[lynx97]

You are exaggregating. Not everyone has per-se bad experiences with social media. Its a tool, and like with many tools, the user has responsibilities. Hammers are incredibly hurtful if you never learn to not hit your hands with 'em.

I have a FB account since, what, 16 years or so. It has helped me to connect with people, it helped me to partially break out of my (disability-inflicted) social isolation. Heck, it even brought me and my partner of 14 years together. Yes, it also tiggered some rage at some times, but that does normal social interaction as well. People are people, and some people are plain assholes. I dont need facebook to be triggered by people.

[LexiMax]

> Not everyone has per-se bad experiences with social media.

Not everyone who drinks alcohol is an alcoholic. Not everyone who gambles is a gambling addict.

> Yes, it also tiggered some rage at some times, but that does normal social interaction as well.

Anywhere can be toxic. The difference is that social media is incentivized to drive engagement, and the way most social media is set up leads to the kinds of anti-social behavior that is rampant on most social media sites these days.

Not all of them. Discord has quietly become the 10,000 gorilla of functioning communities due to the fact that servers are invite-only and moderated by humans, without any populism-driven moderation. Most of the folks I know from the oldschool forum and IRC era ended up there, and I've met loads of new people simply through connections and friends of friends.

[lynx97]

Ha, your first example already shows how lost your cause is. America once tried prohibition, and pretty much gave up on the idea. These days, even though it might be harmful to many, alcohol is pretty much legal in many places on the world. Trying to make it illegal to protect the few that can not deal with it sounds--and actually is--hilarious. Same with social media. So calm down, the train has left the station.

[LexiMax]

Erm, I actually agree with you. Blanket prohibition wouldn't work, and in any case isn't really viable, due to the amount of money in the status quo.

I suppose I hope that future generations will consider social media in its current form to be a vice in the same way that alcohol or gambling are, but I don't claim to know what an actual society-wide solution would look like.

All I can do in the here and now is point out how fake social media is, try and articulate why, and gently guide people who might want off the ride towards spaces where they can connect with actual human beings.

In a way, I feel sorry for terminally online social media addicts. I never understood the appeal of sites like Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram in the first place. Facebook seemed neat until the artifice of real people + real names + real pictures turned out to be smoke, then I stopped bothering with it. Reddit was probably the closest to being appealing that social media ever got, but it had some serious systemic issues with community-building that only got worse as moderators went from community curators to doing janitorial work for a large company >for free.