A common issue that studies like this often bring up, including this article, is the change from in-person teenage social life to an online teenage social life, done on social media platforms. In-person social life has limitations in both scope and size, and includes (among others) physical cues. The online equivalent version lacks both limits on size, but also has those unwanted aspects you bring up.
I do not see direct person-to-person messaging to be a perfect equivalent version of a in-person talk. Even adult people in professional settings can be quite bad in an email conversation, and much more so than they would have been in-person. It also seems that people who start earlier in life with online text communication seem to not really become better (compared to others) at clear online text communication later in life.
> This would include Hacker News, Discord, online forums, any video game...
Wrong. Neither HN nor traditional online forums push content selected to keep you "engaged". Not sure if Discord has started peddling "content" yet. If it does now I haven't noticed on my install yet.
As for video games, are you of the kind that believes all video games are competitive multiplayer? You're right about the free to play IAP fests on both desktop and mobile, wrong about, for example, single player games.
The entire purpose of karma here and on forums like Reddit is to keep you "engaged" by pushing the most popular content to the top of the thread. And many people make HN a part of their marketing and SEO strategy, so the incentive for a lot of what gets posted here is just to get eyeballs and clicks, or increase clout for the authors and visibility to YC. And of course YC uses this forum to advertise their own startups, so they have an incentive to maximize engagement.
>I see it more as a currency which can be used in exchange for spreading unpopular/controversial/inflammatory opinions.
So do I, but strictly speaking that's not what it's meant for. It's supposed to be operant conditioning - you want to do whatever makes the number go up, and avoid what makes it go down. What makes it go up? Obeying the rules, aligning with the local culture and posting stories and making comments other people want to read and upvote. What makes it go down? Repetition, humor, heterodoxy and controversy. It's the same kind of endorphine based Skinner box that every other forum and social media platform uses, just not as complex.
It is not as personalised as Facebook, Tiktok or Instagram.
Problem is when a machine learning algorithm is designed to find content that has highest odds of keeping you engaged forever and diminishing your dopamine reserves as it is doing so.
Hackernews can have issues, but by far not as much.
Also having text only limits the ability to create such addicting content by far.
Finally Hackernews doesn't play on your insecurities as much.
It's pretty easy to skip the blatant advertisements tbh. And HN doesn't somehow conjure more articles out of thin air when I'm done with the front page, as opposed to the likes of "social networking" somehow finding 10000 more cat photos for me if i scroll down.
I could move that the definition of "social networking" is that it's not social. You get "content" crammed down your throat instead of interacting with people.
While the main attraction of HN has always been the comments.
I definitely suffered from severe internet addiction in college, and still struggle today. I rarely use social media other than forums like HN, and I know it impacts my financial health (like depression about my lackluster career for example).
I think the siren song of “everything and anything” of constant internet is its own problem
It's anything with a "social" component that's the problem.
You need to split it further because I think the young uns think direct person-to-person messaging is also social media. That's fine too.
It's when they start cramming unwanted content and "influencers" down your throat that the problem appears.