Meta reportedly halted internal research into the mental health impacts of Facebook and Instagram after finding causal evidence of harm. Internal documents revealed users reported lower depression and anxiety after deactivating accounts. Despite this, Meta allegedly told Congress it couldn't quantify harm to teenage girls.
You won’t get everyone to stop, obviously, just like there are a lot of people who still smoke. But there are much fewer people who smoke now than in the sixties and even than in 2000.
And you have to keep trying to help people to stop, because – using the smoking analogy again – now we have vaping as a gateway drug to smoking, and quitting rates are much lower in third-world countries.
Anyways, I did quit FB, instagram and never had a twitter/X account. Phasing out reddit as well. Not trying to be harsh, but the fact that you didn’t make it doesn’t mean no one else can.
Fair enough, I don’t mean to sound like it isn’t a good thing to do, to try to ween people off, but I’ll freely admit I am way too jaded to try to do that myself anymore.
I spent a decade trying to convince people that if they did not leave, [gestures at current state of the world] is what would happen.
Way I see it, its roughly the same situation as climate change: we passed the inflexion point, we failed, now our possible future timelines are much darker.
… I’m glad you made it out though.
Keep that flame of optimism inside you as well tended and healthy as you can.
Its… far, far too late to just tell people to stop.
I tried, a decade ago, after concluding this, via investigating the Cambridge Analytica stuff.
Didn’t work.
Now we live in a kind of competitively controlled, ongoing, social conditioning experiment.
Beyond causing harm, it verifiably causes an addiction loop.
Good luck unbrainwashing tens of millions of hardcore addicts.
You won’t get everyone to stop, obviously, just like there are a lot of people who still smoke. But there are much fewer people who smoke now than in the sixties and even than in 2000.
And you have to keep trying to help people to stop, because – using the smoking analogy again – now we have vaping as a gateway drug to smoking, and quitting rates are much lower in third-world countries.
Anyways, I did quit FB, instagram and never had a twitter/X account. Phasing out reddit as well. Not trying to be harsh, but the fact that you didn’t make it doesn’t mean no one else can.
Fair enough, I don’t mean to sound like it isn’t a good thing to do, to try to ween people off, but I’ll freely admit I am way too jaded to try to do that myself anymore.
I spent a decade trying to convince people that if they did not leave, [gestures at current state of the world] is what would happen.
Way I see it, its roughly the same situation as climate change: we passed the inflexion point, we failed, now our possible future timelines are much darker.
… I’m glad you made it out though.
Keep that flame of optimism inside you as well tended and healthy as you can.