes ending up as homeless junkies, and this isn't because they lacked the ability to engage in higher-effort, healthy hobbies.

Yes, I'd argue that it literally is because they lacked the ability to engage in higher-effort, healthy hobbies. Ask any star athlete junkie what he thinks is more healthy and more fulfilling: hobbies & sports, or whatever drug they ended up addicted to? They know what's better for them. For one reason or other, they don't do it. If the reason is addiction, that literally implies that they can't do it and addiction overpowers their ability to engage in higher-effort, healthy hobbies as a replacement.

> Breaking those addictions can open up a universe of new possibilities

Except you're not breaking these addictions, you're just sequestering or discouraging one particular abuse. Sometimes that helps. After all, teenage abstinence isn't zero percent effective. After all, cold turkey isn't zero percent effective. Though, the universe of possibilities they open tend to be relatively unreliable compared to teenagers having sex anyway & junkies returning to drugs, or safe sex & methadone.

> Phones, games, apps, and social media are, quite literally, engineered to be addictive.

No they're not, they're engineered to be engaging. There's no evidence I know of that phones, apps, etc consistently induce anything close to the addictive response in humans as the addictive substances we know of. Frankly, claiming that these things are "engineered to be addictive" is flat out misleading and conflates the extremely consistent & brutal consequences of addiction as science understands it with the much less understood area of social media.

[XorNot]

Holy false equivalencies!

You've managed to take... Well a bunch of things which do not create physiological dependency and decide they're exactly equivalent to opiates.

[mrcartmenez]

These are all fair points reasonably made.

[kennywinker]

Therapy first, phone detox second.