It's no wonder Facebook Inc earnings are falling

"Adverse outcomes such as suicide and depression appear to have risen sharply over the same period that the use of smartphones and social media has expanded. Alter (2018) and Newport (2019), along with other academics and prominent Silicon Valley executives in the “time well-spent” movement, argue that digital media devices and social media apps are harmful and addictive. At the broader social level, concern has focused particularly on a range of negative political externalities. Social media may create ideological “echo chambers” among like-minded friend groups, thereby increasing political polarization (Sunstein 2001, 2017; Settle 2018). Furthermore, social media are the primary channel through which misinformation spreads online (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017), and there is concern that coordinated disinformation campaigns can affect elections in the US and abroad."  [Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, and Matthew Gentzkow (November 2019) "The Welfare Effects of Social Media"]

BoingBoing, 10 February 2020:

Facebook is designed to make you anxious, depressed and dissatisfied, three states of mind that make you more vulnerable to advertising and other forms of behavioral manipulation. Small wonder, then, that people who quit using Facebook reporthigher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression andanxiety. Bloomberg's article about the study is a few months old but one that should be revisited regularly between now and November.

People who deactivated Facebook as part of the experiment were happier afterward, reporting higher levels of life satisfaction and lowerlevels of depression and anxiety. The change was modest but significant — equal to about 25 to 40 percent of the beneficial effect typically reported for psychotherapy.

Why are people willing to pay so much money for something that reduces their happiness? One possibility is that social media acts like an addictive drug — in fact, the people Allcott et al. paid to deactivate Facebook ended up using it less after the experiment was over. But another possibility is that people use services like Facebook because they’re compelled by motivations other than the pursuit of happiness.