[somenameforme]

You're probably speaking more from the perspective of a college student, if not adult when this stuff was kicking off.

For kids today it's an entirely different world. Take all the petty little things that naturally happen in school settings, multiply it by orders of magnitude, make it not only permanent but permanently shareable - and you have social media + kids. It's a rather horrific thing. By college a lot of things like bullying have cooled down a good deal, and college kids tend to be at least somewhat more secure, so the image crafting and other issues are at least somewhat less harmful, but this is all very different for children.

And the worst part of this is that as horrible as this all is, it remains highly addictive. It's not about perpetual browsing but about FOMO. Anytime anybody posts something, there's this concern that maybe it's about you, or maybe it's something you don't want to miss out on, or maybe it's just something generally interesting. And this again just among your 'friends.'

Even if you completely eliminated algorithmic promotion (and advertising - which is probably even worse than crap organic 'content') you'd still see significant negative effects of social media on children.