i agree with the main point, social media isnt the world. i think people forget that
In print form. That comes to your physical mailbox.
Newspapers are OK, but magazines are better, if you want "State of the world, processed and digested, after the fact, without the outrage of the moment leaking in."
I subscribe to... honestly more than I get around to reading fully, but part of it is to simply say, "Yes, I value this type of writing and information, please keep producing it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
(And to a much lesser extend, https://text.npr.org/)
And so, Facebook's dark patterns to some extent poison everything.
Is it the dark patterns that are causing anxiety and depression?
Imo the social media panic is mostly people afraid of genuineness & earnesty, or people jist afraid of an idea they dont at all have any connection to or understanding of.
There is a very very real problem that this world lacks accessible role models. That we dont know who to look to, that we dont have local examples. That's not a social media problem: that's just ehat happens when the well-to-do parts of the economy stratify up & up & up & real living gets trashy cheap & hard. Some people fall for the shallow signs that are projected, on social media or in other cultural distribution mechanisms (music is a big longstanding distributor of cultue for example). But the lack of real meaning far far far outstripsy concern with social mediacs ability to let shallow symbols spread.