I think social media is being wrongly made in to a scapegoat

Rather, social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having a lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at, of not having meaningful work or volunteer opportunities, of lacking certain other things that may have existed in the past.

Social media offers a new engaging experiment that fills the void of some of these things that don't exist elsewhere otherwise but doesn't act as an equivalent replacement

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chalupa-supreme 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Social media companies are actors that actively compete for the attention of young people. That does result in collapsing third spaces and social events because it’s easier/cheaper to just post on IG or hang out on discord.

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genghisjahn 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was not an athlete growing up. Didn't do much in organized sports. But all three of my kids play a team sport. It does wonders for them. I really helped them get out of the pandemic. But having them outside several hours a week, working with peers and other adults, practicing new skills. Really cool to see and I think it really helped their mental health (and by extension, my own).

	▲	yoyohello13 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes! I do think playing team sports (for kids and adults) is incredible for mental health. Exercise, learning new skills and socialization all rolled into one fun package. I honestly think that's why Crossfit has become popular. It's essentially an after school sport for adults.

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HerbManic a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It seems to be a bit of both working in tandem. Social media companies are in a race to the bottom of what is socially acceptable to drive as much engagement as possible. But a lack of third spaces also pushes folks into that cycle.

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rsolva 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The term 'social media' has changed a lot over time. The attention grabbing kind we have today is a very different beast than what we started out with; no ads and only a chronological timeline showing posts from your network.

The original kind was genuinely connecting people and adding value. The current one is in effect isolating and driving people and groups apart.

Luckily, the original kind did not vanish. I find a lot of joy hanging out on the fediverse. I spend far less time on it than what I did on Twitter of FB back when I still had accounts there, but that is a good sign.

Social media is too generous term to use when describing products from Meta, TikTok, Snap, X etc. It is an ad platform that also, occasionality, shows you what your friends are up to.

We should come up with a better term than 'social media' when describing platforms that has reached the last stage of enshitification.

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travisgriggs 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are you positing that not-young people aren’t suffering from the same?

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alephnan 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because of social media, there are less teenagers hanging out at the malls. Shops close down. It forms a feedback loop

	▲	dyauspitr 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well they’re also closing down because most people buy the vast majority of their stuff online now.

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9rx a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having a lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at

I see all kinds of active third spaces, but never any young people in them.

I get that it is hard to bootstrap now. Trying to convince a 20 year old that they should hang out with a 70 year old to get the ball rolling for more 20 year olds to show up is not an easy sell, but when I was 20 (just before the emergence of social media) these same third spaces were full of people of all ages. It was bootstrapped once upon a time.

Why did the young people stop coming?

	▲	cityofdelusion a day ago \| parent [-]
		You’re 100% right that third places didn’t go anywhere. I do volunteer work and fact is, teens have incredibly short attention spans now due to instant media in their pockets. On the rare occasions I get a volunteer that isn’t a grey beard, the young person (usually dragged to the place by an adult) sits in a corner on their phone. Most put in absolute minimum effort so they can get on their device asap. The kids aren’t dumb or uninteresting or anything like that, they are just plain addicted to phones. The rare volunteer kid that puts 100% effort in is usually a homeschool type with no electronic devices or someone in the top 1% of their class or something like that. The attention economy is real, and it’s dominated by phones and by those that were born in it.