To be honest, it is really hard to know if social media did in fact improved your life.

One could argue that opiates improve their life, in the short term at least. Therefore, in my opinion parent comment claimed that we will not know the effect of FB for another 10-20 years, and I agree. There is a lot more to us, than what we feel right now, our minds are very complicated. What if in 20 years you starting feeling depressed for no obvious reasons?

FB and social media will definitely have a major impact on the human mind. I am not sure if I find value in being friends with people from high school as my mindset has shifted so much I cannot stand people that used to be my friends. Seeing their children and vacation pictures adds no value to my life, it serves as a distraction and makes me want to "keep up with the Joneses"

I can understand that feeling of "keeping up with the Joneses" but for me it's easy to ignore. For awhile I'd look at Instagram and see all the cool stuff my friends were doing and be disappointed that I wasn't doing cool stuff too.

Then I realized that my mindset was all wrong. I should be stoked for those people! I do cool stuff too, even if I'm not always doing it.

The problem starts when your friends doing 'cool' things as defined by them, then start subtly judging people who are not part of that gang. People hangout only with people who do the exact same thing otherwise there is just no point of hanging out. Instead, the truth is that our brains are quite capable of making friends with different people who do different activities and have a round robin going on. This is how we grow as a person. Human pettiness is universal and it is easy for the brain to keep noticing who is different than them, and completely missing the point.

Exactly, if you use IG in an unhealthy way, don't be surprised if you feel worse after using it.

Only follow your friends and people you actually care about. Then it's a feed of interesting thing about people you actually like.

Problem solved.

Even then, some of my friends are rich buttholes who somehow manage to take many huge trips each year. International, snowboarding multiple times (denver, canada etc).

It doesnt bother me much, but I sometimes feel bad for my wife. She seems everyone doing fun shit on instagram and she is stuck at home. We cant afford to drop 10k+ a year on trips. We get one or two a year which is enough for me.

The thing is when we go on these trips, we just enjoy each other. We take pictures, but we arent fucking posing for instagram 20 times a day. We take pictures to remember the moment together, and to share them with our family in the future.

How much are your two car notes and insurance cost you per year?

If you don't have a number right away, maybe start there.

My argument would combine both of these sentiments, both parents and GPs, and say that social media has an amplifying effect.

It'll amplify good intentioned and sincere efforts (reconnecting, sharing good news, etc.) as well as toxic ones (hatred, lies, and so on) just as all forms of media have done in the past as well.

The same happened with the printing press as well as the emergence of the Internet itself.

Of course, but the fact that these companies have to make a profit creates misaligned incentives.

The degree with which people compare social media to drugs (with all the baggage that entails) fucking astounds me sometimes. I would fully expect a serious reply to a comment like yours to be "that's just because you're addicted".

It's a fad in some circles to hate on social media. And a particularly tiresome one, since it's doing nothing more than highlighting the pathological ways humans have always behaved, even in its absence. Availability heuristic.

Humans have always fought in wars and killed one another but why are modern weapons so much more dangerous? Technology has the potential to enable the dark aspects of humanity to be more destructive than ever. Make no mistake, the HN crowd is not your average person, how social media applies to you does not reflect how it will apply to the majority in the world.

Because modern weapons are designed to enable both sides to lose at the same time.

There's plenty of scientific research on how various services mimic slot machines in stimulating reward mechanisms.

Victims of addictive behaviors need help, not blame like "just because you're addicted".

I think social media is fine, but social media + sinister hyper-optimizing advertising tech is something else...

Sure. Maybe from your perspective, things are improved. But you can’t see how the world would be different without social media. Maybe you’d enjoy living in an alternate world instead. Honestly, connectedness might be overrated. Presence and locality could produce completely different and potentially better results.

I have a strong feeling that you were well past the age where social media could have had a strong influence on your psychological development when you had encountered social media for the first time. I am not saying there are no good things to social media, but knowing people, the dark patterns emerge much stronger than the positive ones.

It's possible. I was 17 when I got Facebook, so older than most kids now, but not exactly a fully formed adult.

Interestingly, in middle school, my friends and I sort of built our own social network. We all made websites on "Expage" and would link them to each other. It seemed like everyone in the school was doing it and I remember being pretty happy when a girl I liked gave me a shoutout on her website. I feel like we all learned a lot from that experience because inevitably, there was plenty of drama and hurt feelings.

That's a big part of what got me into software development in the first place.