Claiming our lives back from social media addiction • Hacker News Board

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#21

Post by jchw » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #14

jchw wrote: post #13

Social media and people on social media do not know us better than we know ourselves because all of us lie and try to look cool on social media. Like, can you think of the last time you saw someone clearly trying to act smart on a forum, maybe even... right here? As far as I'm concerned, all social media knows is how to exploit us. It hones in on what gets us engaged. I think that is far worse than 'knowing us' - I'd…

On the one hand this is true: the things we tell social media are really unreliable indicators of ourselves. On the other hand, the knowledge social media has about us goes beyond what we enter in it. They know what we read, often what website we visit, what we click on, what we hover over but don't click on, whose profiles we view, what posts/comments we start to type but then remove, etc. Those can reveal a lot of…

I think that's exactly why companies fight so hard to watch our behavior everywhere: it's because they want to know the true us, or at least feed as much of the data about the real us to it's ad algorithms.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#22

Post by kokol998 » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 2:29 PM UTC

ashark wrote: post #17

cousin_it wrote: post #12

I think of TV/gaming/internet/Facebook addiction as a generalized addiction to screens. You probably can't kick it cold turkey if your job involves looking at a screen. But you can do the next best thing: avoid all screens except your work screen. No smartphones, tablets, consoles, TVs... (A dumb phone is allowed.)

TV with no antenna and putting part of what used to be your Internet+services money to a dvd or two a month, and maybe a game every couple months on some older console, probably wouldn’t be too bad. Or just using the library for movies. The Internet and its never-ending content are the main problem, IMO.

Main problem, how? Wouldn't doing what you say feel incredibly limiting since you know you could be enjoying so much more? Do you do what you describe?

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#23

Post by onetokeoverthe » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 2:33 PM UTC

An app to socialize. How about just shutting the damm thing off?

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#24

Post by d33 » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 2:35 PM UTC

mkstowegnv wrote: post #20

In my life some of the most interesting lasting friendships were made with strangers I met in hostels while traveling and at weddings. But my recent experiences with hostels and weddings and bus stops and pretty much everywhere (even in remote areas in the third world) is that instead of talking to each other everyone is giving their attention to their smartphones. Social media needs to start making its emphasis the…

That would have some pretty interesting privacy implications, not to mention the room for manipulation...

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#25

Post by gaius » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 2:36 PM UTC

rn3aoh wrote: post #8

I've read an article like this so many times... They called it "internet addiction" before, and accused people of persistent need to check their email. What all of these authors seem to conveniently ignore is that "social media" is not television, not a single source broadcast, even though social media companies would really want it to be. Just a single chokepoint. Social media has real people on the other end. Media…

Saying that people are addicted to it is largely equivalent to saying that people are addicted to other people

Think about it this way: a little sugar, salt and fat isn't harmful. In fact you need salt and fat as part of your diet to be healthy, and sugar was a rare treat - that's why they taste good. But if companies start adding more and more of these things to food, such that the consumers start to forget what real food tastes like, and then start making foods that are nearly all sugar and fat, well that is very bad for your health. That's what social media is. It's food without nutrients, and only the most shallow form of human contact.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#26

Post by en-us » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 2:50 PM UTC

d33 wrote: post #24

mkstowegnv wrote: post #20

In my life some of the most interesting lasting friendships were made with strangers I met in hostels while traveling and at weddings. But my recent experiences with hostels and weddings and bus stops and pretty much everywhere (even in remote areas in the third world) is that instead of talking to each other everyone is giving their attention to their smartphones. Social media needs to start making its emphasis the…

That would have some pretty interesting privacy implications, not to mention the room for manipulation...

Current social media has those exact same problems. Corporations violate our privacy daily and successfully work to manipulate the population. We already crossed that bridge unfortunately.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#27

Post by kristiandupont » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 2:58 PM UTC

mkstowegnv wrote: post #20

In my life some of the most interesting lasting friendships were made with strangers I met in hostels while traveling and at weddings. But my recent experiences with hostels and weddings and bus stops and pretty much everywhere (even in remote areas in the third world) is that instead of talking to each other everyone is giving their attention to their smartphones. Social media needs to start making its emphasis the…

Perhaps. But I would never activate such a thing. I'd expect to run into weirdos that are impossible to get rid of.

It's a cliché to say that we as engineers look to solve all problems with more tech, even the problem of too much tech. But in this case I think it's really warranted.

I've had two experiences here in Copenhagen that were interesting to me. Once, I was on a bus that got stuck in a pile of snow. Everybody got out and helped push it. Another time, the ATM's collectively stopped working for a half hour or so. In both instances, people were almost delighted to have a reason to speak to strangers around them. The bus ride turned into a small party, and with the ATM situation I saw a person giving a stranger cash (not a lot, but completely out of the blue). Both times I had the feeling that it was like people were waking up from a zombie-sleep and I wonder if things were more like this in villages in the old days.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#28

Post by notacoward » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 3:03 PM UTC

mkstowegnv wrote: post #20

In my life some of the most interesting lasting friendships were made with strangers I met in hostels while traveling and at weddings. But my recent experiences with hostels and weddings and bus stops and pretty much everywhere (even in remote areas in the third world) is that instead of talking to each other everyone is giving their attention to their smartphones. Social media needs to start making its emphasis the…

It really is sad that public spaces are now full of people doing private things. Yes, they're often being social in a way, but in most of those cases they're interacting with people they already know at the expense of getting to know the new people around them. That impedes the formation of the broad and diverse web of relationships important to civic community.

I don't think there's a simple answer to this. There just needs to be more of an understanding that mobile devices and social media can either enhance or detract from real human interaction, and that using them in ways that detract is rude.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#29

Post by jhiska » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 3:13 PM UTC

Articles on social media detailing how to combat social media addiction or "the crisis of attention" or whatever clickbait title is the latest way that social media is capturing our attention.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#30

Post by ashark » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 3:32 PM UTC

kokol998 wrote: post #22

ashark wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV with no antenna and putting part of what used to be your Internet+services money to a dvd or two a month, and maybe a game every couple months on some older console, probably wouldn’t be too bad. Or just using the library for movies. The Internet and its never-ending content are the main problem, IMO.

Main problem, how? Wouldn't doing what you say feel incredibly limiting since you know you could be enjoying so much more? Do you do what you describe?

> Main problem, how? Wouldn't doing what you say feel incredibly limiting since you know you could be enjoying so much more?

More limiting in the sense that I would have fewer options for wasting time, yes. More limiting in that I'd be forced to engage with media I had on-hand, yes. More limiting in the sense that I'd somehow be worse off after, say, a year of that? I very much doubt it, and expect the opposite would be the case. Little of my use of the Internet is productive, what is productive is rarely more so than, say, reading, and mostly it serves to take time from activities that would at least not be any more a waste of time, and may well be more improving (including simply sleep).

> Do you do what you describe?

No. I'd cancel our home Internet today if it wouldn't be incredibly inconvenient for my wife. She's a teacher, and she does and is expected to do way more work stuff online in the evenings and on weekends than I am as a developer, unfortunately.