| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11594359/#sec3 That article gives a superficial overview of some of the research, which for obvious reasons is still in its infancy. I didn’t mean to compare the harms to tobacco, but to how these companies tend to operate. That said, the fallout of social media addiction and overuse is far weirder than the fallout from tobacco (which mostly just gives people cancer). Social media appears to be tearing the fabric of society apart. I don’t have studies to cite but it seems like half of americans are one type of conspiracy theorist or another now, and that’s directly attributable to these new media channels. I think the negative effects have been most pronounced on young women (body image issues and bulemia) and people with low media literacy (the misinformation plague). There’s also the algorithmic “extremism” pipeline, where anything you show a little interest in gets turned into more and more extreme iterations to keep you engaged. So maybe “addiction” isn’t even the right word to use here. But just look around outside in any major city or event in America and see how compulsively almost everyone uses their phones during downtime. It’s reflexive at this point, not really a conscious decision. Some of the scariest stuff is coming from primary school teachers. Most of them act like late gen z and gen alpha are genuinely illiterate. It makes sense, you have little kids trying to swipe on physical photos in picture frames and stuff. That says something big about their lifestyles and then imagine the downstream effects of that… I think it really tells you something when the CEOs and people who work for social media companies don’t let their own kids use the product, or drastically limit access to it. |