While I appreciate the idea that moving without factual data is often detrimental (which is what I believe you're implying here), I don't share the opinion that SM deserves any benefit of the doubt.

I'm old enough to have lived as an adult pre-SM, and from my perspective the overwhelming impact of social media has been more inflammatory, degrading, divisive, etc., etc., etc., than whatever positives you think you're getting.

A family friend's teenage daughter isn't allowed a cell phone, and thus has zero presence or view into SM spaces. Unlike nearly all her friends, she doesn't suffer from depression, anxiety, or any other common malady that is so prevalent today with the youth. Yes it's anecdotal, but it's also stark.

We got along just fine before SM, and we'd be just fine again without it.

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krapp 2 days ago | parent [-]

That's just your perspective, based on the fact that controversy makes headlines and normality doesn't. One might conclude based on headlines and populist political rhetoric that the US is a crime-filled hellhole, awash in gang violence and illegal aliens swarming over the border raping and pillaging and burning entire cities to the ground, whereas in reality crime is lower than it has been for years. Perceptions created by the media aren't always accurate, and "social media is a cancer" is absolutely a media-driven narrative. Remember when TikTok was a CCP mind-control weapon turning our children into sleeper agents? When Twitter was threat to the very existence of Western democracy that controlled human speech and could topple governments at will? The vast Marxist conspiracy behind all social media that rigged elections for the DNC? The louder such narratives become, the more we should question the motives of whomever holds the bullhorn.

A lot of people using social media aren't teenagers. A lot of teenagers are depressed and anxious for reasons other than using social media. A lot of teenagers use social media and aren't depressed and anxious because of it. A lot of teenagers find community and support for their issues through social media. Your extrapolation from a sample size of "one teenage girl and her friends that I'm aware of" to the billions of people currently using social media, and your conclusion that social media is responsible for all of the maladies common to youth doesn't really mean much.

	▲	sedawkgrep 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Your first paragraph is just as applicable to social media as it is to traditional media...possibly moreso. So claiming that the media lies or deceives and shouldn't be believed does not lend credence to anything you're saying. When you say "media-driven narrative", where do you think that's coming from? I probably see 10x social media to traditional media and it's all over the place. So it's not the old guard barking at the new. The reality is social media today lacks most of the rigor and accuracy that traditional media needed to be trustworthy. There's virtually no vested interest in anyone on social media being honest and forthright about anything. Your second paragraph is simply your perspective (and full of broad statements), and like you say, your opinion on that matter doesn't mean any more to me than apparently mine to you. Yet here we are, with more depression, anxiety, and civil unrest nationally than we've had since probably Vietnam. At least all that unrest is what I see predominantly on SM.