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Comment by travisgriggs | Hacker News Reader

Lots of comments about this being the wrong group of people to initiate this. Others playing the “is it really the same thing” card.

I find myself torn. They are often sound/reasoned arguments. But I also struggle because the state of play isn’t right either. Social media engagement is now one of the leading causes cited in divorces. My wife and I of nearly 30 years have to battle this ourselves. Something seems clearly wrong with our surveillance economy, yet we struggle to come up with sound reasoned diagnoses and remedies. I guess that’s why it persists.

So I end up both thinking this suit is “silly” and at the same time cheering them on because continued optimization along this evolving status quo vector just seems so obviously wrong.

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I think you've got it right - they're trying to address a serious problem that is absolutely worth addressing, but doing it with this kind of a lawsuit is indeed silly. Even if they win, it's not going to do anything meaningful to address the underlying causes of social media addiction in kids. As an institution that has access to these kids for ~7 hours a day, they ought to be able to come up with a more productive approach.

That's exactly it. As a lawyer, I'm aware that it's technically discouraged to initiate lawsuits for e.g. "political" or "social" reasons beyond the affected parties -- but I definitely think we're in "something has to be done, or at least TALKED ABOUT" territory, and I have no personal problem with this approach.

What is it you're hoping for? Prohibition, so people cannot use social media platforms because they're outlawed? I don't think that'll work, for the same reason prohibition doesn't work for anything that a large part of the population wants.

And what even is social media in that sense. Aren't forums social media? HN has a score and you and other will be told how "the community" values your comments. Sure, it's not emoji thumbs pointing up and down and a frowny face, but what's the difference? Should HN be outlawed because someone might attach their self-worth to getting upvotes? Should Reddit be?

I don't think the problem around social media is the "it's a feed full of trivial stuff that'll steal hours of your life", it's that you have to be on there if you want to have an active social life and not be an outsider. But if you take down facebook, instagram, twitter and tiktok, kids will find a new platform to flock to and to play their social games, bully some and make others celebrities. It's what they do, and now that the tech is here, they'll use it to do it.

I don't know how hard it is for today's kids, but I sure am glad that I went through puberty before internet was a big thing in my country.

I don’t know what I’m hoping for. I stated that in my original: “struggle with remedies.”

HN can be addictive. So can playing with legos. So can honeycombs.

But the highly mechanized addiction that occurs on some platforms is not just the baseline level addiction. It is highly engineered addiction for focused financial gain. I consider it akin to the tricks played by the tobacco industry over the years.

It's different from playing with legos though, isn't it? What makes social media so intense is the social aspect. You get validated by collecting likes, you can humiliate your opponents, you can bond with your tribe, you can fight the just war for whatever you believe in.

Sure, Facebook and friends will engineer it to make it streamlined, but I'd see it more like modern engineered food than tobacco. It's something (like eating) we do naturally and probably cannot live without (for the majority of people), they're just iterating over what we like best, but it's not artificially induced (like nicotine addiction). People play social games, and now they do it online, and you can play with millions of people instead of being limited to those who are in shouting distance.

> Social media engagement is now one of the leading causes cited in divorces.

Where'd you find this?

There are multiple articles written about it [0-2], but they all seem to cite the same (single) study.

[0] https://www.anylaw.com/media/2021/07/18/study-finds-that-fac...

[1] https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/facebook-has-become-a-lead...

[2] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/social-cheating-inc...

What is the manner in which social media is causing you and your wife of nearly 30 years to have to battle divorce?

I interpret this to mean that social media addiction (or what have you) is an additional burden to deal with when doing the day to day maintenance work of a relationship. Like, it's probably harder to do fun things together (especially spontaneously) when the other person is already entertained on their phone. Or maybe a partner is letting their household chores slip because they are spending too much time on their phone. (So then the other person has to be the asshole asking them to do it, which can seem infantilizing and create resentment on both sides). And making the relationship harder will push you more towards the "divorce" realm than otherwise.

I've had friends mention the deterioration of their older parent's relationship due to phone addiction. One said her mother couldn't even properly enjoy a vacation because going out dinner dinner or a hike required putting the phone away for too long. Basically it is similar to the problems caused by any other addiction.

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