Social media pushes the illusion that you are not engaging with professionals but peers, and the dominant signals (how many views, likes, comments, etc.) of this day and age were not present with TV. This seriously messes with the innate reasoning of most humans, because for all our individualism we are norm conforming herd animals.
Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's fake. If the same thing is pushed by all of their friends, now we're in the territory of peer pressure which is a different ball game!
What we are actually seeing is users going to TikTok because it is even more engaging.
People may say they want to keep up with their friends, but they will choose the more engaging activity.
There is no regulating or out-competing it.
Governments should provide identification, communication, community, payments, etc platforms for their citizens, but entertainment is always going to look like this unless stoicism is somehow engrained into our culture.
Entertainment itself is measured by engagement, so it will end with unlimited personalized ai generated content that will be almost impossible to put down.
SOME people cannot help themselves. I spend 0 minutes on social platforms. I can help myself just fine. Some people have much more addictive personality traits than others. Please, don't paint everyone with the same broad brush. It doesn't help the conversation in a meaningful manner