As someone who gets most of my news from Snapple caps, it took me some time to discover that Bucks County is suing several social media companies.

Yes, Pennsylvania’s very own Bucks County.

As a neighboring New Jerseyan, I thank Pennsylvania for taking initiative, and also for being the birthplace of Mister Rogers.

Let’s give it to Pennsylvania. All together now: hip, hip, hooray!

As regards social media, I refer to the words of the eminent commentator and intellectual Groucho Marx: Whatever it is, I’m against it.

I’m opposed to it on general principles. I shall elaborate on them as soon as I discover what they are.

For now, I applaud Bucks County. We should all go to their Facebook page and give it some likes.

But wait. They’re suing Facebook. Not only that, they’re suing Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok.

Maybe they’ll win a few bucks. Ha!

This naturally brings up questions about the nature of free speech. Without Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok, how could young people express themselves?

My generation can barely hold a telephone conversation, even if we work together.

But these apps are convenient. I spend hours of my week making a fool of myself in the newspapers, but Instagram lets you do it almost instantly.

For those of you who don’t know, Instagram is a picture-sharing app where young people can communicate deep, thoughtful opinions on the major issues of the day, like what brand of sneakers looks the prettiest when you put them in a blender.

The parents behind the suit claim that the app has made their children into drooling hobgoblins.

Instagram claims that children are drooling hobgoblins anyway, so it’s not their fault.

At least YouTube has one redeeming quality: You can find decent tutorials there.

The bad news is that by the time you get to the end of a video on how to build a kitchen cabinet, you’ll have bought five because you’ll have seen 15 billion ads for them.

Snapchat’s defining feature is that photos and messages disappear shortly after they’re sent.

In any context other than social media, this would be ridiculous.

Bob: Whoa, what a murder scene. Quick, Joe, get some evidence.

Joe: I can’t, Bob. The photos disappear.

Bob: You call yourself a policeman? Go radio for backup.

Joe: I can’t. The radio disappeared, too. So did our cruiser.

Bob: Then we’ll have to walk back to headquarters. Wait. Joe, where are you? Joe? Hello?

These apps also have augmented reality filters.

This is another way of saying that they convince users that they live in a different reality where it’s normal to have eyebrows the size of your forehead and lips the color of canned prunes.

Meanwhile, TikTok is the force behind idiotic trends like turning your steering wheel in tune with the Cha Cha Slide lyrics.

Slide to the left. Slide to the right. Reverse, reverse.

The next lyric takes you to the emergency room.

Interestingly enough, this has improved traffic in New York City.

TikTok has 150 million users in the United States. That’s nearly half of the national population.

Imagine 150 million people taking four, maybe five minutes out of their busy schedule of uploading videos of themselves eating breakfast to do something like pick up litter.

You can’t? Me neither. Perhaps TikTok dulls the imagination.

I could say something more cynical here, but I’d better be careful. Especially if social media companies are secretly spying on us.

Personally, I can’t imagine that my life is interesting enough to be worth spying on.

If there really is an FBI agent peering through my laptop’s webcam, he deserves a pay raise for putting up with me.

Then he ought to give me the money. Here I am amusing him with this humor column, and what do I get? Nothing.

Not even a lousy T-shirt.

Not even a like.

All I can say is 🙁

Alexandra Paskhaver’s humor column appears every other Friday in the Delaware County Daily Times.