so @julesterpak articulated this on her tiktok (linked below)
Social media's positivity/toxicity is inherently about user intent. There's a huge difference between:
a) posting to get a reaction
b) archiving a memory that you're comfortable... See more
And while the outcome of overusing an app on the phone may not look as physically dangerous, what it has done to my attention, self esteem, and zest for life is just as dark as what alcohol did to me.
I see two divergent media futures emerging—each based on networks that serve very different groups.
In the first future, our networks serve the technologists who build them, the advertisers that pay for them, and the governments that control them. These networks compete for users in a war for attention by making systems that spit out superficially... See more
We can always opt out of this arrangement, of course, and live happily in meatspace, but that is precisely the point: Offline we exist by default; online we have to post our way into selfhood.
In the post-hipster era, you listened to what Spotify told you to listen to. If you read a book, it was because the precise pattern of blobby pastel-coloured shapes on its cover contained coded instructions to TikTok’s algorithm that sent it zooming to the top of your feed. Your tastes and preferences were decided for you by vast crystalline... See more