I wonder how accurate this is.
I have no account in any social media except in LinkedIn (which I see more as a job portal than social media), and that's how I raise my kids. I live without facebook, instagram, twitter, or whatever else and I'd risk to say life is better without those.
"For instance, news stories that express outgroup animosity are 67% more likely to be shared on social media (Rathje et al., 2021). "
They are holding an extreme view and posting it online.
That being said, voting mechanisms which change the order of user-contributed content is hallmark of social media shared by Hacker News. I like to think, though, that this place has a strong enough community to prevent the voting dynamics from devolving to what you see on the most politicized subreddits. (I'll mention that the quality on here is in no small part the result of dang's diligent moderation, btw!)
An interesting message board to compare Hacker News with in this regard is actually 4chan. The former is maybe less social media like inasmuch as we have no inline images here, so there is no room for the sort of meme culture you see on the latter. On the other hand, 4chan is entirely bereft of voting (and even accounts to assign karma to, although reusable tripcodes come the closest), and as such is in some ways even more egalitarian (in contrast to non-anonymous social media).
Personally, and this is a bit of a "hot take", but I think some people trying to define a difference is just trying to justify continue using HN and forums like Reddit while still hating on social media or wanting it banned. To be consistent with getting off social media, I think one ought to get off HN and Reddit completely as well (use a site blocker extension). But yeah this is a bit of an inflammatory opinion, I understand.
The former are general concepts, while the latter are specific companies that are arguably damaging enough to be worth banning at the level of the whole society (except maybe in their home countries, which of course makes the situation harder to deal with).
Why? Because the good it adds to society is trivial. You know how I know? Because I know plenty of people who do not use it and they are getting along just fine. I also know people who pretty much do not use the internet outside of work and get along fine.
We are told we need these things by people who are selling us these things.
And what you are saying is we should teach these kids how to live in a horrible, distorted attention economy that is warping our social norms to an extreme instead of building them a healthy society and economy.
Most people do not live online. They use the Internet because they need to (and usually hate it while they do) or simply as a tool to communicate or amuse.
They don’t care about AI, or federated this and that, or about open source, or about walled gardens, or any of that sort of stuff.
we already know the answer to the ills of social media, the better solution would be to force companies to have chronological feeds and non algorithmically targeted suggestions.