comment: >
  
  
  Social media use in any way, shape, or form, has harmful effects on a person’s psyche, nomatter what the intent may be.
  
  You’re contradicting your previous statement.
  
  You are exposing yourself to all of the aspects of the platform
  
  Not true.  With adblockers in place and careful selection of what you subscribe to, you can easily isolate yourself from harmful aspects of social media.
  
  Even if there may be positive aspects of social media, you are still not avoiding the negativity that surrounds that experience.
  
  Again, not true due to my statement above.
  
  If you are working to better yourself, you shouldn’t be spending any time on social media platforms at all.
  
  Like it or not, believe it or not, social media is an effective way to stay in touch with family.  Anyone who is working to better themselves must necessarily avoid a useful and easy way to maintain connection with family?  Sounds like bad advice.
  
  Instead you should be interacting with people in the real world, reading a book, seeing a specialist, browsing content specific websites, or gaining hands-on experience off of the internet.
  
  You can do all of those things and still use social media to keep up to date with your friends and family.
  It sounds to me like social media addiction is what you really have a problem with.  Social media, when used in moderation, can be beneficial or at least can be used without harm.  It’s just like how someone can have a few alcoholic drinks or some THC to help relax and enjoy an evening without causing health problems or getting into trouble.
context: You seem to be conflating causation with correlation. Unless you do a controlled experiment where some people are randomly assigned to use social media and others are assigned not to. So we can't say that social media makes you a shitty person as people who use social media may be inherently different. >
  
  Right, your influences shape your personality and how you see the world. If you are given a lense by an algorithm that has a specific agenda where you act as a pawn, perhaps that is not shaping you into a good person, but maybe, a good consumer. >
  
  
  There have been countless studies proving that the more time you spend on social media, the lower your self-esteem
  
  Causality might go the other way: the worse someone's self esteem is, the more they spend time on social media.
  
  You are also bombarded with ads that try to convince you that your life will suck without \~this\~ product, advertised by the highest standard of beauty in a human specimen.
  
  That's true, but I'm not gullible enough to believe those ads. 
  
  you need to make pointed effort in order to discover and experience anything of real value and knowledge
  
  A funny meme makes me laugh. That brings happiness into my life. Happiness has real value.
  As for knowledge, Facebook has math and science discussion groups. University students also make study groups.
  
  you need to make pointed effort in order to discover and experience anything of real value and knowledge
  
  What do you mean by "highest selves"? >
  
  Good points, but you can't deny that you're actively improving your life in any way unless you're doing something directly educational or therepudic when using social media.  Highest self, is the best version of you. Surly when you envision the best version of you, they're not spending the amount of time the average person does scrolling on their phone. >
  
  
  unless you're doing something directly educational or therepudic when using social media.
  
  So you admit then that social media use on its own doesn't make you a shitty person, and that it can be used to make you a better person? >
  
  Social media use in any way, shape, or form, has harmful effects on a person's psyche, nomatter what the intent may be. You are exposing yourself to all of the aspects of the platform, even if you are trying to accomplish a specific goal in mind. Even if there may be positive aspects of social media, you are still not avoiding the negativity that surrounds that experience. If you are working to better yourself, you shouldn't be spending any time on social media platforms at all. Instead you should be interacting with people in the real world, reading a book, seeing a specialist, browsing content specific websites, or gaining hands-on experience off of the internet.