And later you had the satanic D&D.

Every generation seems to pick their moral panic and then engages in "unintentional concern trolling" over it. The people mean well, but low quality evidence shouldn't be good enough to condemn things.

Indeed. The question is, how good is the evidence?

Serious question, given it kinda feels like Meta's been acting like cigarette companies back in their heyday, while X is acting like it's the plot device of a James Bond villain.

D&D isn't designed to be addictive, and hasn't been used to psych-profile its users or influence elections.

False dichotomies all the way. I feel like any discussion around meta and social media on this platform brings out the most obnoxious sycophants.

+1

I stopped engaging in such discussions. There are some people who are reasonable and make sense, but the rest are just outright batshit crazy. They want more restraints, more censorship, more anti-privacy crap? Or they equate "good" with addictive? Come on.

It was designed to be boring?

Just because it's good doesn't mean it's addicting.

Are we getting to the point where any enjoyment of anything is viewed as an addiction and a sickness?

Is the concept of a game just being fun that alien?

The difference is children back then actually did see their day expand as they were removed from the workforce, making comic book consumption "free" essentially in terms of what it might have replaced just a generation previous.

That feels like a stretch. In the 1850s it was pulp novels and in the 1990s it was video games.

More so in the cities, not as much in more rural areas where tons of kids were still doing farm work with 10 brothers and sisters along with them in the 40s-60s. After that farms had dropped quite a bit but it was still until the late 70s that farms and farm labor lost enough need for labor that caused most rural kids to completely exist the agricultural sector minus the direct sons and daughters of farmers.

Were they addicting and correlated with a spike in mental illnesses? Genuinely asking.

Because I can hardly imagine 70% of people in a train reading comic books. Guess what 70% are doing in the train in 2026?

I think part of the problem is choice. 36% of teens wish they spent less time in social media. Only 32% say it has a positive effect.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/teens-and...

It’s addictive like smoking. Addictive algorithms take away agency. I don’t think there are a lot of kids wishing they read less comic books, or played less DND (there may be some percentage wishing less video games). But it’s not like a classic generational divide where parents don’t understand it and teens are fighting for this stuff, a lot are against it themselves!