Social media divides us, makes us more extreme and less empathetic, it riles us up or sucks us into doom scrolling, making us stressed and depressed. It feels like we need to touch grass and escape to the real world.

New research shows that we might have largely misinterpreted why this is the case. It turns out that the social media internet may uniquely undermine the way our brains work but not in the way you think.

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  • Beej Jorgensen
    27•1 year ago

    The real problem with the internet isn’t Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, it’s the fact the entire experience is pretty much controlled by Microsoft and Google. As they shape your content, lock you out of areas and generally dictate what’s “legal” or even what gets found during your searches.

    I agree the Google and MS are a problem, but Facebook, Twitter, Reddit are also a problem, albeit a different one.

    • meseek #2982
      7•1 year ago

      Yeah not saying they aren’t shit. Just that the internet isn’t just social media. I surf with mullvad blocking all nuisances (social media included) and I don’t even really feel its effects unless I actually try to visit facebook.com or equivalent.

      • Move
        6•1 year ago

        I think this is where you’re wrong. Facebook, together with google, ms, apple and amazon, are building all the tech nowadays and thus shaping the internet according to their priorities, and this is the biggest problem.

        • meseek #2982
          3•1 year ago

          Apple is a hardware company. Over 90% of their cash comes from hardware. Latest figures show that about 6-8% are from services. Aside from making a browser that’s quite popular on mobile, they really have little to no control on the net.

          Their partners certainly do, but they are not a software company. They have nowhere near the impact Google or Microsoft do because those two are both service companies and both actually control and own giant slices of the net. Google has shaping the net’s infrastructure for decades now.

          Not saying Apple doesn’t influence in other ways, but is just a spec compared to the companies that actually own parts of the nets backbone.

          It’s going to be like old telecom soon, where the companies that own the physical lines have all the control. And that’s scary. I don’t want kids growing up using Google Internet or Microsoft AllNet to access the web.