SAMANTHA BRETT: Facebook itself admitted what we’ve long suspected: that it is bad for you

A LOT has been said about Donald Trump’s tweets, but none more so than the latest where he claims to have his own “bigger” and “more powerful” nuclear button than that belonging to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

His fiery tweet during the week (capped off with the words “and my button works!”) set off a social media avalanche, from jokes about the size of his appendage to some vowing to delete their Twitter accounts altogether to ensure they are blissfully unaware should there be a nuclear catastrophe.

But even if the world doesn’t end in a Twitterinspired global war, online experts are now blaming social media for something just as worrying: apparently our in- cessant usage is damaging our mental health and sense of self.

But don’t take my word for it. In an unprecedented move, Facebook itself recently admitted what we’ve long suspected: that Facebook is bad for you.

In a blog post, Facebook research scientists David Ginsberg and Moira Burke cite studies which found that social media increases depression in teenagers, while the more we scroll through other people’s social media feeds – and peruse their perfectly curated lives filled with purple sunsets, impossibly toned derrières, glamorous bathroom selfies and an abundance of people who feel “blessed” – the worse we feel about ourselves.

“The causes aren’t clear,” the post reads, “but researchers hypothesise that reading about others online might lead to negative social comparison.”

Addicted to the validation we get from a single like, we conflate the truth, distort our photos and spend hours coming up with the perfect hashtag in the hope someone (anyone) will give us that little tick of approval that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

But as former Facebook vice-president Chamath Palihapitya recently told a group of business students, it’s all a sham, “a fake, brittle popularity that’s short-term and leaves you even more vacant and empty inside than before”.

Someone forgot to tell that to Trump. Still, we continue to do it in droves, with Aussies now spending a staggering 40 hours a week on social media, while real-time socialising (in the flesh) with family and friends equates to just six hours of our entire week. Even work, food and family take a back seat to scrolling and tapping. Sex has been replaced with sexting.

Many deny their social media addiction, instead blaming narcissistic, self-obsessed selfie addicts who have ruined their social media Zen by flooding feeds with their perfectly posed life masked by flattering filters and nifty usage of the blur tool.

Others say it’s the social media companies themselves which are to blame. As Sean Parker, also a former Facebook executive, told a recent tech conference, companies such as Facebook aim to “consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible by exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains”.

And sadly we’re about to find out. I was shocked to recently discover Facebook is releasing a new version of its messenger system aimed at kids aged between six to 12. (Up until now Facebook was strictly for 13s and over, which is still too young in my book.)

Child-safety experts are calling it diabolical, slamming it as a way of getting kids addicted early, while closely monitoring their habits in order to curate a personalised social media world for them to inhabit a decade from now which they will be sucked into for all eternity.

Samantha Brett is a journalist and author of The Game Changers