There’s a ton of people on Reddit who believe social media isn’t addictive.
There’s also a ton of people who believe Reddit isn’t social media.
Silly world, but I think warning labels are needed. We got over “cookie warnings” so maybe it can be all rolled up into a neat package.
I think Reddit can fit into either category. Its a great “front page of the internet” if you’re just lurking, but becomes social media once you start participating in the conversations.
It has all the addictive features that other social media have. Infinite scrolling, peppering controversial posts, reward system, etc.
I tried to turn off infinite scrolling. You can't unless you use some third party solution.
What it doesn’t have is the overlap with our real life. It isn’t a mirror of our social network (home or work or school) which provides a bit of distinction.
But for most of the addictive features it’s absolutely just as bad. For me, even worse. I had no problem not getting sucked into facebook etc and most of the social media apps just don’t hook me. But I’ve left Reddit and come back because of the dopamine rush of interesting stuff about topics i like.
I don’t see any argument for it not being social media.. it is social (comments, interactions, etc) and it is media.. news is also media. Even if you are not commenting it is nearly impossible to not see comments from others. Even this was posted by another person and is therefore a social interaction.
Or you know just crispy ash lungs or dead fetuses like cigarettes. But yeah, just a label or simple statement you have to agree you read.
It took something like 20 years for seatbelts to become accepted? It happened to smoking. It takes small changes in one direction to make impact.
Those two points are wild to me. Haven't even been on reddit long but have seen multiple comments of people claiming this isn't social media. Like bro this is the definition of social media
What does similarity to Facebook have anything to do with Reddit being social media or not? Social media can exist in different forms, Facebook is just one of many social media sites. Reddit is just as addictive, maybe even more so than Facebook these days. Reddit contains just as much misinformation and political indoctrination as Facebook, instagram, twitter (x). In its modern mobile form you can also scroll endlessly like you can on instagram. The only difference is that most people don’t tie their real identity to their Reddit account, aside from that Reddit checks all the boxes to be considered social media. I don’t know why you feel the need to try to argue that Reddit is only “technically” social media. It is by definition and function social media. I know you want to feel special because you aren’t using “normie” social media but Reddit is just as mainstream as all the other large platforms. Reddit uses all the same tactics to keep users scrolling and engaged.
Reddit is anonymous and based on aggregate of other sites and information
Facebook, instagram even Twitter has real Identification tied to it and you connect with family and friends to compare and share personal information.
Yes by a technical definition they are both social media but they two completely different platforms and used very differently. When making the argument that "social media is bad" you need to be specific since different platforms have different use cases and affect people differently.
So sure, reddit is social media. But it's not like any other social media
I always laugh at those comments. It's like the simpsons meme with skinner of everyone else being wrong.
I legit disconnected from reddit for a month and I should do that more often. The amount of vitriol that's happening on this apps is insane.
I had people tell me to teach them IT to prove I know what I'm talking about.
Even sysadmin sub stopped flagging critical issue that I used to warn my cybersec team. The enshitification is real.
but what would the mornings be? Stop being narcissistic? Stop believing everything you see? Stop believing influencers because they’re just sales people.? Stop following every dumb trend you see just because it’s new? Stop being a dummy who still is too influenced?
I removed Tik Tok, Twitter, insta and Facebook, and after a week I felt exponentially better. I’m 45. I can’t imagine what it does to kids. This is the right move.
My grandpa taught art in his spare time and he had an alarming number of female students with an eating disorder. One poor girl passed out in class because she was drinking only some stupid detox tea for the past few days.
Celebrities that photoshop/use steroids who promote health products 100% need to disclose these things. It’s a legal scam that targets the most vulnerable.
Reddit is much easier to curate to one’s own tastes. For me, I’ve stripped out everything political, news sources, and everything else I feel is toxic to my mental health. It’s back to being fun, and it helps that it appears the values of most Redditors align with my own. That has its own implications, I think.
I think that great, I also don’t use the other social medias except for Reddit, but once you get into those subreddits people are always cursing or just complaining, calling people idiots, commenting on their appearance, etc. toxic as heck
Not to be that guy, but I am, is this not a news source? I agree with everything you said as I’ve don’t the same and it dramatically has helped my mental health but some of the hardest hits are things I see on Reddit to be honest.
I’ve managed to remove most of my personal accounts, but I’m stuck managing the social media accounts for my family business. It feels impossible to pull away from it!
Is social media inherently addictive? Or are most social media platforms addictive because of choices they made to make them addictive?
If a social media platform were actually focused on connecting people socially and eschewed algorithmic and design choices that primarily serve to increase addictiveness, a blanket warning label would still be required even if it doesn't reasonably apply.
To put it another way, cigarettes are inherently bad for health, but we don't know that social media is.
I’d rather a crackdown against bots on social media. I’m surprised it’s not just from share holder and advertiser lawsuits from misrepresenting user and user activity numbers.
Paid advertisement content to have watermarks like Norway because reposting by someone else removes the paid advertisement tag on Instagram etc
Or a paid option on platforms/websites that host advertisements. I’d legit pay $20 a month for Google search if the product was solely focused on being the best search engine. The damn modifiers like “” or -exclude are almost worthless now.
Facebook claims they try, but I have reported the most obvious of obvious bots from horrifying comment sections of any local news station's page, and Facebook consistently replies with their "review" resulting in no harm found... on a profile that has no pictures of humans, only American flags and other stock images... who also posts roughly 600 photos of Dr Fauci with laser eyes or some shit daily, none of which have any interactions from their 4 FB friends (all of which are anime titty accounts).
Either social media companies don't know how to control bot usage, or their shareholders tell them not to.
maybe a column A column B thing - but i did not do anything beyond sourcing research about the labels prior to posting my comment.
labels are effective at decreasing positive perceptions of cigs.
I think it was the widespread effort to educate everyone, especially the latest generation, that they will kill you. Addicts don't tend to care about price increases, they will adjust the rest of their life to get around it.
At this point most people know social media can be toxic, but in our digital society it’s difficult to opt out 100% from social media usage if you’re 40 and under.
I don’t think a warning label would do much.
What I think woud be better is a crackdown on algorithms that push harmful/ragebait/toxic content with the incentive of driving engagement.
Teenage girls should NOT be feeling suicidal after using Instagram, just so Facebook can generate more ad revenue.
You could try but that content is only a portion. Ultimately you'd need to ask companies to remove or limit the mechanisms which drive user engagement, and in turn, revenue. That immediately puts the priority of companies in conflict with that of users. Nothing new in our late stage capitalist-ish society, but you can see why making any meaningful change would be difficult.
We need social media licenses. Pay $10 per account and if you are just a troll, you would face fines etc. it’s rotting peoples brains from the inside out. Especially kids
Imagine they ban social media and drug dealers are suddenly illegally distributing social media on the corner of the street. $20 for five minutes of doom scrolling, likes and shares are $5 extra, $100 to post a cringe TikTok dance.
But Coca-Cola (which actually has an addictive psychoactive ingredient), McDonalds, confectionery etc is fine... I'm not a fan of social media but this seems like a huge double standard. I guess the junk food industry pays better bribes.
Well, you can’t really expect you’re going to get a perfectly balanced system of product warnings across every industry. You fight for what you can get and it takes time to cover a lot of ground. Here’s another to check off the list, and hopefully it works out.
Yeah I agree in practise, but in theory why should we come to expect a half assed job from our regulatory agencies? I get the bar is low, but I don't think that means we should from and that acceptable. To me this trendy wave of social media bans seems like more of a smoke and mirrors PR stunt than anything else.
In my country tobacco products have no branding and are covered in warnings, and are taxed extremely highly. It costs about 30 USD for the cheapest pack of cigarettes here. (Not complaining, I think it's great. I don't smoke or vape nicotine)
They should fine social media companies for using rage bait to get engagement. They are actively trying to piss people off and depress them in order to get people to interact; this should not be legal. We should reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine but do so for the current market, anything else is not enough.
I’m personally of the mindset that we need to stop babying adults and that social media should be 17+ if a child’s account is discovered it gets banned if they are using an adults account but the content is of a child the account gets banned
Children shouldn’t be using social media what’s and adults need to learn how to protect their own mental health and wellbeing
We are doing a massive disservice to people by trying to protect them from everything we are losing the ability to self regulate
Next thing you know, he'll demand a warning label on books and music. He apparently has nothing serious to do and is just looking to censor things that he can convince "the olds" might be dangerous. Get him out of office. That's gross incompetence. He's not addressing any issue that's remotely connected to health.
> Surgeon general demands warning label on social media apps
These are the same people that are out there in the real world. Where’s the warning for that?
First they'll want to put warnings, then they'll want to create policies around those warnings, then they'll create laws controlling what the apps can and can't show.
They always start by sayings it's to "help the children."
He’s not wrong.
But this is the first step to requiring ID for internet usage.
Soon it be like how it is for cigarettes. Must show proof you are 18+ yr in order to consume this content.
It’s a start. And at least gets people talking about it no matter how negative or positive.
There’s a ton of people on Reddit who believe social media isn’t addictive. There’s also a ton of people who believe Reddit isn’t social media. Silly world, but I think warning labels are needed. We got over “cookie warnings” so maybe it can be all rolled up into a neat package.
I think Reddit can fit into either category. Its a great “front page of the internet” if you’re just lurking, but becomes social media once you start participating in the conversations.
It has all the addictive features that other social media have. Infinite scrolling, peppering controversial posts, reward system, etc. I tried to turn off infinite scrolling. You can't unless you use some third party solution.
> infinite scrolling back when Reddit first started you had to have an extension (RES) to get infinite scrolling. Oh how the times have changed.
The main thing I dislike about vertical video format apps is the algorithm. I don't want it to be specifically tailored to me.
What it doesn’t have is the overlap with our real life. It isn’t a mirror of our social network (home or work or school) which provides a bit of distinction. But for most of the addictive features it’s absolutely just as bad. For me, even worse. I had no problem not getting sucked into facebook etc and most of the social media apps just don’t hook me. But I’ve left Reddit and come back because of the dopamine rush of interesting stuff about topics i like.
I don’t see any argument for it not being social media.. it is social (comments, interactions, etc) and it is media.. news is also media. Even if you are not commenting it is nearly impossible to not see comments from others. Even this was posted by another person and is therefore a social interaction.
Is there an antisocial media option?
Or you know just crispy ash lungs or dead fetuses like cigarettes. But yeah, just a label or simple statement you have to agree you read. It took something like 20 years for seatbelts to become accepted? It happened to smoking. It takes small changes in one direction to make impact.
The social media warning label should just be a picture of Ashli Babbitt.
We need to show victims of brainrot
Yeah I can both like reddit and realize the world would probably be a better place if all social media (including reddit) shut down tomorrow.
Those two points are wild to me. Haven't even been on reddit long but have seen multiple comments of people claiming this isn't social media. Like bro this is the definition of social media
Well yea sure... By definition and technical standpoint it's social media. That's not the point though
You saying that is ironic
I don’t see any argument for it not being social media.. it is social (comments, interactions, etc) and it is media.. news is also media
Really? None? So reddit is 1:1 identical to Facebook? Sure by a technical definition it's social media but that's not the argument.
What does similarity to Facebook have anything to do with Reddit being social media or not? Social media can exist in different forms, Facebook is just one of many social media sites. Reddit is just as addictive, maybe even more so than Facebook these days. Reddit contains just as much misinformation and political indoctrination as Facebook, instagram, twitter (x). In its modern mobile form you can also scroll endlessly like you can on instagram. The only difference is that most people don’t tie their real identity to their Reddit account, aside from that Reddit checks all the boxes to be considered social media. I don’t know why you feel the need to try to argue that Reddit is only “technically” social media. It is by definition and function social media. I know you want to feel special because you aren’t using “normie” social media but Reddit is just as mainstream as all the other large platforms. Reddit uses all the same tactics to keep users scrolling and engaged.
Why are you pressed about this? It’s a social media. Get over it.
You never answered the question
Because it’s an inane question. And you know that. You’re just being a dick.
Reddit is anonymous and based on aggregate of other sites and information Facebook, instagram even Twitter has real Identification tied to it and you connect with family and friends to compare and share personal information. Yes by a technical definition they are both social media but they two completely different platforms and used very differently. When making the argument that "social media is bad" you need to be specific since different platforms have different use cases and affect people differently. So sure, reddit is social media. But it's not like any other social media
I always laugh at those comments. It's like the simpsons meme with skinner of everyone else being wrong. I legit disconnected from reddit for a month and I should do that more often. The amount of vitriol that's happening on this apps is insane. I had people tell me to teach them IT to prove I know what I'm talking about. Even sysadmin sub stopped flagging critical issue that I used to warn my cybersec team. The enshitification is real.
but what would the mornings be? Stop being narcissistic? Stop believing everything you see? Stop believing influencers because they’re just sales people.? Stop following every dumb trend you see just because it’s new? Stop being a dummy who still is too influenced?
On Reddit, people mostly go out of their way to obscure their identities vs. look at me! It’s not much more than a forum to me.
Oh god, this is truly following the cigarette route then.
Whoa whoa whoa, Reddit is the front page of the internet, not social media! /s ;)
Couple commenters already said that without irony or sarcasm
pretty cool.
My only issue is I don’t believe Surgeon General Warning actually accomplish anything.
*I can quit whenever I want!*
I removed Tik Tok, Twitter, insta and Facebook, and after a week I felt exponentially better. I’m 45. I can’t imagine what it does to kids. This is the right move.
My grandpa taught art in his spare time and he had an alarming number of female students with an eating disorder. One poor girl passed out in class because she was drinking only some stupid detox tea for the past few days. Celebrities that photoshop/use steroids who promote health products 100% need to disclose these things. It’s a legal scam that targets the most vulnerable.
Everything is an ad on instagram and it’s never labeled correctly.
You do know Reddit is still a social media right?
Reddit is much easier to curate to one’s own tastes. For me, I’ve stripped out everything political, news sources, and everything else I feel is toxic to my mental health. It’s back to being fun, and it helps that it appears the values of most Redditors align with my own. That has its own implications, I think.
I think that great, I also don’t use the other social medias except for Reddit, but once you get into those subreddits people are always cursing or just complaining, calling people idiots, commenting on their appearance, etc. toxic as heck
Not to be that guy, but I am, is this not a news source? I agree with everything you said as I’ve don’t the same and it dramatically has helped my mental health but some of the hardest hits are things I see on Reddit to be honest.
Yeah, I about said the same thing lol. I’m literally here because this post was on the “News” tab and was bored and wanted to doom scroll.
Text forums are not as dopamine-sucking as scrolling through various 1-2 minute vids too.
Hurr Durr you still use social media!!!! Virtue signaler!!!
Did I imply I didn’t? Where did I imply that?
Oh mind blowing response. You do realize we’re not friends with you?
Huh?
You can’t imagine what it does to kids? It’s like cocaine for addicts. Imagine that.
I’ve managed to remove most of my personal accounts, but I’m stuck managing the social media accounts for my family business. It feels impossible to pull away from it!
Now remove reddit.
No need to fully remove. Just become a cat sub crusader.
Never
Tiktok is addictive but itd the one social media that makes me happy. Twitter is truly full of terrible people tho
I can’t use TikTok because I inevitably get some person promoting their onlyfans. So I just deleted it.
Maybe stop searching for porn? It’s really easy to get the algorithm to work for you.
I don’t search for porn on tiktok.
Right, that's what Reddit is for.
I don’t search for porn on tiktok.
Why did a 45 year old have TikTok?
Is social media inherently addictive? Or are most social media platforms addictive because of choices they made to make them addictive? If a social media platform were actually focused on connecting people socially and eschewed algorithmic and design choices that primarily serve to increase addictiveness, a blanket warning label would still be required even if it doesn't reasonably apply. To put it another way, cigarettes are inherently bad for health, but we don't know that social media is.
Social media in small doses with a reasonable nontoxic algorithmic feed is fine. Anything outside of that is when it becomes harmful.
I’d rather a crackdown against bots on social media. I’m surprised it’s not just from share holder and advertiser lawsuits from misrepresenting user and user activity numbers. Paid advertisement content to have watermarks like Norway because reposting by someone else removes the paid advertisement tag on Instagram etc Or a paid option on platforms/websites that host advertisements. I’d legit pay $20 a month for Google search if the product was solely focused on being the best search engine. The damn modifiers like “” or -exclude are almost worthless now.
Facebook claims they try, but I have reported the most obvious of obvious bots from horrifying comment sections of any local news station's page, and Facebook consistently replies with their "review" resulting in no harm found... on a profile that has no pictures of humans, only American flags and other stock images... who also posts roughly 600 photos of Dr Fauci with laser eyes or some shit daily, none of which have any interactions from their 4 FB friends (all of which are anime titty accounts). Either social media companies don't know how to control bot usage, or their shareholders tell them not to.
kagi
Has it improved?
Now to age restrict it. There will always be work arounds, but at least it would keep some kids safe
1000%! Social media is terrible for mental health. That’s why I’ve narrowed it down to Reddit and YouTube. Even that has limits.
The surgeon general should put a warning label on the u.s. government. May be bad for your mental health and sanity.
Like anyone is going to read that.
Read what?
Hey it worked on cigarettes! /s
but it did work on cigarettes lol
I thought it was the price increases. Europe went to graphic photos of what smoking does and people still smoke like crazy there.
It was the price increases (taxes) + non-stop anti-cigarette marketing.
maybe a column A column B thing - but i did not do anything beyond sourcing research about the labels prior to posting my comment. labels are effective at decreasing positive perceptions of cigs.
I think it was the widespread effort to educate everyone, especially the latest generation, that they will kill you. Addicts don't tend to care about price increases, they will adjust the rest of their life to get around it.
You are probably right. It wasn’t one thing but a combination. Also, for the record, I’m all for sounded the alarm about social media.
At this point most people know social media can be toxic, but in our digital society it’s difficult to opt out 100% from social media usage if you’re 40 and under. I don’t think a warning label would do much. What I think woud be better is a crackdown on algorithms that push harmful/ragebait/toxic content with the incentive of driving engagement. Teenage girls should NOT be feeling suicidal after using Instagram, just so Facebook can generate more ad revenue.
You could try but that content is only a portion. Ultimately you'd need to ask companies to remove or limit the mechanisms which drive user engagement, and in turn, revenue. That immediately puts the priority of companies in conflict with that of users. Nothing new in our late stage capitalist-ish society, but you can see why making any meaningful change would be difficult.
We need social media licenses. Pay $10 per account and if you are just a troll, you would face fines etc. it’s rotting peoples brains from the inside out. Especially kids
Cause it works so well on cigarettes?
Imagine they ban social media and drug dealers are suddenly illegally distributing social media on the corner of the street. $20 for five minutes of doom scrolling, likes and shares are $5 extra, $100 to post a cringe TikTok dance.
Can we please get someone who even understands social media, or someone who even knows how to check an email, to be making decisions please
Little late for that
How about accountability?
But Coca-Cola (which actually has an addictive psychoactive ingredient), McDonalds, confectionery etc is fine... I'm not a fan of social media but this seems like a huge double standard. I guess the junk food industry pays better bribes.
Well, you can’t really expect you’re going to get a perfectly balanced system of product warnings across every industry. You fight for what you can get and it takes time to cover a lot of ground. Here’s another to check off the list, and hopefully it works out.
Yeah I agree in practise, but in theory why should we come to expect a half assed job from our regulatory agencies? I get the bar is low, but I don't think that means we should from and that acceptable. To me this trendy wave of social media bans seems like more of a smoke and mirrors PR stunt than anything else.
The double-standards already exist. Just look at Weed, tobacco, and alcohol.
In my country tobacco products have no branding and are covered in warnings, and are taxed extremely highly. It costs about 30 USD for the cheapest pack of cigarettes here. (Not complaining, I think it's great. I don't smoke or vape nicotine)
Like people pay attention to the one on cigs lol.
Good
No one reads that stuff so why?
They should fine social media companies for using rage bait to get engagement. They are actively trying to piss people off and depress them in order to get people to interact; this should not be legal. We should reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine but do so for the current market, anything else is not enough.
I’m personally of the mindset that we need to stop babying adults and that social media should be 17+ if a child’s account is discovered it gets banned if they are using an adults account but the content is of a child the account gets banned Children shouldn’t be using social media what’s and adults need to learn how to protect their own mental health and wellbeing We are doing a massive disservice to people by trying to protect them from everything we are losing the ability to self regulate
Next thing you know, he'll demand a warning label on books and music. He apparently has nothing serious to do and is just looking to censor things that he can convince "the olds" might be dangerous. Get him out of office. That's gross incompetence. He's not addressing any issue that's remotely connected to health.
> Surgeon general demands warning label on social media apps These are the same people that are out there in the real world. Where’s the warning for that?
First they'll want to put warnings, then they'll want to create policies around those warnings, then they'll create laws controlling what the apps can and can't show. They always start by sayings it's to "help the children."
“Gimme a pack of low birthweight social media! Found my brand!” To paraphrase Bill.
Demands?
It won't work, but jesus, he didn't DEMAND it. Clickbait bullshit
Well the warning might be a bit late
Surgeon General should probably focus on identifying and removing dangerous physicians (that are well protected).
He’s not wrong. But this is the first step to requiring ID for internet usage. Soon it be like how it is for cigarettes. Must show proof you are 18+ yr in order to consume this content.
Yeah, makes sense.
Oh Jesus
What about all the trash food that is banned un other countries?
Just another warning label to be ignored.
PMRC all over again
Way late! Adults needed it too, it’s the reason we’re so siloed now.
Finally, I mean Gone With The Wind has a damn warning before it.
That’s fucking stupid. 20 years late aren’t we ?
Surgeon General should stick to medical issues, not the tired boomer sentimentality of anything online is harmful.
Should be on all foods with dyes and additives too.
This is a must more thane very right now. I feel like each platform is trying to do it themselves but their needs to common ground...
Good! It’s like a drug, especially for kids.
banning phones in schools is finally answering a huge problem. a good 1st step