Social media is bad, but it's not the cause. Our society is seriously suffering, and the gap between those of us who are privileged and those of us who have nothing is just getting wider.
Most of these ills existed long before Facebook. Facebook just makes it more apparent. Common people are on twitter, on reddit, on all the big networking sites directly pointing out that "everything is far from okay" and for a certain segment of the successful population of the world, they almost take that as an insult to them personally, because they're doing well and they assumed everyone else was too.
The reality is there are huge segments of the global and even American population that are being largely left behind by our new shiny future.
Secondly there are additional items that are necessary for this next generation that I don't believe are really accounted for. A lack of good internet access in the form of a smartphone or pc is a literal handicap, if someone can't justify affording that, I would very much consider them impoverished. Time is literal money and denying the most advanced tool in our day and age that will save you large amounts of time/money is poor from my perspective.
Yes I realize this measures something else, but it is rather opaque, and it fails to account for other things like debt.
The result is that that there are a lot of people who are officially in the government's eyes "above the poverty line" but who in reality can barely pay rent and afford groceries.
At my current job I work really hard, but I feel incredibly lucky that what I do is valued such that I am able to put about $3k per month extra money into a Vanguard mutual fund that has about 7% return. This money will continue to accumulate and grow with compound interest. I literally get more free money for already having money. That is privilege.
Meanwhile for many other people it's the exact opposite. They work equally hard (arguably perhaps even harder than I do) but the work they do isn't valued so they get paid almost nothing. After they pay their bills they don't have any extra money to invest. In fact they might have a small shortfall which over time turns into credit card debt. Now their net worth is compounding in the opposite direction.... down instead of up.
Someone in the second group has every right to feel depressed. I'd argue they probably even have every right to be mad as hell. They say that depression is just anger internalized. Some people are reacting to their situation by getting angry at the billionaires and super rich in our society. Others are experiencing that internalized anger that turns into depression that causes them to suicide slowly with drugs or alcohol.
Not sure there has ever been a time so many people are in debt with no possibility of being able to repay. Consider 1M student loans go into default every year. That's 1M a year, mostly young people, who will have these loan debts for the rest of their lives with no way out.
That's just 1 area of debt to highlight, but more of these young people will never buy a house, probably not own a car, likely not have families, and die younger than their parents.
To tell these people there has literally never been a better time to be alive is an insult, any time in history was relatively good so long as you had wealth, the same is true today.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
How many have defaulted on their loans? Again 1M default every year...how many do you know?
Home ownership, car ownership and marriage are all down with this demographic and millennials overall.
I mean, we have a measurable metric right now- young people dying in high rates, suicide is up, average life expectancy is down?
"In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period,' just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
The wealth of people like Bazos, Gates, Buffet, Greenspan, etc turn the suffering of entire generations into rounding errors.
I love how the common HN statement of, "if there's a metric, it will be gamed," never makes it's way into concerns of societies ills. The United States is an incredibly lonely and alienated place and, while GDP may be going up or whatever gamey mechanism you want to measure does the "right " thing, it does nothing to affect the very real material concerns of the average person: the ever-increasing precarious nature of work, healthcare concerns, student loan debt, increasing rent, and it just gets worse every time you wake up.
The saying "never cross a river that is 4 feet deep on average" is applicable -- the skewness is a critical factor.
Who cares if the planets burning and suicides are up!? Don't worry about financial security and medical expenses! The NASDAQ thing went up! That's all that matters afterall, as long as the made up fuckin numbers are nice and big, have a party!
Some demographics that should be doing fine perceive the world as worse than it is [1].
Even though the demographic's metrics are improving, the perception of their metrics might not be improving.
https://qz.com/1752676/the-job-quality-index-is-the-economic...
Life expectancy has dropped for three years running.
Don't blame it on social media. It's bigger and deeper rooted than that.