An ambitious CEO moves to a small coastal town, living right on the beach to "optimize his lifestyle." Every evening, he sees a local fisherman sitting on his deck, playing guitar and watching the sunset with his family.

After a week, the CEO approaches the fisherman and says, "You know, if you spent less time playing guitar and more time fishing, you could buy a second boat."

The fisherman asks, "Why would I do that?"

"To catch more fish, sell them, and buy a whole fleet! Then you'd be rich," says the CEO.

"And then?" asks the fisherman.

"Then you could retire, move to a quiet beach, and play guitar all evening!"

The fisherman smiles and says, "What do you think I'm doing right now, while you're trying to figure out the ROI on my hobby?"

* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1376114/ (1992)

The abstract: “ It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains--that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.”

Rather, social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having a lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at, of not having meaningful work or volunteer opportunities, of lacking certain other things that may have existed in the past.

Social media offers a new engaging experiment that fills the void of some of these things that don't exist elsewhere otherwise but doesn't act as an equivalent replacement

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

I like this framing of social media use in the same terms as drug use. There are significant risks to this activity that so many people are ambivalent toward. Depression is not a condition you want to have, and here's this activity that causes it (or at least significantly contributes to it). And yet, so many persist!

Israel for example seems like a place that would be fairly unhappy right now given world events, but they rank quite highly.

Saudi Arabia also sticks out as unexpected. It seems in the media I hear about their government being quite oppressive (especially against women), so seeing them just above the US is surprising.

Not using any VPN or proxy, no CF DNS, nothing like that.