I wanted to create clarity between (the many) studies about social media harm and true costs (aka externalities). I built an interactive calculator where you can load any peer-reviewed paper and instantly see its economic impact.

Example: Load the Yale 2024 mental health study → calculator shows $280B/year in youth treatment costs alone. Add the Stanford polarization paper → another $500B in lost productivity. Total damage: 2.4% of GDP.

The vision: Make externalities of social media (human suffering, suicide, depression, etc.) visible.

Try it: https://suffering.social/

Click any study, watch the numbers update in real-time. The methodology is transparent—you can adjust multipliers and see how assumptions change outcomes.

Open to suggestions. Trying to make the world 1% safer for children.

Also - this may underestimate costs as these are mostly summaries of child-harm studies, many adults not included.