This article strikes at a very salient set of points about smartphones and social media. As someone that specifically tries to only use federated social media because it avoids some of these dark patterns, I certainly agree with. I also use my smartphone without any notifications turned on, ever.

Unfortunately the author has a few paragraphs that miss the mark and strike me as coming from more of a centrist or right-wing “kids these days are too soft” which feels very off-base and disconnected from the issue. For example:

This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to “microaggressions” and sometimes claimed that words were “violence.”

The scare quotes around microagressions, a genuine issue faced my marginalized communities, is really uncomfortable and gives an unfortunate perspective on some of where this author is coming from.

Putting that aside, I really do feel like most of what is said here is on point. Reducing social media use is imperative. Designing smartphone UX that doesn’t shove notifications at you would also be a good idea. Getting younger people involved in communities and forming friendships is incredibly important.

As with what others are saying here, pulling out algo nonsense is good, however I do worry that it slowly devolves into something similar to what’s happening with Twitter where you can barely look at anything without being pushed to login. It’s unusable unless you have an account. Websites shouldn’t operate like that.

Monthly Active Users are unfortunately down for the past several months in a row. Something more needs to happen.

ngl I’ve honestly gotten very frustrated at some of my friends for being very unreceptive to even trying a fediverse site, saying they would rather just stop using social media, and then signing up for Bluesky the moment they got the opportunity.