I've been calling social media companies "the tobacco companies of the mind" for quite a while.

The effects are most obvious with teens but I see this stuff as bad all around. Social media algorithms have really driven today's insane political polarization, and there's lots of examples of adults having their brains sucked out by social media rabbit holes.

Here's one pile of examples:

https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/

It seems pretty obvious to me at this point that if you connect a bunch of people together and then artificially prioritize content to maximize engagement, the result is unbelievably toxic.