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Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

iafrikan.com

61–70 of 87 posts

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that it would be realistic to think we will never get back to theses times. Tech has already been pushed too hard into new generations.

I can literally go do those things right now and meet people, I've made plenty of connections doing exactly those things. Not everyone you try to talk to will be into conversing with random folks, but some will, and that's fine. If you're too afraid to just talk to people, I don't know what people think an app is going to do to help.

[deleted]

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#62
My predictably unpopular theory is that highly social people are really afraid of other people. Perhaps not without reason if one regards other humans as potential predators. So they designate a group of people friends and use it as protection against all the other people.

Yet they remain afraid, and this fear is what makes social interactions addictive (like gambling; the great the fear the greater the high on the occasions when you don't lose).

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that it would be realistic to think we will never get back to theses times. Tech has already been pushed too hard into new generations.

I can literally go do those things right now and meet people, I've made plenty of connections doing exactly those things. Not everyone you try to talk to will be into conversing with random folks, but some will, and that's fine. If you're too afraid to just talk to people, I don't know what people think an app is going to do to help.

Remove the expectation barrier. The point of meetups, the "find someone near me" app, and other tech-mediated gatherings (and hobbies, and non-tech-mediated-gatherings, and so on) is that everyone is on the same page as to what to expect. Society has fractured into self-organized bubbles; breaking down things like "talk to me" vs "don't talk to me" from an out-group may require some sort of outside influence that isn't yet present. Since, as you mentioned, you can literally do all those things right now, and people aren't, we need to do something if we want things to change. Our interconnected pocket supercomputers are our current hammer. Maybe this problem is nail-shaped?

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#64
post #34
post #31

I've deleted my facebook account a decade ago, the last time I logged in when facebook revived the account and told me it was hacked. I don't think I've ever really had the desire myself to reactivate it, my fellow students started posting into some shared group there but eventually everyone moved to whatsapp as that was more widely deployed and direct. FB, for me, has no actual value other than capturing users like…

everyone moved to whatsapp Maybe the distinction is worthwhile to make if you try, but in general “I don’t use Facebook, I use [thing that is also Facebook]” is not really a convincing argument.

Facebook is more public. Even if your posts are only visible to "friends" it's more about browsing and less about actually starting conversations. It also gets data-mined more heavily, compared to WhatsApp which has end-to-end encryption using the same underlying protocol as Signal.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#65
post #5

Its probably nothing in comparison to video games and we dont talk much about that.

I disagree on both points. Human population spends less time in aggregate playing games that on social media. I don't have a quote from somewhere but just from the monthly active users from various social networks it is quite safe to say that almost everybody is on at least one social network. The second thing is, that people do talk about the addictiveness and bad effects of games all the time , and have been doing…

Monthly active is nowhere near any kind of problem.

I know no one who would flunk the school cause he can't glue out of Facebook. I know multiple people who had huge problems in school due to being unable to stop playing or woke up multiple times during night to care about kingdom.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#66

My predictably unpopular theory is that highly social people are really afraid of other people. Perhaps not without reason if one regards other humans as potential predators. So they designate a group of people friends and use it as protection against all the other people. Yet they remain afraid, and this fear is what makes social interactions addictive (like gambling; the great the fear the greater the high on the o…

That's ridiculous.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can literally go do those things right now and meet people, I've made plenty of connections doing exactly those things. Not everyone you try to talk to will be into conversing with random folks, but some will, and that's fine. If you're too afraid to just talk to people, I don't know what people think an app is going to do to help.

I am agree with what you said, but the aim is to pull those who spend too much time on social medias (not necessarily afraid of talking to people) and make them go out ! btw, thanks for giving your opinion :)

If it helps someone actually socialize a bit, I'm all for it. I don't mean to sound like I'm shitting on your project or anything, it just feels so weird to me that it's necessary.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems true that comfort breeds alienation while adversity encourages interaction and interdependence, and, being that that's what we evolved for, many people seem to enjoy the latter. For my part, though, I'd like that limited to WoW guilds; communication greatly disrupts my comfort unless done in the most abstract and expedient environments possible, like cyberspace. The smartphone has done wonders to make meatsp…

There's a fantastic quote from Orwell about Hitler's rise that points out that the appeal of fascism was struggle and conflict itself. I'l see if I can find it, but it is something I wonder about from a sociological standpoint: When we have our basic needs met, how do we deal with the alienation that results? If we don't deal with that alienation, can we expect someone who promises adversity to arise? Being poor, lac…

Hitler promised a lot more and did not arise to power in the situation of good economy. He promised new land under theory that Germany is overcrowded, he promised power and went up as capitalism/democracy seemed to be failing. Hitlers popularity went down when economy was better and up when it crashed.

Another thing that played against socialists in Germany was knowledge of purge in Russia. Germans were scared that something like that will happen there unless there is strongman in lead. And to be fair, communists getting power would likely mean danger and killings.

People also hoped that Hitler in power will cause street violence go down.

People will trade identity and purpose for comfort, but in Germany it did not happened out of comfort. And it happened in violent already militaristic state that valued military a lot long before Hitler.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#69
post #34
post #31

I've deleted my facebook account a decade ago, the last time I logged in when facebook revived the account and told me it was hacked. I don't think I've ever really had the desire myself to reactivate it, my fellow students started posting into some shared group there but eventually everyone moved to whatsapp as that was more widely deployed and direct. FB, for me, has no actual value other than capturing users like…

everyone moved to whatsapp Maybe the distinction is worthwhile to make if you try, but in general “I don’t use Facebook, I use [thing that is also Facebook]” is not really a convincing argument.

While owned by the same company I don't think it traps you in the same way. Whenever I log into facebook it turns into a 10 to 15 minute thing that could have been one or two. I avoid that thing as much as possible, but that's not really a problem with whatsapp.

I do dislike the "status" feature they put in though...

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#70

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…

> Social media needs to start making its emphasis the creation of more real world social interaction.

They could also try to do better at fostering more-meaningful online interactions.

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