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by XorNot 807 days ago
I think this could be aptly summarized as "you can't accidentally slip and become depressed" using social media. You can absolutely slip and lose one or several fingers or your entire hand using a table saw.

The more pertinent comparison would be alcohol IMO: none of the people who want "something" done about social media seem to have a problem with the widespread, massive use of alcohol within society and the incredible amounts of continuous and ongoing damage it does.
1 comments
unclebucknasty 807 days ago
>I think this could be aptly summarized as "you can't accidentally slip and become depressed" using social media

I think the point is exactly that you can.

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XorNot 807 days ago
No you can't. You can, through usage over a long period of time, and by ignoring a lot of good advice, create problems for yourself just like anything else.

If a table saw could only remove your hand after years of dedicated usage, then sawstop wouldn't be the obviously good idea it is.

Hence why the comparison to alcohol is much more apt, and yet, mysteriously - absent in the discussion.

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unclebucknasty 806 days ago
These read like distinctions without differences.

Damage from social media use is gradual and insidious. Additionally, it's designed to be addictive, slowly pulling users in. There is no threshold that announces itself when users are addicted or have begun to "ignore a lot of good advice".

There's also no absence of discussion around the dangers of alcohol or drugs. And, there are actual laws regulating or outright banning their use.

But, even if it was absent from the discussion, that would not absolve social media. Is every world issue rendered illegitimate if we don't also mention the dangers of alcohol with equal fervor? It seems a random, meaningless requirement.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion.

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XorNot 806 days ago
I think every issue is due consideration in the context of "do I personally not care about the thing I want to regulate about everyone else?"

Alcohol is a useful yardstick, because it was banned (to considerable disaster), almost everyone likes it, the misusers tend to not realise it till considerably later, and we've got studies which look dire on the cost to society of it in fiscal terms.

If what you're calling for would seem ridiculous if it were applied to alcohol, then maybe it's just going be ineffective or you just don't have any "skin in the game" so to speak: after all, both serve a considerably important social cohesion function as well.

Which to loop it back around is why trying to compare social media regulation to something like mandating sawstop is especially disingenuous.

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