Social media has been with us for less than 2 decades, yet its anti-social effects – from anxiety and depression to sleeplessness and compulsive behaviour – are becoming obvious. Worse, more than 90% of 18 to 24-year-olds spend an average of 2 hours every day (equivalent to an entire month per year without sleep) on social media sites, with some doctors now so concerned that they’ve called for social media to come with film-like age restrictions or be labelled with stark warnings similar to those on cigarette packets.
To make matters worse, it’s now emerged that these same sites have been spying on us and raking in vast profits by selling our personal data to secretive organisations intent on manipulating everything from our shopping habits to our votes.
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