Once we've made "digital visibility" the primary source of our identity, status and self-respect, we've doomed ourselves to wandering, compass-less, in a vast artificial wasteland.
That social media is addictive is self-evident. The temptation to continue scrolling is as limitless as the vast wasteland of content.
The destructive nature of this addiction is also self-evident. The net result of this addiction is depression, anxiety and rising rates of self-harm and suicide.
The immense profitability of addiction to screens and social media establishes the corporate incentives to increase their addictive power and thwart attempts to limit this profitable power. Who cares about self-harm and depression when shareholder value is at stake?
Though social media is pitched as connecting us all, it's actually about control: the platforms control the flow of user-created content, the addictive mechanisms and the monetization of user engagement.