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Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

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Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#91

Post by matz1 »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #38
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.

I certainly don’t consider stranger random people on social media as “interacting with people” either, this include my respond to your comment.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#92

Post by rwnspace »

Confiks wrote: post #26
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…

> 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 cronjob. About a year ago I was 30 minutes into creating exactly such a script, and then I found https://hckrnews.com , which lists all the posts that reach the frontpage (or are top 10/20/50%).

I do quite like hckrnews, though there's still not enough of a disconnect for me. The comment section is too juicy. I'm probably going to symlink the output of the script as a source for $HOME/.newsboat/urls [1]

[1] https://newsboat.org/

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#93

Post by eeZah7Ux »

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…

I'm surprised you are not getting downvoted (more) by mentioning the hivemind.

The first rule of the HN hivemind is that you don't mention it.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#94

Post by eeZah7Ux »

petra wrote: post #52
Kiro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two problems I see with HN: 1. It's the most addictive social media I know. 2. Due to the "downvote if you disagree" policy you get downvoted for simple opinions and that makes you really depressed when you happen to have opinions about stuff that's not in line with the general HN crowd.

I agree HN is very addictive, maybe the most of all social media. but why ?

Because it focuses on topics rather than facebook nonversations

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#95

Post by davestephens »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #82

I've been off social media for years now, entirely, and I'm back to a point where the rest of my friends and just society itself are so fully entrenched into some sort of social media that I'm getting very lonely and depressed. I've actually thought about making a Facebook or Instagram account again and just placing strict rules on it, but even that really creeps me out. My friends are always telling me about cool ev…

Can I ask how old you are? I wonder how this affects different age generations.

I'm 37, left social media a few years back when my son was born - the thinking being that the time I spent on there would be better spent with him and my wife! I don't feel excluded by my friendship groups or like I'm missing out on anything.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#96

Post by abledon »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #82

I've been off social media for years now, entirely, and I'm back to a point where the rest of my friends and just society itself are so fully entrenched into some sort of social media that I'm getting very lonely and depressed. I've actually thought about making a Facebook or Instagram account again and just placing strict rules on it, but even that really creeps me out. My friends are always telling me about cool ev…

Do you program for a living or have a job that requires lots of human interaction? I find coder jobs amplify the unbalancing nature of loneliness. On the other hand , loneliness is just a symptom of the human not knowing how to be alone and remain content. If only we were born with the user manual around our neck

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#97

Post by prolikewh0a »

abledon wrote: post #96
prolikewh0a wrote: post #82

I've been off social media for years now, entirely, and I'm back to a point where the rest of my friends and just society itself are so fully entrenched into some sort of social media that I'm getting very lonely and depressed. I've actually thought about making a Facebook or Instagram account again and just placing strict rules on it, but even that really creeps me out. My friends are always telling me about cool ev…

Do you program for a living or have a job that requires lots of human interaction? I find coder jobs amplify the unbalancing nature of loneliness. On the other hand , loneliness is just a symptom of the human not knowing how to be alone and remain content. If only we were born with the user manual around our neck

I have a tech job that requires a lot of non face-to-face human interaction through slack, with people I never build relationships with. Still super lonely :D

Dating is also near impossible because I don't want to use social media.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#98

Post by rifung »

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.

> HN and Reddit arent that different from other social media sites.

I guess it depends on what you are measuring them by. I'd argue they are quite different and did something similar to the previous commenter.

To me, FB and Instagram make you feel lonely because you see people you actually know interacting and doing things which may make you feel like you're being left out or have a worse life somehow.

With HN and Reddit, you get news or some form of entertainment but that's more similar to Netflix or YouTube than to FB for me personally. I don't mind being entertained; it doesn't make me lonely. In fact I actually go on YouTube or Netflix precisely when I want to be alone.

Re: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

#99

Post by prolikewh0a »

davestephens wrote: post #95
prolikewh0a wrote: post #82

I've been off social media for years now, entirely, and I'm back to a point where the rest of my friends and just society itself are so fully entrenched into some sort of social media that I'm getting very lonely and depressed. I've actually thought about making a Facebook or Instagram account again and just placing strict rules on it, but even that really creeps me out. My friends are always telling me about cool ev…

Can I ask how old you are? I wonder how this affects different age generations. I'm 37, left social media a few years back when my son was born - the thinking being that the time I spent on there would be better spent with him and my wife! I don't feel excluded by my friendship groups or like I'm missing out on anything.

I'm 27, single, no family/brothers/sisters.
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