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A comment on The Case for Banning Children from Social Media. Parent comment

Re:The Case for Banning Children from Social Media by mxkopy on Wednesday April 05, 2023 @11:56AM (#35456259)
In my experience you don't become terminally online unless there's something else going on in your life. People talking about the ills of social media seem to forget that children nowadays are: institutionalized for 8 hours of their day, raised on diets of processed garbage, etc. Like, a well adjusted kid isn't going to treat social media as more important than their friends unless they think they can make a living from it or have no friends.

I think "dopamine bombing" is not what it sounds. See discussions on dopamine fasting for what I mean. The relationship between the things you do and dopamine are complex, probably more complex than the relationship of what you physically consume and dopamine.

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Re:The Case for Banning Children from Social Media by clnq on Wednesday April 05, 2023 @12:24PM (#35456653)
> In my experience you don't become terminally online unless there's something else going on in your life

That's true, but it's also true for other addictions.

> a well adjusted kid isn't going to treat social media as more important than their friends unless they think they can make a living from it or have no friends.

Probably mostly true, but also a lot of friendships are moving online.

> I think "dopamine bombing" is not what it sounds

Can you elaborate? I think it sounds like abusing the dopamine hits you get when scrolling through SM, for example.

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Re:The Case for Banning Children from Social Media by mxkopy on Wednesday April 05, 2023 @02:15PM (#35458315)
It implies a direct connection with neurochemistry that's much less direct than drugs (and even moreso diet), which can directly stimulate the release of dopamine. For example if I'm feeling tired of scrolling through memes, I can just put my phone away. I can't stop caffeine from stimulating my neurons, or ignore a macronutrient deficiency in my body.

It might be that this is an unimportant distinction in the end, but I'm not sure we know.

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Re:The Case for Banning Children from Social Media by clnq on Wednesday April 05, 2023 @09:39PM (#35463002)
Quite many people can't just put their phone away, even when they try to concentrate on something else. The behaviour seems to be very similar to other addictions.
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