> But, you can easily argue that "my child should never smoke". You cannot easily argue that "my child should never use social media".

That might be true now, but it could always change. Don't forget that we all used to think smoking was perfectly healthy.

I'm hoping that movies/shows in the future show how we currently use social media and it shocks people the same way media made now does with cigarettes because we realized how unhealthy it is.

No, it will not change.

Humans are social animals. We depend heavily on each other. Perhaps, we will rebrand social media... but the underlying fundamental issues will persist. Even if the next wave of tech is called Group Links, people will still need to learn how to navigate the noise.

I suppose I could be wrong. If we abandon the internet, disband the newspapers and the post, and generally give up on democracy entirely. But I don't like the sounds of that either.

Smoking is simply a bad comparison, though it's true, both are currently harmful. One however needs to be addressed in a way that promotes healthy use, the other pretty much falls under the umbrella of adults can choose to make their own choices.

Now before I go off down the "but think of the children" path too much further... I'll reiterate; this all falls primarily on better education, not stricter laws and enforcement. Censorship is a double edge sword and implementing it above the scale of the household is very dubious. There's a reason minors are admitted to rated R movies with their parents, for example. Even drinking ages are sometimes flexible.

Anyways, I feel like I could rant about this topic forever right now, but I'm just stop here.

I would argue the effect of smoking was also a lot longer to see the effect. I've been to countries where kids smoke (middle east) and there's no apparent effect on the smoking kids. You'd probably have to wait until their 30s to really see the damage.

Watching a kid watch TV there is almost an immediate feeling of unhealthiness that isn't as apparent from watching a kid smoke. The smoking kid will keep on playing soccer, the kid on the TV is sucked into the sedentary low-thought activity like they're in a trance.

I'm not sure that a majority of adults are actually capable of using social media responsibly. How do we teach kids to use social media when it seems like our entire society is incapable of handling it?

Its not that society is incapable. Its more that Social Media went viral before we even had a chance to digest "this is social media", this is how you operate it.

The lava from the explosion is now cooling, the dust is settling; and we are now starting to see is the newly formed dystopian world that has been created from.

As unlike cigs, that have been around longer than the internet. We've known for a long time they're bad.

If you put me in front of someone on an operating table and ask me to operate on them I would be incapable of doing it.

That's not to say I don't have the capacity for it. I just got put in front of a patient before I had the chance to digest any medical studies.

We can learn from history. The invention of the printing press comes to mind.

But yea, it's hard to pass good practice on to future generations when the current ones don't have a clue what they are doing.

at what age do you think most children would be capable of being taught how to manage/handle these things?

> But, you can easily argue that "my child should never smoke". You cannot easily argue that "my child should never use social media".

Oh, I think one can so argue. Social media as in "public or broadcast-to-all-'friends' style posting, that pushes content at you in a way designed to maximize engagement above all other concerns", yeah, that stuff's digital asbestos. I'm not gonna take my kids gambling, either, and certainly not going to let them do it on a regular basis. Social media's just as low-value and dangerous.

Texting and equivalents, sure, not so much.