I have a theory for that. Namely, companies have a mild monitary insenstive to allow shit to continue getting worse. And look, I am pro-capitalist. I like that capitalism atleast lets you choose how you get fucked over while other systems don't really do that.
But, the continuation of isoluating humans from community is something I firmly believe companies have an insenstive to reduce the ammount of alternatives we have access to.
Think about it. Why would a chatbot company, for example, want it's customers to get human connection when getting addicted to it's chatbots would be more profitable? Or why would a delivery company want the customer to just decide to go out today and buy stuff from the source?
Now, I am not saying that these companies are actively doing this. As in, the OpenAi system is not personally going to every person and trying to talk them out of meeting people IRL, but rather, I'm saying they're jumping at the chance for these changes to continue. So, instead of doing anything to create alternative, companies allow the problem to continue spiralling downward into dependancy.
Remember, companies aren't evil, they're just greedy. And nothing motivates a company more than money. That's why companies are somewhat understandable. While people can be sadistic, compnaies are usually monitarily motivated. Hence, my theory that part of the current hell is because companies realised creating a level of tribalism and social isoluation is profitable.
Think about it this way. The Hunger Games and Twilight both managed to produce a level of public interest by providing a fandom tribal conflict, namely which half of the love triangle you'd like. Same with Harry Potter, people started fixating on which Hoggworths house they would get. While this is harmless, I doubt being team Edward or Jacob makes you truely against people on the other side, it did promote people to start getting identifiers. There was merchindise for all of these sub-groups within the fandoms. People felt connected somewhat to say they were Team Edward or Jacob or Slitherine or whatever else.
And than with things like Character.Ai, it made more profit off of having people wanting to continue interacting with the bots. Granted, the system was trying to maintain more control that things like, less flitered chatbots, but the principal remains the same. Normal chats, trained the bots on how to behave, than higher running bots were locked behind a paywall after a while. Because certain quality of life features where locked behind the paywall, some people bought it to continue and so on.
Character.Ai had insentive to produce addictive bots which eventually lead to users buying pay-walled features. Character.Ai is not unique in this area, online games also use this system. By locking features behind a pay-wall, most users invest a considerable ammount of time and energy into the system which than insentivises them into wanting to spend more. After all, if I've already spent a week on something, what's a week more? If I've already spent two weeks on something, what's a few bucks to unlock better features? Since I'm already paying a little bit, why not pay slightly more to unlock everything? And so on.
Honestly, it's a hell that's always been here, it's just been made worse by malls shutting down, lock down and continued limitations to social interaction. Hell, it's understandble from a business point of view to continue providing cheap patch problems to social issues as when it breaks you could sell the solution to it.
Of course there's other things wrong with the world, but this is defiently not helping it. I don't hate capitalism. I think it's hell but at least it's not a worse hell. It's the devil we know, and it at least provides some choice in how we're going to be screwed over here. That's something Communisim doesn't really do. But, to an extend Corps are the worst part of capitalism as Corps do have insentive to use more predatory systems to keep people hooked as it is profitable.
Take Casinos for example. While any smart Casino knows to not try to hook everyone who walks in, the second a Casino gets it claws into a whale, high payer, all bets are off. Casinos are the more pure form of what I am saying. Casinos don't create people who want to gamble, rather they find the ones who are likely to gamble and than provide a place for the spiral to exsist. People who don't or carefully gamble are less likely to get hooked by a Casino, but they're not the targets here.
The only major difference is current sociaty have damn near endless places that are designed to hook the vunrable. Think about dating apps. Someone who is already in a happy marriage or relationship is likely not on a dating app, they're not the target. People who want compainionship on the other hand. They are on dating apps, and so companies who manage to make them hooked on these dating apps start figuring out how to perpetuate there use of the app.
Same with online social media apps. While the content is hand created by real people, most of these spaces are managed by algorithms, meaning you are likely seeing what the app believes would keep you online for longer. Remember, time is money, online time is a lot of money. So, if you response somewhat to say, cat videos, the algorithm funnels cat videos to you. And note, positive response does not always count as more online time. If you watch a cat video that lifts your mood, maybe you'd log off instead of scrolling more. Negitive responses however boast engagement. Hence why people make rage bait.
The funny thing with social media is that the companies only produce about half of the problem, by making the algorithms, the content creaters create the other half of the problem. While most content creaters produce realively good quailty content, some realised that engagement is consistant on certain responses. For example, teasing content, or content that alludes to sexual content, usually grabs people attention, and so, some content creaters just produce such teasing content. Or other content creaters realised that people would hate watch their content, so they instead produce rage bait to boast engagement. Or they make use of AI generation to trend jump and conssitantly produce "high interest" topics for their content.
Of course the companies don't have much insesntive to limit such behaviour. While reducing actually illegal contant can work under legal restraints or content that is sexual reduces advertisers, most videos don't actually cross the line. After all, legally teasing content is not sexual content yet as it walks the line too well. Not to mention animated, or generated, content of that nature can get much closer to the line without being autoflagged.
For example, one band I like had two music videos. One, called Exicution is Fun, was live action and the other, How Nightmares Die, was an animatic. The animatic had drawings that could be classified as gory, such as a skinned man or other such body horror, but this was not flagged as age restricted on Youtube. The live action video had mild references to violence and puppets being dismembered with fake blood, but it was very tame compared to the animatic, however this one was flagged as age restricted.
My point here is mostly that even when the social media companies want to enforce regulations, there is cracks that some content slips through easily.
Honestly, not much different than were we started. Other than assuming that companies are profiting from consistant conflict, trying to alter your behaviour all that much is not exactly going to change anything. Again theres a market for everything, so technically companies are still profiting. But that also means that it would be smarter to just stop and try to focus on the immediate surrounds. Things like yourself or pets or family or hobbies rather than the great outside worlds. If you manage your own needs and find healthy coping mechinisms, addictions would be slightly easier to manage. Not, by much, I won't lie to you there, but any level of self-care is better than just spiraling, honestly.
You don't really need to rely on material goods to patch every problem, or at least not material goods sold to you by a company who only sees you as a figure on a spreadsheet. Even if you still hate yourself, try to care about yourself to spit in the face of Corpos and be a true punk, you know?