Social media is like tobacco

in #facebook5 years ago

Facebook has over 2.3 billion users/followers and that is bigger then any religion on this planet.

Social media users worldwide:

statistic_id272014_global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users-2019.png

Smoking vs Social Media

Now if you look at our last hundred years it is only recently that we found out that smoking is unhealthy and then it took even longer for the people to actually understand it as well and to quit or not start. Then the regulators saw all the health issues and costs involved. And that was a real catalyst for the governments to start ignoring the lobbyists of big tobacco. I do not truly believe that governments as institutions really cared about the health issues as such, they took a look at the bottom line and saw that tobacco related illness and disease was costing them more then it was bringing in in taxes.
Only then did we see campaigns starting to prevent smoking and measure being put in place to scare people off.
This seems to be paying off. The combination of the will of the public and the realisation that health cost is a true priority.

calculating the price of social media addiction:

The next thing that is now in the spotlight of these same regulators is the fact that Facebook and Co are addictive and monopolistic. The cost on society was not known before but there is more and more research being done and it shows that a whole generation is growing up addicted to social media.
These companies market themselves as free but in truth the users pay with their data. This is something that has become common knowledge over the last few years. The only thing these users do not understand is how much their data is worth.
In all honesty I still have a FB account, I cannot seem to bring myself to deleting it even though I have not used it in ages. I have deleted the app from my phone and only go through the browser anymore.

So if you do want to use social media, a network like Steem is better. Your data is not being sold, everything is decentralised and not owned by one company that has to make billions in profit for the shareholders. With steem we, the users, are the shareholders and you can even earn a bit whilst using it the way you would other social media.

If you do not hold a steem account then please read this post with the 7 good reasons to join up

I personally do not see that the digitalisation is something bad as such and neither does the author of the book mentioned below written by Roger Mcnamee

The special thing about this man is that he was a Venture capitalist who was an early investor in FB and even mentor to Zuckerberg. It gives an inside view.

article inspired by a book from Roger McNamee: Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
You can also get the short summary here for 3.99

Is social media like tobacco?
should it be looked into?
should it be regulated?

Sort:  

What's Facebook?

Posted using Partiko Android

some college thing where you are made jealous of other peoples lives or bored by stuff that doesnt matter

It’s even worse than tobacco, since you get stigmatized by others for not using it. :)
As you said, the main problem is the fact that public opinion doesn't realize the flaws of social media, even though it's now obvious that modus operandi of most of the social media is - if you don’t pay for it, you are the product.
In general, participating in social networking is good thing, it's just being misused.

so its good to be here, away from being a product of someone else, being your own product is much better

I got rid of Facebook (which I didn't use much at all anyway) a couple of years ago. It was the best move I made. It's such a trap!

Yea, I still have my account and might even have to use it since it is hard to avoid in digital marketing

Posted using Partiko iOS

Yes, I am guilty about steem addiction. This also a type of social media in a whole new level were user are getting paid with penny.

i suffer from the same syndrome a bit... all true steemians are I guess, but i do like those pennies

Before I spent a lot amount of time and data on Facebook but since I joined steemit, it has been less time spend on Facebook, more time spent on steemit. Though I still spend some time to login to Facebook but can't be compare to my time on steemit.

i get the feeling that is with all who get this new thing

Yea I believe so

It is just remarkable how so many can't see how their data is used against them - around 30% of Amazon sales are due to personalied recommendations!

And don't even mention Brexit.

However if yer conscious of what yr doing with SM it's powerful and fun!

As long as you can switch it all off for the night!

Posted using Partiko Android

However if yer conscious of what yr doing with SM it's powerful and fun!

yea, true but most people just do not get it and are unconscious (and make others want to be unconcisous when watching the feeds)

Can’t wait for those billions of people to get addicted to Steem

lets start with hundreds of thousands, that alone would make us successful and would be a true test case on stress resistance and such

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