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Comment by TFNA | Hacker News Reader

The OP says that turned out fine even though he played an online video game for thousands of hours, and mentions he made friends to boot. He goes on to repeat this idea of "online connections". But screen time for young people (and old) today is not necessarily that; many of them are just consuming content from endless feeds and not building actual ties with other people. Modern social media is not a place for new friendships to blossom.

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And it's getting harder and harder to tell if you're building actual ties to "people". We're not far from an article titled "I found out all my online friends are actual bots" being completely true. Worse online connections have barely been grounded in any physical reality as it is, and as more realistic AI takes over and gets cheaper to run god only knows how many "friend networks" will just be large scale subtle manipulation schemes.

Dead Internet Theory becomes less prescient each day.

It's known as the Dead Internet Prophecy now.

at this point its pretty close to Dead Internet Reality

51% or more of internet traffic is bot

Agreed, I think the author has some self-selection bias.

Also from article:

> They were coping mechanisms for [my] preexisting problems: loneliness, family instability, social anxiety, ...

I would also suspect that some of those may be partially caused by second order effects of modern digital landscape. Even if we assume his own screen use is healthy that doesn't mean everyone else is the same.

The internet was just a better place, i also did similar stuff, and i remember i had forums i where i discussed niche hobbies and topics.

Lets not pretend modern internet addiction is the same, you are facing a fine tuned algoritm designed to keep you isolated and glued to your screen. Even boomers are fallibg for it, my mom is watching ai slop shorts on facebook now...

Mine seems fine. She actively refused Facebook when it came out and still does, among other things. I've even tried to get her to check out Youtube because I was amazed about that out of everyone else addicted. Nope. She's still a mean woman, maybe that has a lot to do with it. I am happy for her.

I agree. A 25 year old making friends raiding in WoW is a lot different than an 8 year old swiping on an iPad.

Also the friends you don't get from real life aren't compensated by the ones you get online. Also just life experience.

And everyone thinks they're fine. When I was 25, I was still afraid of eating at restaurants. But I thought I turned out fine.

How can a research fellow so blatantly use anecdotal evidence?!?!

He's a research fellow at a politico-economic thinktank, not academia. But it is disappointing given that he also has a PhD from Harvard.

Oh, the think tank is a "project of the Cato Institute". So this essay is just ideological right-wing driven drivel. Trying to deflect blame off big tech and societal problems and place them entirely on the individual. Libertarian fantasies.

> Oh, the think tank is a "project of the Cato Institute". So this essay is just ideological right-wing driven drivel. Trying to deflect blame off big tech and societal problems and place them entirely on the individual. Libertarian fantasies.

Look man, businesses can do no wrong, because a business that did wrong would immediately fail, therefore we can infer that all existing businesses are doing good things that people want. QED, science fact.

The real problem with society is all those uppity people who are racist against businesses and the wealthy.

Yes and that he used it in his opening anecdote as an appeal to authority. Clearly demonstrates some bias. I don’t disagree with his statement that many factors are at play however it is a biased article rather than one I would expect from a PhD in the way it’s written.

The same way scientists for tobacco companies back in the day never found cancer connections. $$$ and ideology.

This is what worries me. The services are deliberately designed to be addictive and the proven technique for that is making users angry and/or depressed, these two emotions are found to be the most "sticky" and revenue enhancing.

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