When people say social media is toxic and bad for us do they also mean sites like YouTube and online news?

[belle_kai]

[CaptainOverthink]

The toxic part about sites and apps have to do with how they affect us whithout us noticing or properly controling it.

Most sites/apps aim to keep us engaged which has so far been accomplished by algorythms that learns who we are and what we like by documenting our behavior online and then showing us content that are similar to what we seem to like. It was also established early that negative/upsetting content kept users more engaged than positive.
And so they usually also lead us down a 'rabbithole' showing us exccessively more extreme content which makes it easy for the world to seem much more extreme than it is, which in turn also validates the opinions of extreme minority-groups as they tend to have upsetting ideas. This leads onwards to more people gathering around these camps and so as a consequence the world becomes more extreme as we get increasingly more polarized.

Now, it's not so black/white as saying you can't live a healthy life with toxic apps/sites. Just as with other potentially bad habits it's all about awareness, staying informed and staying in control.

Any sites or apps that uses the following are potentially very toxic:
- Notifications or likes/reactions (trigger dopamine response = addictive).
- Algorythms that's simple enough to only strive to catch your attention by giving you more of the same or increasingly extreme content (politically or otherwise), instead of aiming to give you a balanced 'diet'. That's pretty much ALL of them right now.

On top of all this..
Social media isn't really nuanced enough to be a good type of social either. We don't have consequences for how we behave online and it's far too easy to choose to not interact with people we disagree with. So we don't really learn to actually talk to people like we used to, which makes us narrow in our perspectives.

While we sit by our devices wasting away our lives and complaining, the world moves on without us and it's so easy to turn our backs to difficult things that we end up not doing anything about the issues of the world (complaining and rioting don't count). We become passive bystanders.
Who would we be if instead of being on an app or a device we did something productive or useful?

If things don't change I fear we go down with the ship by destroying it from the inside for lack of understanding our peers and tribalism.

[ShiftingMonke]

I'm going to have to say yes. But within reason.

Toxicity is based on a dosage, right? 'X amount parts per million', or some other form of measurement, to give a baseline minimum dose for lethal ingestion.

That's the way I view most all information online, be it news (I generally avoid that) opinions, polls, what have you. I don't trust implicitly whatever it is I'm ingesting, unless the bias is openly admitted or the media I'm ingesting is 100% personal opinion.

The internet is slowly turning into an advertising space, and that's infiltrated every corner of it. A media piece runs ads for a pharmaceutical company, so you can guess they'll be gentle on any medicinal news lest they upset the advertisers. YouTube channels edit their content following dodgy guidelines that change on a whim without warning and force influencers to source their own ad revenue because YouTube takes theirs from them for problematic content.

The bias or slant runs both ways across the political spectrum and I can read an article on one event and a different article on the same event, but come to 2 different conclusions based on the bias with. That, to me, is toxic; who's got time to cross reference each article? Who's fiction checking the fact checkers? It's far easier to just pick one source, especially if you lean in that direction, and stay there. However, you end up being surrounded by- you guessed it- toxic people and opinions, spewing the latest scare tactic and drawing battle lines against Them.

The best thing you can do to avoid toxicity online? Set a one hour timer on your phone and delete social media. Get online for an hour to check up on news or current events or jack off for all I care. But after that hour, disconnect and go outside. Touch grass. Speak to your neighbor. Take up a hobby. Literally anything but shake with rage over the last thing you scrolled past. It's all toxic, all the time, so just limit your dose.

[msmissydc]

Well it depends. THere are the (and I am hugely generalising this opinion here so be warned) Karens/ older generation. They mostly mean that they can't undertand it so it can't be that usefull therefore it is a waste of time.

THan there are psychologist and sociologist that have a more profound opinion. It is indeed true that having access to a front of information or " emotional situations" (funny, sad, etc.) can to an extend numb us down.

For a self experiment: Try to find an older 20 years old joke book. Read and look how many do you actually find funny vs. what would you consider an ok joke or just "old".

Yes humor changed but also we have access to fail videos, joke websited, comis in mass that most people have much more developed a kind of filter what is "worth to react to"

And when we talk about media as in news: Internet is such a huge flood of information which mostly are negative news. While that was allways the case with news, with the internet is got much less lokal and you hear about wars, terror and such things all day all long. I think we mosltly can agree (and that is an opinion) that this is not good for our psyche and mental health.

[DizzyDesii]

Youtube is one of the worst in terms of the gang up on you comments section. I dont use youtube for anything unless im posting a quick clip here for something. Also, youtube banned me like 5 years back for “spamming” on a movie trailer. I posted something similar in the comments section 3 times but none were word for word

[MrCommodore]

No, just interactive social media like Fb, Instagram etc

[Anonymous]

'People' don't say that, the mainstream media says that and it says that because IT is the toxic and bad thing for us, the fake news, mind control etc.

[jshm2]

Those people tend to be drama queens, and the toxic ones.

[MementoMori777]

I think they only mean places where people spend their time communicating but I don't know

[Bklynbadboy12]

Social media is what you make it. It's only bad for certain people because they're weak. They want to kill themselves because they're not getting enough likes.

[GoodGuyBreakingBad]

Yes, I believe so

[Jennz6]

I don’t think so, but not really sure

[Brando10222]

Depends on what you watch on YouTube

[In_Trance]

yes i think so. they're time killers.