Comment by philipodonnell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by philipodonnell | Hacker News Reader

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I dunno. I get where your coming from but this seems completely different. If you take two activities at random, one social and one not, I would not expect the people organizing either of those activities being super incentivized to get you addicted to them and to do more and more of it as often as possible. That's more of a drug dealer thing.

I mean they might really want you to, but they don't put apps on your phone and reset your privacy settings to let them reach out to you and spam you with notifications through multiple channels (email/text/sms) multiple times per day trying to get you to engage that are endlessly optimized by very smart people to trigger that engagement, not a lot, but just a hit to get you coming back for more.

And then grow into one of the largest companies in America lead by one of richest men in America by leveraging the addicting and repetitive nature of that activity to literally and intentionally monetize _their_ influence how _you_ think (advertising).

Sorry, but what is going on right now @ Facebook can't be hand waved away by saying that humans are social animals.

I mostly agree with you. Although, social media has some benefits. I used to not use it very frequently and had thought about deactivating FB for a while, but then I moved to a new city and found it useful for both showing my old friends what I was doing on the weekends and for finding fun things to do like mountain biking and rock climbing through various groups.

But I see your point in that FB's management isn't really pushing to make those sort of interactions happen more frequently, they're just trying to get people to spend as much time on it as possible to extract ad money from them.

Hey, I'll be the first one to acknowledge that social media can be totally fine, even have positive effects, in moderation and when used responsibly. I would say that about most drugs, for that matter. (maybe not meth: you don't hear about many responsible meth users).

You seem to be using it in a responsible way, don't let anyone judge you for that.

Just be aware of the forces arrayed against you and be honest about how it effects you. If you find yourself not enjoying it or see it have a negative effect on your loved ones, try to cut back. If you have no problem doing so, then there's nothing to worry about, but if you do find it difficult then you know you may have a problem.

Honestly, I expect within the year we'll see the first nationwide support groups for social media addiction a.l.a Alcoholics Anonymous. If no one has done a startup yet for an app that is designed to help, that would be a great opportunity.

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