I think the issue people are not acknowledging is that social media and apps and phones are addictive because they are fun. People are addicted to having fun, and to outlaw the addiction is to literally make fun illegal.

Let me take half a step backward from that provocative stance. Of course we don't need to outlaw all fun, but we perhaps we really do need to outlaw some fun, to prevent people from overindulgence. Maybe a sin tax could be the way to go.

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Jensson 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

To me social media was more fun before the addictive patterns started appearing. And HN is one of the most fun social media sites there is and it doesn't have those addictive patterns.

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jimmyjazz14 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

or hear me out, we could just let people have the freedom to make their own choices and take self-responsibility for their choices in life.

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techblueberry a day ago | parent [-]

Why tho, are you really just a nihilist?

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jimmyjazz14 21 hours ago | parent [-]

How is respecting peoples freedoms nihilistic?

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techblueberry 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Because we’re entering this era where the only freedom we’re recognizing is the freedom to be miserable at some extreme end, “freedom” is just a euphemism for neglect.

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techblueberry 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To elaborate, people often see freedom as an unqualified good, but I think in a sense the opposite of freedom isn’t slavery but purpose.

Everyone talks about the sense of meaning that came from fighting world war 2 and that was a time when freedom in the world was extremely precarious. There was a draft.

Purpose turns into slavery when you only have one purpose and people use violence to enforce it.

Getting married, having kids, buying a house, having a job. These are all constraints on a persons freedom.

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jimmyjazz14 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

now that, my friend is truly a nihilistic world view, do you actually believe people can not be trusted to control their own fate?

	▲	techblueberry 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		People dont have the power to control their own fate, only physics does. But we’re never truly free, there’s a society already built so it’s not really the choice between freedom and oppression, it’s always a specific set of freedoms and a specific set of oppressions, so if you close off all the doors people can use and leave only the traps; it’s not freedom to choose whatever trap you want. But really, you look around and you see freedom? Really? Sorry for thinking bigger than that. Maybe the opposite of what I said is true, that we’re so not free right now people are holding onto whatever freedoms they can not realizing the way they impact the bigger systems Maybe what we need is not just specific interventions but antritrus law. Less control by any big organization, governmental or otherwise.