Look, I like all this traffic, and it brings in revenue for my business.
But I'm starting to wonder whether it's all worth it, if we end up
creating a generation with significantly less brain function, for the
first time in our evolution, less than 50, 60, 70 years from now.

I feel you man. I've had plenty of existential crisis moments in the last handful of years. I enjoy what I do and the compensation/opportunities that come with it, and it is always amazing to see some of the wonderful things that have happened in the world because of all the work that has been put in to connect people. But it often bothers me that at the same time it's helped more nefarious elements of societies to connect more easily too, and enabled them to do more bad things more easily. 

Overall I do think the good outweighs the bad , but occasionally things happen in the world that make me really wonder. I'm sure my therapist is sick of hearing about it by now. :p

On Fri, Oct 8, 2021 at 11:40 AM Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:


On 10/8/21 17:26, Tom Beecher wrote:

> There is already lots of published research on social media addiction
> that does call it out just that strongly.

Oh no, I didn't mean that the research to link social media addiction to
long-term mental harm does not exist. It's just that such research will
be ignored or buried under piles of stone to never see the light of
common day, so that BigCorporate can keep cashing in on our addictions.

As a practical example of life-saving research-stomping, between the
US$1.5 trillion food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical
fraternity and the medical insurance companies, there is a reason why
the globe spends US$1 billion on insulin therapy for Type 2 Diabetes.
Every. Single. Day. And the research about how T2D can be successfully
reversed, through diet alone, has been around for over a decade:

https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/lifestyle/health-fitness/how-i-reversed-diabetes-3449528


>
> There is a reason why that company has started going to great lengths
> in recent years to make it harder for outside researchers to do
> similar work.

Exactly my point, above.

And sadly, little young Jane + Thabo won't be looking for social media
feeds on how to get their social media addiction under control.

Look, I like all this traffic, and it brings in revenue for my business.
But I'm starting to wonder whether it's all worth it, if we end up
creating a generation with significantly less brain function, for the
first time in our evolution, less than 50, 60, 70 years from now.

Mark.