Were We Less Happy Before Social Media?

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription, on Patreon, or on Stripe. Help us produce all of the high-quality, original content we publish week after week despite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles.

We’ve got so much going on with the AI craze and AI crisis that the social media ones feel like old news. The old-school era of social media, though, is still here. There are still all kinds of challenges and problems associated with TikTok, Instagram, X, YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms.

One problem is managing social media use for small kids and teens. There’s all kinds of harmful content, and there are also addiction, self-esteem, and peer pressure issues associated with the platforms. Research has made clear now that social media can be very damaging to people’s self-esteem and happiness, especially females and teens.

Some places have decided to implement social media bans for kids. One such place is Australia, but Elon Musk’s X is apparently now suing the Australian government regarding this ban. X argued to the Australian senate committee that the law does not give “due regard to procedural fairness, privacy, the broader impacts on online services, and Australia’s ​digital economy.” Anyway, many more details can be found here, but reading about the case just got me thinking, “Were we less happy before social media?” Why do kids need to be on social media?

I get it if all of their friends are connected somewhere and they aren’t — that can be challenging. But Australia is just blanket banning social media for kids, so that’s not an issue. So then it’s really a case of “why do kids need social media again?” Naturally, given what I wrote about at the top, I don’t think social media is a net positive for happiness. It’s a net positive for thinking everyone else has it better while also bragging posting the highlights of your life — the coolest places you go, the best food you eat, the awards your kids win, the fanciest clothes and jewelry you wear. Are we more connected with people because we’ve got 1,000 followers on this network and 3,000 on that one? Has “Instagram culture” lifted our societal happiness level? What about the raging fights, doomscrolling, and constantly shocking news we see on X? And while we talk about the giant data centers powering AI, it’s not like all of these social media networks are powered by unicorn urine. Has society gained greater heights of happiness from the constant social media use? Or is it bringing us down?