Social Media Mental Health

Can't help but think this is a consequence of social media. People have dramatically unrealistic expectations on what life should be like.

Fair point on the 'blame phones'. But social media is powerful and might have an amplifying effect on mental imbalances.

without social media, they would be suffering more. it is an escape from reality that world is bad.

I believe the reason the "problem" doesn't go away is because it's constantly framed in black and white terms: "Is social good or bad?" and usually supported with the same bleak facts: "it's makes use depressed, it gives marketers information about us."It's a really a form of media control a la the Chomsky model of "allowing lively debate, but only within certain range of discussion." It's becoming tedious and conditioning us t

Here is just one article. Have a google, there are plenty.https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/19/popular-soci...

its becoming quite a common take on social media, especially all the "look at my blog post on how i quit social media" posts on reddityoutubers/ig accounts are very open about the effects of social media, maybe you should check some other sites to see HN... isn't that unique in this view

I don't think social media helps. It probably exacerbates the underlying issue? Otherwise we'd all be like this.

This rings untrue. Hacker News is about the most "social media" type of site I use, and I still feel the shift towards isolation others described.Also, the naive view is to place all the blame for a broad cultural shift on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/TikTok and pretend people can't choose to limit their use. Someone pretending there can only be a single factor to blame for a problem is usually a biased person with a bone to pick. The rhetoric supports your cause,

For those who think this is "just" a fad, there are some descriptions of the emotional harm that that it can cause in this article from February: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/social-med... The semantics of "mass sociogenic illness" aside, there do seem to be d

This feels like a “the only way to stop a bad guy with a censor is a good guy with a censor” style argument, but sure let them if they want to. Social media is correlated with poor mental health so it might be a win for all the wrong reasons.