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Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway22032

The tide on mental health seems to have turned to the extent that it's gone from being something we don't speak about, to being used as a catchall for, well, just having a reasonable and balanced life.

Doomscrolling is just not that useful when you compare it to like, basically anything else you could be doing with the time, like exercising, reading a book, tidying around the house, just relaxing with your thoughts, etc.

The logical extension of constantly doing stupid stuff (like eating bad food, not exercising, not having a fulfilling life) is indeed physical or mental health problems.

The answer is just to take a step back and examine your life. Are you spending your time doing things you want to do, or are you being driven around on autopilot?

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Heroin isn't that useful for people not in acute physical pain, but it's addictive.

> The answer is just to take a step back and examine your life. Are you spending your time doing things you want to do, or are you being driven around on autopilot?

You can say things like this to heroin addicts, but the first important thing is keeping them from leaving to get more heroin. After they're clean, they might find this sort of introspection to be a reasonable substitute.

There's acute mental pain, heroin numbs that too, but you're right.

That kinda thinking, the new "you're wasting your time on Facebook, go read a book" is just the old puritan "get to work loser". Literally, one of the oldest scripts in the docs to get you to work harder for the man. Damn him.

If you're brain is too tired to do anything but watch cartoons or play video games, or just fart around and not do anything, then that's your god-given right and you don't even have to be tired to do that.

Facebook gives us social connections and those are critical for humans. Far more important than reading a book or going for a walk.

> Facebook gives us social connections and those are critical for humans. Far more important than reading a book or going for a walk.

A rather basic take, I'd wager, or if you prefer it, a really superficial analysis, but ok.

YMMV, I suppose. There's always psychos and sociopaths. But I wouldn't trust anything they say...

The tide on mental health did not turn nearly enough.

The developed world is facing a real mental health crisis and still failing to address it.

From the perspective of the pharma industry, one good outcome of the public consumption of more of this corporate social media is increased sales of antidepressants.

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