> Apps like these are causing mental decline, addiction and behavioral problems on a large scale, but the parents just dont care. As long as the kid is quiet with the smartphone in hand. So sad.

Honest question: did it really take having a child to realize this? I mean, most of us here grew up on the Internet and saw the trajectory coming how things devolved from Newsgroups--> Forums --> Myspace. It was day and night each iteration and it wasn't getting better, but significantly and starkly worse way to communicate.

I've been uniquely apathetic about Social media since it was created, and I have never been drawn into it for the aforementioned reasons plus I have a strong background in oratory that forces me to communicate in person; my concerns were that social media presented us with as an intrusive security threat vector, as it's entire buisness model relies on selling data, but I was only secondarily concerned with how vapid people were becoming. I figured it was always there, but it now gave them a platform to draw attention to themselves; so long it was confined to online antics, like on a chan, it will remain there.

Damn, was I wrong about that!

Flash forward to a few years ago and that Black Mirror episode (Nosedive) encapsulated what a lot of us felt inside as these things grew in popularity to the point of replacing people's entire identity. Flash forward a bit more and you get Social Dillema by the very people who created the thing (after they made their money of course) sounding the alarm: Tristan Harris. Flash forward another few months and you get Jan 6th, and all the implications that came with it, and this all started as a dumb LARP'ing thing on 8chan!

I struggle to see the threat of smart phone useage itself as a threat, because I have so many and rarely use them (I only have calls and text notifications on them for what and who I speak with); I often forget to bring them with me when I go out or simply just leave it in my backpack as I go on about my day, but I've seen struggling to see how people didn't see this coming.

It takes a nutmeg snorting, tidepod eating contest or I guess blackout challenge to get people to realize just how pointless, and quite frankly cancerous, this entire part of the tech Industry is.

> Apps like these are causing mental decline, addiction and behavioral problems on a large scale, but the parents just dont care. As long as the kid is quiet with the smartphone in hand. So sad.

I think it's over usage and a clear dependence on them; we all were around when gore was still a shock factor thing, and hung around chans; does that mean we all became depraved menaces to Society? Some maybe, but most of use learned that there is a clear divide between online and in real life behaviour that shouldn't be crossed: what I think failed for so many was that there was never any downtime where you spent time away from these apps and people started to emulate that behaviour in their everyday and THAT is what I think is the issue: people, young or otherwise, seek validation and acceptance from others. It's a hardwired survival mechanism, and that is what these corps have exploited for their own monetary gain.