I deeply believe smartphones are the social equivalent of pornography for sexuality. You get your needs when you want how you want but in fact it's only a pale copy of the real thing.
And here I thought smarthphones are the social equivalent of neighbourhood kid playgrounds of my generation. Kids there were each on a similar, but slightly different and completely independent schedule. We wouldn't arrange social events in advance, we'd just go outside when we wanted and play with whoever happened to be there, for as long as either of us was there. Just like social media today.
Sorry for my bold point but, most of the time I feel that saying hi to someone in the street has more impact on me than having long convos on reddit. There's something to physical proximity that is missing from the web (obviously) and people trying to make it a full replacement are somehow lying.
I don't disagree. There is something in meatspace interactions that isn't captured on the Internet. Probably even multiple small somethings that add up to a different quality. And while I feel my social media activity currently brings in more value than most of the meatspace conversations, I would really like to have these kinds of conversations I have on HN in a bar, face to face.
Yes, social media conversations are more interesting, and you'll learn more.
But emotionally, they hold little value compared to face to face interactions.
But with regards to learning and information, there's often much better we could do than social media - for example good books, or at least summaries of books, hold an order of magnitude more value than most social media.
But the way social media and the internet manipulated our attention, does make it harder for us to read those.
There's a trend since the ubiquity of computers and internet that the most important thing in life is information and truth. When you're face to face with someone, information is rarely the most important thing. What matters is how you share time and space to make for a good time for people involved.
It's actually not far from my previous point. Seeking truth when you're not aimed for it or understand its limits reverts to ~tribal and emotional reflexes of trust and influence, a large opportunity for disinformation. And is the sour parallel to relating to others mostly emotionally (except anger). The difference is that people are sold 'pure <sourced> information' as a new paradigm.
To try to be balanced, maybe internet does bring a different space to discussion too (ignoring the extreme rot that can happen on twitter youtube and others). Kinda like letters, people speak and think differently when writing things down.
This is an overarching statement which doesn't apply to everyone-- with certain disabilities that force people to mostly stay in their homes/facilities, social media is infinitely better than the almost-nothing they had before.
It's also arguably important for children, to get more insight into the minds behind the peers they know in real life-- without it, they could miss learning the traits of potentially vital communication channels (although I believe in monitoring and limiting screen time for nearly all humans).
I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, though, because you are absolutely right as far as the current general dynamic goes. I believe our education & health systems must eventually teach young people how to have a healthier relationship with these new tools. They will probably use videos from our time period of kids walking into traffic while holding their phones as (one of many) cautionary tales.
To double down on the devil's advocate, when texting popped out, I was sad that I didn't enjoy having this to talk to kids my age because I was cripply shy. So that's true, to some part of the population, it gives something. But on the whole scale, it's too far from the mainstream effect.
I think "a pale copy of the real thing is orthogonal. The "real world" is perfectly capable of creating pale copies with many communities as the pressure leads to shallow pleasantries, pressure to conform for the sake of conformity when nobody really likes the status quo but does so because it is expected, keeping up with the Joneses and more instead of what people are actually interested in and value.
Of course it is a matter of how you use it - with both smartphones and "real world".
