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Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

> are addicted to social media and have to take psychiatric medication for it.

I’m sorry but this is just not real.

There’s not a single non-quack doctor who will recommend psychiatric medication for “social media addiction,” which is not a real thing and pretty much all of the recent academic literature proves as much.

If your doctor is suggesting medication for social media use, you either have much deeper underlying mental health issues, or you need to find a new doctor ASAP and report them for malpractice.

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Which is exactly the problem with this whole discussion. On the far side, you hear that it's heroin! It's fentanyl! It's alcohol! Facebook groups are the modern opium den! But when actually challenged, it's oh no no, that's a metaphor, it's metaphorical fentanyl, not real fentanyl. People on Instagram are metaphorically injecting metaphorical drugs into their metaphorical veins.

It's a poor basis for policy and thought. I would wager 20 francs that none of these people have ever seen a heroin OD. The whole discussion centers around a maximally impactful comparison but the middle of the comparison is hollow.

> all of the recent academic literature

The academic literature funded by what grants from what stakeholders? Like the social media research from Harvard Kennedy now? The research that came after its social media research lead was fired and a $500mm Chan Zuckerberg Initiative grant occurred somehow in parallel [0] [1]?

That recent research?

Or the research that was occurring on social media before that? Surely you're not arguing in that bad of faith, despite where I could speculate your RSUs might have came from. But this seems an extremely naive take if not made in bad faith.

[0] https://www.thecrimson[.]com/article/2023/2/2/donovan-forced... [1] https://www.npr[.]org/2023/12/04/1217086770/disinformation-r...

Really? Would you mind pointing us to all that academic literature?

And compulsive behaviour is definitely something that medication can help with.

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