68
Social media as bad for children as smoking, British doctors say
(www.reuters.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
68 points (100.0% liked)
World News
2164 readers
720 users here now
Rules:
Be a decent person.
No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, zionism/nazism, and so on.
Other Great Communities:
Rules
Be excellent to each other
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The whole purpose of this comparison is to invoke exactly this reaction.
Social media use causes the chemical dopamine to be produced in the brain.
Social Media is arguably worse. Both are addictive, but the damage from smoking heals over time. Social media permanently alters brain development and leaves people with debilitating psychological scars.
The immediate consequences of social media use are also worse. Bullying, predation, advertisements for smoking/vaping.
We need to treat social media use as seriously as smoking. That's the point.
Dopamine is a natural chemical in the brain and you really don't understand how it works, you are just repeating "Dopamine make brain feel good when it shouldn't! Social Media make BAD Dopamine!".
.....Cigarettes also "create" Dopamine in the brain too...?
The damage of smoking doesnt heal over time you idiot, it kills you.
No, kids smoking a physical addictive drug by inhaling burning smoke is far far far worse than using social media and you are out of your damn mind to suggest otherwise.
So are formaldehyde and THC.
Clearly I meant if you stop smoking the damage heals. As compared to psychological damage from exposure to whats on the internet.
Didn't take much for you to crash out and resort to adhominims eh? Must be from the smoking right? Couldn't possible be social media wiring you to be an irrational person.
Crashing out? I am pointing out that you are a willfull idiot if you believe this and don't see how you are being manipulated by authoritarian forces that don't care at all about kids and never did.
You haven't addressed the substance of my argument and are instead saying things like,
That's crashing out.
edit: Do you think I'm some shill for the tobacco lobby lmao?
Like if we're gonna devolve to ad hominims than aren't you the one getting paid by zuckerfucker in this scenario?
Yes I am saying you are being an idiot, I have explained why and provided a directly relevant source to the EFF to demonstrate why.
You don't "heal" from smoking cigarettes it just either kills you or you stop smoking before it does.
Drawing a close comparison to a software app on a device that a kid may view and be emotionally affected by is insane, one is an external stimulus, the other is a drug that is inhaled in a way that immediately physically hurts the body, potentially locks in a lethal disease into that person's future and radically changes brain chemistry over time to be supremely dependent upon nicotine.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2913388/
Cigarettes have been established by decades of research to have ended the lives of a stupendous amount of people. Tobacco kills more than 7 million people per year.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco
Of course social media can be toxic, especially corporate social media with no actual investment into human moderation or mitigating rightwing hate speech against vulnerable minorities... but those are choices about how we chose to build social media and what values we built social media according to (endless growth potential being basically the only actual one).
Social media does not have to be that and it is absurd to spend time here, on the fediverse, while believing that social media should be banned for youths in such a draconian way.
You are so close to understanding what I'm saying.
Well since ad hominims are on the table. You suck at reading comprehension.