alt Hacker News> there's clearly no good done by the existence of social media.
If this were true, I’m sure that you wouldn’t have any trouble advocating that we ban it. Many of us remember social media before the algorithmic feed took over, and it was a good way to stay connected to friends and family. Some us also were lucky enough to experience a protracted period of socializing on the internet in the pre-social media days: MUDs, web forums, chat rooms, etc. I enjoyed all of those, in my teen and college years, and like you I count myself fortunate that I was not exposed to social media during a formative time of my life. I think that’s why I hesitate to say that we should outright ban it: I know that the internet _can_ coexist (and even augment) a healthy social life. That said, I don’t use social media at all anymore (unless you count HN), so I’ve definitely voted with my eyeballs.
Some critical differences, I think, are:
- What we did on the Internet in the early 90s was not broadcast to our (real world) peers. If some big drama blew up online, we could escape it with the flip of a switch.
- Similarly, we could escape real world drama by shifting to our online relationships.
- Normal people were not online yet, so you didn't have all the normal real world structures of authority and popularity/hostility. Or, you had substitutes instead, because this is human nature, but they were not so universal and entrenched. It was an Internet of niches, and we could all find or create our own.
- There was no pervasive profitability goal in keeping our eyeballs on a particular platform, so today's dark pattern manipulation just didn't exist.
- It was separate. Not only did the Internet not bleed into real life (and v-v), but it wasn't always-available like today with smartphone ubiquity.
The Internet, back then, was a safe third space.
Today it's often a toxic hellscape, with some exceptional corners.