Have "likes" and "kudos" polarized our society?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

After being on FB for 10+ years I quit in around August 2017. Same with every every other social media platform though I wasn't active on them aside FB, which I would post on at least a few times a day.

I realised that actually I have enough friends in RL and that sharing what I'm doing with people. Or what I'm eating or where I'm travelling, is really more just an exercise in extreme narcissism.the only people who would give a fuck are my close friends and family anyway, and I can tell them in person. When someone shares some images of themselves in an exotic holiday resort I just either didn't care or thought about the flip side, how much did you borrow to get there or why did you feel the need to share an image of yourself on a beautiful beach fully knowing everyone else is back here grinding it out 9-5 for a shitty pay check. Then I came to the what should of been obvious realisation that people do the exact same thought process to me. I posted loads of images of myself in Iceland early in 2017, then asked myself why the fuck anyone would care outside of my immediate social group who I either already told and showed pictures to anyway.

There have been numerous articles and studies that have gone into the negative (and positive) mental and physical health effects of excessive social media use, especially in younger people. My favourite anecdotal article is the below which is what tipped me over the edge in leaving it all behind forever.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...on/534198/

Rebuttal article here, because I thought about it a lot and read up on it quite a bit. For brevity I'll just leave these two here. Be interesting to see who people agree with the most:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/onc...generation