Taking the time to save a link/picture, go to another site, and typing in a description and comments on material? Great. Seeing a cat picture and instantaneously clicking "share"?

Screw that. That kind of behavior is in the website's interest, not mine. It creates an endless stream of slightly-interesting material from people I know, just enough to keep me watching but not enough to feel like anything got done.

Spending time doing something compulsively that later you realize was a waste of time, then doing it again? That's addiction. I don't know what kind of addiction it is. It's certainly less addictive than opiods. But it's no doubt addictive -- and it is currently affecting billions of people worldwide.

It's an amazing amount of societal damage that nobody will ever be able to quantify. We'll never know the books that weren't read, the inventions that weren't made, or the people that weren't helped because somebody was watching social media.

(And before somebody talks about how great it is to have the planet connected, it is! Being able to communicate and research is nowhere near the same thing as having your head stuck in your phone eight hours a day)