Study: Psychologists conclude that social media algorithms have a negative influence on users mental health

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1365278/psychologists-say-that-social-media-algorithms-have-a-negative-influence-on-users-mental

news.utdallas.edu/health-medicine/social-media-algorithms-depression-2026/

Social media has the power to do so much good: connecting people across the globe, enabling the sharing of information across language barriers and in circumvention of government censorship, and more. But because the world is run by greedy power-hungry pigs, we can’t have social media without it being exploited to the furthest extent possible in the name of profit. The mental health of the public is not even a secondary concern - it is completely disregarded in favor of squeezing further growth out of a saturated market for a service that should be both simple and free.

Before all that - and you are right on your take - there is a more basic flaw that affects social media: people do not know how to act properly.

The anonimity emboldens the small minds that use it to mistreat, slander and ridicule others and spread lies and rumours.

Unless we can force people to act with civility - which implies people being fairly conscious of the consequences of their words and actions - social media will remain what it is: a cesspool where the worst of our species destils into a refined poison.

See: Manna by Marshall Brain. In his Australia project they simply install a centrally controlled “cutoff switch” - when people are out of line their conscious brain gets switched over to a virtual reality where they can live out their fantasies while their bodies report to detention until their brain decides it wants to join “the real world” again.

That doesn’t work. The average individual is too hedonistic to refrain from any pleasureable or self reinforcing loop. It’s been a cautionary tale in stories since ancient times.

There’s no shortage of people. If the “real world” people all get along with reasonable consensus on what “individual freedoms” mean, and some (hopefully small) percentage of those people decide they’d rather live in an alternate reality where they trample the rights of others, instead of incarceration / punishment / inadequate efforts at rehabilitation, transferring those people’s consciousness to a virtual reality where they can “be themselves” would seem to me to be a far better use of their individual spirit than trying to break it or simply terminating it. Maybe most of them never rehabilitate - that’s o.k. Of course, this is feeding right into a prequel for Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan.