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Comment by amazingamazing | Hacker News Reader

I’ve never understood this take - no one is being forced to use this stuff. Don’t use it personally if you don’t like it.

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It’s designed to be addictive. It’s like saying nobody is forced to use drugs, alcohol or tobacco. There’s a reason those are very difficult to quit.

The weird thing is that labeling tobacco as addictive did actually seem to produce a decline in use. Labeling social media apps as addictive has, from what I’ve seen, given a lot of people an excuse to keep using it. The narrative has shifted toward “It’s not my fault I use it so much, it’s the company’s fault for making it addictive!”.

Something about moving the locus of control to a 3rd party opens the door for people to forgive themselves for using it so much.

Obligatory “not everyone”, of course, but I can’t believe how many conversations about social media use will immediately shift all blame to the company and downplay any individual choices.

I think part of this is the genuine benefit of social media, it's used for education, connection, political organization... not quite the same as a cigarette. You can pick any emotional or moral response you're having from it and cite some aspect of its multifaceted nature to bolster your position.

HN ist also addictive for many people. So lets also ban it, ok?

There's no endless stream of short videos. That's the hook of these apps. A slow, bare, text only website is probably low on the dopamine trigger scale. Worst case scenario you're now addicted to post graduate conversations.

Text can be addictive though, silly and arbitrary distinction.

Hmm I'm no neurologist but I would place solid money on the fact that it really doesn't activate the same neurological circuits. Saying this because I had issues there and reading really change my brain patterns tangibly.

We ban chemicals that are designed to be addictive to humans. The exception are substances that are addictive but also have high medical utility. Those are carefully controlled (sometimes less carefully of course — see OxyContin).

It doesn’t seem impossible to make similar value judgments about social media apps, but clearly it’s even harder than with chemicals.

HN ranks fairly low on the "designed to be addictive" scale, and fairly high on the utility scale. With TikTok, it's obvious that it's off the charts on the former while the latter is a very complicated value judgment.

Plenty of articles documenting how TikTok is designed to be addictive. Show me equivalents for HN.

Even that is not entirely relevant. I think the criteria here are likely actual addiction combined with harm from that addiction combined with scale of that harm. So even if we showed that HN was addictive, the harm and scale are so low that banning it shouldn't even be a conversation. Under the same framework, we have TikTok, which combines an algorithm designed for addiction, actual or imminent harm from a foreign power, and probably the most massive scale possible. So it seems within the realm of possibility that banning TikTok should be a discussion.

You're looking at this in a binary way but there's a spectrum of addictiveness. Some things are a little bit addictive, some things are more addictive, and some things are intentionally designed to be addictive.

Sure, there's some individual out there who spends 8 hours a day on HN and is completely addicted to it. But there are a much larger porportion of users on other platforms that are at that high level of addiction, because those platforms are designed to be addictive.

Scrolling apps don't want you to leave. Ever. In contrast, HN stops you from commenting if you keep doing it too fast.

Quick-access video and audio is particularly psycologically impactful.

HN is not intentionally engineered to be as addictive as possible now, is it?

Yes! That sound good to me actually.

I think it depends on how you define a lot of stuff, and what you think the effects are.

If you think there are mental health effects, then it's really no different than outlawing anything with negative effects. "I don't know why we outlaw fentanyl. Nobody is being forced to use it. Don't use it personally if you don't like it."

If someone believes that these type of apps pose a real danger to people and society, it's a take that makes sense.

Some things are so incredibly harmful for society it is in the governments interest to regulate those things.

Sure, but this isn’t remotely about that. If it was, we’d get some privacy laws and bans on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

Seemed like the comment was. It mentioned wanting to see banning all scrolling apps and was implying because they cause addiction. Did you sense a different implication from the poster?

I don't know about ban, but parents today are so totally disconnected from the dangers associated with scrolling. Kids today live in their phones. The ones that stay away are going to have such a competitive advantage. So maybe not forbid, albeit that would really serve the community, but the goverment should get off their asses and start informing schools and parents about what their kids are doing to themselves.

But it is a super-difficult problem to solve, because a lot of parents depend on just letting their kids sit with their phones a couple of hours every day to enable wfh etc (or in worse cases, go out with friends to socialize).

My wife is super-aware and is a stay-at-home mom and even she thinks it is a real challenge (mostly because of what friends are allowed to do). We have rules that say no screens (with exceptions for research, school work, some programming) during weekdays. We banned TikTok and Roblox years ago. The kids get 1 hour per day during weekends. These rules, when my wife introduced them, made a HUGE difference. They're different kids (they get so bored they clean their rooms, play chess, read books, play with Lego, don't have problems with their chores etc).

We should, but we won’t.

“We need to do something” and “we will do something” are not the same.

Looking at causes of death, soft drinks and fast food should be at the top of the list.

Somehow tiktok is banned and cigarettes are still legal.

this is just the thugs being mad someone else is better than them...

There should be an age restriction, the same way 17 year olds can't drink vodka and smoke cigars.

But targeting Tiktok specifically spits in the eye of the spirit of the law. The government is doing the bidding of its lobbyists here.

Wasn't there a 13 years age limit in the US?

> But targeting Tiktok specifically spits in the eye of the spirit of the law

The Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the United States and arguably the arbiters of the letter and spirit of the law, disagrees with you.

They're only arbiters of the letter. The spirit doesn't have a place in the courtroom.

Perhaps not literally forced but socially, effectively yes.

I could drop Instagram/Facebook but that would be me making a choice to drastically change the way I interact with some people that I know and like and want to interact with.

I think there's a parallel with app stores. Can you go through modern life right now without using the Play Store or the App Store? Sure, you can, but there's so much more weight on the "use it" side than the "lose it" side.

On the other hand, you have to ask if we want a society where you can generate massive wealth by peddling addictive substances to people.

And that's what "just don't get addicted" doesn't track.

I'm not sure where to draw that line when it comes to social media, but there's more to the convo and we probably do want to figure out where that line is or isn't.

What about it is confusing? I just wish they didn't exist. Even if I threw my entire phone away, it wouldn't change that so much time is collectively being wasted. Not to even touch on how its changed social gatherings. The minute something isn't "happening" the phones come out.

That's particularly hard when you are in middle school/high school and all of your peers are using them. It might sound easy on principal children are cruel and something as simple as "You don't use tiktok, weird." could be social suicide for a teenager.

No one forces you to smoke cigarettes, but claiming that it's purely a decision ignores a major confounder: they are addictive. Social media is the product of thousands of A/B tests to arrive at the most engaging (addictive) platform possible.

I don’t think we should rule out the existence of digital heroin e.g. a digital experience so compelling that humans forget to eat.

Whether short form video is this or not is debatable, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a digital media experience even more addictive.

Depressed? Aha just stop being depressed it's that easy

Addicted to alcohol? Well just stop drinking, duh?!

That's how all these "nobody is forcing you" comments sound to me

Even though it's banned and the app wont' work, people are constantly switching back to the app and opening it over and over out of addiction, see that it doesn't work, close it, and a few seconds or minutes later, do it again.

Yeah that's the first stage of grief, denial

We aren't capable of self regulation. Just look at what people eat and the size of the general population. In general we have no self control.

Should we outlaw refined sugar? There's definitely debate to be had on a lot of these things, but I'm having a hard time reconciling banning adults from using something that they personally enjoy and doesn't bother anybody else if you care about freedom/liberty.

It at least shouldn't be as easily available as it is today. I lived in Japan and been all throughout Asia, returning to the US you realize something is deeply wrong when looking at people. People are suffering.

Nobody is forced to gamble, shoot heroin, smoke cigarretes, etc. We still think it's a good idea, at the very least, to restrict them to adults, ban advertising, and similar restrictions.

Social media is possibly even more destructive than e.g. gambling. Yet it's routinely peddled to kids and pushed as practically mandatory to live in society.

"no one is being forced to use this stuff."

No one is forced to use heroin either.

We will all be forced to reckon with the consequences of this stuff. Whether we personally scrolled or not.

Do you want to unban cocaine, heroine, meth, too?

They aren't forced on anyone.

This is a question in good faith. I want to understand where people are coming from who oppose TikTok ban- is it the philosophy of unchecked libertarianism, or isbit coming from the faith that social media can never be as harmful as cocaine et al?

If there's a spectrum of harm that includes speeding 5mph over the limit and abusing heroin, I have a pretty good idea where I might put watching cat videos on your phone.

You can't die and OD from TikTok usage, and believe it or not many benefit from it. There's little inherent benefit to cocaine.

Yes, I would like to unban these even if heroine and meth are crap, just put warning labels on them.

"I've never understood this take - no one is forcing people to drink, snort drugs, smoke cigarettes, gamble their life away. Don't use it personally if you don't like it"

none of those are banned, dunno what your point is.

"Don’t use it personally if you don’t like it"

You seem oblivious to the addictive nature of things ...

Doesn't matter if it's banned or not.

And let me know where snorting drugs is legal so I can plan my weekend. Thanks.

go to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_cocaine and sort by legality

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