Social Media Is the New Smoking
I don't know about you, but I don't find that I'm missing out on anything by pulling my phone out when I'm waiting for my car to warm up. I don't think I'm wasting time because when I start getting bored with a movie that I'm watching, I pull out my phone and check my messages.<p>I don't miss the ten minutes of watching the news before leaving for work that has been replaced with ten minutes of Facebook. Maybe reading a novel for an hour after work is a better use of my time than reading Reddit for an hour, but maybe it's not?<p>I'm probably not super typical with my social media consumption, but I only use social media to fill the time when my kids are doing their own thing, my wife is on something, and I don't really have time to <i>engage</i> in some activity.<p>I get that social media is new and alarming that it's such an integral part of our lives, but maybe we need to step away from these hype grabbing headlines. What's the difference if a 10 year old is posting on Instagram, to a 10 year old in the 80s with a Polaroid? If kids talk on snapchat instead of over the fence in the backyard?<p>Again, I want to stress that I'm not saying we shouldn't look into the negative effects of social media. We certainly should. But we also shouldn't assume these things are bad because people with poor impulse control are ruining their lives.