Like you said, that guy is more comedy than anything. I really can’t stand his videos… While I agree with most of the positions I’ve seen him take, there’s a clear bias (maybe in the name of humor… He seems like he’s going for a Jon Steward/John Oliver thing, but I just don’t find him funny)

Most of all, he seems like he’s got researchers pumping out scripts at a furious pace

I don’t think that’s a great source for this, the guy isn’t a science communicator - social issues and current events sure. This is a hot pop science issue turned cultural - you really want to hear from experts on this kind of topic, it’s such a muddied issue. They’ve been writing articles about how “social media is destroying the children” and “social media isn’t as bad as it seems” for a decade and a half.

I agree there’s a lot of confounding factors. Smart phones exploded along with social media after all, that alone was transformative

But that’s if you look at it all together, I’m not claiming that social media is the source of all our problems (I’d argue there’s a good case, but one near impossible to prove)

I’m saying social media is bad for you, particularly short form video. And by that, what I mean specifically is that it’s highly addictive, incentivices the spread of misinfo, and is a displacement activity (eats up any amount of time) that doesn’t improve mood or life satisfaction. And unlike the previous new forms of media, it was designed to be addictive by big data crunching - sensationalism isn’t new, but this was too fast and too centralized for the natural push and pull to happen

I can go into each of those aspects deeper, but I don’t think anyone is arguing this is a better way to socialize or a net good for mental health