Social media has the power to do so much good: connecting people across the globe, enabling the sharing of information across language barriers and in circumvention of government censorship, and more. But because the world is run by greedy power-hungry pigs, we can't have social media without it being exploited to the furthest extent possible in the name of profit. The mental health of the public is not even a secondary concern - it is completely disregarded in favor of squeezing further growth out of a saturated market for a service that should be both simple and free.

Yet no one wants to leave social media.

I left it last year and feel so much better. No FB no Whatsapp, no Insta, no Tictok, no nothing.

In today's episode of "fucking obviously, duh,"... fine-tuned digital brainwashing algorithms do in fact have generally 'bad' effects on the human mind.

Some say they may even be addictive and habit forming!

More at 11!

Attention Everyone.

Grass is green.

Fork found in kitchen.

Water is wet.

Sky is blue.

Thank you for your time.

Y'all, this is one of those articles worth reading right quick. The title is... well, bad. They were looking more at the "quality" rather than quantity of social media usage. The findings were more about the reinforcement of the user's state rather than social media itself being bad. Sure, the algorithm will push things, but your algorithm is primarily gonna push what it needs to keep you engaged with itself, and what you engage with will be influenced by your state of mind/mood. If you're already depressed, you're probably gonna reinforce that via the algorithm. Same deal with positive outlooks. Neuroplasticity and all that.

The researchers also bring up a good point about calling into question the recommendation to limit the amount of time on social media with the idea of mitigating the negative effects. Much like [alcohol] prohibition in the US, a ban on social media usage does nothing to teach us a more wise and healthy approach, nor is it something realistic for the general population.

In fact, if we practice abstention in such a way, those that would use it for malignant purposes would make it worse. I think a good example of that is cryptocurrency. Crypto isn't inherently bad, but boy did it get super maligned by any left-leaning space. There are plenty of useful things we could do with crypto, especially now with the hostile behavior of many currency-issuing states, but since crypto was mostly abandoned by leftist spaces, scams, commodification, speculation, and other hyper-capitalist bullshit abounds in the crypto space.

Do we really want to cede the further development of social media to malignant dickheads via unwitting abstention? Or will we take the time to actually learn how to wisely approach the tools we have right in front of us?

water is wet, fork found in kitchen

Social media itself is bad for your mental health. It encourages forming snap judgements using low quality information. Training yourself to use this kind of superficial thought process makes you easier to fool and manipulate.

Lemmy has been ok for me. I get on it whenever I feel like it and leave whenever I can't deal with the politics anymore

Edit: grammar

Again!
IDK how many times I've seen similar headlines. But it's a lot.

A simple google search shows me more than 5 studies already on the first page.

I'm shocked! SHOCKED! Well...

No shit!

It took them time...

user's