Social Media Zombie

It has been 10 months since I entirely stopped using social media. My LinkedIn account is still active, but I check it only a few times a month because I'm fed up with the plethora of spam messages from headhunters and self-promotional posts on my timeline.

Many studies suggest that frequent social media use causes our brains to deteriorate. I'm deliberately using a strong word. The impact of social media on our brains, especially for children, is similar to that of drug or alcohol addiction. I don't know why most governments still don't regulate social media usage for kids. The harm far outweighs the benefits.

I'm also deeply concerned about social media from the perspective of maintaining healthy democracy. I was shocked when I discovered that my mentor, who used to work for a professional firm, started discussing conspiracy theories. He definitely had high intelligence, but social media was able to influence even someone like him, not to mention many other ordinary people.

These days, I feel that social media is like a slowly-functioning zombie virus. Over time, it slowly but steadily encroaches on our brains and eventually leaves us brain-dead. I've seen so many people who engage intensively with social media exhibit the same patterns.

To me, the combination of messaging apps that keep us connected and long-form media (blogs) is sufficient. During that period (Web 2.0), we still had optimism about the internet's future because the benefits outweighed the harm. Today's social media has gone too far, and I don't think it's worth using.