Now apply a distortion that allows everyone to to make their life seem much better than it actually is, and it’s not difficult to believe these platforms cause mental health problems.
100. There were plenty of campaigns over the past decades to "expose the fakeness" of Hollywood actors that are portrayed as role models. For the same reasons we're discussing now.
Where are these campaigns now? The ones designed to "expose the fakeness" of your BFFs insta.
Policy & regulation are a dead end. I suppose Facebook et al know this, that's why our ATTENTION is there.
The real change comes in the form of massive settlement to fund these PSAs and further gambling-tobacco-esque taxing to keep those campaigns funded.
The argument is social media is not a neutral platform but __amplifies__ the extremes, thus reducing the "Visibility" to a rat race of envy, by design.
If it were as simple as you suggest, the studies would not be pointing out the biased slant of these platforms being harmful as much as they have been.
Also add in a 'revenge' and 'pettiness', for lack of a better term, style posting. I just shudder at thinking what some of my peers would have posted about me and others when I was younger. They barely kept it together normally. But sitting behind the 'safety' of a screen... It would have been awful.
It's other people's lives, plus selection bias. It doesn't make other live visible equally, because people post more of the best moments (plus photo filters to look even better).