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Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

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Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#21

Post by lkrubner »

zerealshadowban wrote: post #19

Since modern philosophy has been teaching that reality is a social construct, why wouldn't it follow that each individual self is too? Further, we have been taught that values are socially determined (market prices, fashion, popular arts, ...) and that for the individual the highest moral compass resides in the well-being of others (e.g. utilitarianism, charity drives, altruism, welfare programs, ...). Given this, wo…

This doesn't follow at all. I am very committed to the well-being of others, and donate my time and money in various ways to help, but I'm not on social media because it is so clearly a game that takes people away from their best ideals. As an example, consider people who post photos of the party they went to last night, or the vacation they took last week. There is a competition to suggest that their life is amazing. I don't judge them, and they are free to live however they wish, but that focus takes people away from the ideals of helping others.

You mention that notion that reality is a social construct. This makes me think of Jean Baudrillard[1] and his assertion that the Gulf War I did not occur, it was simply a television show that we all watched.

Baudrillard would obviously assert that Facebook is part of the Simulacra. (I don't think anyone can doubt that, so I'm not qualifying the sentence.) If one is trying to get back to something real, the path does not lead through Facebook. If one is trying to find real connections with other human beings, the path does not lead through Facebook.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#24

Post by dekhn »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #20

The way this is titled makes the relation seem directional, and in the wrong direction... Basing self worth on social acceptance definitely predates Facebook, and Facebook addiction is a pretty obvious consequence of the positive feedback loop that you'd get form using Facebook to feed that part of yourself. Not defending Facebook or any other social network here, I personally think Facebook is likely toxic -- but I…

in any scientific article, if you reverse the causation in the title and it makes more sense, the author probably made an error.

As a wise professor sitting in the audience said to the lecturer: "Normally we put the dependent variable on the Y axis".

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#25

Post by logicchains »

bdz wrote: post #14

Social media is the new smoking. Cancer destroys you physically but these sites destroy your mental health. Not just Facebook but Instagram too for example, it's even worse. And don't forget Twitter.

That's just absurd. Maybe people with underlying psychological issues are somehow damaged by Facebook, but in my experience the majority of users (at the very least the people I know who use it) just see it as a convenient way to keep up with what friends are up to and share interesting jokes/memes, it's certainly not destroying their mental health.

If someone suffers when they see other people doing well, because their self-worth is based on comparing themselves to others, that's a character flaw. It's going to keep making their lives miserable until they learn to address it, without or without Facebook around. People blaming Facebook seems like a classic case of addressing the symptoms not the disease; some people are so unwilling to make any effort to grow and better themselves that they'll do whatever they can to find an external source of blame for the effects of their unhealthy thinking patterns. It's so much easier to think "Facebook is evil" than to think "It's not healthy for me to judge myself in comparisons to others, I should work to learn to be happy at their success".

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#26

Post by 1sttimeposter »

What about TV addiction, video game addiction, addiction to foods laden with high fructose corn syrup, or an other number of “addictions”? Point here is anything can have a good effect or negative effect. Everyone on HN has an addiction to talking negatively about things people have built or are building. Very rarely is anyone speaking about the good that results from what people are working on. People have and will always gravitate towards staking self worth on social-acceptance regardless of the communication channel. Whether it is their family, friends, classmates, colleagues and interaction happens over IM, email, in school cafeterias, locker rooms, people are looking for social acceptance and depending on how that goes there is a good or bad experience with it. Nothing new here nor does Facebook have anything to do with it. Facebook exposes you to more people and it doesn’t inherently do anything to you either negatively or positively. For every negative article there are hundreds of examples of good that comes from it. (My 2 cents)

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#27

Post by anothergoogler »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #20

The way this is titled makes the relation seem directional, and in the wrong direction... Basing self worth on social acceptance definitely predates Facebook, and Facebook addiction is a pretty obvious consequence of the positive feedback loop that you'd get form using Facebook to feed that part of yourself. Not defending Facebook or any other social network here, I personally think Facebook is likely toxic -- but I…

I'm not so sure, a Skinner Box is designed to condition its occupants. Facebook cultivates a user's thirst for validation from other users. On a much, much smaller scale, Hacker News does it with the point system. That's not surprising, everybody is going for engagement. I disagree that every obsessed Facebook user is innately hooked on approval from others. Facebook pays the big bucks, has hundreds if not thousands of employees focused on this specific goal.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#28

Post by florabuzzword »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #20

The way this is titled makes the relation seem directional, and in the wrong direction... Basing self worth on social acceptance definitely predates Facebook, and Facebook addiction is a pretty obvious consequence of the positive feedback loop that you'd get form using Facebook to feed that part of yourself. Not defending Facebook or any other social network here, I personally think Facebook is likely toxic -- but I…

What direction do you think “linked” implies?

I find no bias in this language. To me, this reads as suggesting mere correlation.

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