This is 100% true. I even know it about myself, most of us are a this point. I don't think I'm as bad as some people, because some people let it spill out of just social media but overall my generation is mostly in some way addicted to social media.

Technology is always changing the world, and has always changed the world since tools and fire. every period in time is defined by what tech was invented and at the cutting edge. Each period's most important figures always include Politicians, Artists, and inventors. and it can even be argued that art is another kind of technology that is ever changing with the world. So two thirds of my list of who's important in a time period is inventors when you think about it.

I think this is what would happen if social media was left un checked. But with cyber security laws and parents becoming more understanding of it it's moved away from that. People have become much more aware of things like fake new, engagement bait, and grifters that overall it's become a lot more sanitized, it's no longer the wild west of the internet.

I feel like with my generation who have been on the forefront of social media this rings truer for us. We have grown up right along side social media and it's populated our entire lives. We've been around long enough to see how our schools grew to handle social media. We post, like, comment, scroll and share. A giant chunk of our communication goes through there and it's weird for people my age to not be on social media.

Social media sites use whatever they can to get more clicks. So the most shocking stuff is going to be pushed to the forefront instead of what's really going on. I think back to the Tide pod "Trend" which exploded getting a ton of media coverage even though very few people were actually eating any tide pods. It was mostly jokes about it that the main stream media took seriously and started reporting on like crazy and the statistics they used were dishonest. The statistics they used were about death by cleaning supplies and those statistics were almost identical from years prior. But even with it not being real it still began a frenzy and scared a ton of people.

These were genuinely so dumb. You could see the death tolls of coronavirus and they were still like let's go make it worse. I think the worst part about it was that it did in fact lead to more deaths and all because these people weren't allowed to leave their houses. Like be smart for two seconds and think critically about this like what motive would the government have to lie to you about a pandemic. It actively hurt our economy and these people were so excited to make it last longer.

This is because of the mass misinformation campaigns aimed to hurt movement and make it more divisive. Which is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter had to implement fact checkers to combat misinformation on their sites.