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Comment by jt2190 | Hacker News Reader

I suspect that those who grow up as social media “natives” will have some social norms that protect them somewhat, whereas many of those who came of age pre-social media will not have learned the social norms that can protect them.

We can see lots of useful examples of a protective social norms with alcohol. For example, it’s quite common for people to not drink any alcohol before a certain hour of the day. It’s not illegal to drink alcohol earlier, but it’s “just not done”. We can easily see the benefits of not drinking at the start of the workday.

I’m not going to guess what kind of social media norms people are developing in general. For me I only follow boring, topic-focused people on Twitter, and I only use the “Following” feed. Nobody is making me do this.

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>I suspect that those who grow up as social media “natives” will have some social norms that protect them somewhat, whereas many of those who came of age pre-social media will not have learned the social norms that can protect them.

Agreed. A lot of older generations fall for a lot of satire and comment on things as if they're 1 on 1 with you instead of realizing that it's a public forum. However, a lot of younger generations are incredibly aware that everything they do and say could potentially be public or go viral. That brings a whole host of other problems and challenges with it.

The ultimate problem is every incentive goes against a "healthy" social media. Companies don't want a "healthy" social media as they're focused on engagement, screen time, content, and advertisers. Most of the primitive portions of our brains don't want "healthy" social media either, as it craves the rush of more likes and followers. I don't think that the logical, self-aware portions of our psyche are going to change the direction of how things are going.

> We can see lots of useful examples of a protective social norms with alcohol. For example, it’s quite common for people to not drink any alcohol before a certain hour of the day. It’s not illegal to drink alcohol earlier, but it’s “just not done”.

I find this point quite interesting. I didn't drink alcohol until I was nearly 30. I skipped by most of the formative alcohol consumption experiences most people have.

And, incidentally, I don't seem to follow the same norms about what time of day it's okay to drink: I'll happily have a beer well before noon.

The non-native social media people have grown up fully on in-person relationships where trust is very important. They apply the same trust to people on social media that they do to their friends and family. The social media natives treat social media as different things.

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