It is a completely coherent position to dislike and distrust a platform, and still use it daily because that's where your friends are.
Network effects are powerful. It's entirely possible for a platform to be popular even if _nobody_ is happy with it, due to a "tragedy of the commons"-like effect.
> completely coherent position to dislike and distrust a platform, and still use it daily because that's where your friends are.
The only issue is the article makes it sound that your friends also dislike and distrust those same places. If that were true, it begs the question why are "all the teens" using it then? OR, alternatively, the survey and reporting conclusion is (somewhat) wrong or missing nuance.
>If that were true, it begs the question why are "all the teens" using it then?
It's an attractor. The more people who are on a social media platform, the more value you can get from joining it yourself. Thus, you're more likely to join and then you joining makes the next person to come along also more likely to join.
I've realized that I'm not really on Facebook for friends the way I used to be anymore. I'm there for Messenger, Marketplace, and sometimes a Group if my neighborhood, team, etc. has decided to use Facebook.
Which then made me wonder: is there truly no good social messenger that's separate from social media now? Signal was the closest I could come up with, but it's missing lots of niceties especially in group messages.
Personally I haven't used FB messenger for years now because WhatsApp and Signal serve my use case. When people messaged me on FB I immediately switched to e-mail or some other messenger. I haven't used FB marketplace, but I'm pretty sure that is something that does not require social media at all.
The one thing that I don't see a good replacement for at the moment is event management because it inherently requires visibility to many people. As a musician I have been advertizing by events on FB (together with good ol' newsletters). Conversely, I have found out about many cool local events I would have missed otherwise. I'm using past tense because I have deactivated my FB since. (Meta sucking up to Trump broke the last straw for me.)
Signal is the best I've found too - I'm reticent to use WhatsApp as it's another Meta product.
While an online marketplace doesn't require social media (see Craigslist), like events, you're missing out on a large population of potential sellers/buyers if you're not on Facebook.
My nieces and nephews had some school announcements _only_ disseminated on facebook. I had to call the school to change their process, and even then it took a while for them to adapt.
This kind of thing absolutely needs to end. Especially for public schools. Requiring you do business with a specific commercial entity just so you can get a message from your government definitely crosses a line, and you were 100% right to advocate that they change.
If you get your news only from mainstream media, you'll be strongly anti-Palestine. If you get your news from social media, you'll be moderately to strongly pro-Palestine. With this in mind, in your opinion, is one an adequate replacement for the other?
> They have no realistic option than use the social media sites in the link I included?
Perhaps. What options do you see, and how do those options meet their requirements? How well do you understand their requirements?
IMHO "revealed preference" has to be interpreted very carefully, in the light of the fact the market actually rarely fully satisfies people's preferences, and nearly everything is a compromise, sometimes a large compromise. I very rarely see that done when "revealed preference" is brought up. In nearly all cases, it's not a gotcha to undermine what people say about their preferences, but that's how a lot of people try to use it.
No teen wants to be that weird kid that's not on social media, has a shitty phone, etc. Social pressure and the desire to fit in is extreme at that age, which doesn't prevent teens from understanding how rotten social media and tech are.
So technically they have a choice, but c'mon, I feel like I'm talking to Ayn Rand here.
