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My Toxic Relationship with Big Tech

Published on by Ron

When did we normalize relying on the platforms of big tech companies to make our lives at least somewhat meaningful?

I understand the escape from traditional TV to YouTube/Twitch as a search for decentralized and creative audiovisual entertainment. I understand influencers and micro-entrepreneurs using Instagram/TikTok as a showcase for their work. What I don't understand is the use of WhatsApp/Telegram by most companies in Brazil. Do they really believe their business models are confidential?

The worst part is that in Brazil, WhatsApp has become normalized across every level of society. The government, the military, civilians, the religious and atheists alike, everyone uses WhatsApp. Are we really sovereign? Telegram and Discord are also widely used, by decent people and criminals alike. I can even understand people using Twitter (X) or Bluesky to say what they think. Human beings need to put their ideas out there, even if those ideas are useless.

I'm against regulating social media. I'm in favor of destroying it. The amount of useless information people take in every day on these platforms speeds up physical and psychological wear and tear, causing illnesses like anxiety and depression, and for developing brains, that is, for children and adolescents, the harm can be even greater. I didn't pull this conclusion out of thin air or from voices in my head. It comes from a study published by Susanne Schweizer, PhD, School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, UNSW Sydney NSW 2052, Australia. The study Planned Social Media Ban and Depression and Anxiety in Adolescents, published on August 28, 2026, concludes that social media use and starting at a younger age are directly linked to increased symptoms of anxiety and depression. Having an account of one's own was specifically associated with increased anxiety.

We know that anxiety and depression are recognized as the ills of our time, yet we rarely talk about their causes. I would say capitalism is the first cause and, precisely, social media is the second. When I was a teenager in the early 2000s, I thought of the Internet as something amazing, where I could create websites, download music and movies, and research any subject, especially school subjects and technology.

Today's teenagers, like my youngest stepson, look up anything using language models and, worse, believe the model's answers without any verification. They spend a lot of time watching useless videos on YouTube and TikTok. As for my stepchildren, as a tech guy I don't forbid their use (it would even be hypocritical, since I spend most of my own time online), but I warn them about the harms of excess and invite them to play footvolley in the street from time to time.

My relationship with Big Tech in 2026 is getting shakier by the day. I currently watch videos on YouTube. In an election year, I like to be well informed. I watch some entertainment, mainly from YouTube's LGBT bubble, and I open Bluesky at random every day. I use WhatsApp because everyone I know uses it. I don't have Twitter, Instagram or TikTok, and I limit my use of language models to debugging code when I'm exhausted and to technical information, although I still prefer opening the official documentation.