This content and this system, Meta said, has led to an 8 percent increase in time spent on Facebook and a 6 percent increase in time spent on Instagram, all at the expense of a shared reality and human connections to other humans.

It’s certainly has the opposite effect on me. I used to spend a lot of time on Facebook in my younger days. That has been steadily declining over the years, especially the past 6-7, but even more the last year or two. I’ll open it up, see nothing from people I know right off the bat, and close it again. For a while they also stopped letting me scroll until it played an ad; that really helped me break out of a doomscroll since I’d just close the app.

I see this as a benefit to me in helping me not waste time there.