this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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Speaking as someone who managed to quit smoking, but still uses a vape, who is focusing on doing daily PT after being maimed a while back...
A step in the right direction is a step in the right direction, and taking one step at a time is better than none.
Lemmy ain't corporate like Reddit, it ain't parasocial, only a very small number of users actually directly link their real identity to their psuedonym, and it doesn't have a worldclass datamining/profiling algo perfecting what content to feed to specifically you, to make you angry or insecure enough to keep you engaged.
Perfect?
No.
Leagues better than every alternative?
Far as I can tell, yes.
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 both anonymous or personally identifiable online forums' neurochemical 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. Screen time is the enemy.
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 how 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.
(At least not without some third party script or software... which are probably all broken by now given how hard reddit is cracking down on its API?)
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.