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Comment by b111coins | Hacker News Reader

Its probably nothing in comparison to video games and we dont talk much about that.

I disagree on both points. Human population spends less time in aggregate playing games that on social media. I don't have a quote from somewhere but just from the monthly active users from various social networks it is quite safe to say that almost everybody is on at least one social network.

The second thing is, that people do talk about the addictiveness and bad effects of games all the time, and have been doing so since games existed.

Monthly active is nowhere near any kind of problem.

I know no one who would flunk the school cause he can't glue out of Facebook. I know multiple people who had huge problems in school due to being unable to stop playing or woke up multiple times during night to care about kingdom.

I mentioned the MAUs only to give some importance to the scale. Social networks affect an order or two magnitudes more people than games. Social networks lead to anxiety, depression and have been instrumental in many disastrous cases of mob justice and harassment.

People do get influenced by games and it can lead to problems you have mentioned. However, I do not think that gaming can transform the society as a whole. Social networks have already done it, both in bad and good ways.

It compares quite well to video games. Social Media is very much like a MMORPG.

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