I understand. I'm not saying that I accept that the correlation is accurate. I'm just saying that if it is, the tradeoff to stop making 3% of people less happy is totally worthwhile.
But of course, still in the hypothetical, it wouldn't be necessary for ads to disappear to accomplish this. All that would be necessary is for advertising to adhere to the ideals the ad industry itself says it holds: rather than manipulating people, ads could just inform people what the product is, what it does, and what its strengths (and, as long as I'm dreaming, weaknesses) are.
But the vast majority of ads do none of that. Instead, they engage in psychological manipulation.
I'd take issue with that. Go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t... and look up some random brands you've heard of. The vast majority of ads are on the level. The ones that aren't are when the product itself is a scam most of the time.
I don't do Facebook, and have no clue what FB ads look like. I'm talking about advertising generally, online and off. I very rarely see ads that are like that.
Either advertising is so powerful as to rule the world, or it's so useless that nobody benefits from it. I 'd say , without adequate research on the effectiveness of advertising, these correlational studies are only marginally interesting.
Not to those 3%, and since advertising provides very little benefit to anyone who isn't in the ad business, I would be happy to that 3%.