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I don't know why you're making that guess when both are obviously bad in totally different ways.

Cigarettes, which social media is sometimes compared with, are still bad for adults, and the rules for them are for a minimum age of purchase rather than to ban for everyone.

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It's also illegal to partake in cigarettes in certain areas, even for adults. Cigarette packaging and location is also regulated. It's not like adults have unfettered access to things that harm them. It's illegal to drink and drive. In some places, it's illegal to drink in public, or it's illegal to sell alcohol beyond certain time periods. I'm not saying that these things are right, but that if we're going to compare social media to harmful substances we shouldn't misrepresent the access to harmful substances adults actually have.

All of your examples, like drunk driving and indoor smoking bans, exist because those activities are likely to harm others.

I would suggest analogous rules should be determined for social media.

I am not particularly confident what such rules should look like — I don't think there's an easy equivalent to drunk driving, but perhaps "smoking in a confined public area" might be close to "trolling on forums that people need to use to get normal life activities done"?

But they are their own thing, and need to be treated appropriately.

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