Hacker News Reader

Social media has destroyed humanity. Turned everyone into attention deficit zombies.

Honestly, all censorship and free speech ideas aside, I wonder if a small socia media tax could be net positive on American society? Especially in terms of relieving diminished attention spans, etc.

I have decreased my own personal usage by adding a "time tax" — I always log out after a brief session on Twitter/Facebook/etc. I also use 2FA everywhere so there's extra friction in logging back in. That extra 30 seconds of effort can be enough to say "nah, I don't need to check Twitter twice today".

You can use things productively, or you can use things unproductively. This includes social media and Twitter. I have spent some time cleaning out so the only people I follow on Twitter post extremely valuable content. I block with extreme prejudice and will unfollow if they stop posting useful info.

Please stop posting unsubstantive comments here.

I agree. Kids at school using social media in class should be fined. I have since many years been out of FB, Instagram and Twitter. I don’t miss it a second. My kids is growing up without FB. I block it and other social media sites on a DNS-level.