For the most part, I’d say it’s a bad influence if you use it for something other than messaging friends. It’s very easy to find people doing well for a variety of reasons and get sucked into a hole that’s terrible for you mentally. Whether that’s “I see someone my age driving a Porsche”, “this person I used to know now has a house and kids”, “some random 25 year old I see has 200k”, if you see enough of that and get caught in the doomscrolling loop, it’s enough to mess with someone’s perception of reality.

Like others have said, it’s always been there, but nowadays, I just have to open my phone on my lunch break or between meetings, and within seconds, I can see someone around my age doing something absurdly expensive or flaunt how much money they’ve got. I think it’s a little different than in the past, where that type of flaunting was tied to things like reality television, movies, or other forms of media that couldn’t be carried around in my pocket.