Comment by adi_kurian
6 hours ago
Hopefully people will start seeing social media as what it is: a cheap, shitty, and extremely addictive drug. I am confident that in time, the opposite opinion will be viewed as insane.
6 hours ago
Hopefully people will start seeing social media as what it is: a cheap, shitty, and extremely addictive drug. I am confident that in time, the opposite opinion will be viewed as insane.
As much as I dislike TikTok, I dislike this dangerous mischaracterization even more. If you start propagating the meme that screens are like chemically addictive drugs the governments of the world will feel emboldened to use violence force to 'regulate' them. Screens are not drugs. They do not directly manipulate the biochemistry of incentive salience regardless of valence of perceived stimuli. They just provide enjoyable stimuli. It is VASTLY different. Conflating them is playing in to the hands of the authoritarians.
I'm sorry, but "playing in to the hands of the authoritarians" is using shite like TikTok, generating revenue for the authoritarian billionaires who are currently destroying the world.
We are not disagreeing. Definitely do not use TikTok for those and many other reasons. But calling an audio visual stimuli an addictive drug is just as wrong and dangerous. That will lead to those same authoritarians controlling screens with use of force justified by the false metaphor.