[travisgriggs]

I don’t know what I’m hoping for. I stated that in my original: “struggle with remedies.”

HN can be addictive. So can playing with legos. So can honeycombs.

But the highly mechanized addiction that occurs on some platforms is not just the baseline level addiction. It is highly engineered addiction for focused financial gain. I consider it akin to the tricks played by the tobacco industry over the years.

[luckylion]

It's different from playing with legos though, isn't it? What makes social media so intense is the social aspect. You get validated by collecting likes, you can humiliate your opponents, you can bond with your tribe, you can fight the just war for whatever you believe in.

Sure, Facebook and friends will engineer it to make it streamlined, but I'd see it more like modern engineered food than tobacco. It's something (like eating) we do naturally and probably cannot live without (for the majority of people), they're just iterating over what we like best, but it's not artificially induced (like nicotine addiction). People play social games, and now they do it online, and you can play with millions of people instead of being limited to those who are in shouting distance.