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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

I've always thought when I see one of these numbers about how people are collectively dumping millions of hours into Youtube or WoW or whatever else every day, imagine if that'd be spent on something genuinely social instead, learning, creating something, contributing something to the commons, volunteer an hour at the soup kitchen, clean the local park, however trivial. A billion hours of that every day instead of reading garbage on facebook or tiktok and I'd like to think things would look very different

goes well beyond breaking up big tech though, needs an entire reversal of culture at this point

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You say this, but here you are wasting time on HN.

Please stop with this appeal to get others to be constantly productive; it is not helpful advice, and being unproductive is crucial to helping the brain relax.

I’m not endorsing toxic social media, but I’m debating your overall gist nonetheless.

read carefully, I suggested people ought to be more social in a genuine sense of the term and not more 'productive' in some superficial corporate sense, the examples i gave should have made that clear.

Secondly I surely do waste too much time on social media, I don't see how that should stop me from appealing to others as well as myself though, consider me included in the criticism, I'm not a saint. However this holier than thou silencing tactic of thinking we can't criticize culture just because we're also part of perpetuating it has always been silly.

> ‘productive' in some superficial corporate sense

While you didn’t use the word, the exemplar “social” activities involve more productivity in the general sense of the word, than doom scrolling on social media does. There is space in our lives for both.

> holier than thou silencing tactic of thinking we can't criticize culture just because we're also part of perpetuating

That is not what I meant. You implied that people should not want a certain aspect of relaxation, while enjoying the same aspect yourself. This is akin to rich people saying “money doesn’t buy you happiness” while enjoying the outcome of having money. There are nuances, but the appeal is flawed nonetheless.

It's not going to happen. People want to veg out after a hard day of work, most are not going to volunteer even if all video games and social media ended tonight.

Agreed. I absolutely hate the things I dump my hours into. There are things which I have to, chores, work, sleep. But then even the things I don't have to, the ones I do to "de-stress" I end up hating and loathing after I've done it. And yet I'll continue to dump hours and hours into it. I could have learnt a language by now, or two. But the path of least resistance always wins, then you regret it immediately. Addiction and laziness are at fault to be honest and it's a vicious cycle.

Note: Here my de-stress is playing video games. I don't do it much, but a couple hours here and there adds up to thousands eventually.

This has been lamented for seven decades at least. Back then it was the Idiot Box wasting people's time.

People choose to spend time on social media, instead of going to park and volunteering. Banning social media isn’t going to fix that, people will waste time in other ways.

At some point there needs to be personal accountability

+1 to that. A 15 minute walk around the block, or through the park, picking up any litter along the way, times a billion, means you won't see litter, and you won't have to pay quite as many sanitation workers.

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