<story><title>Her Facebook life looked perfect. How social media masks mental illness (2015)</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/her-facebook-life-looked-perfect-madison-holleran-suicide-highlights-how-social-media-masks-mental-illness-1.3071302</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RandallBrown</author><text>It also lets you stay connected to people in ways that were impossible before.&lt;p&gt;Chance meetings can become longtime friendships. Great memories that would have faded away no longer have to.&lt;p&gt;For me, social media has mostly improved my life.</text></item><item><author>strikelaserclaw</author><text>Social media is a slow acting poison. It&amp;#x27;s extensive damaging effects will only be felt in 10-20 years. For the most part, it amplifies all the negative traits of humanity, twitter encourages ad hominem style debates and substanceless statements from all strata of soceity. Instagram&amp;#x2F;FB takes the need for human validation and the need to keep pretenses among our peers to a global scale. The next generation will be much more comfortable behind a screen where they can maintain an illusory persona than in real life. This is not taking into accounts the addictive nature of social media in general and how they employ research scientists to work on making their products more addictive.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>avgDev</author><text>To be honest, it is really hard to know if social media did in fact improved your life.&lt;p&gt;One could argue that opiates improve their life, in the short term at least. Therefore, in my opinion parent comment claimed that we will not know the effect of FB for another 10-20 years, and I agree. There is a lot more to us, than what we feel right now, our minds are very complicated. What if in 20 years you starting feeling depressed for no obvious reasons?&lt;p&gt;FB and social media will definitely have a major impact on the human mind. I am not sure if I find value in being friends with people from high school as my mindset has shifted so much I cannot stand people that used to be my friends. Seeing their children and vacation pictures adds no value to my life, it serves as a distraction and makes me want to &amp;quot;keep up with the Joneses&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Her Facebook life looked perfect. How social media masks mental illness (2015)</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/her-facebook-life-looked-perfect-madison-holleran-suicide-highlights-how-social-media-masks-mental-illness-1.3071302</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RandallBrown</author><text>It also lets you stay connected to people in ways that were impossible before.&lt;p&gt;Chance meetings can become longtime friendships. Great memories that would have faded away no longer have to.&lt;p&gt;For me, social media has mostly improved my life.</text></item><item><author>strikelaserclaw</author><text>Social media is a slow acting poison. It&amp;#x27;s extensive damaging effects will only be felt in 10-20 years. For the most part, it amplifies all the negative traits of humanity, twitter encourages ad hominem style debates and substanceless statements from all strata of soceity. Instagram&amp;#x2F;FB takes the need for human validation and the need to keep pretenses among our peers to a global scale. The next generation will be much more comfortable behind a screen where they can maintain an illusory persona than in real life. This is not taking into accounts the addictive nature of social media in general and how they employ research scientists to work on making their products more addictive.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>basilgohar</author><text>My argument would combine both of these sentiments, both parents and GPs, and say that social media has an amplifying effect.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;ll amplify good intentioned and sincere efforts (reconnecting, sharing good news, etc.) as well as toxic ones (hatred, lies, and so on) just as all forms of media have done in the past as well.&lt;p&gt;The same happened with the printing press as well as the emergence of the Internet itself.</text></comment>