What exactly are we trying to ban?

There’s lots of discussion around restricting social media for teenagers. I’m not against it, but it raises a question that’s talked about way less, which is what exactly we’re restricting.

Watching an endless stream of algorithmically picked videos designed to sustain your attention as long as possible is very different from sharing pictures and chatting with a few friends. They shouldn’t be in the same category.

Same thing when it comes to screen time. An hour of meaningless scrolling through stuff you’ve forgotten by the next day is different from going through pictures from your sister’s vacation, reading what she’s been doing, and leaving a few comments. Both count as screen time, but they’re not equivalent. Lots of digital wellness advice treats all device time the same. What matters is what people get out of that time.

It’s being talked about because the problem is easiest to see with teenagers. Parents want to protect their kids and that’s reasonable. There’s also good reason for teenagers to use technology to be social. People are social in everything they do, and that includes technology.

We should be able to have healthier alternatives to the dominant model of social media. The focus is on kids, but these things don’t stop affecting people once they hit a certain age. Plenty of us have seen what they do to adults too.

Pools is one example of a different approach. Reactions are visible only to your connections, so there’s no public count to compare yourself against. No algorithm chooses what you see, so nothing is built to keep you scrolling. The audience is the people you invited, so there’s nobody to perform for. We think design choices like these shape how an app makes you feel, and over time, your mental health.

None of this argues against bans. It argues for taking the design of social technology more seriously, so we can restrict what we’re worried about and keep what we’d miss.