And then there are also those companies/institutions/orgs/news/shops that make you left behind from otherwise useful information or services by not being on social media platforms.
Most (like 90%) businesses don’t have a website or when they have, it’s a static website. All the news are on social medias behind nag screens.
Luckily with Elon doing crazy things to X, NYC has divorced a bunch of public services from it.
But not enough
Children don't need social media, just as they don't need tobacco or alcohol. As long as all your friends are off social media, you'll be fine. It's when there's a choice that you get the FOMO situation that makes it more or less impossible for parents to dissuade their children from using social media.
I kind of feel like Elon was actually right that Twitter has become the "public square", but I disagree violently that he should be the one to control and steward it. We need a non-government controlled, non-corporate/profit-driven Twitter. The fediverse is okay but the UX needs to be completely frictionless so everyone can use it (also my mum).
Histeria (and the virbrator), ice pick lobotomies, electro shock therapy, Quaalude, Benzodiazepines (valium) as mothers little helpers, MAOI's, SRRI's (PSSD), Benzodiazepines again (Xanax, klonipin). <<< (Hint all of these things turned out to be DEEPLY fucked up)
And for good measure a few variations of adrenal Ritalin and other methamphetamines.
Maybe, just maybe, and hear me out on this, we have more people with mental health issues because "self diagnosis" and "self identifications" can get you a prescription. Maybe, just maybe more people have mental health issues because there is a whole fucking industry designed to profit off of problems that have a "diagnostic criteria" and not a "test". Maybe just maybe we should remember that the "reproducibility crisis" has some of its worst offenders in psychiatry and psychology.
Or you know blame social media, like we did for books, radio, tv, Elvis and rock, rap and metal, video games, 4chan and now....
electro shock therapy: were still doing this, there isnt good research to support it at all.
Quaalude addictive, banned in USA since 1984
Benzodiazepines, Valium, Xanax, Kolinapin: Addictive, withdrawal from these are brutal: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=benzodiazepines+suicide
MAOI: so well studied that we let them out in the public and then realized that taking them and eating leftovers could kill you.
SRRI: This is an entire class of drugs that is getting ripped apart by current research. There are studies that show they dont have greater benefit than placebo with therapy. There is new research that says they may be damaging in their own right and have massive withdrawal symptoms.
The term "replication crisis" started with psychology. And, though it has shown its face across much of academia, psychology on the whole looks particularly blighted. Modern research is having no problem turning over much of the last 30 or so years of drugs and research.
It. Is. Damming.
>> Many, if not all, of the medications you listed have been a net benefit for the individual and the world.
The only medication I mentioned with a leg left to stand on anywhere is the SSRI group:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jul/no-evidence-depression-c...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3130402/
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0... (hey better that we figure this out AFTER it has been on the market for 30 years right?)
To summarize all those links: A study that says serotonin isn't involved in depression. Another that is a meta analysis of SSRI research that says "no better than placebo" and the last one that says SSRI's have some gnarly withdrawal and you should taper off them (a multi month process).
So no I did not have a tirade against a broad spectrum of drugs. I had a tirade against the "treatments" that have, or are, turning out to be worse than the diseases they were treating.