Facebook is a boredom cure at best, and at times it can be a version of the cold, hard, cringey truth. You might complain that Facebook harms mental health, but the reality is that sometimes the truth is the most depressing thing to learn.
If Facebook does harm by preventing enough escapism, there’s no regulatory cure to fix that. You’ll just have to wait for the tide to shift. But hey, look at that, today’s your lucky day...
People really are that bored. People’s lives are frequently very lackluster and uneventful. This is plainly obvious, because whenever someone delightfully ordinary (yet comfortable with that) comes along, it seems like such a breath of fresh air amongst all the puffed out try-hards that grab so much attention.
The cringey reality check is the depressing part that creates the anxiety of never wanting to leave the house. People have a hard time differentiating between bullshit and not bullshit.
It’s not entirely correct to blame Facebook in particular for the inadequacy felt, when comparing one’s self to someone else’s carefully currated (yet seemingly natural) photo album.
That part of the debate is just the bulemia-caused-by-waif-as-fashion-model-redux. You can’t fix that by removing Facebook from the equation, because people will never stop beautifying their profile pics and cherry picking exclusive-yet-swollen friend lists.
So we’ll cure it by all jumping ship to Mastodon, where the photo albums will be crappier and less enviable, and we’ll all be less cringey? That’s the plan?
This isn’t about elections at all, is it?
I was merely responding to a comment that I thought didn't accurately portray the harms that social media can cause. Perhaps you could address those points?
> to want to destroy you
That doesn't sound healthy...
Support for regulation of casinos is born largely out of the idea that many people are not fully responsible for their psychology.
Federated social media (e.g. Mastodon) only serves part of the problem. It's like going from the casino to your friends' houses; ill effects still exist, but the domain is not controlled by a profiteer, who may have incentives to maximise and exploit those ill effects.
Additionally, if we do introduce social media regulations (shudder) you can guarantee Facebook will have a hand in writing/influencing them to benefit itself and hurt any startup competitors, as the article argues.
I wouldn't be opposed to basic data protection laws, but I'm always wary of "oh just regulate them" as an automatic cure-all for when we don't like how a company behaves. There's almost always unintended consequences.