I don't count HN as modern social media. For me, it's more akin to older phpBB boards and the like. We have no avatars, we come and go on posting, reading. We have only usernames and karma, and no one cares how much karma someone has. There's very little dopamine hit.
If we look at the wikipedia definition of social media, it states: "Social media are interactive technologies that allow the creation or sharing/exchange of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks"
I personally view the old IRC (Efnet!), BBS, chat rooms, ICQ as the earliest form of social media. And just as addictive - I couldn't wait to get home from school and jump into a chat room. I checked it as often as I did Facebook later on.
It seems like that should be true, but my observation is that HN causes similar stress in people.
For example, "I'm so stressed out by all these new frameworks" is a frequent comment on HN. That's FOMO, that's keeping-up-with-the-Jones's, that's a negative reaction to social media.
I've been an active member of a particular, very popular, and long-running boating forum. It's been around years before facebook and twitter. FOMO, envy, and keeping-up are just as much a thing in the marine communities as they are on any social media platform, but the one key difference is consumption of info - that forum is compartmentalized. Subscription emails are a thing, but they're throttled. The format of the forums makes for slow, introspective consumption. I've been a member since 2005, but I only visit once a month.
I just think it's night and day different from the firehose that are modern social media.
