A Boring Dystopia

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Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.

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Crazy Coincidence (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 years ago by Brunbrun6766 to c/aboringdystopia

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I'd argue that social media isn't inherently bad. It's social media that promotes instant gratification that is bad. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok - their purpose is to make you consume more content, quicker, so they can harvest data on your likes and dislikes and stop you from thinking too hard, which makes you less likely to spend money. Social media should be about letting people talk to each other, not about glorification of celebrities.

And the former purpose is beneficial for youth - it allows one to expand their view of the world through the thoughts, views and ideas of other people, while the latter makes youths into victims.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Rage is certainly one of the issues with social media, however psychological research indicates that one of the most harmful aspects is the comparative effect. That is, comparing ourselves to what others post about their lives. Since users typically only post themselves at their best, it creates a false narrative that we are inferior. This is highly resistant to rational thought and therapy. We can tell ourselves it's not true, but our lizard brain remains unconvinced. Kids in particular are susceptible to this.

I think it would be very difficult to create a psychologically safe type of social media for kids. First, the rage algorithms need to be turned off. Second, our natural inclination to rage needs to be blunted. I'm not sure how to do that without heavy moderation. Third, there must be no possibility of comparing ourselves. This seems almost impossible, even with an anonymised network. Someone will post a picture of their new, expensive car, or house, or vacation, or computer, or an achievement of theirs.