Fundamentally, the brain still receives “bite-size-chocolate” dopamine hits from Lemmy by receiving positive affirmations from upvotes, cortisol from downvotes, and lends to dark behavior patterns like any forum. Adrenaline dumps when engaged in “online arguments”.
The nature of forums’ stimulation of our over-sized and over-active (but evolutionarily necessary for our ancestors’ survival) amygdala fosters social media addiction.
People like Lemmy for many reasons. Some of them are good. However, let’s not pretend that it’s “all of the good with none of the bad.” It’s healthy to be skeptical of Lemmy instances too.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Yeah, a great part of Lemmy’s fundamental design is that it gives the user so much ability to block specific toxic users and communities and even entire instances from being seen by that user.
A user who is interested in self regulating or limiting that potential adrenaline overload … is aided by Lemmy in doing so.
This is significantly different from its nearest equivalent, reddit, operated untill about 2 years ago, when they finally added an actual block user ability.
Still don’t think you can block the entire user group of subreddit communities, the way you can block an an entire Lemmy instance, if you want to.
Also, moderation and admin logs are significantly less opague than on reddit.
To the best of my knowledge, on lemmy, you can’t admin edit the post of someone you are arguing with to frame them, basically, and then turn them into a strawman of themselves, and then win that argument with them, and then ban them… as has happened on reddit.
Also Also, … lemmy at least not yet does not appear to have a problem with a massive flood of ai bots posting god knows what % of the actual content.
…
Not saying Lemmy is perfect.
I’m saying its better.
And I guess I’m also saying there’s a difference between being an alcoholic and enjoying an occasional drink from time to time.
Generally: Yes, of course, approach any online messsge board or social media with caution and skepticism… but different platforms can be significantly more conducive to generating negative mental health outcomes than others…
… short form video platforms collapse your attention span, anything that allows advertisements or ‘influencers’ who are basically just walking talking brand ambassadors lie to you to sell you all kinds of bs…
Thats not present on lemmy, at least not that I’ve seen… so in those ways, lemmy is the marijuana to say Tiktok’s fentanyl.