Opinion | Gen Z Has Regrets - The New York Times

Dr. Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business; Mr. Johnson is the chief executive of the Harris Poll. Was social media a good invention? One way to quantify the value of a product is to find out how many of the people who use it wish it had never been invented. Feelings of regret or resentment are common with addictive products (cigarettes, for example) and addictive activities like gambling, even if most users say they enjoy them. For nonaddictive products — hairbrushes, say, or bicycles, walkie-talkies or ketchup — it’s rare to find people who use the product every day yet wish it could be banished from the world. For most products, those who don’t like the product can simply … not use it. What about social media platforms? They achieved global market penetration faster than almost any product in history. The category took hold in the early aughts with Friendster, MySpace and the one that rose to dominance: Facebook. By 2020, more than half of a

Dr. Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business; Mr. Johnson is the chief executive of the Harris Poll. Was social media a good invention? One way to quantify the value of a product is to find out how many of the people who use it wish it had never been invented. Feelings of regret or resentment are common with addictive products (cigarettes, for example) and addictive activities like gambling, even if most users say they enjoy them. For nonaddictive products — hairbrushes, say, or bicycles, walkie-talkies or ketchup — it’s rare to find people who use the p