Poll: Which social media platform causes the most harm?

[noname223]

I give you 3 votes. If you have another platform in your mind please comment. I only covered mass platforms. The worst ones are probably niche platforms that are not regulated well.

My votes go to:
1. Instagram. It makes me highly depressive and increases my suicidality. It just paints a wrong picture of life. At least the content I saw so far.

2. Telegram. Misinformation, conspiracies and torture videos.

3. Maybe WeChat. Mass surveillance and used for propaganda.

Honorable mentions: X. Hate crimes, bullying, right-wing extreme content. Twitter once was pretty decent but it always had its flaws. But it had some value.

WhatsApp Mass surveillance by the US, TikTok surveillance by China, fake news

Facebook mass surveillance by private companies, counterproductive policies on suicidality

My favorite platform though is Youtube. I love it. But it is not perfect.

What about you? Damn I seemingly once posted such a thread but this one is a poll. Seemingly my creativity is limited.

 

[sserafim]

All of them. Social media seriously harms your mental health

 

[Alexei_Kirillov]

My votes were for TikTok and Instagram.

 

[Malaria]

My votes were for TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram.

Though personally, YouTube has also done damage to my mental health but I feel like that's a "me" thing and not a "greater society" thing.

 

[Namarupa]

I'd say Instagram. Other social media platforms have a few interesting groups relating to specific hobbies (art, handcrafting, sports, cooking etc) that offer high quality discussion. Instagram, on the other hand, seems to be overwhelmingly about vapid, superficial topics.

 

[Agon321]

I see social media as tools.

Instagram has the least positive features.
It's hard to find something positive in my opinion.
Mostly there are photos of half-naked women and advertisements for various products.


On other social media sites, you can find valuable content in a sea of shit.
Personally, I only use YouTube and Reddit
(of those on the list).
YouTube in particular gives me a hit of dopamine.

I can't comment on WeChat because I don't know anything about it. I only know that it exists, but I don't know what it looks like.

Of course, each of these websites belongs to corporations.
Corporations use many tricks to make users addicted.
In general, no corporation should be trusted.

 

[sserafim]

My votes were for TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram.

I voted for those three as well. I wanted to vote for Reddit too, but was only allowed three votes

 

[Silent_cries]

Probably tiktok, idk, not very active on social media outside ss nowadays. I'd say discord and kik is pretty bad too though. Discord having multiple toxic groups and kik having litteral child porn groups in it. >_< Yeah, there sure are some rly messed up platforms out there!

 

[Downdraft]

Telegram is a nice chat app, and YouTube is a great source of knowledge if you use it correctly.

The rest are pretty even. I'd say Reddit had a pass before the API BS, now, it's like the rest. A privacy nightmare, a propaganda machine, systems that reinforce echo-chambers, heavily restricted speech, made to try to addict you, a lot of content is fake or misinformation, tons of rage-bait... Yeah, I can't decide one.

social media outside ss

We are social media? SMH. Uninstalling right now.

 

[updatedmind]

tiktok will force you into a constant loop of whatever makes you feel terrible unless you really change up what you're interested in

 

[sserafim]

tiktok will force you into a constant loop of whatever makes you feel terrible unless you really change up what you're interested in

It's the algorithm, baby

 

[tronix]

Instagram and TikTok. I guess they are almost the same.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

The only platform I use regularly is YouTube and I think it doesn't cause harm. Most of the other ones I never used in my life or very rarely.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I voted instagram, tiktok and twitter. I voted instagram because, whilst I never really use it, I hear a lot of cases about people who feel depressed over how positive people act over there and how their life isn't the same as these so called positive people. I voted tiktok because I genuinely believe that it reduces a lot of people's attention span. My attention span is awful but not so awful to where I have to see a video of subway surfers in the background just to entertain my brain enough to listen to 3 or 4 sentences. Lastly, I voted twitter as that social media place has a lot of videos regarding the bad things within it that harmed people. It feels like twitter is the one place in where users form groups to hate on others

All in all, the only social media that wouldn't really harm me is SaSu, reddit, whatsapp and youtube (though I don't know how youtube is even considered as a social media place as I never really talk to anybody there)

 

[druggedonsurvival]

Instagram is full of vapid, uptight, self-obsessed people, but I think it's ultimately harmless. Facebook and Twitter are major centers of disinformation campaigns whose effects have been pretty well measured in recent years, as far as I'm aware. I can't really speak to TikTok, I know basically nothing about it.

 

[weatherforecast]

I only have experience with facebook, but from what I've seen it is pretty terrible. I mean, half the posts you find are some MLM marketing campaign, and many are harmful. Colloidal silver which makes your body turn blue when you ingest or apply it directly to skin. I guess at least they state that it isn't FDA approved / tested etc in the bio. Freebirth, black oxygen organics which is literally just dirt, just read the comments ahaha.

 

[bieatmania]

I've been seeing people being filmed and uploaded to tiktok for sake of making fun of them. other than how shallow the contents there generally is.
Youtube have such a shitty algorithm, they always recommends me some right-leaned political stuffs and not only it's outright harmful it kills my motivation to go and find something actually interesting to watch on that website. so I turn off the home feed all time.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Both Instagram and Facebook made me feel like shit- so I voted them. Plus, lots of people have reported awful experiences with Reddit here so- that earned my vote. I feel too old for TikTok but I probably should have voted for that.

 

[untothedepths]

Trying to get a gist for what you were asking, I choose to not vote for any. To me it is not a simple black and white issue. While there are some questionable practices and serious privacy concerns, when we asked which of those has "caused the most harm" we ignore the core problem - people. People are the 1# problem of otherwise powerful tools of communication. People harass others, commit crimes on, and have zero empathy/care for their fellow man. I personally do not think humanity is ready to have social media (though it is here to stay). I believe humanity did better back in the early days of the internet when things were more broken up and people could find wide, vast swathes of smaller communities to enjoy. No, I don't think everything was better about the internet back then either, I am just pointing out the net ecosystem and respect for others was more apparent. Then again, if you ask me which social media app could be used to try and manipulate the populace: all of them, doesn't matter the country. Many powerful countries have been caught red handed multiple times in the past trying to manipulate public perception so at the very least it would be incredible generous to think otherwise. If that is surely the case, then once again, humanity is better off with more fragmented, smaller communities where people feel closer to one another instead of just enabling herd mentality and becoming worrisome attack vectors.

 

[RosebyAnyName]

I'm surprised no mention of Discord. It's full of actual abuse, grooming, and rife with narcissists and horrible people. Even the mods are terrible. There are so many fringe groups and extremists, the only thing it doesn't have is public access to every server but that just makes it worse.

Discord is one of the big reasons I want to CtB, now they refuse to delete people's post history. It's a privacy nightmare.

 

[Malaria]

I'm surprised no mention of Discord. It's full of actual abuse, grooming, and rife with narcissists and horrible people. Even the mods are terrible. There are so many fringe groups and extremists, the only thing it doesn't have is public access to every server but that just makes it worse.

Discord is one of the big reasons I want to CtB, now they refuse to delete people's post history. It's a privacy nightmare.

I agree, Discord is really toxic. I've been bullied pretty horribly on there.

 

[Dark Moon]

I voted for twitter or x. There's lots of trolling, bullying and harassment on there. I haven't really used the others only Facebook.

 

[ColorlessTrees]

So happy to see TikTok winning. It's probably me being irrational to vote it the "worst", but man do I feel like that platform's brainrot is spreading to the entire internet.

Instagram is worthless, the bird app is a cesspool, and Reddit is the second side of that rotten coin, if only I could've had 4 votes. I hate all major platforms for killing small forums and niche hobby/informational spaces. Also for radicalizing people, but nah, hobbies are clearly more important.

 

[lefi]

Tumblr in the past was by far the worst app for young me. Tiktok and X need to be shut down.

 

[Apathy79]

I find Whatsapp and Telegram really useful messengers. Facebook Messenger too. Pretty much everyone I message is through one of those. You can set it up so it's just your friends / groups of interests. I think they're all good.

Youtube is an interesting one. If I stick to the "my subscriptions" tab, I find it very useful. The main page seems curated for clickbait these days though. Every thumbnail is a question I want to know the answer to, only to click it and find out it's a 4 hour video with an answer in there somewhere, and often an unsatisfying one. It seems designed mostly to keep people there all day clicking aimlessly. In that sense, it can be toxic, but that part can be avoided.

The main Facebook is all ads now so is pretty much unusable outside the messenger anyway. Instagram I only follow about 10 people and only see their stuff so I like it. I assume if you followed 1000s of people or scrolled the main feed it could easily become toxic though. More a highlights package than real life. Tiktok is barely any different, just with more short videos than pictures.

X I use mostly for timely work specific things, and for that it is invaluable. It also has an entertaining AI, and usually has access to news that is censored here on other sites. Most of it is a cesspit, but like all the rest it can be curated to be useful.

Have never used Snapchat, Reddit or Wechat.

I couldn't really find one to vote for. Many of them can be toxic, but I think can be customised to not be if we choose. Youtube is the one that sucks most of my time away.

 

[SoulCage]

I think it totally depends on the country/region you live in. In some countries, Facebook is still being used as main source of information and therefore misinformation is more likely to reach a high amount of people. Somewhere else you might have a bigger audience on Twitter. I think I would need more statistics to choose the ultimate site that is doing the most harm worldwide.

 

[archiveofpain]

Personally I would say Instagram, it really feeds into the grass is always greener syndrome and everything about it feels so unnatural and just reeks of toxic positivism and vapid "good vibes only" normie people. I hate how it forces you to publish every moment of your life and how generally it's expected to you to have it because of it being one of the most mainstream and used social media or otherwise people will start being weirded out. It truly encapsulates everything I hate in social media along with TikTok

 

[eatantz]

I think twitter is the worst social media platform ever. I used Twitter when i was 15 for this roblox game with a mostly children/tween fanbase, and one popular account started posting nudes in random threads it was insane. I've seen multiple videos of people dying without warning, and the most vile posts. Very triggering and nasty overall, and even though i wouldn't interact with such posts and they kept popping up.

 

[Saturn_]

Twitter, without any shadow of a doubt. My answer to this question will always be Twitter. TikTok also seems to reinforce a lot of these damaging thought patterns, but I have far less experience with it because I don't wish to expose myself to any form of "infinitely scrolling, vertical short video", for the most part at least. But they seem to borrow from one another. Perhaps it's less of a problem of individual platforms, but among our more online youth in general.

Put every small misgiving, every accidental shortcoming, every negative aspect of a person's history under a microscope. Pathologize each and every single one of these human flaws as evidence of covert bigotry, hatred, and vitriol. Spew your own hatred onto this person because someone else told you to. Dismiss all dissenting empathy with one of countless thought-terminating cliches. Reduce the complexity of another human life to the confines of 280 characters. They can't reason if they aren't funny or snappy or amicable enough for onlookers.

Every genuine thought and idea you could possibly have can be dismissed with "ain't reading allat", and we as members of Gen Z are so clever and thoughtful for this, for being so narrow-minded and vapid. Who needs to think, or to formulate ideas anymore? Who needs to speak with thoughtfulness or compassion anymore? We're so self aware that we can't enjoy anything without degrading ourselves anymore. We will express even our despairing cries for suicide in a humorous fashion. We have irony, memes, anti-intellectualism, and dogma more infectious than a swarm of cockroaches. All the kids are dumb, irony-poisoned, unempathetic and bitter, and you should be too. Spout the most miserable horseshit imaginable in the span of two sentences or less, and you'll be cool like us.

This quote from Fahrenheit 451 reminds me a lot of what's become of communication online. It could also be applied to TikTok and the encouragement of more condensed, more outrageous expressions of complex topics.

"Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Classics cut to fill a two-minute book column. Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, Digest-digest-digests! Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less."

 

[pollux]

TikTok, definitely. It was a good decision for the US to ban it. Sure, it was more due to Nat Sec concerns, but still a positive.

I'd say Instagram next, since Meta shouldn't be trusted. The only good thing they did lately was release the Llama models.

I'd say X next, but I think it's more meh now. It can be a good tool to follow people in certain niches, but you need to know how to use it. Surprisingly, I think it has gotten better after Musk's takeover, though the bot situation is getting quite annoying.

Reddit is pretty neutral IMO. You probably shouldn't use any big subs, focus only on interests/hobbies.

Whatsapp and YouTube are mostly tools. With YT I recommend disabling your history and only going to see subscribed channels. This makes it a bit hard to find new interesting content, but this way I think it stops you from endless scrolling (since your front page won't show any recommendations.)

Snapchat/Facebook probably has been 10+ years since I used them.

Barely used Telegram. Never used WeChat.