Are smart phones destroying our mental health?::undefined
Yes
It’s just a tool. If there is someone who destroys your mental health it’s you or sometimes other people.
Heroin is just a painkiller. A slotmachine is just a game. Guns don’t kill people. A cigarette is just a plant leaf in a piece of paper.
While all true, there are clear merits to regulate them.
Are smartphones bad? I don’t know. But I wouldn’t reject the idea on the spot. I don’t think it’s the device perse, it’s how we use them. There are assholes among us.
What does “regulate them” look like? It’s not phones doing it. It’s the social media apps doing it, as far as phones are concerned.
Exactly.
The libertarian paradise of Somalia has never really appealed to me.
As for smartphones, it’s no secret that App designers pull every trick they can to increase engagement a.k.a. addiction.
I can definitely see a future where some of the more sinister tricks have mandatory opt-out or opt-in options.
it’s an awfully convenient and accessible tool though.
Should it be inconvenient and inaccessible?
A knife is a convenient and accessible tool as well, I could use it to hurt myself or others, or use it to prepare a nice meal for myself and others. It’s up to me how I use it, not the knife.
A knife is convenient and accessible as well true, but it is easy to understand that swinging a knife will hurt yourself and/or others.
While social media doesn’t have that, we don’t automatically identify social media as dangerous unlike swinging a knife or pointing a gun.
I do understand your point that the user is still responsible in some way, I just think that knowledge of its danger be more widespread.
If you ever read any of the thousands of terms and conditions you agree to when you pick up your phone, you would see that choosing how you use it, is most certainly not up to you.
It’s a tool that opens up a lot of dangers (bullying/misinformation/addiction loops created by companies). Oddly, we don’t seem to educate kids on how to handle the tool properly.
So giving phones to kids and not parenting them enough to ensure they learn how to interact with people IRL is bad?
I thought we had kinda already come to that conclusion some years ago tbh
(Not your fault OP) Clickbaity headline
Unfortunately it is very difficult to be good parents when both parents have to stay out over 10 hrs per day to work. This is the part that is always overlooked in these news. Problem is not the smartphones. It’s modern society
Really good point tbh, and really just adds to my point, not just bad parenting through negligence, but also an unfortunate lack of presence from otherwise good parents even being possible due to both needing full time jobs.
I’m not gonna bang the 4dww drum in this thread, but reduced-day-same-pay working weeks need to happen yesterday, so many tangible improvements to society are just hanging there.
Absolutely agree. We should have gone from single income households to “2 part time incomes” households
Industrialization and capitalism have figured largely in an intergenerational mental health crisis. But it’s so ubiquitous we think dysfunctional behavior is normal and accepable like vodka addiction in Russia.
Social media and dysfunctional smartphone behavior is yet another cope, yet another way to tolerate a stressful live forced upon us. And it’s probably less harmful than other coping methods such as drinking or domestic violence.
Eh. Wasn’t much there to destroy anyways. At least i got memes and cat pics out of the deal.
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