Americans: Facebook Contributing To National Health Crisis, Should Be Regulated Like A Drug

by Joe Mandese , October 11, 2021

The vast majority of Americans feel social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are addictive to them personally, are contributing to a national health crisis and should be regulated the way potentially harmful substances such as alcohol and tobacco are, according to a flash poll conducted late last week by MediaPost and Pollfish.

The study, which was fielded in the aftermath of Facebook's outages, also found that two-thirds of Americans said it felt like they were withdrawing physically from a drug, or that they were simply better off without access to the platforms, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Significantly, a significant majority of the respondents said they consider social media like Facebook and Instagram physically addictive to them personally and that they have considered deleting their accounts to make themselves healthier.

apps, digital, facebook, health, instagram, regulation, research, social media, whatsapp

3 comments about "Americans: Facebook Contributing To National Health Crisis, Should Be Regulated Like A Drug".

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Doc Searls from Customer Commons, October 11, 2021 at 10:07 a.m.
Consider the possibility that Facebook not only can't be regulated (where are you going to find the algorithm inspectors in white coats to inspect those data centers, when hardly anyone at Facebook, Zuck included, has a full grip on how the whole mess does what it does?); but that it may be unfixable, by design.

I wrote about this here, three years ago: https://dsearls.medium.com/the-human-solution-to-facebooks-machine-produced-problems-also-won-t-work-3364656bc257
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Dan C. from MS Entertainment, October 11, 2021 at 11:44 a.m.

No disclosure of how the survey was conducted, leading questions, who responded....the usual Mandese clickbait....

Joe Mandese from MediaPost Inc., October 11, 2021 at 12:19 p.m.

There you go again @DanCiccione. It's fully disclosed in the source line, which has always been our style. And we link back to Pollfish for anyone who wants to understand and vet their platform. You should try reading our stories before inaccurately criticizing them.