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Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

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Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#31

Post by bengale »

clarry wrote: post #29
bengale wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it’s different there. Also, how do you go about getting an account over there?

It helps that the community is smaller and we've had the occasional meta thread discussing rules & phenomenons, with moderators and active posters alike present. We also have a somewhat tight knit community of active participants & mods on IRC. I think this makes the whole thing more human. There are other factors, for example downvoting because you disagree isn't seen as a valid reason for downvotes on Lobsters. In…

Interesting, thanks for the info. I'll give it a more thorough look.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#32

Post by octosphere »

kopo wrote: post #30
jelly_dev wrote: post #2

About half way through my college education I decided I would only use Facebook for messages and otherwise eliminated all social media from my life aside from Reddit and Hacker news. Since then I found my outlook on life has improved dramatically and recommend most people do that. The problem with social media is you only see the interesting parts of people's lives, so you're forced into a loop of thinking your life…

HN and Reddit arent that different from other social media sites. All of them in my mind are "All You Can Eat" info buffet tables. This is just the current approach we have of dealing with a new world overloaded by info. It will change as we learn more and more about how it effects people. In the real world nobody healthy visits an "All You Can Eat" buffet everyday. Same thing will eventually happen with information.

The bulk of the problem is the linear-thinking brain. If we could devise a way for the brain to think exponentially (something computers are good at) - then we have a suitable way to deal with information overload. My only gripe with augmented brain capacity is that it could spiral away from us, and then lose touch with our original linear thought patterns. Something we have to eventually come to terms with.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#33

Post by anoncoward111 »

Social media is literally my only hobby and has kept me very happy and safe-feeling for years now. I love browsing and discovering random things. Interacting with people in person can be very taxing after a long day of work, aka, interacting with people.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#34

Post by nhauz »

newen wrote: post #28
8bitsrule wrote: post #21

My favorite long-term shared-post-and-comments site - far and away the most friendly and community-like - does not have downvotes. You can only 'favorite' a user comment. If your comment is not 'favorited' it is also not slapped with a downvote. (I find downvotes to be counterproductive and often arbitrary if not malicious. And one sows another.) Moderators decide only what posts are productive. A dozen or so a day r…

Metafilter? Pretty sure the reason there are no arguments is they purged everyone who doesn't follow the groupthink. And the fee helps with banned people not rejoining ofcourse.

So mefi is the same as HN but you even have to pay on top of it? ;P

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#35

Post by davidverhasselt »

rwnspace wrote: post #6

I've deleted all my social media accounts besides Reddit and HN. The only thing that's stopping me from visiting these two is addiction. I don't read the news, mostly, why bother? It does much more harm than good. You don't need 1000 hrs of newsreading to vote effectively. My next step is to make a personal website with some contact details and a scraper script for the links in the HN top 30-40 that I can run as a cr…

Heya, I run https://hndigest.com - you can configure it to email you the top n posts over a certain period (daily up to weekly). Check it out, it might suit your needs.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#36

Post by b3b0p »

rwnspace wrote: post #6

I've deleted all my social media accounts besides Reddit and HN. The only thing that's stopping me from visiting these two is addiction. I don't read the news, mostly, why bother? It does much more harm than good. You don't need 1000 hrs of newsreading to vote effectively. My next step is to make a personal website with some contact details and a scraper script for the links in the HN top 30-40 that I can run as a cr…

I do the same. The only reason for me keeping Hacker News and Reddit is that I often find more up to date information and more information then say Stack Overflow (e.g. site:reddit.com/r/golang ). Otherwise, I would unsubscribe and put them in `/etc/hosts` file.

I also don't read the news (who's the president? Kidding...), at least in the typical sense. My colleagues seemed to really be shocked when I told them that, but when I inquired why they could not give me a good reason. I only remember them saying to discuss current events. I figured if it's big enough deal and important enough I would hear about from other sources.

I read Ars Technica, Hacker News, and I am subscribed to a few Subreddits (Games, AnimeDubs, Vita, Nintendo, GameDev and related, but that's it). I have a multireddit for Programming, Startups, and Netflix/Amazon Prime movies/shows for when I need to put the computer down.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#37

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

kopo wrote: post #30
jelly_dev wrote: post #2

About half way through my college education I decided I would only use Facebook for messages and otherwise eliminated all social media from my life aside from Reddit and Hacker news. Since then I found my outlook on life has improved dramatically and recommend most people do that. The problem with social media is you only see the interesting parts of people's lives, so you're forced into a loop of thinking your life…

HN and Reddit arent that different from other social media sites. All of them in my mind are "All You Can Eat" info buffet tables. This is just the current approach we have of dealing with a new world overloaded by info. It will change as we learn more and more about how it effects people. In the real world nobody healthy visits an "All You Can Eat" buffet everyday. Same thing will eventually happen with information.

Agreed that HN and Reddit are basically just replacements for Facebook. Former becoming more and more like the latter.

I disagree it’s “information”. The article is usually wrapped in opinion, and you’re in the opinion section now.

Maybe the appeal is that when the opinion is from some you know (a “friend”) you feel obligated to acknowledge it and on an anonymous forum you can more easily ignore it?

Reddit vs Facebook I think is just social media preference.

IDK... I’ve found myself skipping articles and jumping right to the opinion section in order to “save time”. Bad habit, but I just don’t have time to read everything.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#38

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #33

Social media is literally my only hobby and has kept me very happy and safe-feeling for years now. I love browsing and discovering random things. Interacting with people in person can be very taxing after a long day of work, aka, interacting with people.

Is it a concern that you don’t consider social media usage as “interacting with people”?

If you were browsing wikipedia I’d understand. But your in the comment section talking to me, believe it or not, a real person.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#39

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

icelancer wrote: post #19
Kiro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News and Reddit are the worst though.

For that to be true you have to have one hell of a selective group of people you follow on Facebook and Twitter. Hacker News is without question the best "social media" site I read and has mostly maintained its quality over the years I've been here. Reddit, however, is godawful.

Yea? Have a pro-gun discussion on HackerNews and tell me how it’s so much better than Reddit.

HN has its own problems. For one, there is a growing discontent for different opinions (downvote happy), and two, there is one “channel”, so it’s mob rule for opinion.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#40

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

clarry wrote: post #17
stareatgoats wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit can be, but HN is IMO the best social media site there is in the IT space, because of the clear guidelines, active moderation and well thought out mechanics which for example enables both flame-war suppression and anonymity, no small feat.

IMO the guidelines, moderation and mechanics all work way better on lobste.rs than here. Here the hivemind effect is pretty damn strong too, so it's going to be frustrating to try have a fruitful discussion if your opinion doesn't align with the group. Here there are enough toxic people that discussions often turn into tiresome, flamey back-and-forth between a handful of people. And here there are too many people wit…

>Here the hivemind effect is pretty damn strong too, so it's going to be frustrating to try have a fruitful discussion if your opinion doesn't align with the group.

Entirely correct.

For fun, sometime write “I’m aware of the issues in speculative modeling, misleading headlines, and also I don’t feel like a tax solution is the correct response to global climate changes” and see what happens!

Edit: and even posting an example phrase - proves my point. Thanks for the downvotes!

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