Do you believe social media websites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok or Instagram are bad for the mental health?

[Anonymous]

There are real people out there who leave hateful or insulting remarks online but it also seems like there are AI generated bot accounts online that amplify and make the hatred (towards a celebrity, country, religion or politician etc) seem worse than it truly is compared to offline.

[OneViewpoint]

I think they are bad for society in general. Social aspects aside, they are all monetizing their platform by selling users data and advertising fueled by that data using an AI to target you specifically. A relative handful of people are getting rich off this scam.

[AngryCarl3]

YouTube is definitely bad if you spend too long on it. Which I probably do.

It's called "doomscrolling" apparently.

[AngryCarl3]

A lot of channels are just AI slop with bot-generated comments. I avoid those.

[Nikki1989]

You can block/hide all of those.

[Nikki1989]

Weird how an entertainment website like YouTube is labelled "social media". That just shows the kind of junk people are drawn to watching on there. There is a search function of YouTube, but most people will just eat up whatever the YouTube algorithm feeds them.

[Anonymous]

Definitely

[Calyptomaniac]

It's not the websites themselves that are bad for your mental health, it's the people who are on them and interacting with them. If you're selective with it, then you're fine but it's not the website specifically as the question is phrased.

[lilBigPotato]

It certainly can be, it depends on the individuals though.

[leviopperman]

I like youtube shorts and facebook reels. I get book ideas from some reels that talk about books. So no it's not bad.