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Comment by mberning | Hacker News Reader

I was at the beach the other day, beautiful weather, perfect sunset, etc. The number of people staring at their phones was very high. The number of teenagers, especially girls, taking pictures and seemingly staging events was downright depressing. We will soon look back and realize that social media and phone addiction was worse for people’s health than smoking.

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I think smartphones are the worst invention of this century. They bring all the addictive services (not just social media but also news, gaming and such) everywhere, with minimum resistence.

Before smartphones every silent moment, every moment of boredom people had to figure out something to do, make do with what was available. Now the phone is always the path of least resistance and instant gratification, which does nothing good to our brains.

Too often I find myself and my partner just staring our phones while our child is playing. I wish I could destroy these cursed devices.

> Too often I find myself and my partner just staring our phones while our child is playing.

My partner and I keep our phones put away when with our child _as a rule_. It's worth trying this out and seeing how your outlook might change. You don't have to use your phone; you're addicted to it. Fix the problem by taking responsibility and do things differently.

The proper word for the device is "joymaker", and we're almost there - just a few more finishing touches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_the_Pussyfoot#Joyma...

> We will soon look back and realize that social media and phone addiction was worse for people’s health than smoking.

What specific statistics will we look at to realize that social media is worse than 500,000 deaths per year (in the US) due to smoking?

But you know that's simply not true. I was a smoker in my 20s and quit finally in my 40s. Are you suggesting my f'ed up choices were in some way better than taking a load of selfies in my twenties and growing out of it in their thirties?

In aggregate it would be hard to say. But at the extremes I think you could argue that social media is worse. For example, getting severely depressed and killing yourself as a teenager due in large part to a distorted sense of reality from social media is probably worse than getting esophageal cancer and dying in your 50s. Both are extreme outcomes of a bad habit, but one is way worse in my eyes.

Maybe. Smoking is a very social habit at least. Whose to say the isolation and depression from phones/social media is less harmful?

How is smoking a social habit? I see people stepping away from groups to go smoke elsewhere.

Back when more people smoked you'd see smokers congregate and chat while smoking, often smoke breaks would be coordinated. It still happens, but less often because fewer smoke, especially in professional environments.

That said it's pretty rare I ever see a single smoker off by themselves, unless they've gone out of their way to be alone.

In it’s heydey those people stepping away were a group

If I absolutely had to choose a vice here, I’d choose smoking for 20 years over living in social media.

> We will soon look back and realize that social media and phone addiction was worse for people’s health than smoking.

This would be the most optimistic end result of social media and phone addiction. It’s very difficult to even measure someone’s long term social media addiction enough to look back and say “they were better off without it.”

"my generation enjoyed X by doing Y. the younger generation ruined X by doing Z!!!"

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